A quick thought (without knowing anything about the subject!)

If a judge allows a prisoner to be released from a full life sentence to an ordinary life sentence, and that paroled prisoner murders someone, should the judge be charged with some form of manslaughter – knowing that the full-life criminal is serving full-life because he poses a very real threat to other people’s lives?

Did that make any sense at all?….

I like this image of shockwave formation… in this case a bullet.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/06/weird-world-of-fluids/

You’d only hear the ‘boom’ as the shockwave passed over you (in this case, some time after the bullet itself passes – the shockwaves being the black lines in the form of a bow wave and smaller shocks along the bullet length.)

Now turn the picture through 90 degrees so the bullet (Baumgartner) is heading downwards… At what point will the shockwave pass over you to enable a ‘boom’ to be heard…

Yes, the air is so thin at the point of sound breakage in Baumgardner’s case, that the shockwave would be greatly reduced. In theory, if you were on a platform and he passed you by whilst doing the speed of sound at 80,000 ft you’d hear it. You’d also have breathing difficulties, exploding eyeballs and a REALLY tall platform!

It didn’t run for very long… they threw a propshaft…

By chance, I was reading THIS thread…… http://forum.keypublishing.co.uk/showthread.php?t=119865

Matchbox power track was better than TCR and Scalextrix … I had two sets – both with the Jaguar XJ and BMW of some kind…

The date of fitting is interesting – by 1948 it seems that the RAF had done away with Mk IX Spitfires…

I’d go with a training airframe too. The incomplete paperwork and a made-up serial number fit in with non-airworthy parts and a learning environment…

Peter, use a BIG bushy paint brush to dust them (1″) – you can get really soft ones, and they won’t rip off pitot tubes and the like..

I think that Tolkien might have enjoyed the films for what they were, which is a BRIEF overview of his story…. There is no worry about running out of content – have you read The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings properly? (Cover to cover including appendices and the other random side-tracked bits). There is easily another film or three in the appendix alone covering the initial back-story and the events AFTER TLOTR. He pretty much invented a working language to meet the requirements of his story!

The combined works do give an interesting twist on old European Mythology, although it is a nod to the research material rather than attempt to re-write history…