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Yes. Bananas. Preferably quite ripe. Don't knock it until you've tried it.

My dad's fried breakfast:

Start by cutting tomatoes (1 each) in half, sprinkling with lots of black pepper, and putting under the grill (full power) in the bottom of the grill pan.

Get a frying pan on the heat with a little lard and begin slowly frying bananas (1 each, halved longways). Turn a couple of times. Outsides should go brown and caramalise.

Put plates somewhere to warm.

Put mushrooms in a small saucepan with a little butter and heat gently. Stir a little at the start, then leave.

Put wholemeal bread in toaster (1 or 2 slices each). Toast lightly, then prop up one slice against another in a T shape so they dry out (most toast racks hold the slices too close together). Later, re-toast until dark brown, butter, put on plates.

Lay out thick cut back bacon (2 rashers each) on grill rack and add to grill pan, arranged so that the fat of each rasher overlaps the flesh of the next, so the fat can be cooked until crispy without drying out the flesh. Will need turning once. Transfer bacon to plates when done, but leave the tomatoes under the grill until the last moment.

Make tea (in a properly warmed tea-pot with loose tea - mixed half & half english breakfast and earl grey). Cover with tea-cosy and leave to brew for approx 10 min. To serve add milk to mugs, then pour in tea (via strainer). Half fill each mug, then top up in oposite order for even strength without stirring up the bitterness in the bottom of the pot.

Transfer fried bananas to plates. Pour any fat from the bottom of the grill pan into the frying pan, and start frying wholemeal bread (1 slice each). Frying pan should have just enough fat to lightly coat each side of the bread but not soak through to the middle, which should remain moist but not damp. Fry until each side is crisp. If there is too much fat, tilt the pan so that it stays at one side.

Once bread is fried and transferred to plates, add more fat to pan if required and fry eggs (1 or 2 each).

Arrange everything on plates and eat. Fried eggs go on the toast, and you break the yolk and spread it across the rest of the egg. One half of the grilled tomato goes on the fried bread and you mash it with your fork and spread it across the bread. Eat by cutting bits of several things and stacking them up on your fork in different combinations.

Finally, wipe plates clean with more bread.

The crowd should have stripped off and huddled in around the cops.

I got that very same pump for £15 from ribble in December.

Kick a man while he's down!

Have you managed to get the broken plunger out? What does it look like?

I had a Joe Blow track pump that saw very heavy use (by lots of kids using it to launch water rockets) which broke the plunger away from the rod.

The plastic plunger had a cross-shaped protrusion into the rod, and the rod was crimped to hold it in. The plunger snapped away from the protrusion, which remained in the rod. I drilled a holes up the centre of the plunger and into the bit of protrusion remaining in the rod, and rejoined them with a small screw and plenty of epoxy. It held up to a fair amount more abuse and as far as i know is still going strong.

Sadly i don't have enough of a workshop to be able to offer to repair yours at the moment.

V nice. Post-processing? Almost looks like HDR... ND or polarizing filters on lens?

At that angle to the sun the sky blue will be quite vertically polarized, while the surface will tend to reflect horizontally polarized light, so filter out the blue but leave the clouds. That's my guess anyway.

no. The moon is getting further away. The gravitational pull of the earth's tidal bulge is continually pushing it into a higher, slower orbit. The energy it gains (a small part of the energy of the tides) comes from slowing the rotation of the earth. In the distant past the moon was much closer, the earth span faster, and tides were much bigger.

Cube - total guilty pleasure, i mean, we all know it's essentially crap right?!

Under its shallow survival/horror wrapping it is essentially a science fiction short story - i.e. it is all about a single idea, and the climax is the revelation of that idea to the audience, so any art or style serves to communicate that or gets in the way. That's how i took it anyway, and judged on those terms i think it's pretty good.

And its idea, that organisations can do terrible things without any of the people within them ever deciding to, is still an unusual and fascinating one.

i rate her, can't stand that Juno shit but liked her in this. but he wasn't a pedo.. he just took pictures. good film

Get hold of 'mouth to mouth'. A bit raw, but all the better for it.

I've seen someone come out of a nightclub to find that their saddle had been stolen. And replaced with a different one. Apparently the one that went had shock-absorber seatpost which he'd found annoying and been meaning to replace anyway.

The phrase 'very likely' is about as strong as sciencegets. In the 2007 IPCC report it was defined as meaning a 95 per cent chance that it is so. Thats a common scientific convention: something is taken as established fact if there is 95 per cent confidencethat it is correct."

That very much depends on which bits of science you are referring to. Despite its inherent randomness and unresolved questions about its philosophical foundations, the predictive power of quantum mechanics has been proved with often astonishing precision, and some physical constants are known to 9 or 10 significant figures.

Also, 95% is a very rough rule of thumb. Every day we rationally act on information far less certain than that, while in other situations 99% certainty would be recklessly insufficient.

What a very strange comment. Embarrassed? Paid!? It's a link to a review of a new book by a scientist. Why does that rattle you?

Rattled? Maybe, but not for the reasons you imply. The phrase 'linky dinky' got on my tits to the extent i felt uncomfortable sharing a thread with such a cringingly pathetic piece of rhetoric. I couldn't let it stand unchallenged and took the piss.

The earlier wounded pleas for fair assessment of your point of view at least had some hopeless logic to them. But that that simply isn't a reasonable expectation.

It is fine and rational for people to base their own opinions on the assertions of sources they trust. Working things out for yourself is great where it's practical, but very limiting as a policy. It makes a lot of sense to reuse other people's hard thought & hard-won experience to quickly increase your knowledge of a subject, but argument from authority is a rubbish basis for a debate.

The trouble is that given two people with slightly different prior beliefs about a subject and a stream of relevant infomation, it is possible for each to rationally arrive at the opposite conclusion. This comes right out of the maths of Bayesian probability, and seems to be an even stronger feature of the buggy approximation to probabalistic inference that most people run. It happens because a piece of information is also evidence of the trustworthiness of its source. I read your link, weighed the assertions it contains against the rest of my knowledge, and quickly lost all trust in you, Ian Pilmer and Paul Sheehan. Someone starting from different knowlege could just as rationally find the same assertions plausible and judge the three of you sound and insighful.

The more this goes on, the more it polarises an intitally continuous specturm of opinion into two opposing camps who don't believe a word the other says. Attacking the motivation of others is both symptom and further fuel for the fire.

So we have the weird situation that many of the good reasons that each of us holds our position are not good reasons for the other to change their minds, and your attempt to pass some of your reasons off as uncontroversial ends up annoying me.

That drunk bloke last week proclaiming the virtues of Sturmey Archer was in fact a visionary prophet and we'd all do well to follow his revelations.

Wooohooo! Sturmey Archer FTW! (Can't believe i'm ahead of a trend.)

CO2 is not a greenhouse gas?
or
CO2 is a greenhouse gas but greenhouse gasses are not a problem?

Which is your position?

As i understand it, the earth's surface temperature is primarily set by the balance between adsorption and re-radiation of vast quantities of solar energy. Anything that affects that process has the potential to affect the earth's surface temperature. CO2 scatters certain frequencies of light, so reducing their flux through the atmosphere. The frequencies it scatters form a larger proportion of the re-radiated spectrum than the arriving spectrum, so all else being equal, increasing the quantity of CO2 in the atmosphere would tend to increase the surface temperature of the planet.

Of course, all else will not be equal as the climate is a really complicated system with lots of feedback loops. I've heard of mechanisms that look like they'll oppose the warming, and of many others that will exacerbate it. Because water vapour plays a larger roll than CO2 in determining the energy balance it seems theoretically possible that feedback mechanisms involving it could overcome the effect of CO2 on surface temperature, but i haven't seen any evidence that they will, and it seems a pretty scant hope to me. (At least without major human-unfriendly re-jigging of the biosphere.)

Another linky dinky to throw into the pot - http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/beware-the-climate-of-conformity-20090412-a3ya.html?page=-1

You are so timid in offering that link I almost think you are embarrassed by it. You certainly should be. Are you paid to do this?

I think you spent over two hours trying to true that wheel.

It was fun, though possibly i should have been more sociable, and it was hardly the work of a master wheel-builder. By the time i gave up it was still a long way from round and my bending attempts had chipped a lot of paint, but the beer was making it hard to tell whether i was improving things or not. I'm glad it got you home though.

@ Dylan:

Yes. On an individual level, understanding the dangers of trucks and keeping clear of them will make you personally safer.

The problem is that spreading that message can have other effects as well. It can perpetuate a culture that blames victims, reducing the care people take of each other, so making the roads more dangerous. I'm not saying this is inevitable, but i do think care needs to be taken to avoid it. I think the LCC's 'Two Sides' leaflet is a good example of such a careful approach. Fuzzier 'people' issues matter as much as the hard mechanics of this problem as all these vehicles are controlled by people.

While we should not let pursuit of cycling utopia hold us back from achievable improvements, we should be careful that they really are improvements.

@ Dylan:

You don't need permission to be wrong, but people need to see that you are wrong.

Your view seems to be basically 'might makes right'. That's not a recipe that improves many things.

... out of interest do people who think cycle lanes are dangerous think we should not have a cycle lane at all? ...

Yes.

John Franklin has sensible things to say about why.

I don't see why councils can't take our rubbish and use it to fuel power stations. I know there are a couple already, but NIMBYs seem to prevent new ones being built. We generate too much crap, and we are facing an energy shortage. Surely it's the obvious solution to both problems. Most of what we produce was made from wood or oil, both of which are perfectly good fuels. If you can control the pollution (and I presume you can) then what's the problem?

Historically, people have objected on the grounds of toxins emitted (dioxins are a favourite), and that argument was valid, 20 years ago. As you guessed, the technology now exists to burn rubbish cleanly. But people still object, and although the same old pollution arguments are often seen, i suspect the underlying objection is a fear that power generation from waste would encourage the creation of waste, both economically and morally, and so encourage the consumerist culture that is attempting to consume all resources as fast as possible. But the campaigners recognise that many people like consumerism, so don't make that argument publicly.

Actually, energy generation from waste is taking off anyway, as people are finding they can generate worthwhile amounts of electricity by burning the methane that seeps out of rotting land fill. I don't think plastics contribute much to this methane, but paper and cardboard do. (And as methane is a much worse greenhouse gas than CO2, burning it into water and CO2 is more responsible than just letting it go.)

Intelligence Direct do canvas printing and stretching, though i've not tried it. They've printed panoramas to paper for me and i've been please with the results.

Set cranks horizontal, stand on pedals, gently rotate cranks 180, stand on pedals again. If this makes creaking noise, then it's not the rear wheel. Repeat, standing on crank arms instead of pedals to work out whether pedals or BB are responsible.

I am a lanky wierdo so my frame is pretty much the size of a small room so I am not sure anyone else wants it/ could fit it.

No harm in finding out though? (Come on: let us have a laugh at the extent of your lanky weirdness ;-)

"Two sides" leaflet uploaded - turn it upside down to read the second half.

I think the approach taken by this leaflet is perfect. I like they way that seeing the message to the other side stops you feeling blamed for their failings, while emphasising the dangers they present to you.

It is also nicely clear and short, but there are a few things I would add to it:

• more explicit information on just how extensive a lorry's blindspots are, and how small the images in their mirrors are - i think many people would be surprised by this.
  
• I think the point "• Cycle lanes and advanced stop lines are there to help you – but take care not to get trapped by a lorry as it turns." isn't clear enough. How about "Cycle lanes and advanced stop lines are not lorry-proof. Don't let them lead you into danger."
  
• add the point "look out for lorries and change your behaviour around them - they are not just a bigger car, they are much more dangerous."
  
• add a point on what to do if you find yourself on the inside of a turning lorry - make it clear that keeping going and hoping for the best is often not a good plan.
  
  
  

Finally, 'Reckless' might have been a better choice of opening insult than 'Ignorant'.

So what are the measurements of the unwanted frame? Finding someone who wants it could be part of the ideal resolution.

I've been making a list of factors that might contribute to the problem. Anything to add?

truck trouble:

• blind spots
  [INDENT]
  
• while turning some regions are completely hidden
  

• easy to overlook small low things from hight of driving position, even if they are right in front, and especially on the front left corner.
  [/INDENT]

• mirrors
  [INDENT]

• no rear-view

• need wide-angle (or auto-rotating mirror) to cope with changing angle of trailer on articulated lorries

• wide-angle -> small images

• the back is simply a long way from the cab

• lots of mirrors to keep track of

• some vital mirrors not compulsory on all vehicles
  [/INDENT]

• too easy to get underneath
  [INDENT]

• big wheels

• lots of ground clearance

• often huge space between back of tractor unit and trailer wheels
  [/INDENT]

• heavy, hard, some sharp bits, much more solid than a car

• driver may not see, hear or feel collisions.

• driver has a lot to think about while turning

• road position before turning invites undertaking, and then rear wheels travel further into the curve, closing the gap as the vehicle turns

• need a lot of road-space to get around sharp corners - may not be possible to leave a gap on the inside. Non-articulated can be worse for this.

• some bits that swing out while turning

• even heavy modern lorries can accelerate scarily fast

bike trouble:

• small - harder to see than cars
  
• soft & squishable, no crumple zones
  
• can manouver through traffic - hard to keep track of
  
• usually no mirrors - perception of traffic behind relies on hearing or turning head to look backwards (often infrequent)
  
• cycling can be hard work - can reduce alertness
  
• often slow, so get overtaken a lot - generates risk and contributes to habit of cycling on the inside as if it was always a separate lane, not paying attention to traffic in the rest of the lane
  
• generally like to keep rolling because accelerating requires real effort and stopping is awkward - leads to overtaking at junctions, often on the inside
  
• fear puts the slowest on the inside.
  
  
  

road trouble:

• city streets narrow, with sharp corners
  
• cycle lanes invite undertaking, encourage habit everywhere
  
• cycle lanes and ASLs invite cyclists to stop in lorries' blind-spots.
  
• railings can trap cyclists on the road
  
  
  

What to do if you find yourself to the left of a turning lorry?

• If you are level with or behind its rear wheels, stop and wait for it to go.
  
• If you are further forwards than that, scream loudly and try to get off the road.