ersatz soubriquet's Comments

Ha! They still exist?
Back a zillion years ago, 1977, I got married, and my then wife took a job with the local city council, as a word processor operator. It was, back then, the latest in technology, and the council was so proud of it that they had regular visits and tours of people eager to see the latest in computerised cutting-edge technology. She had taken typing class at school, and tried hard to teach me, but here I am, still pecking away with one finger.
I remember the data storage, the controlled atmosphere room with tapes, coloured lights. very space-age.
And there was indeed a big gender divide. Women typed, men wandered around frowning at machines.
I wish I had learned typing back then. I still miss my old travel-remington typewriter, which, along with me, kept tip-ex in business.
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Back in the 1930s, my father learned to type, he rose to become chief executive, and was proud of the fact that his typing in words per minute was as fast as any of the company's typists. He also could write in Pitman Shorthand, which, as a kid, I thought was a super-secret code. Which, I suppose it is. I wonder how many people today are fluent in Pitman?
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Then again, it might have something to do with a major cluster of military radio and radar sites along there, a fast jet base etc.

As someone who has been travelling that road for a great many years, I'd discount the metals dumping notion. Other routes, not within these boundaries, but within the map, have far higher metals concentrations.
Teesside, for example, steelworks, or leadmining in the hills to the west.
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Pseudonym?
Good heavens! You mean... Oh no... Surely?
Only a scoundrel would use obfuscation, here in the transparent, honest, and trustworthy world of the internets.

I assure you I would never be party to such a heinous crime.
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Absolutely genuine. Wood gasification plant at rear, it will run, albeit with slightly reduced power, in a standard, carburetted engine.
Wood-gas fired tractors were moderately common in scandinavia at one time, as the fuel is free, a by-product of the forestry work those tractors were engaged in.

The gas being utilised, by the way, is carbon monoxide.
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I liked the analogy of a neighbour playing music loud enough to hear, and the one of watching tv in a store. Mine is the guy opposite me on the train, reading his newspaper. The parts of it I can see, I will read. I'm stealing his content!

I have wifi. when I first set it up, I experimented with leaving it open. then, on finding four networks connecting, I secured it. Buy your own, dammit.

But if I'm visiting my mother's house, there's a neighbour with a handy signal.
If you don't want others to connect, then password your access point. It's that simple.
Or get a plain wrapper to cover your newspaper on the train.
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Idiot....

As for Neatorama policy?
Keep posting whatever you choose. If some of these people are not happy with it, let them post their own thoughts on their own blogs.

It seems to me that there is a great deal of confusion in the U.S. as to the culprits in the WTC attacks. Many people have been killed in Iraq, which people like the driver of this truck in the picture seem to feel is a just and rational response. Yet Saddam was not behind the WTC attacks. Saddam WAS seen as an ally of the U.S. not so long ago, he only became an enemy when he threatened Kuwait's oil. And anyway, he's dead. long gone.
But american soldiers are still dying, and also killing, in Iraq. In a situation which is creating many more enemies for america, worldwide than existed at the time of 9/11.
To point out that the war on Iraq has been nonsense from day one is seen as an attack upon America. To point out that illegal torture has been gleefully embraced by the U.S. government is seen as an attack too.

And yes. It is. It is an attack upon the constitution of the United States, it goes against the principals that founded the nation.
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Great pic, but not a Ka7.
I've had a bunch of these pics for a while, and have been trying to track down the source. First thing is, they seem to be cg in origin, not the grainy black and white pics that would have been.
The Ka -7 did exist. It was smaller than this, and an utter disaster. It vibrated so badly that its first test flight was abandoned just five metres (15 feet) off the ground. After major modification it flew again.. And crashed.

But if anybody can give the true origins of these pictures, I'd be grateful... Oh.. and don't say "Dark Roasted", they also confuse fiction with reality. The curse of the web, if you see it on the web, it MUST be true.
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I work for a company that rents out industrial and commercial space. I see this all too often.
A closed weaving mill that supported a community for over 150 years, desk drawers filled with personal posessions, walls with collages of group outings, christmas parties, weddings, babies, of people at their workplaces, tables I can see as the wind blows through the broken windows, shuffling the once-vital papers.

It's sad. Buildings full if ghosts.
I work on them, we rebuild, subdivide, people come in again, voices, laughter, relationships, a whole new cycle.
Then the stunned morning. A locked door. A notice pinned to it. Raised voices, tears.
People with pride in their work, a good product, plenty of demand, but for some reason they cannot understand, suddenly it's gone. Cancel the holiday.
The new car will have to go back...I see the faces. "What will I do?"
The old buildings, they belonged to an era where a job could be for life, where generations of families worked together, old Rose, she started in the 1930s, minding a machine, under the eye of her own grandmother, and look now, Louise, her grand-daughter, clicking through the offices on power-heels, with her laptop, and her overnight case, flying out to Zurich to complete a multi-million pound deal.
No more though. The offices are apartments now, the factory flattened, those old stones scored by iron wheels and horse's hooves, all gone.
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  • Member Since 2012/08/07


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