Oddities, curiousities and strangness in history

We'd see that pretty regularly on a smaller scale in Alaska. At the end of the salmon season, many 60 foot commercial seine boats would find that the cost of shipping the boat south on a freight barge was about the same as the fuel cost to motor it, and the crewing costs went away. The economics are clear.

And yet it's almost Star Warish in scale. Actually makes me think of the opening discussions in Dune (book, not movie).

halfwise wrote:And yet it's almost Star Warish in scale.  Actually makes me think of the opening discussions in Dune (book, not movie).

Why is it I read The Silmarillion aged 16 and got it completely the first time round, but Dune had me lost on the first two pages just a few months back...

A friend recommended Dune to me, highly recommended it, but I just could not get past the opening section either.
It was a ridiculous lot of concepts and names seemingly with little context to pin anything to, I found it impenetrable.
But my friend kept saying how brilliant it was, and I trusted his judgement and on about the fourth attempt I got passed that opening, and then something just clicked and boy was it worth the persevering.

Keep at it Malick, it really is worth the effort of fighting on through that opening.

David H wrote:We'd see that pretty regularly on a smaller scale in Alaska.  At the end of the salmon season, many 60 foot commercial seine boats would find that the cost of shipping the boat south on a freight barge was about the same as the fuel cost to motor it, and the crewing costs went away.  The economics are clear.

That actually makes sense to me. I assume there must be some sort of scaffolding on there, though, otherwise the boats at the bottom of the pile wouldn't survive the trip in one piece (would they?).

Eldorion wrote:So what happens if you have a ship on one side of an ocean and you want to it get to the other side?  Do you sail it?  NOPE.  Load it on a bigger ship.

Holy ship shit!

*ship

Eldorion wrote:I assume there must be some sort of scaffolding on there, though, otherwise the boats at the bottom of the pile wouldn't survive the trip in one piece (would they?).

I'd guess not. Remember that a cargo vessel such as these is engineered to carry many times its own weight through much more stress than these empty hulls will experience.

Just picture one of these ships with a high deckload of loaded shipping containers plunging through huge seas and hurricane force winds as they'll routinely do once they're put to work. The shock loading, torques and torsions are unbelievable. By comparison this would be rather like stacking empty shoe boxes.

I'm sure they're secured well to prevent shifting however. If nothing else it would be really embarrassing if a whole barge full of ships capsized at once! 

Dave, how goes the harvest (which obviously just my polite way of saying when will you get back to the Who thread!)

Almost done. We're expecting to finish up by this weekend if weather holds.

Who is on the list, but it'll have to take it's place in the queue with a hundred other things that have piled up in the mean time.

Piled up ahead of Who!  

(You've only a month to go to get up to date in time to catch the 50th!)

Thanks for the explanation, Dave. That actually makes a fair bit of sense. Just goes to show what I know about boats (er, ships ).

+michael interbartolo shares this stunning image of Saturn provided by NASA's Cassini spacecraft. With the sun's rays eclipsed by Saturn, Cassini's on board cameras were able to acquire a panoramic mosaic of the Saturn system. Cassini was able to capture 323 images in just over 4 hours on July 19, but it took Cassini's imaging team several months to create this mosaic from 141 of those wide-angle images.

Learn more about the Cassini Solstice mission at http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/.

Now THAT'S a cool eclipse!  

Stunning- and the truly humbling bit is when you spot earth in that picture.

which ones Earth?

I cant tell on that pic- the BBC site had it highlighted and it was just to the bottom right of the planet- but this looks different- not sure if that pics reversed  

you do get the empty vastness of Space thing in that photo though, have you seen Gravity yet?

No, it hasnt made it to my small town cinema yet.  

 

There's always the question whether you should use 'had had' versus 'had'.  
I remember writing a sentence where I had had 'had'; 'had had' had had the correct meaning.

I suppose "had had" can be kind of redundant, but I think it conveys a more precise meaning in certain circumstances.  I've never been great with grammar though.

I think it's called past perfect: indicating something that was brought to completion in the past, before something else happened.

I had a cat before I got a dog.
I had had a cat before I got a dog.

The second indicates the ownership of the cat was completed before the dog arrived. On the other hand, it could also indicate emphasis: if someone doubts that you owned the cat, you might say "I HAD had a cat..."

It's actually really subtle and complicated to understand when you'd use 'had' versus 'had had' versuse 'have had'....

This is exactly why the crash course in English only teaches present perfect. No subtleties, no irregularities. "I am having a cat before I am having a dog." No subtle causalities, but close enough to communicate the idea.