mr2mk1g

"remember Paula - front to back.... front to back".

I drove over a big bee hive on a ride on lawn mower once that had taken up residence in an old mole hill. They didn't like that. About 1.5 seconds later I was stood about 150yrds away trying to knock a couple o'the bastards out of my hair and wondering how in the hell the lawn mower could possibly be trying to drive up a small tree on its own when I had the key in my hand. Never did figure out how in my rush I'd managed to remove the key without killing the engine. That night I went back and poured a couple of pints of kerosene down the hole. Then I stood back and chucked a lit rag at it. I missed. Apparently bees don't like kerosene either. They began to swarm above the hole. I was just trying to figure out what I was going to do about the situation when the flame from the rag must have caught a whiff of the kerosene and the whole swarm went up in a ball of flames. That was fun.

Great film. Big beards and gold flying motorbikes. Love it. Kiss your thumb and grin at the camera.

Unless you care little for money go second hand for at least some of your first kit. Most people buy to get them in the air then later downsize and get the colours they want. It's kind of an accepted that your first rig's gotta look like cack... kind of a rite of passage thing. If you travel to the states a lot, I'd say buy from the states. Their ecconomy is fried and our second hand market sucks. These two facts mean you stand to save anywhere between 75% and 50% on pretty much any second hand gear. Hell I just bought a brand new canopy from the stats for less than you'd pay for a beaten up canopy over here.

What might be more useful would be a light over your eye which lights up when the access lamp is on (talking DSLR's here). This way you would know when your camera has finished writing to the CF card and you'd know you had a full burst facility back. You could easily hook one up by using the old light sensor over the red record light trick people use on DV cameras without a lanc socket.

The cost for a barrel of oil is set by OPEC... everyone pays the same before tax.

No I mean toilets set up for wheelchair users. We call them "disabled toilets" over here... translate that into whatever PC term you guys use over there for "crip-crappers".

Will the technology and infrastructure exist at the time that market forces cause people to want to switch? Or will our ecconomies have to go through a period where there is not the tech to replace petrol, but no petrol to power the ecconomy? Surely it's sound ecconomic planning to entice the scientific and infrastructure providing communities to develop before it's time to actually call on them? The ramifications of not doing so could be the destruction of the very markets we look to for market forces.

A gallon of 95 ron petrol in the south west (according to the AA) is 80.9p per liter. That's 367.8p per gallon which equates to $7.06 (I was slightly off with my guess). 73.4% of this is tax so we pay 270p in tax and 97.8p on fuel per gallon. That's $1.88 per gallon on the actual fuel... that’s pretty much identical to what you're paying allowing for fluctuations in regional fuel price here in the UK and compound errors in the equations I've used... especially when you consider you're not buying 95 ron. Source: http://www.theaa.com/allaboutcars/fuel/ edit: damnit - shoulda used the national average from that table - would most likely have come out exactly the same as what you're paying... the area I live in appears to be paying the most for fuel out of the whole country.

Disabled toilets are gender neutral. Tell them they're disabled.

Majority of it is tax. Still it kinda puts things in perspective for you guys - especially when people are predicting the total breakdown of your way of life if the price goes any higher.

Link? For that kinda money I can't really say no.

I don't have to be green to get annoyed seeing continued personal attacks. I'm not issuing a warning here - just reminding you that someone else might given the circumstances. It's damn annoying when people can't show enough restraint to have a civilised debate. Besides, the greenies encourage us to self police. What would you rather me do - just dob you in? The "corner" you refer to with SD appears to simply be you calling him an America hater and thus considering all of his posts to be worthless. Even if he does hate America it doesn't nessaserily follow that he's incapable of making a valid point. I wouldn't get anywhere in life if I simply said "yeah your honour but the other guy's a prat so we should win".

Why don't you two cut it out? There are at least three threads now at the top of the SC where you're at this. Quit attacking the poster and deal with the post.

Dude... I thought there would be guts and stuff but it looks like his insides came out of his mouth... or at least where his mouth would have been.

You can dress anyway you like so long as you have "a fixed distinctive emblem recognizable at a distance". If you're spontaniously taking up arms to defend your country from invasion you don't even need that - you just need to cary arms openly.

By "had" I'm guessing he means at the time Sadam was failing to comply with the UN at the start of this century... not way back in the 1980's when he gassed the Kurds. Even our owns governments now say they were wrong and that Sadam didn't have any WMD at that time.

They'd likely be above your head as opposed to over your shoulder. Remember sitting on a swing as a kid and twisting up the ropes? Just like that. You'll almost certainly be shown pictures of malfunctions during your first jump course, so don't sweat it.

Is anyone else getting really pissed off with the pithy nature of this election campaign? We have Labour going – "Face it, you're going to vote for us just like last time". Beyond that they're not exactly saying anything at all... just that the Conservatives are crap. Then you have their oddly open duplicity on taxes in that any time anyone says "give us your assurances you're not going to raise taxes" they say "we won't give you any promises we won't raise taxes, but we won't raise taxes" then squirm when the fact that last time they promised that they raised taxes claiming that that tax isn’t really a tax anyway. Then you have the Conservatives who have exactly the same policy as Labour (after all New Labour is more right wing than the right wing) but bang on about the most incredibly boring accounting theories which show that while they're going to do exactly the same thing as Labour, they're going to do it at 4% less cost over a 10% longer period and that this is actually better. Bizarrely they also claim that while Labour can't do what they claim the will without raising taxes – the Conservatives will be able to do exactly the same thing but save the public purse money in the process. Everyone but Labour appears to agree that it's not possible to do what both parties claim they're going to do without either raising taxes (which Labour claim they won't do) or cutting thousands of jobs in the civil service (which Labour claims won't work). Both main parties appear to agree on absolutely everything but for that 4% change in how they would do it all the same. It's quite annoying. No one wants to tackle the big issues like the war in Iraq, Europe, council tax, or the looming pension crisis. They all seem to agree with each other on everything or just don't seem to think we actually care enough about these issues to want to vote on them. Then you have Charles Kennedy who called the war on Iraq exactly right, and yet is not seeking to make political capitol out of it, has a brilliant idea on council tax (which apparently Labour are going to steel after the election but can't admit it yet) but doesn't attack anyone else's crap ideas, wants to tackle Europe but doesn't criticize everyone else's reticence on the issue, actually has a plan that would solve the pensions problem (much better than Gordon's barmy means testing crap which is an incentive to nothing but apathy) but doesn't push the issue. It's like his party is just resigned to the fact that no one's actually going to vote for them so can't be arsed to push his issues. In short you have: Tony – c'mon, it's us... you know we're going to win anyway. Michael – we'll do exactly the same as them, just in a slightly different way. Charles – y'know all those things you asked for, we want to give you them... just we can't be arsed so don't bother voting for us. On the up side I hear the Monster Raving Looni party are going to be fielding I think 56 candidates. Wicked... at last someone with some sense in this election! At the end of the day we're going to end up with a quintessentially English, odd situation in that we're going to elect as PM someone who isn't actually standing – Gordon Brown.

Sure you can have my name - gas is about six and a half bucks a gallon here. Has been for some time, I suspect it will still be in 5 months time. On a side note - a great way to save gas money is to buy European and Jap cars rather than your gas guzzling US cars. Same technology as US cars, same size as US cars, same features as US cars, just they have miles better gas consumption. Simple petrol engine - 45mpg. Why? Because we pay thee times as much for gas. Oh hang on, I see you guys must already be doing this as Ford's announcing today record losses and yesterday GM said they lost 1 billion in the last three months alone. Seems like the gas hike you guys have over there (which incidentally isn't being mirrored in the rest of the world) is going to hurt your economy real bad unless some of your industries change the way they're doing things.

we duh - you sit orangutans up front with you so they can indicate when you want to turn left.

Yup. I think it would be even funnier though if SD would post the world "QUACK" right after my post.

I've not followed his posting history but I'm quite happy to accept your assessment of it. I agree with him regarding to the meaning of his "without being voiced" statement. I feel you were either nit picking or simply latching onto an alternative interpretation of the meaning of the phrase for the sake of argument. His attacking your reading skills was in a direct response to your attacking him for his writing skills. You called him "illiterate"; in response he suggested you had difficulties in comprehension. Tit for tat, it's hardly worth getting bent out of shape over.I find it a shame that people here can't have a dispute without slagging each other off. I see nothing in that whole saga however that I would term an attack on the US as a whole. Yup - he admits to slamming anyone who blindly follows and he (note "he" not "I" in case this solicits an attacking response) considers some here to be blindly following. Thus he's admitting to "slamming" some posters here. Thankfully for the sake of world peace, slamming a small number of people on an internet forum does not equate to attack a nation as a whole. Finally - I'm also happy to accept your assessment of him as a duck. That doesn't mean I heard him say quack.

By those standards even I in merry old England have an "arsenal".

Um... no; you're blaming the US for allowing Cheney to be VP, he's simply saying Cheney is a crook. If I said "Nixon was a crook", I'm not blaming anyone for anything but Nixon for being a crook. Sure the fact that the US allowed Nixon to be in the position he was while he was a crook is tacit in my statement... but that's not what my statement is actually about. The same is true here. Skydeckers post is simply in relation to Cheney and his actions - not the people of the US. What anyone reads into the post above and beyond that is down to the reader. Of course... he could have anticipated you, the reader, would read into it in precisely the way you have done.