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Post by mossie on Jun 18, 2018 7:40:29 GMT
Agree with Casi
Now the bloody beards. This is an extremely sloven habit which has crept in in recent times, or can’t you afford razor blades. To people of my generation who had compulsory military service, one knew that to appear as scruffy as that would merit 14 days “confined to barracks”. There one would have to parade in full kit at the guardroom night and morning and be put to all sorts of menial tasks. Whitewash the stones marking out the barrack square, scrub the toilet with your toothbrush or pick up litter round the camp. Get a life.
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Post by lagatta on Jun 18, 2018 8:22:19 GMT
How about Prince Harry?
I'm not at all surprised about family violence, though I think family and "friends" would be more accurate.
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Post by mickthecactus on Jun 18, 2018 8:39:58 GMT
Agree about beards too.
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Post by questa on Jun 18, 2018 8:52:12 GMT
Some useless stuff re beards...Royal Navy (and Oz) may grow full face beards but keep them trimmed and neat. Hang-over from days when men used "cut-throat" razors. On a ship which is pitching and rolling in heavy seas it was too dangerous to shave, however by the same reasoning it was too dangerous to part shave or go for fancy styles, hence the full beard was neatened with round-bladed scissors.
Very popular TV newsreader here was told to remove his mustache as lip reading viewers had trouble reading him. As a proud Armenian he pointed out that this was against his culture where all grown men wore mustaches. Compromise was the 'mo'had to be trimmed to reveal his upper lip.
Some researcher in the late 50s claimed that men who wore full face-hiding beards were in fact hiding something about themselves from society. Then came the 60s and beards and hair prevailed.!
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Post by rikita on Jun 18, 2018 12:19:49 GMT
i read a few things about ants yesterday. like that the males come from unfertilized eggs and that in some ant species, a lost worker ant can lay an egg and raise the male ant who then is its chance to spread its genes. and that since a lost ant tries to find its own groups pheromone trail, a small group of lost ants might ant up just walking in circles, following each other's scents, until they die of exhaustion. and that if an ant is lost and manages to come back home, but has been gone so long it lost its group's scent, it will be treated like an invader and killed.
i feel very sorry now for the ants that climbed into our lunch box yesterday and thus were carried far away from home by us.
oh, also, apparently when an ant dies, its scent changes, indicating to the other ants to carry it to the area where they store the dead ants. and apparently they did experiments giving a live ant the smell of a dead one, and its friends kept carrying it to the dead ant area, which it left, but was carried back there as soon as it encountered another ant again and again, until it managed to wash off the scent ...
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Post by Kimby on Jun 18, 2018 12:31:45 GMT
Fascinating stuff, rikita.
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Post by questa on Jun 30, 2018 13:10:36 GMT
This delights me...a gathering of starfish is called a "constellation" of star fish. A very large constellation is called a "galaxy" of starfish. Isn't that lovely!
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Post by kerouac2 on Jun 30, 2018 13:20:42 GMT
97% of the Republic of Chad does not have electricity.
The electrical output of the entire country is no more than that of a medium-sized shopping mall.
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Post by Kimby on Jun 30, 2018 13:38:38 GMT
This delights me...a gathering of starfish is called a "constellation" of star fish. A very large constellation is called a "galaxy" of starfish. Isn't that lovely! Who knew starfish “gathered”? That IS lovely. (And “constellation” is so much prettier than a “murder” of crows or a “parliament” of owls.)
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Post by Kimby on Jun 30, 2018 13:40:18 GMT
97% of the Republic of Chad does not have electricity. The electrical output of the entire country is no more than that of a medium-sized shopping mall. Sounds like Puerto Rico, post-hurricane...
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Post by bixaorellana on Jun 30, 2018 17:46:00 GMT
Who knew starfish “gathered”? That IS lovely. My thoughts eggzackly!
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Post by kerouac2 on Jul 1, 2018 20:39:30 GMT
Only 3% of the residents of France are vegetarians.
However, 56% are willing to eat vegetarian meals (or already do so) from time to time.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jul 1, 2018 21:04:05 GMT
Somehow, I would have thought both those statistics would have been higher. The number willing to eat vegetarian meals isn't too surprising, since the French strike me as people who venerate vegetables, so would give a non-meat meal a chance.
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Post by whatagain on Jul 2, 2018 20:39:22 GMT
According to statbel an official site of Belgian stats we eat 18pc less meat than 10 years ago. Quite a drastic reduction.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jul 3, 2018 3:43:25 GMT
Same trend in France.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jul 3, 2018 5:37:23 GMT
South Korea is lowering its maximum work week from 68 hours to 52 hours.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jul 3, 2018 8:14:05 GMT
Lazy bastards! But seriously -- How many days in their work week? Even at six days, the new workday will be over 8 hours.
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Post by whatagain on Jul 3, 2018 17:00:17 GMT
Maximum Bixa, maximum... In Belgique we usually do 38 hours per week, max 8 hours a day, but maximum is ... 56 hours ! Better (worse) than Korea. From offocial site : www.emploi.belgique.be/defaultTab.aspx?id=38255Il y a tout d'abord les dérogations structurelles qui sont liées à certains régimes de travail et qui présentent donc une certaine permanence quant à leur application. Parfois, la dérogation est directement permise par la loi, sans autorisation préalable : •le travail organisé en équipes successives (maximum : 11 heures/jour et 50 heures/semaine) ; •le travail organisé en continu pour des raisons techniques (maximum 12 heures/ jour et 50 heures/semaine ou 56 heures lorsque les prestations de travail sont réparties sur 7 jours/semaine à raison de 8 heures/jour.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jul 3, 2018 17:08:02 GMT
Actually, the article I read was a bit misleading, as such articles nearly always are. Just because the law says something doesn't mean that it is the norm. It was mentioned that the "average" work week of Koreans was something like 43 hours. This was later compared to the shortest working hours in the world, which are in Germany and Denmark. Something like 28 hours.
Information like this is misleading, because generally they mix everybody into one group, whether they are full time or part time workers. Every country has part time workers, but I think we all want to know what the working time is for full time workers.
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Post by whatagain on Jul 4, 2018 16:52:52 GMT
Average working time of my German colleagues is 40 hours per week. They went up from 38 to 40 some years ago. Boooh would say unions. However I was able to see the effect on average cost per hour. German one went down whilst Belgian continued to go up. Then when recession hit us one factory had to be closed. Guess what ? The Belgian I e installed since 150 years in the historical region of steel mines and steel was producing fine quality.
But strangely we were the ones that got shut down. Of course it had nothing to do with the fact that we had become the most expensive of the region when quality of production of neighbouring countries was at least as good as ours. Maybe we would have survived with a lower average wage. Unions disagree though. It is the fault of the globalisation o the bosses and of Europe.
The plant is now completely razed by the way. Nothing left except the chimneys and the water castle (do we say it in english ? A tower for water so that pressure is ok for using water in the plant).
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Post by kerouac2 on Jul 4, 2018 17:12:37 GMT
Easy: water tower.
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Post by bjd on Jul 5, 2018 5:43:23 GMT
Those statistics are misleading. Germans don't work 28 hours/week. If you remember, just a few months ago the news was about a union/government settlement between the German union of metalworkers about reducing the workweek to 28 hours. That was finally agreed but only for some people, under certain conditions. So these numbers are produced as covering all workers in the country for comparative statistics, but are just simplifications of certain cases.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jul 5, 2018 18:14:13 GMT
France has just reached the plateau of having 100 billionaires (I suppose we are talking about US dollars). Naturally, this is far fewer than quite a few other countries.
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Post by rikita on Jul 6, 2018 22:31:56 GMT
i work only 20-25 hours per week ... but then, that's part time ... most people i know work around 40 hours, which is what i'd consider full time ... as for maximum time, it is ten hours per day under special circumstances (normally, unless you have specific jobs, this can only be short term, else the work time has to average eight hours per day), more than that under even more special circumstances and then the average can't be more than 48 hours per week ... but in reality of course lots of people work more, either voluntarily or because they feel they have to, to keep their job, and would never dare to report it ...
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Post by Kimby on Jul 23, 2018 13:19:04 GMT
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Post by mickthecactus on Jul 26, 2018 13:05:32 GMT
Philadelphia was once the second largest city in the British Empire.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jul 26, 2018 21:02:34 GMT
Huh! That's a great fact and news to me.
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Post by mickthecactus on Jul 26, 2018 21:23:57 GMT
And they really liked coriander.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jul 26, 2018 21:31:58 GMT
Kinshasa is the largest French speaking city in the world, pop. 17 million
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Post by bixaorellana on Jul 26, 2018 21:32:11 GMT
Seed or leaf?
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