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#51481 03/16/2002 2:05 AM
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An amused titter ran through the audience.


#51482 03/16/2002 2:54 AM
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I was afraid you'd give us the Dickens!

No, Geoff...Dickens has already given us the Dickens!


#51483 03/16/2002 5:05 AM
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An amused titter ran through the audience.

Bra-vo, Ken! What a titillating thought! And we all remember Edgar Allen Poe, who, in one of his poems, counted breasts. "The belles, belles, belles, belles, the titty tabulation of the bells, bells, bells...."


#51484 03/16/2002 5:12 AM
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No, Geoff...Dickens has already given us the Dickens!.

Well, W O'n, with your name, I'm surprised you didn't think of the Japanese version of one of Walt's titles, "I Sing The Body Erect-ric."


#51485 03/16/2002 2:21 PM
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I didn't want to interrupt anything so have held back from firing my own shot.

My partner in crime CapK is, as we speak, erecting a pic to blow all of you away.



Watch for his post with the url......then rush to book your trips to the Nambung National Park, Western Australia.

stales


#51486 03/16/2002 7:56 PM
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#51487 03/16/2002 8:48 PM
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Ain't that swell - now Aussies apparently think every K1W1 is the same person!
Here's some payback for you, Max: he's really an American!


#51488 03/16/2002 8:52 PM
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Oh, no no no no no!!! Oh, too much, too much!


#51489 03/16/2002 9:00 PM
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#51490 03/16/2002 11:29 PM
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OMG!!!!!!!!!!!! A headless woman! But I guess the head the guy is showing makes up for it?!?!?!?


#51491 03/17/2002 2:11 AM
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> My partner in crime CapK

OMG !!!!!!!!!!!!!

A thousand pardons Max - and you too CapK.

It was late.....er, there was an earthquake,...........er, a huge explosion.........there was fire.

thanks anyway.

stales


#51492 03/17/2002 2:13 AM
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A headless woman! But I guess the head the guy is showing makes up for it

Always nice to see folks getting ahead in their endeavors.


#51493 03/17/2002 2:17 AM
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All I can say is OUCH!


#51494 03/17/2002 2:18 AM
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Always nice to see folks getting ahead in their endeavors.

And what was he endeavoring to do?


#51495 03/17/2002 2:21 AM
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All I can say is OUCH!

Bel, not "tabarnac"?


#51496 03/17/2002 2:22 AM
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Word-related question: whence comes the phrase "to get on the stick"?


#51497 03/17/2002 2:31 AM
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Word-related question: whence comes the phrase "to get on the stick"?

Maybe here?
http://communities.msn.com/KimsOasis/unusualandfunpictures.msnw?action=ShowPhoto&PhotoID=180
Gives new meaning to "woody"!


#51498 03/17/2002 3:33 AM
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#51499 03/17/2002 4:11 AM
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pinnacles

Well, I'd say one head more than compensates for the loss of the other!


#51500 03/17/2002 3:15 PM
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Well, I'd say one head more than compensates for the loss of the other!

Oh, boy, Whit, you'd better put on your flack jacket! Women already think we men only think with the "other " head!


#51501 03/17/2002 3:30 PM
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Women already think we men only think with the "other " head!

You don't?
News to me!



#51502 03/17/2002 9:50 PM
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I assign nationality by the way someone identifies themselves, not where they were born.
Yeah, yeah--I was jus' tryin' to poke his borax a little bit...(dang, a person cain't even have a little fun around here...)


#51503 03/17/2002 10:29 PM
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Women already think we men only think with the "other " head!

You don't?
News to me!


Glad to have been of service to you, Ann! (Upper head)

Glad to have serviced you, Ann! (Other head)

There, see, we DO know the difference!

Your humble servant, Geoff


#51504 03/17/2002 10:31 PM
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Men think???





#51505 03/17/2002 10:37 PM
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Angel,

I was going to write:

All I can say is ouch, a-yoy and TABARNAC but it is *really* a bad swearword here. My Mom's threat of "I'll wash your mouth out with soap" uttered to me when I was a child is *still reverberating through my synapses.


#51506 03/17/2002 11:03 PM
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#51507 03/18/2002 2:11 PM
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"The" pic was taken in 1985 at the Nambung National Park, several hours north of Perth, WA. The prominent features present are known collectively as "The Pinnacles".

Over time there's been various explanations put forward for how they formed, with the common thread being that they reflect a change in soil conditions around ancient, long gone, tree root systems.

One reasonable sounding hypothesis and some pix are given at http://aussie.trafalgargroup.net/pinnacle.html:

The raw material for the limestone of the pinnacles came from sea shells in an earlier epoch rich in marine life. These shells were broken down into lime-rich sands which were brought ashore by waves and then carried inland by the wind to form high, mobile dunes. Three old systems of sand dunes run parallel to the WA coast, marking ancient shorelines.

The oldest of these, known as the Spearwood dune system, is characterised by yellow or brownish sands. In winter, rain, which is slightly acidic, dissolves small amounts of calcium carbonate as it percolates down through the sand. As the dune dries out during summer, this is precipitated as a cement around grains of sand in the lower levels of the dunes, binding them together and eventually producing a hard limestone rock, known as Tamala Limestone.

At the same time, vegetation that became established on the surface, aided this process. Plant roots stabilised the surface, and encouraged a more acidic layer of soil and humus (containing decayed plant and animal matter) to develop over the remaining quartz sand.

The acidic soil accelerated the leaching process, and a hard layer of calcrete formed over the softer limestone below. Cracks which formed in the calcrete layer were exploited by plant roots. When water seeped down along these channels, the softer limestone beneath was slowly leached away and the channels gradually filled with quartz sand. This subsurface erosion continued until only the most resilient columns remained. The Pinnacles, then, are the eroded remnants of the formerly thick bed of limestone.

As bush fires denuded the higher areas, south-westerly winds carried away the loose quartz sands and left these limestone pillars standing up to three and a half metres high.

Although the formation of the Pinnacles would have taken many thousands of years, they were probably only exposed in quite recent times. Aboriginal artefacts at least 6,000 years old have been found in the Pinnacles Desert despite no recent evidence of Aboriginal occupation. This tends to suggest that the Pinnacles were exposed about 6,000 years ago and then covered up by shifting sands, before being exposed again in the last few hundred years. This process can be seen in action today - with the predominantly southerly winds uncovering pinnacles in the northern part of the Pinnacles Desert but covering those in the south. Over time, the limestone spires will no doubt be covered again by other sand drifts and the cycle repeated, creating weird and wonderful shapes over and over again.


For the record, whilst I do think the pic is funny, (we were a lot more frisky in those days!!) I no longer condone such mistreatment of these features and apologise to whoever, wherever for our actions that day. My only excuse is that we were no more disrespectful than many/most others. One was allowed to walk - or even drive!- anywhere throughout the Pinnacles back then. Now it's very much a case of low impact ecotourism.

stales


#51508 03/18/2002 7:14 PM
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Wow--thanks, stales! That's really cool! In the caves in this part of the country, you can really see evidence of the cracks in the calcrete layer: skinny little roots are often seen dangling from the ceiling--creepy. And thanks for the word calcrete--if I learned it all those yrs. ago in my geology classes, I'd forgotten it. Calcrete = calcium + concrete?


#51509 03/18/2002 9:21 PM
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From stales' link: One of the years, Sports Illustrated shot some of their swimsuit issue here.

Hmmm... wonder how they posed the swimsuit models?


#51510 03/18/2002 10:23 PM
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we don't, we aren't, and if we aren't,...

But, Max, you're using Cartesian logic, which is dualistic, so you've inadvertently brought us back to having two heads!











#51511 03/19/2002 9:12 AM
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You got it - I think. Could also be calcium + accreted/accretion.

Same goes for "silcrete" (silica + concrete/accreted/accretion) and "ferricrete" - have a guess!

stales


#51512 03/19/2002 4:36 PM
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per Academic Press Dictionary of Science and Technology, no concrete is involved:

calcrete Geology. 1. a conglomerate of surface sand and gravel cemented into a hard mass by calcium carbonate. 2. in a semiarid climate, a hard crust containing calcium carbonate formed on the surface of a soil.
silcrete Geology. a conglomerate of surficial sand and gravel cemented together by silica.

http://www.harcourt.com/dictionary


#51513 03/20/2002 2:35 PM
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Keiva - "concretion"(n.) is a geological term - a subspherical lump of grains that have been cemented together by chemical means. Thus you are correct in saying that it has nothing to do with concrete, but concretion is in there somewhere....

stales


#51514 03/22/2002 2:57 PM
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Hope that thing is well sanded, I'd hate to think of splinter removal.


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