Pics that make you smile

[kamkar]

You forgot.

 

[country_hick]

Who comes out on top after a colonoscopy?

 

[Harsh]

but interesting.

 

[kamkar]

I would not do the drive from Tuxpan to Mexico City i did in 1991 today.
Though looking at google maps today thats not the overnight drive i remember, today its a 3-4 hour drive but i recall a longer drive.
At least my country are not that broken, but it is also not as nice as i would like, the 2 largest banks here have also been proven guilty in industrialized tax evasion and laundering Russian money.

 

[Harsh]

Yeah, corruption is rampant here too but Mexico appears to be at a different level altogether.

 

[jokiin]

I would not do the drive from Tuxpan to Mexico City i did in 1991 today.

I was on a bus driving through Mexico in 1998 and there were guys with machine guns laying on a pile of sandbags on the side of the road, no idea what it was about but didn't want to stop and find out either

 

[Gibson99]

View attachment 50163

I disagree. THIS is one of the best lines from that show:

 

[kamkar]

So you don't want to invite my friend, cuz he like his well done.
I don't mind a little blood myself, it satisfy the lion within me.

 

[Dashmellow]

 

[kamkar]

Bring me a cow, and i will carve of what i want and ride the rest home ( Dennis Leary - no cure for cancer )

 

[kamkar]

You think somethings are easy / simple, but really they are not.

 

[Gibson99]

View attachment 50197

i absolutely love my sous vide cooker. it's so much easier to get meat to the right done-ness every time. sous vide pork is one of our new favorites because it's so tender and juicy, since pork usually dries out so damn fast. you can cut inch-thick chops with a fork. the only weird part is how a steak still looks pink on the outside when you take it out of the bag, so you have to finish it in a skillet or on the grill. i usually just put it on a hot grill for like 30 seconds each side - mostly to brown it and get that slight char. the pork doesn't need finishing though.

For Christmas I cooked a prime rib with the sous vide. Started it at 11pm Christmas Eve (it was not completely thawed - still solid in the center), and cooked it till about 1pm Christmas day, at which point we finished it with the broil setting in the oven, and used the juices from the bag to make an au jus. the au jus was a flop, but the beef was a hit - no leftovers. here's how i cooked it, since i didn't have a pot big enough to hold the prime rib:

 

[Nigel]

governments keep doing dumb stuff here, fires are nothing to do with emission targets or whatever though, just poor forestry management

Should just let the forests grow naturally?

The Oxygen Farm helped save our village from a bushfire, residents say

A thousand acres of remnant rainforest, bought by residents and protected from logging 30 years ago, is believed to have helped spare their homes from the ravages of bushfire.

www.abc.net.au

 

[jokiin]

doesn't take long

 

[DT MI]

Should just let the forests grow naturally?

The Oxygen Farm helped save our village from a bushfire, residents say

A thousand acres of remnant rainforest, bought by residents and protected from logging 30 years ago, is believed to have helped spare their homes from the ravages of bushfire.

www.abc.net.au

There may be anecdotal incidents where that's the case but years back one of the major contributors to some of the worst California wild fires was lack of forestry management. Reportedly some 'tree hugging' protectors of nature convinced the authorities that controlled burns to remove underbrush, and thus remove a fuel source for wild fires, was a bad idea and nature should be allowed free rein. The result after a few years was wild fires were more intense and wide spread because of the additional fuel available.

Sometimes the natural way isn't the right way.

 

[Nigel]

Sometimes the natural way isn't the right way.

Yes, and whichever way you go, decent firebreaks that are kept clear of fuel are essential, especially around villages/towns. In both Oz and USA the firebreaks don't appear to have been working, or have not existed, or have not been monitored sufficiently to deal with the odd spark that gets across.

 

[kamkar]

 

[Dashmellow]

Yes, and whichever way you go, decent firebreaks that are kept clear of fuel are essential, especially around villages/towns. In both Oz and USA the firebreaks don't appear to have been working, or have not existed, or have not been monitored sufficiently to deal with the odd spark that gets across.

So, Nigel, once again you express a disparaging, blame-the-victim attitude towards the USA and Australia, this time with a false and ill-informed narrative about firebreaks suggesting they either do not exist or have "not been monitored sufficiently" to deal with the "odd spark that gets across".

It's interesting too that once again, you ignore the fact that The UK has had more wildfires in 2019 than any year on record! (and this record was achieved only four months into the year!) and 2019 saw the highest winter temperatures ever recorded in the UK and 2019 broke the previous record number of wildfires from the preceding 2018 season. Perhaps some properly maintained firebreaks would have been in order?

While there is much debate about the appropriate forestry practices in Australia and the USA for fire protection and suppression, firebreaks have been in widespread use to mitigate forest fires since the nineteenth century and earlier. While they can indeed work quite well, they are certainly not a panacea. Additionally, unlike the UK, both the USA and Australia are geographically huge countries where maintaining adequate firebreaks in all locations at all times is virtually impossible due to limitations in resources, manpower and budget.

Typically, firebreaks are built to the width of two large bulldozer blades. Anything wider is usually impractical although it is done on occasion. Where possible, well-maintained roads, lakes, streams, and green areas are often used as firebreaks. But even if firebreaks were built literally everywhere they would be of limited effectiveness in a major conflagration such as the 2018 Camp and Woolsey fires in California or the current bushfires in Australia. To date, the fires in Australia have consumed 26,000,000 acres, which is many times the size of the otherwise enormous 2018 California fires which decimated 1,893,913 acres. Only so many firebreaks can be constructed and maintained over such vast areas of forest and bush country.

Your notion Nigel that "decent firebreaks" would "deal with the odd spark that gets across" is laughably naive and woefully misinformed. "Odd spark"? Good lord, man!

Burning embers and other debris are one of the primary reasons wildfires spread the way they do with such speed and destructive power. In places like California where the fire season goes hand in hand with the Santa Ana Winds, once a major fire begins, strong winds can toss firebrands for great distances shifting in many directions. To make matters worse, much worse actually, major bushfires, wildfires and forest fires literally generate their own weather systems with gale force winds which can blow burning embers literally for miles. These self generated winds become literal firestorms. Wildfires in the form of firestorms have been known to jump across lakes, rivers and large barren areas such as parking lots. Fire generated winds have been known to rip entire trees out of the ground and fling them (or parts of them such as branches or logs) for hundreds of feet.

It gets worse! Such firestorms often create "Fire whirls", literal tornadoes of fire that can shoot flames hundreds of feet in the air and generate temperatures of greater than 2,000 °F (1,090 °C). Some have been recorded that are 1km high generating wind speeds in excess of 200 km/h (120 mph)!

These fierce winds and fire vortexes are what we are witnessing in Australia and previously in California. The town of Paradise, CA was lost to a ferocious, fast moving firestorm and the firebreaks that were already in place were useless in the face of such a conflagration.

See: Why Embers Cause the Most Damage in Wildfires





So, "firebreaks don't appear to have been working, or have not existed, or have not been monitored sufficiently to deal with the ODD SPARK that gets across". Really, Nigel?







Fire fighters refer to these event as "Ember Attacks" as they overwhelm firebreaks. Embers like this can set a house or an entire neighborhood on fire, often in minutes.

 

[jokiin]

flying embers are the big problem when we have fires, it's that dry here that even grass will easily light up, this test was done recently to demonstrate just that

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=2581969525250218

 

[kamkar]

Yeah it move really fast.
Most people don't know that with a big fire, the inrush of cold air at ground level can be so fierce you can barely stand on your feet.
I saw some irrelevant parts of AU got a little rain today, and they said the area between Sydney and Brisbane are "scheduled" to get some rain "soon"
I just hope it will be rain levels that can make a difference, the smoke are already across the pacific and over Chile giving those guys a noticeable drop in light levels even if the smoke are up high and so not really a health risk for them.
As i recall i think US wildfires have been clocked at around 60 MPH,,,,,,, thats hard to outrun even in a car if you are on a dirt road.