onetrack

There's a good video below on U.S. War production during WW2. It's long, at 43 mins, but it's very interesting to see how the U.S. went from an isolationist stance and very little War production in the late 1930's, to a position of "the World's Arsenal". https://www.google.com/search?q=Bill+Knudsen&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:62a21db5,vid:2YIuuJQH6Sc,st:0

The U.S lost 733 Merchant vessels to enemy action during WW2 - mostly U-boats. The total shipping tonnage of these 733 vessels lost was 3.1M tons - and the tonnage was measured, using the pretty standard maritime measure - Gross Tonnage. The weight of steel used to make one Liberty ship (and I'm using the Liberty ship as an example, as over 2,700 were built during WW2, making it the most common U.S. freighter) is estimated as between 8,100 and 9,180 tons. Using 8000 tons as a rounded number, and multiplied by 733 lost ships, the steel weight lost in the shipping was 5,864,000 tons. However, many of the ships lost were smaller than Liberty ships, so the actual tons of steel lost would probably be far lower. A vast amount of steel produced during WW2 went into construction machinery and armoured equipment. The tank factories turned out thousands of tanks, and the construction equipment manufacturers went full speed ahead on construction machinery. Caterpillar provided 98% of their output to the War effort, producing mostly Cat D7 and D8 bulldozers and Cat 12 motor graders, which were the primary machines of the U.S. Forces. The wartime D7 weighed about 15 tonnes fully equipped, the wartime D8 weighed about 23 tons, and a Cat 12 grader weighed around 10 tons. Looking at just Cat production figures, they built around 10,000 x D7 tractors, 9,500 x D8 tractors, and around 6,000 x No. 12 graders during the War period. That makes a total of 428,500 tons of steel that just went into Cat tractors and graders alone. There were also substantial number of other tractor manufacturers and equipment manufacturers who built a wide range of war/construction equipment as well, so the total amount of steel required for manufactured equipment was colossal. The 2,000,000 tons of steel used in Marsden Matting was probably a low percentage of overall U.S. steel production during WW2. Machine tools were produced by the tens of thousands, and vast tonnages of steel would have been consumed in that area. I have a copy somewhere on a computer hard drive of the history of the USACE (U.S. Army Corp of Engineers), and it gives the background and order figures of steel production during the War years - and the production orders for steel were just mind-boggling - and they changed weekly, as War orders were delivered. The figures bounced all over the place and reality and priorities had to be balanced. The appointment of Bill Knudsen (from GM) as Head of War Production was deemed crucial to instill some orderliness into both civilian and military Wartime orders and production.

Going back to the original aim of the thread 🙄 - I see where 540,000 people cast their absentee vote on the first day of absentee voting. Seems like a substantial amount of people have already made their mind up, and no amount of election speeches, or last-minute pork barrelling, is going to affect the direction as to how a lot of people vote. I think there's only about 7M registered voters.

I watched an interview with Musk, as regards the performance of DOGE, and he was claiming that they were saving $4B a day in Federal expenditure. However, that claim is rubbery, because so much of their claimed "savings" were from processes that were already in place when Trump took over as President. To add to that, the interest bill on the U.S. National Debt is running at $3B a day, and what Trump and Musk are doing, is actually doing very little to address that debt level. What they ARE doing is causing increased U.S. unemployment, reducing Americas ability to keep tabs on what is happening in the world outside the continental U.S., damaging Americas standing in the global arena as a reliable and trusted partner - and as the bloke in the video above clearly points out, there is no statesman-like vision in Trumps and Musks agendas for Americas future, it's all about money, chaotic decision-making that takes abrupt reversals, promotes bitter divisiveness, chases retribution and vicious revenge, and which concentrates on belittling people who oppose their agenda. And the very worst part of Trump and Musks beliefs is that Putin is a good bloke, and his vision for Russia is worthy of support, and that Ukraine is just a corrupt failed state. To top it all, anyone who thinks that American industry can return to low-cost manufacturing, and beat China at their low-production-cost game, is living in La-La Land.

Somebody wrote that for him, I'll wager! It contains nothing about crooked judges, crooked Democrats, fraudulent elections, fake news, or even recommendations for Trump Hotels or golf courses.

Here is W.A.'s charging network, we have a State Govt that is really pushing EV's and spending a heap of money on charging stations - but they're still mostly on main roads, and there's quite a few areas where coverage is poor. The RAC of W.A. has also been spending money on installing charging stations, but they've only installed a total of 16 stations. https://www.drive.com.au/news/western-australias-public-electric-car-charging-network-is-now-switched-on/ https://rac.com.au/about-rac/community-programs/electric-highway#:~:text=If you're in an,supported by the Chargefox network. While I appreciate Octaves EV report, I think that comparing a NZ EV driving experience with the Australian EV driving experience is comparing apples to oranges. SWMBO and I regularly tour using rented accommodation (Hotels, Motels, AirBNB's, Farmstays, etc), and I wonder what the reaction is when you plug in your EV at your accommodation and whack up the accommodation owners power bill? Plus, I'd like to see actual recharge costs from the various charge outlets. Just giving Tesla my CC and letting them charge it at will with whatever figure they dream up for recharging, is not my idea of keeping tabs on expenditure when travelling. As I understand it, you can't even own a Tesla without having a CC on record with them, that's the equivalent of giving the fox the keys to the hen house, IMO. I'll keep full control of my CC thanks - even the auction houses I deal with, don't take money out of my CC without serious controls on the amount taken out.

Pope Francis has passed away this afternoon (this morning, Rome time), aged 88. He looked like s*** in the last photo I saw of him, about a week or so ago, and I reckoned then, he didn't have long to go. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-04-21/albanese-and-dutton-respond-to-death-of-pope-francis/105198666

In Australia, between 1900 and about 1918, there were no petrol stations as we know them today, and car owners had to buy and carry 4 gallon cans of "benzene". Running boards always carried spare cans of petrol, and the used cans piled up everywhere. Poor people even cut the cans apart and flattened them and used them for cheap house cladding. This lack of service stations was despite a huge surge in car ownership between about 1908 and 1918. The Model T Ford, released in 1908, became enormously popular very quickly as it was cheap and simple. But it wasn't until the early 1920's in Australia that a few petrol stations started appearing. Petrol cans had to be sourced from general stores and hardware stores before bulk fuelling became available. It must have been quite inconvenient, but no-one drove the distances then that we drive today, as roads were substantially less in number and very few were sealed, only the ones in the cities. I feel that recharging infrastructure is seriously lagging behind the EV takeup, and it's only a small number of bodies that are investing in charging infrastructure - and even then, only along main highways. I also feel that battery swapping MUST be an option to enable much higher EV takeup. Teslas are not selling well at present, but I think the Chinese EV onslaught will make up for that.

The U.S. still produces a lot of steel, but it's nearly all sourced from scrap today, and smelted in electric arc furnaces. They don't have huge hematite reserves any more, they ran out of easily-accessed hematite at the end of WW2, and had to turn to taconite for their iron after WW2. Taconite is only 30% iron content, as compared to around 60% for hematite - and taconite requires a lot more processing to get the iron out of it. It was only due to the work of one clever U.S. scientist, that enabled U.S. taconite to be processed economically. Prior to 1945, taconite was treated as waste or overburden, and cast aside. https://eros.usgs.gov/earthshots/taconite#:~:text=The rock being mined now,century made taconite mining profitable.

What about when the EV's are in the majority and there comes the time when you get "charger rage", as people are waiting to charge up? I think this area is what needs addressing, too much of the EV blurb and spiel is all about how you can charge at home overnight. When you're travelling, you need those charge points everywhere, and you need them freely available.

I find it amusing that the Roman Catholic Church still insists on using a dead language for its religious communications - claiming its use "provides a stable, unchanging foundation for its liturgy and theological traditions" - while at the same time, it bases all its beliefs and traditions on a Bible that has undergone multiple translations from its original writings in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek.

2 millions tons of the matting! It makes you wonder where it all ended up? A lot still corroding away on tropical islands, I suppose. PSP and jerrycans were the two indispensable winning items of WW2. But the jerrycan was actually invented by the Germans! - and the design was so good, the Allies simply copied the entire design. I didn't realise that the Allies actually offered a small reward to local civilians and children to pick up abandoned Axis jerrycans, and to return them to troop headquarters for reuse.

No, Trump is at his Easter finest, ranting and abusing in his Easter Message, with a media release that's filled with vitriol and vengeance. He's a classic psychopath. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trumps-happy-easter-message-1235321550/

Australian paper wasps or introduced European wasps? The former are relatively innocuous here on the Left Coast, but the European wasps are apparently the vicious bastards. The European wasps are extremely rare here, and a declared pest, to be reported to authorities for immediate destruction. The Australian paper wasps rarely sting here, although one did bite SWMBO a few years ago, and made her yelp. However, I see in news items that the European wasps have bred up in large numbers in the Eastern States, and are becoming a major problem. What with them and fire ants, the Eastern States look less attractive every day!

Believe it or not, I've actually found "align" written as "aline" in a number of WW2 U.S. Military Technical Manuals ("TM's"). I have never seen it spelt like that anywhere before, but apparently, according to authoritative sources, it's a common alternative spelling, and it has been that way for a couple of centuries. I suspected it was spelt that way in the WW2 TM's, so it was easier for black American soldiers/mechanics to read. But it appears there was a contemporaneous American English spelling reform movement, that was quite strong between about 1890 and 1950. This group set about eliminating all the curious (mostly French-origin) English word spellings, to simplified spellings that were more directly related to phonetic pronunciations. However, the movement appears to have fizzled out after about 1950. It seems we can blame the French once again - "alignment" is pretty much directly lifted from the French word "aligner" - which means to align. https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/131067/alignment-or-alinement#:~:text=The words aline%2Falign and,the words (the 1847 American