lmf7000

I'm writing a short fictional story. I need the main character's job to be to drive a car in a private underground tunnel constructed between two facilities 200 miles apart. He is the only car using the tunnel, and makes the 400 mile round trip daily. I need to think of something plausable he could be carrying in the car that makes the construction of the tunnels worthwhile, and makes the choice of a car for transport sensible (as opposed to a train in a railway tunnel for example).

What could it be that he's carrying?

(Hint: nothing illegal (like drugs), hazardous to health (like nuclear waste or fuel rods))

I took one bite of the burger before realising that the beef was raw in the middle. I spat out everything immediately (but swallowed some of the juices that stayed in my mouth). Gave the staff a piece of my mind and got a replacement burger. Properly cooked this time :)

My questions are:

1. What are the chances of getting ill from the small amount of raw beef that I swallowed?

2. Can I take anything now (antibiotics, suppliments, foods etc.) as prevention, to ward off any possible infection (just in case the meat did contain some illness-causing bacteria or viruses)?

I'll be visiting London next week on a family trip, and I wanted to try either renting a fast car and driving on a nearby racetrack, or being a passenger in one of those cars while its owner or an instructor does all the fast driving. My questions are specifically these:

1. Which tracks are close to London?

2. How do I get to them from St. Katherine's Docks (I won't have a rental car outside of the tracks)?

3. How do I go about getting myself a passenger experience in a race car? Do I book it through some official means, or can I show up on the day and hope I find someone nice enough to let me ride along in their car?

I'm trying to find an old short cartoon I saw as a kid once. The details are sketchy, but I remember it involved at least two planes - a slow one and a very fast one (that looked like the spitfire). The planes were "alive" so to speak (they had eyes and mouths). I remember at one point in the cartoon the slow plane ate a mixture of motor oil and engine parts. The episode focused a lot on how dangerously fast and noisy the big plane was. My most vivid memory is at the end of the episode where the big plane enters a dive, and as it goes faster and faster, the outer skin panels start to come off, leaving only the internal framework.

It may have involved a human pilot too (maybe he was in the big plane, and the little plane ended up saving him?) but I can't remember.

For instance, I want to be able to find a list of cars (of any make and model) that have a 0-60 time of under 10 seconds, CO2 emissions of less than 150g/100km and a fuel economy of greater than 30mpg.

Are you aware of any used car websites that allow sorting like this? Most of the sites I've come across (like autotrader) don't allow filtering by 0-60 time or CO2 emissions. They only filter by things like engine size, number of doors, price and mileage...

Here are two pictures of the real Extra 300 that show these devices. You can see that a thick black tube comes out of the end of each wing, and a small hollow triangle of smaller tubes is stuck to the large tube so that the point of the triangle points upwards:

http://www.esacademic.com/pictures/eswiki/69/Extra...

http://www.esacademic.com/pictures/eswiki/69/Extra...

Any idea what that structure is for? The Extra 300 seems to be the only plane that has something like this.

I'm 22 and have absolutely zero dating experience (long story hehe). Well, tomorrow is my first time going out alone with a girl so I was wondering if anyone could share any advice? I've never done this before so I have no intuition whatsoever to help. So I could use all the advice I can get :)

This is my third time meeting the girl. First time was at a family gathering - she's actually from another EU country and very friendly and approachable. Well, we hit it off and I got her number.

Second time was a sort of double-date at a restaurant with my brother and his girlfriend (who she also met at the gathering). It went great, I paid for her meal but there was no hand holding or romantic stuff of any kind. And when I drove her to her house (after dropping off the other two) she basically jumped out of the car without even giving me time to park, but then stood there and said she had a great time and we'll keep in touch.

A few days and messages later, she's agreed to go out with me (alone, without the other couple) - the plan is basically a walk through an interesting city followed by a meal at a restaurant. She returns back to her country in a month to finish the last two years of her degree (currently she's here on a working holiday during her summer recess from uni) - so maybe I'm interpreting this all wrong? Maybe she just wants a friend, someone to show her around? Like I said, my intuition is useless so I need advice from someone more experienced in these matters :) Thanks.

If you were to take a small pendulum with you on a motorbike, how would the pendulum react when the motorbike goes into a turn? Will it point straight down towards the ground, or will it point towards the bottom of the bike? Because on the one hand, you have gravitational force pulling down, but you also have centrifugal force pulling towards the outside of the turn.

Let me rephrase it. If I were to superglue a wine glass to my bike's fuel tank and half-fill it with water, what happens to the angle of the top of the water during a turn?

In case you're wondering why I'm asking, I'm trying to think of a stabilised motorbike camera that always aligns itself with the ground regardless of how the bike tilts, but I'm thinking that a simple swiveling mount with a heavy weight at the bottom won't work.

Currently a student in the North of France and have been cycling for just under a week (I use my car in my home country) and need some thoughts on this question.

In France many roads are one-way but the restriction applies only to motorised traffic (they normally stick a sign saying "sauf velos" under the one-way sign, which means "except bicycles").

So, I was travelling at normal speed on a single lane cobbled street on my bicycle, in the opposite direction to the one-way cars are forced to use. The road was had no pavements and was empty except for some parked cars to my right, and I was cycling on the right-hand side of the only lane (as everyone drives on the right in France).

All of a sudden a small kid ran into the road from behind a parked car, not more than 4 meters ahead of me. I swerved left into the middle of the road, and miraculously the kid noticed me and took a step back, and with this combination I managed to pass about half a meter to the left of the kid. It was that close.

I didn't have enough space to stop, and if he had kept moving forwards I doubt I'd have been able to avoid hitting him, and now it's got me thinking about cyclist/pedestrian collisions since I'm a new cyclist.

So I'd like your thoughts:

Would a bicycle at 10mph seriously injure a child? His head was about the height of my knee on the bike.

If I hit him, who takes responsibility and what happens after?

Anything else you'd like to add?

If not, then what would be the latest time you would consider it to be safe to find yourself at a train station in this area?

Right now sunset in Douai happens at 10pm (I found it odd at first, but seems common in summer at Northern latitudes), so I don't know if this changes anything.

Compare, for example TGV and Ryanair. Second-class seats on both, between Marseille and Brussels cost £57 by rail (5 hour trip) but €52 by air (2 hours - and one sterling is 1.25 euro so it's even cheaper).

How is it that an electric train on a rail can cost the companies more to run than a kerosene-powered aircraft that bleeds money even when it's standing still? I used to work at an aircraft maintenance facility. Those things are NOT cheap to run. Frankly on some flights I consider it a miracle that Ryanair actually make a profit charging passengers just €20.

On the other hand I have no idea what it costs to run a train, but seeing how it's not going to fall out of the sky if something goes wrong, I'd say the maintenance requirements can be somewhat more relaxed compared to aircraft. However I don't know what it takes to maintain the rail system and I don't know whether that's paid for by the government or by the actual train company?

Please, enlighten me?

I am going to be staying in Douai (a small town in northern France) for a month to do some research at their university.

I will be staying at their student accomodation, so as far as I know I won't have any sort of appliance (no fridge, no microwave, no cooker...). Eating on weekdays isn't a problem because I can eat at the university canteen. But I hear most shops will be closed on weekends (including the uni canteen)... so what can I eat?

In particular, my plane lands there on a Friday. So I need suggestions for foods that I can pack in my suitcase that will feed me for my first weekend there.

I'm going to be staying at Douai (near Lille) for a month to do some research at their university (currently doing a Master's degree in engineering).

I'm 22, Maltese and I have a Maltese driving license.

I've always wanted to do a few laps around a race track, but Malta has no race tracks to speak of.

So my question is, would there be any way that over one of the weekends I'm in France (will be there all of June), I could get to a track, rent a track car there and go for a few laps? I really like the ariel atom, but that might be a little over budget :)

So, the details I need some advice on are:

-Which tracks are accessible (I don't mind taking a train to a different country if need be - Lille is very close to Belgium and the South of the UK). I won't actually have a rental car for normal roads while there though (too expensive!)

-What it takes to rent and drive the car on track (license, insurance etc.)

-Any other considerations?

Downloading legal stuff (mainly linux distributions). My home connection goes at 1.5 MB per second and I never actually configured any ports for it to work.

But at my university it's a different story. There is no problem downloading the .torrent file, opening it, having bittorrent log in and whatnot, but the download speed is about 0.1kb/s.

How are they limiting the download speed? I'm not really interested in bypassing this (I just download at home) - but I've always liked I.T. and this has aroused my curiousity. So if you can also suggest a workaround to bypass their throttling, and the workaround works, it would confirm that the reason you gave is correct.

P.S. Using "forced" encryption in my bittorrent client made no difference.

Just wondering whether the general opinion is that staring at legs is as bad as staring at exposed cleavage...

Oh, and for the purpose of this question, by "legs" I refer only to the areas below the midpoint of the thighs - i.e. the exposed parts when wearing a normal-length skirt and standing up or walking.

If you were given a bank account with infinite money, and had a seriously fast supercar, which country would be the best to drive it in for a few years?

Naturally, it must be a country where:

a) The roads are fit for driving fast; and

b) The authorities don't hassle people for speeding / i.e. no speed cameras or similar

P.S. This is only a "what-if" kind of question.

My car has self-tensioning belts. One for the water pump, alternator and A/C compressor, the other for the power steering pump.

Mechanic says it needs new belts because the old ones are starting to crack. The dealer wanted €110 for the pair of them. I found an aftermarket replacement for €13 but I noticed the part number the shop gave me is slightly different to the one in their compatibility catalogue. The shop owner says the difference is only some milimeters (not sure if it's bigger or smaller).

I know that too small a belt will eventually break the bearings, and too large a belt will slip on the pulleys and burn, but considering the difference is only a few mm, is that an acceptable tolerance, or should I expect something to break eventually?

I've seen videos of compressor and turbine wheels being machined on 5-axis milling machines, but that takes hours and hours to do so I'm assuming it costs too much for a production car.

So for cheap car turbos (the kind in every small diesel engined car made nowadays), what production process do they use to make the compressor and turbine wheels of the turbo? I assume they start by casting the molten metal into the right shape... but then what?

My car (Ford Fusion, european, 1.4l petrol, 2004) has a self-tensioning serpentine belt. That means no spring-loaded tensioning pulley and no tension adjustment screws on the alternator or anything. Basically you just use special tools to stretch the belt over the pulleys once and that's it.

Now, the thing is that the thermostat housing is leaking, and to replace that it needs to have the alternator removed - and hence the serpentine belt. Could I re-use the old serpentine belt? The Ford Workshop Manual specifically says that the belt is designed to stretch over the pulleys only once and should be replaced, but the belt is very expensive in Malta, and the car's only done 60,000 kilometers (40k miles) so should I risk using the old belt?

In this car the belt powers the alternator, water pump and A/C compressor. The power steering pump has its own belt and the timing belt is also separate.

The car is a european 2003 ford fusion with 1.4 petrol engine. Absolutely identical to the mk6 Ford Fiesta (same car, different body).

So, today I had the car serviced at the dealer, and they discovered a coolant leak from the thermostat housing. After driving home, I left the car parked for a few hours and returned to find a small puddle of coolant underneath it and some fresh drops of coolant dangling from the engine block. I followed the path of the drops and found the source of the drops - i.e. the underside of the thermostat housing - but I haven't had time to get a mirror to see what the leak looks like (it's in a hard-to-see place behind the alternator and under the intake manifold).

With labour costs, and gasket, the dealer is asking for €250 to change this housing (worth €25) and the alternator belt (€88). Frankly I'd rather not spend the money if I can avoid it.

I'm thinking - since it's only a small leak, is there any way I can try sealing it off from the outside? Like maybe putting a layer of silicone, superglue or epoxy (araldite) on the housing over the leak? This part only heats up to around 90 deg. C (engine operating temp) so heat shouldn't be a problem. What I'm concerned about is possible reaction with the chemicals in the coolant, and getting the glue to stick and hold on for a couple more years.

So - any ideas how I should go about it? Best method to use, best choice of adhesive or sealant etc.? Maybe you can think of a better way? (Except for putting stop-leak in the coolant).