Nigel Garvie

1 hour ago, TallGuyJohninBKK said:

 

I probably wouldn't fly on a 737 Max for a good long line into the future, giving the plane a solid chance to prove itself.

 

But as for Boeing's other jets, the 747 and 777 series are proven workhorses, and the current 777-ER AFAIK has a pretty sterling safety record. I fly on 777-ERs all the time and would have no qualms doing so in the future.

 

As a European I've always been pro Airbus, but wherever my loyalties lie I try to have a balanced view. This is about competition between monster companies. Actually both companies have been huge successes over the years, with overall a very good safety record. Flying is much safer than driving for example. 

Airbus goofed up with the A380 and misjudged the market. Boeing wisely didn't try to compete, and the 777 and 787 have dominated the long range sales, though the excellent A350 is gaining a respectful share despite being late to the table. In reality it is better to have two companies in competition rather than one monopoly. 

I expect Boeing will eventually recover from the awful mistakes with the MAX, though they will definitely lose some of their short haul market. I will never fly on one I hope, though to rule out all other Boeing planes is neither practical nor justified.

The real issue is whether Joe Punter, will ever bring the vile titans of corporate greed to heel, I'm not optimistic. 

On 1/24/2020 at 2:28 AM, TheDark said:

Boeing's problem was never just the latest Max problems. The root cause is embedded deep inside of Boeing manufacturing and management culture. 

 

That is something what can not be fixed overnight. To fix the root cause, requires full top management shakedown, kicking out most of the people who loved money so much that they forgot safety and quality. 

This has long been a problem with the Capitalist free market that it seems many people are uncritically wedded to. I am not anti-capitalist, that is just silly, human progress has been built on trade and barter, and if you save enough and invest, that is capitalism. However it is "The unacceptable face of Capitalism" to quote Ted Heath UK PM in the 70s, that is responsible for the sort of behaviour that Boeing has been guilty of - profits before customers. No doubt the senior members of companies who have a large shareholdings as part of their remuneration package, are highly motivated to maximise the dividends, at the expense of whatever. This is inherently not a healthy system. 

The problem for Boeing is that aircraft fatalities attract huge public attention. If they were a big Pharma company encouraging opioid consumption, and responsible for many 10s of 1000s of individual deaths, you could get away, and indeed have already got away, with murder.

5 hours ago, brokenbone said:

no, the 97% consensus lie is creative statistics from start to finish,

if the creator of the statistic had understood statistics,

the answer would be 2%. as it is the only thing this statistic show

is the bias of the statistic

 

In 2008 Margaret Zimmerman asked two questions of
10,257 Earth Scientists at academic and government institutions. 3146 of them responded.
That survey was the original basis for the famous “97% consensus” claim.

For the calculation of the degree of consensus among experts in the Doran/Zimmerman article,
(snip)
 

 

 

1 hour ago, RickBradford said:

Actually, the subset was chosen by the actual researchers who first produced the "97% of scientists" claim.

 

The researchers received 3,146 responses from 'earth scientists' to their two questions on the climate, and winnowed that down to a subset of 77, of whom 75 agreed that humans can affect the climate. 75/77 = 97%. Aah, climate science.

 

The paper in question is Doran & Zimmermann (2008). Read it and learn how climate science is done.

It looks like you have both done your research on you favourite CT deniers website, where the "How to deny the 97% figure for dummies" article or some such can be found.

The evidence is much much wider and stronger than this one article alone.

start with Anderegg et al 2010.  https://www.pnas.org/content/107/27/12107

"Here, we use an extensive dataset of 1,372 climate researchers and their publication and citation data to show that (i) 97–98% of the climate researchers most actively publishing in the field surveyed here support the tenets of ACC outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and (ii) the relative climate expertise and scientific prominence of the researchers unconvinced of ACC are substantially below that of the convinced researchers.

"These results suggest that scientists who are climate change skeptics are outliers and that the majority of scientists surveyed believe in anthropogenic climate change and that climate science is credible and mature."

then NASA Showing that serious science is still alive and well in the US (They put a man on the moon you know!). It is enlightening to follow the links in the article and see how many science organisations all over the world believe ACT to be a fact.

https://climate.nasa.gov/faq/17/do-scientists-agree-on-climate-change/

and. 

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/10/9/094025/meta

Heavens it must be hard work being a climate change denier, so much evidence to attempt to discredit, ????  maybe being a flat Earther would be more fun.

2 hours ago, CaptRon2 said:

. Joe Biden doesn’t know what year it is, what state he is in, or what country he is in. He has not even received an endorsement from his best friend forever, I believe  the upcoming investigations will conclusively prove corruption, involving his entire family, and the only moping Joe will be doing is the floors in the penitentiary. 

A lifetime in politics and he has accomplished nothing except to pad his bank account. Trump will expose his corruption and give him the beating (in the debates and election) that he has been begging for. 

Bye,bye Dems!

This is so funny, and I can only assume it is meant as a joke. 

The idea of Trump exposing ANYONE ELSE for corruption is laughable.

 ???????????? I award you 3 emojis for making the start to my day such a pleasure.

29 minutes ago, VocalNeal said:

All dentists recommend Colgate!

Colgate is a toothpaste, all dentists recommend toothpaste. Therefore "All dentists recommend Colgate!"

......................and Macleans, Sensodyne etc etc etc 

15 hours ago, RickBradford said:

Those "nutters" include prominent authors such as Naomi Klein, who wrote a New York Times best-seller entitled "This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate", so it's hardly a fringe view. Klein may be unhinged, but she's popular.

Yes Naomi Klein was at her peak with "Shock Doctrine". She has since taken what is fairly widely seem as a bit of a looney turn in her views on Climate. She has sold a lot of books it is true, whether that is feeding of her previous reputation I would not care to speculate. 

15 hours ago, rabas said:

Very few people do! But I would rather follow knowledgeable people with significant maturity and experience over Greta. Old white men scientists and professors come to mind.  Most important are people who are not heavily invested in the outcome. There have been a few good videos of such people posted in earlier threads.

 

I doubt many prefer under-aged, poorly educated Noble Peace Prize laureates.

 

Why "Old white men scientists and professors" (Presumably professors of Science). Scientists have passed their peak by their mid 30s at the latest. Old ones, (Whatever the colour of their skin) are way passed their peak, and the professor tag is generally a reward for long tenure rather that achievement. So called maturity is overvalued, often it just means a struggle between failing ability, and unjustified self assurance.

"Most important are people who are not heavily invested in the outcome". Good point, that rules out all the people whose "Research" is funded by the fossil fuel industry.

14 hours ago, Eric Loh said:

FYI you don’t need any level of education qualification to be the chosen as NPP laureate. Malala Yousafzai was 17 when she was NPP laureate. 

Of course, and the award has been utterly corrupted when it was awarded to the war criminal Kissinger. Children are still getting their legs blown off on the Plain of Jars.

3 hours ago, mrfill said:

Ryanair have solved the problem of the reluctant customer not wishing to book on a 737MAX - they renamed it the 8200...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-48995509

 

 

Ryanair come last in the customer satisfaction survey. At one point they were considering charging customers to go to the plane toilet. There is cheapo, mucho cheapo, then Ryanair. When you fly the MAX  with them you will probably be charged extra for the excitement factor - though others would call it raw fear. 

MAX should have been re-designed from scratch, but Airbus would have had a head start with the 320 Neo. As it is, it's like putting a Rolls Royce engine in an old pick up.

If I had more choice I would fly the amazingly quiet A350 on long haul, but to be fair the 787 is a good plane as long as the batteries don't go on fire.  

Reply to removed meme now deleted - no longer relevant.

1 hour ago, talahtnut said:

That's not quite fair, wave pumps have little or nothing

relating to perpetual motion, a wave is just pure

energy, which can be harvested.

In answer to this, I said THE WAY it reads. Wave machines do of course exist, and are promising source of renewable energy. Perpetual motion is not the ideal way to describe it I grant you, but the laws of thermodynamics still apply. 

22 minutes ago, thaibeachlovers said:

(Snip)

Eg wave pumps to move sea water up hill to be released through hydro plants,

(Snip)

The way this reads gave me a laugh. Mankind has been searching for the perpetual motion machine for centuries, and here someone on Thai VF actually believes that it exists! OK maybe that's not quite what you meant.

There is no 100% efficient machine anywhere, check out the laws of entropy.

There are wave machines that convert motion to electricity, they test them in the Pentland Firth, they are getting more efficient all the time. Using wave power to pump water uphill which then comes down again strikes me as remarkably inefficient.

The ultimate answer to most of our power consumption may be nuclear fusion, but we are still left with the problem that if you use energy it is simply transferred somewhere else. Energy is neither created nor destroyed, it just gets converted into a different form. Someone with a real science qualification is welcome to correct me here. Your ability to read websites like " thetruthaboutscience.com" does not qualify you.

1 hour ago, teatree said:

Anyone who wants to know why people are skepitcal about climate alarmism please watch this video.  It is full of scientific data to back up the arguments made:

 

29 minutes ago, alfalfa19 said:

so, did that scientific data come from the 3 percent of the world's scientists who deny climate change?  (and i'm sure it's merely concidence that most of this 3 percent are employed by the fossil fuels industry)

I would suggest that the illustration in this link gives a true picture. It is simply facts of what world temperatures has been doing since the last Ice Age. It is very difficult to dispute the data (However desperate you are to do so). The rapid warming since industrialisation has NO parallel. Climate changes linked to the changes in the earths orbit act over a vast time period compared to this. These effects are measurable, not a matter open to dispute.  

https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1732:_Earth_Temperature_Timeline?fbclid=IwAR2yd4KR8mo3ZyQSfF5bDYdiBt3bB66MijB2mj6Orv-u-mvZCXckycOR07Y

Once again we have this topic where old men blow their gaskets over the activities of a young girl - how pathetic is that. Who she is, or how old she is, is irrelevant, it is the science that matters, she is simply pointing at the science. Anyone could do it, if she wants to do it fair play to her. Probably a good moment though for her to pass the baton. If she is that passionate about climate science, go away and study it, there is a hell of a lot to learn. 

13 hours ago, Orton Rd said:

Some used to know her personally like Piers Morgan before she became famous for marrying H, she cut them off as soon as she started ladder climbing and they have rubbished her, not surprisingly.

Anybody who cuts themselves off from the slimy reptilian Piers Morgan should be warmly congratulated by all and sundry. 

However it appears that you put famous for marrying H before "started ladder climbing". Where do you go on the ladder (If ladder climbing is your sad thing) after marrying a prince?

1 hour ago, sucit said:

Any theory as to why we are fighting completely unnecessary, costly, unpopular and even illegal wars for the past 20 years? Killing untold numbers of US soldiers and innocent civilians if the commander in chiefs have not been doing the bidding of corporations? Because it is not a very big mystery if you assume presidents have all been part of it.

 

This is not conspiratorial. This is the way things are, and was even predicted by Eisenhower in 1961. https://www.npr.org/2011/01/17/132942244/ikes-warning-of-military-expansion-50-years-later

 

What have we gotten out of these wars exactly beside oil profits, military weapons production and contractor profits. What is your reasoning as to why they have been started, and why we seem to purposefully take actions that make it unable for us to get out of the region? 

 

Do people just like death, and to see American troops die? What is the reason? There is only one plausible reason. 

 

You would also need to answer why every single non establishment candidate, for example Bernie and Yang, are unfairly covered and treated by the media, which is an arm of the establishment. Just google "yang biased media coverage". You do not have much further to look than the pharmaceutical ads during the presidential debates to understand exactly what is going on. Corporations that are making obscene profits do not want change. 

 

Isn't it interesting, if you assume I am right, everything going on makes perfect sense. Every single question answers itself perfectly. And if you are right, nothing makes any sense at all? Don't you find that somewhat suspicious? 

 

You have a perception problem, I agree with almost everything you say here. Of course the US military industrial complex  is a ravenous beast that needs to be fed, and that involves the deaths of many US servicemen and women, and countless soldiers and civilians of other countries as well. I come from well on the left in UK political terms ( I left the Labour Party when Blair helped invade Iraq) and I am well aware of most of the things going on in the US political sphere. You said "Start here on your journey to enlightenment. The truth wont set you free, unfortunately". I didn't bother, sometime later maybe, I expect I will know and agree with the points you are making, and I will forgive your rather pompous "Start here on your journey to enlightenment". I marched in the 60s in London against the Vietnam war where your country, you should remember, was destroying the lives and country of people very similar to my good Thai friends who I am blest to share my life with here. 

It appears from what you say above that you missed the point of my argument, which was, put simply, "Don't lose the battle due to your obsession with ideology, like we did. The greatest left wing leaders we ever had were practical men WHO GOT THEMSELVES ELECTED, and quietly achieved real advances. Don't put off ordinary voters by telling them how you are going to castrate the GOP, get elected first and then do it.

6 minutes ago, JonnyF said:

You mean like dressing as a Nazi and playing strip billiards? 

Indeed, or suggesting that you would like to replace an item of sanitary wear belonging to the married woman you were having an affair with and thus betraying your wife. 

I read this thread, fired up with indignation, that someone was complaining about our magnificent Highland Bagpipes (Commonly referred to just as the pipes). Turned out the subject was just manopausal posers on big scooters. Sorry my mistake!

2 hours ago, phkauf said:

Sorry, but you are repeating the same nonsense Bernie has been spouting for years. NONE of these countries are socialist (although Sweden has insanely high tax rates to pay for generous social benefits). Sweden turned to Socialism in the 1960's which stagnated their economy and led to an exodus of talent and wealth. They gave it up around 1996 and now are free market with high taxes. Norway has great social benefits funded by their oil wealth. Both Denmark and Finland are free market countries. 

There is a really neat thing called the internet, try to use it some time to get your facts straight.

Before you call a country Socialist, or Capitalist, you have to understand what the words mean to normal educated people, not for example, the dismissive derogatory way the word is used by many in the US, particularly uneducated members of the rabid right. (No need to take that personally)

1) Almost all countries in the world are basically Capitalist, in the economist's definition.

2) It is possible to have a largely free-market Capitalist economy, working side by side with a Socialist government, that ensures that rampant - devil takes the hindmost- style Capitalism does not destroy the fabric of society. Such a government will ensure that there is adequate social provision, and protection from exploitation for ordinary members of society. This is the case to different degrees in all European countries. For us you don't have to nationalise everything that moves to be a Socialist, that is a right wing US fantasy.

3) Bernie is quite right to call these northern European countries Socialist. In European terms he is very moderate in his views, and these countries are examples of the good and caring governance that he aspires to for the US. That is a world away from the hard left in the UK, Italy, Spain, or France.

4) Venezuela started out in a promising way, but the US believes that all the oil in the world belongs to them, and it was an awful accident that a lot of it is actually located in other countries. Venezuela struggled for many years as the US tried all means to overthrow the left wing government. Combine that with a progressively dictatorial thug of a leader, and you get the current mess. Not an advertisement for Socialism (Which it certainly isn't), the CIA or anything at all really. 

5) One would have to be totally daft to imagine that the US would have shown any interest in Venezuela at all if it had nothing they wanted to exploit.

59 minutes ago, JonnyF said:

Seems there's an awful lot of people with a grudge against Markle. Her own family, her old friends, old colleagues, ex-husband. The list seems to grow daily.

 

I wonder what the common denominator is? I guess they're all terrible people and Markle is in fact an angel being victimized by them all ????. Yes, that must be it. 

It certainly is old news, but I guess he dragged it up if it was the best he had. 

I wonder what scum from the gutter press went around collecting all these negative opinions. How very strange, they couldn't find anything positive to say at all, Meghan must be one of those awful people who is bad through and through, not a decent bone in her body. Such a rarity someone who is uniquely totally bad. 

On the other hand is it just possible that the gutter press have been feeding us all this mean bs about her because THEY have an agenda. Surely not. 

Anyway it shouldn't be a problem, I doubt anyone would be naive enough to believe any of the things they print.........now would they!

7 hours ago, JonnyF said:

I think Hilary Benn might forever be tainted by the Surrender Act. 

ThornBerry hasn't shaken off her sneering post at the working class in Rochdale (white van and flag tweet).

Long-Bailey is seen as continuity Corbyn, too left wing.

Jess Phillips isn't taken seriously and would be terrible as a states woman. All she ever talks about is how 'real' she is but she's light on substance and policy. She's also still talking about Revoke or ReJoin.

Blair will never shake off the Iraq war. That's his legacy.

 

I think it has to be Starmer or Nandy. 

Well neither Benn nor Blair are one of the 5 selected candidates, so that's no longer relevant. Starmer is way way ahead with the bookies, and has already got the biggest union UNISON on his side. UNISON is now larger than UNITE. Nothing would give me more pleasure than to see McClusky, Laverty, and Jenny Forbes slide away into irrelevance. Along with Milne and Murphy, and of course Corbyn, they have done more to destroy the UK economy with their sad 1970s Europhobia, and destroy the Labour Party as a fighting force, than any before them. 

The plot to install continuity Corbyn looks to be stumbling. Recent polling of the membership shows Starmer ahead in every demographic and area. Milne and Murphy got put on full time contracts in a slimy underhand hard left attempt to ensure that they kept their jobs, but maybe they could be office cleaners. Phillips is refreshingly honest, and Nandy is the business, but time for them to grow with a top Shadow cabinet  job would do them no harm. 

The Labour Party actually has a lot of real talent available for their front bench, once the idealistically correct but intellectually inadequate, dross has been swept away. Yvette Cooper has the brains for the treasury.  However as Puipuitom correctly says "A few months too late". 

"Saddest words of tongue or pen".