On Tue, 04 Jan 2005 18:29:35 +0100, wrote:

On Tue, 4 Jan 2005 13:02:06 +0100, Tim Challenger
wrote:

On Tue, 04 Jan 2005 11:19:52 +0100, wrote:

On Tue, 4 Jan 2005 10:53:42 +0100, Tim Challenger
wrote:

On Tue, 4 Jan 2005 09:09:34 -0000, BAC wrote:

"Douglas" wrote in message
news
Tim Challenger Wrote:
On Mon, 3 Jan 2005 14:40:51 +0000 (UTC), Mike wrote:

And what would you suggest that "they" do? Get a couple of big sticks
and
prop it up? You'd need a lot of string and blu-tac to hold back 500
billion
tons of rock.

Tim C.

Don't be so silly!

What you need is one giant elastic band, placed round the island to
hold it together.
Then you can start to superglue it.



Or you could build a giant sea wall/dam around the island and pump out all
the water so there's no giant splash if/when the chunk falls off :-)

I like that idea. Imagine the size of the beaches they'd get!

You could fill the hole with lava, if you had a large drill.

A new sport, lava-boarding ?

It's an old sport in Lanzarote.

I meant molten lava-boarding. ;-)
--
Tim C.

[quote=Tumbleweed]"goldfinch" wrote in message
...[color=blue][i]

Then today on the news we hear that our insane government had plans to
blow
up the channel tunnel with a nuclear bomb if the Russians were to try and
invade us.
********

..........Providing the cold war had still been going on from 1994 onwards when the Tunnel was opened.

Besides, most, if not all of the previous Channel Tunnel attempts were, in the end, stopped as we all knowing souls in Britain still feared invasion from either the French, even though they had had no such intention too since about 1815, and the Germans.
So much so in fact that the some of the designs put forwards incorporated a means of flooding the tunnel from either the English side or both ends should an invading army from either country decide to use it as a pathway!

Makes you proud to be British, doesn't it?? cough.
******

The resulting massive waves would devastate most of the S.E.

******
.......And that would be a bad thing?? ;-) (JOKE).

In article ,
wrote:

but there wasn't a channel tunnel in 1974, or was there a secret one
we didn't know about?

There was one in 1874! It wasn't complete - which doesn't stop the
government planning how to blow it up if it were ever completed.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

"Tim Challenger" wrote in message
news:1104838745.68a636cbd747e5fb5e2516c27b1790a8@t eranews...
On Tue, 04 Jan 2005 11:25:36 +0000, Lazarus Cooke wrote:


We have a term for it too Tidal Wave.

That's the trouble. It was misleading. A tsunami has nothing at all to
do with tides, and that's why they changed it.

L

At least it indicates that it's a wave, whereas the word "tsunami" tells
the uninitiated naff-all.

What happened to the term "episodic wave"? I haven't heard that one for a
while. I don't know if it's technically different to a tsunami or tidal wave
or both, but then I don't suppose it makes a lot of difference if you're
30ft under it all of a sudden.

Steve

SNIP


The idea of a nuclear explosion was considered but in the end it was
decided
that a couple of valves to let in sea water would be cheaper and less
damaging to much of Kent..... That was in the Telegraph an the Mail and I
think the Times. Take your pick.
--

Bob flowerdew would do it by siphoning the water from above with a length of
old garden hose into the tunnel entrance. That would be my preferred method
also.

Steve

In article 1104917378.33e402cc30bfd22cb86573c2e70ae991@teran ews, Tim
Challenger writes
On Tue, 4 Jan 2005 18:08:45 -0000, BAC wrote:

The point is, a person who doesn't speak Japanese either knows what the term
tsunami means, or does not, so no confusion, whereas an English speaker who
does not know the accepted definition of 'tidal wave' might be tempted to
derive a definition intuitively, hence the possibility of confusion.

But they'd be pretty sure to guess it has something to do with a big wave,
and let's face, that's what counts. Plus there's more chance that an
English peaker would have heard it and actually know what it means.

That's an interesting point. Perhaps in these days of international
travel, it would be helpful if we all agreed on some internationally
understood words for certain key concepts, eg 'fire' 'help' 'ambulance'
(in the same way that most of Europe and I think some other countries
have agreed on 112 as the phone no for emergency services).

In which case, tsunami vs tidal wave comes down to which one is most
readily understood by the international community
--
Kay
"Do not insult the crocodile until you have crossed the river"

Of course. ;-) I'm still on Siam anyway, where is this Thailand place?

I noticed that the BBC correspondent, who had just returned from
Miramwhere, referred to it as Burma.

Good!
--
Tim C.

On Wed, 05 Jan 2005 12:46:06 +0100, wrote:

On Wed, 5 Jan 2005 10:40:30 +0100, Tim Challenger
wrote:

On Tue, 4 Jan 2005 16:35:14 +0000 (UTC), Mike wrote:


I think you'd need a lot of expensive stuff to move 500,000,000,000 tons
of
rock in one go. Someone is bound to notice.
--
Tim C.

Can you please confirm that the scales you used to weigh this item have been
checked and please post proof of the date and the certification certificate
here via a link. (No binaries on this newsgroup)

Er... bugger.

:-))

Tons or Tonnes?

Estimates from the volume of rock bounded by the cracks. The original
article I quoted said "half a billion tonnes" (New Scientist uses American
billions). Quite right to point that one out ;-)

and metric tons? Shouldn't they be setting an example?

Yes, it's a bit confusing and arbitrary, I though. They've been doing that
for years.
--
Tim C.

On Wed, 05 Jan 2005 12:44:31 +0100, wrote:

On Wed, 5 Jan 2005 10:34:59 +0100, Tim Challenger
wrote:

On Tue, 04 Jan 2005 19:58:56 +0100, wrote:

On Tue, 4 Jan 2005 17:55:32 -0000, "BAC"
wrote:

The stuff that provides the motive power is totally free and ubiquitous,
i.e. gravity :-)

Bisto powered?

That's gravy powered, martin.

I blame a dirty mark on my flat screen monitor.

What do you use to clean them?

Coffee and my sleeve at the moment!
--
Tim C.

In article ,
wrote:
On 5 Jan 2005 11:51:10 GMT, (Nick Maclaren) wrote:
In article ,
wrote:

but there wasn't a channel tunnel in 1974, or was there a secret one
we didn't know about?

There was one in 1874! It wasn't complete - which doesn't stop the
government planning how to blow it up if it were ever completed.

It would need a bit of foresight to anticipate a tunnel and the
invention of the atom bomb :-)

No foresight needed for the first - look up the history of the
tunnel - it was first proposed in the 18th century and preliminary
work started in the 19th.

The atom bomb was also speculated in the 19th century, but I now
forget the reference. Anyway, you don't need one to blow up a
small construction like the tunnel, nor even modern explosives;
ordinary gunpowder will do.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

In article ,
wrote:

what about Nyasaland and Tanganyika?

Still there, the last time I visited them. I haven't heard that
they have been stolen or demolished.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

On Wed, 05 Jan 2005 14:37:20 +0100, wrote:

On Wed, 5 Jan 2005 13:33:42 +0100, Tim Challenger
wrote:

On Wed, 05 Jan 2005 12:44:31 +0100, wrote:

On Wed, 5 Jan 2005 10:34:59 +0100, Tim Challenger
wrote:

On Tue, 04 Jan 2005 19:58:56 +0100, wrote:

On Tue, 4 Jan 2005 17:55:32 -0000, "BAC"
wrote:

The stuff that provides the motive power is totally free and ubiquitous,
i.e. gravity :-)

Bisto powered?

That's gravy powered, martin.

I blame a dirty mark on my flat screen monitor.

What do you use to clean them?

Coffee and my sleeve at the moment!

I take it that you don't own them?
Not th escreen anyway...
It was a coffee-nose-screen interface situation. :-)
--
Tim C.

On 5/1/05 1:34 pm, in article ,
" wrote:

On Wed, 5 Jan 2005 12:18:12 -0000, "shazzbat"
wrote:


SNIP


The idea of a nuclear explosion was considered but in the end it was
decided
that a couple of valves to let in sea water would be cheaper and less
damaging to much of Kent..... That was in the Telegraph an the Mail and I
think the Times. Take your pick.
--

Bob flowerdew would do it by siphoning the water from above with a length of
old garden hose into the tunnel entrance. That would be my preferred method
also.

Charlie Dimmock would do it by buying some rubber membrane and a load
of water feature stuff from a garden centre.

Poor Charlie's mother is one of those lost in the tsunami. ;-(
--
Sacha
www.hillhousenursery.co.uk
South Devon
(remove the weeds to email me)

"Tim Challenger" wrote in message
news:1104917378.33e402cc30bfd22cb86573c2e70ae991@t eranews...
On Tue, 4 Jan 2005 18:08:45 -0000, BAC wrote:

The point is, a person who doesn't speak Japanese either knows what the
term
tsunami means, or does not, so no confusion, whereas an English speaker
who
does not know the accepted definition of 'tidal wave' might be tempted
to
derive a definition intuitively, hence the possibility of confusion.

But they'd be pretty sure to guess it has something to do with a big wave,
and let's face, that's what counts. Plus there's more chance that an
English peaker would have heard it and actually know what it means.

Maybe. Personally, I doubt there are many English speakers who have not
heard the term 'tsunami' and learned to associate it with images of
destruction caused by 'freak' waves crashing ashore in the Pacific area.

Perhaps we should say that 'tsunami' is the common term used for earthquake
induced waves in the pacific area, and 'tidal wave' would be the preferred
term if/when they occur in English speaking parts of the Atlantic area.
After all, cyclones can have different names like hurricane and typhoon
depending on where they are encountered, so why not waves?

In article 1104840072.98438ddeea2045e62f46ffa1c2f70c96@teran ews, Tim
Challenger wrote:


I'd have thought that as most English speakers speak English, they might be
more likely to know what the work tidalwave means that tsunami.

'Tsunami' now *is* the English word for it, just as 'gong' is the
English word for the thing you bang when dinner's ready (from Malay), a
'tycoon' is a big businessman (Japanese), and a tattoo is what your
daughter gets against your wishes (Tahitian), and which you may well
think is 'taboo' (Tongan).

Try asking people under the age of 15 what they'd call a tsunami, and
they'll use the new word, not the old. Languages change all the time,
and one of the nice things about English is that people are happy to
adapt. Remember, 'pork', 'beef' and 'mutton' were all foreign words
once. But not any more.

I still talk about 'motoring' up to London, listening to the
'wireless', and 'taking luncheon', but I only do it to amuse myself and
irritate my children.

Lazarus

--
Remover the rock from the email address