Let's hear it for .....

[mistermack]

On the subject of Strads, aren't they somewhat over-hyped?
I seem to recall someone doing a blind test, with musicians who swore that Strads could never be matched or improved on, and they couldn't tell, or rated modern violins ahead of the Stradivarii.

You can get influenced by the aura of greatness and the price tag.

[Brian Peacock]

Yeah, Paris Double-Blind experiment, but still, Antonio certainly knew how to coax magic out of wood.

[mistermack]

Yeah, Paris Double-Blind experiment, but still, Antonio certainly knew how to coax magic out of wood.

Oh yeh, a genius in his time.
You would hardly expect a 1915 Merc to compete with a 2015 one. But he does that from much further back.

There's probably a limit in what can be done.
Like the 100 meters sprint. As you get better, the possible improvements get tinier and tinier.

[DaveDodo007]

Sliced bread?

[mistermack]

The automatic chain-oiler for motorbikes.
I read somewhere the other day that it can extend the life of a chain by up to SEVEN times.

The reason? A dry chain gets much hotter than an oily one, and stretches under heavy torque.
Also, hot dry bearings wear so much faster.

Years ago, they used to totally enclose the chain on some boring commuter-type bikes, but ''real'' bikers don't like it for some reason. They don't think it looks sporting, like an open chain does.
It does add a little bit of weight.
I would go for it, myself. If it saves you having to clean oil off the back wheel, it's worth it.

[pErvinalia]

Dave Dodo and other man-boys who get upset about women aggressively standing up for their rights. Without them we'd only have the extreme feminist to laugh at, and we might have started feeling bad about that.

[JimC]

Juniper berries.

Otherwise, I might as well be drinking vodka...

[pErvinalia]

Strong painkillers. Except when they say you can't have alcohol with them or you might die.

[JimC]

Strong painkillers. Except when they say you can't have alcohol with them or you might die.

I always ignore that bit...

[pErvinalia]

I'm having one beer. Living on the edge!! \m/

[mistermack]

Let's hear it for evaporation.

If water didn't evaporate, there would be no life on land. No rivers or lakes or fresh water or ground water.

And I can't decide if the ocean would be incredibly salty, or not salty at all.

Rain washes salt out of the rocks, which concentrates in the oceans. So you might expect the ocean not to be salty, if there was no rain.
But over billions of years, salt would have leached into the ocean from rocks.
And evaporation actually turns sea-salt into rock, when inland seas dry out.
So I THINK that the ocean would be super-concentrated brine, without the salt lakes removing salt.

In which case, if water hadn't had the evaporation property, there would be nothing on Earth but brine-shrimps etc.

Edit: Actually, I don't even know if they would be around. Would there be much oxygen about? Is there much photosynthesis going on in super-concentrated brine?

[JimC]

One should add condensation to that, for completeness...

[mistermack]

One should add condensation to that, for completeness...

I did TRY to keep it short.

[Hermit]

And I can't decide if the ocean would be incredibly salty, or not salty at all.

Salt is soluble, but it does not evaporate. That's why we get salt lakes and why rainwater is not salty. You can work the rest out yourself, yes?

[mistermack]

And I can't decide if the ocean would be incredibly salty, or not salty at all.

Salt is soluble, but it does not evaporate. That's why we get salt lakes and why rainwater is not salty. You can work the rest out yourself, yes?

What planet did you just arrive from?