ryyannon

Yawn. I think I'll go play the slots. Or cream on my jeans thinking of my next $300.00 Sub from good old Eddie. (This is not directed at indenial's post just above - particularly since he agrees with my proposition - as much as towards all the ineffectual waves of sympathy emmanating from the other posts. If you guys are really unhappy at what can happen to one of our best dealers, maybe you should think of doing something concrete to protect them. For a measly ten dollars a year - were it required of all members - we could be both supporting the forum financially (instead of just a handful of us at present) and providing an informal system of insurance for both dealers and buyers in the case that something goes radically wrong. I'm not talking about the watch that arrives DOA or goes astray, but the occasional and authentic problems that arise - and which can be dealt with easily and with common sense.) I feel that there is a very real need for a system such as this, and that once instituted, it would take the forum to a new level of quality and seriousness. If there are individuals who feel that it all should be free, and that ten whole dollars is too exhorbitant a price to pay for the priviledge of belonging to, contributing to and helping to secure this unique community, I would reply that there is something seriously wrong with their value systems.

I'd be happy to participate in the implementation, but at this point, the decision itself is in the hands of the administration - meaning Admin and the moderators. But it's not rocket science. Just a question of information, discussion, consensus and organization - most of which can be done right on the forum itself.

It shouldn't even be a question of contributing or not: if you want to become (or stay) a member of RWG, you PayPal $10.00 to the fund. Not happy with that? There's always TRC, IWC and RWG1. Myself, I feel more comfortable knowing that I'm giving something back - however nominal - rather than just taking, and letting others take the real risks. I hope the forum moderators and the dealers themselves will consider this proposition and let us know what they think.....

Talk is so cheap. If you put a little money where your mouths are, you guys just might be believable.

This sort of lunacy happens regularly, and nothing ever changes. The only difference this time is the size of the fine Eddie's been hit with. Beyond all the commiseration and messages of sympathy that we seen every time, here's a concrete suggestion: each current and new member of RWG be required to pay a $10.00 yearly membership fee. With over 2,000 members currently, that makes a kitty of over $20,000 to be allocated in situations such as these. Our dealers are protected, as are buyers - subject to evaluation of the circumstances. It's a simple and cheap annual insurance policy. What's left over at the end of the year can be used for maintaining the site, or even lowering the 'premium' the following year. The fact of contributing $10.00 to a fund of this type might also create a sense of responsibility on the part of members so that situations such as Eddie's could be avoided. Who can find a reason for not going ahead on this? Eddy has always been good to us all; maybe it's time to start protecting our own...

http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/stories/greenland/ In the case of the NASA laser measurements of the Greenland icecap, you are paying for the research via your Federal taxes. Do you really think that all the people down at the Goddard Space Flight Center are secret card-carrying members of Greenpeace? You guys have got all kinds of agendas - some good and some bad - colliding with each other. Just take a step back for a moment and look at the link above: the ice is melting, there's no doubt about it. Same thing in Europe, where the glaciers in the Alps are receeding...or in Africa and Japan, where snow-melt on the tops of mountains is accelerating to the point that the peaks are losing their signiature white mantles. These are observable facts. Now whether you want to believe that it's your snowmobiles and Hummers that are doing this, is another problem. But in the meantime, take a good look at the objective information on the NASA site: I say 'objective' insofar as it is the result of scientific observation rather than the a-priori agenda of people who are already certain of what they're gong to find. The kicker is that even if we somehow found substitutes for fossile fuels and greenhouse effect chemicals tomorrow, it's already too late to reverse the transformations taking place today - and which are going to continue to take place over the next century.

HORSEFEATHERS!!! Nanuq, can you get me a job with the same Big Oil lobby too? I guess they didn't see this (research done in the same time-frame - things have gotten considerably worse since....). http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/stories/greenland/ But what does the NASA know about anything anyway....? :-)

I'm the one selling the watch, and I'd like everyone to sort of cool it for the moment: I've got an offer from a member in the same city as I'm in (Ursk, Upper Mongolia) and it's an infinitely better idea to sell it locally than to go through third-party PayPal payments and the hassles of shipping the piece. My sincere apologies to Robbie (sydneysider) who's totally stoked to acquire this puppy: all I can say is that the god of the replica watch nuts will certainly send another one your way. As I said in an earlier message, "someday you'll thank me for this." And please, don't put the Nigerian-Germano-Australian Mafia on my ass for backing out....I'm already suffering from a huge migrane.

@Nanuq: What do the Canadians know about anything anyway? Just the same, have you thought of buying up acreage for banana plantations? Study Says Polar Bears Could Face Extinction Warming Shrinks Sea Ice Mammals Depend On By Juliet Eilperin Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, November 9, 2004 Global warming could cause polar bears to go extinct by the end of the century by eroding the sea ice that sustains them, according to the most comprehensive international assessment ever done of Arctic climate change. The thinning of sea ice -- which is projected to shrink by at least half by the end of the century and could disappear altogether, according to some computer models -- could determine the fate of many other key Arctic species, said the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, the product of four years of work by more than 300 scientists. Bears are dependent on sea ice because they use it to hunt for seals, which periodically pop up through breathing holes in the ice. Because the ice has broken up earlier and earlier in the year over the past few decades, polar bears are deprived of crucial hunting opportunities. The uncertain fate of the world's largest non-aquatic carnivores -- as well as the future of other animals and humans who live in the Arctic -- was sketched in stark relief yesterday by the 139-page document. The report offered a broad picture of the evidence that climate change has disproportionately affected far northern latitudes. The researchers concluded that some areas in the Arctic have warmed 10 times as fast as the world as a whole, which has warmed an average of 1 degree Fahrenheit over the past century. "The Arctic is really warming now," said Robert Corell, a senior fellow at the American Meteorological Society who chaired the assessment. "These areas provide a bellwether of what's coming to planet Earth." In Alaska, western Canada and eastern Russia, average winter temperatures have risen as much as four to seven degrees Fahrenheit within the past 50 years, according to the report and are projected to increase an additional seven to 13 degrees over the next century. Winter temperatures have risen faster than summer temperatures, according to Michael MacCracken, chief scientist for climate change programs at the Washington-based Climate Institute, because thin sea ice releases more energy from the ocean into the atmosphere. The sea ice in Hudson Bay, Canada, now breaks up 2 1/2 weeks earlier than it did 30 years ago, said Canadian Wildlife Service research scientist Ian Stirling, and as a result female polar bears there weigh 55 pounds less than they did then. Assuming the current rate of ice shrinkage and accompanying weight loss in the Hudson Bay region, bears there could become so thin by 2012 they may no longer be able to reproduce, said Lara Hansen, chief scientist for the World Wildlife Fund. "Once the population stops reproducing, that's pretty much the end of it," Hansen said. Arctic residents have already detected changes in polar bears' behavior. Jose Kusugak, president of the Canadian Inuit political association, said at a news conference that within the past two years he witnessed a polar bear "stock up on caribou" because it was deprived of seals. Hudson Bay residents now complain the bears are coming onto land more often, forced to seek sustenance in a habitat where they are less well adapted. Polar bears are not the only Arctic animals in trouble. The ringed seals that bears eat, and that humans hunt, are also dependent on the sea ice to rest, give birth, nurse and feed. "You have organisms that have been pushed beyond their limits," said James McCarthy, director of the Harvard University Museum of Comparative Zoology. While some questioned the report -- Los Alamos Laboratory atmospheric scientist Petr Chylek said he has charted declining temperatures at the summit of Greenland's ice sheet between 1986 and 2003 -- environmentalists said it shows the need for stricter curbs on greenhouse gas emissions linked to global warming. "This study is the smoking gun. Skeptics, polluting industries and President Bush can't run away from this one," said Philip E. Clapp, president of the National Environmental Trust. He added the study showed "concrete evidence that global warming pollution is already having serious impacts." Administration officials, who oppose mandatory curbs on carbon emissions on the grounds that it will cost U.S. jobs, said yesterday that they consider Arctic climate change an important issue and will work to draft policy recommendations for the region. Some European negotiators have complained that the U.S. State Department is resisting issuing policy guidelines based on the scientific study, a charge Bush officials deny. "The United States is committed to working within the United Nations framework and elsewhere to develop an effective and science-based global approach to climate change that ensures continued economic growth and prosperity for our citizens and for citizens throughout the world," said State Department spokesman Richard Boucher.

I was just doing what I could to cover your back, Pug.... And of course, I hope you'll be with Usil and I when we get together...not sure that he knew that you're one of the Paris bunch....

Wow! Tell us, is the past, present and future (ex) Watchmaster (Kenzo) really a gnome who lives under a rock in the Black Forest? And does Tanfoglio carry a gun? And when you mention 'Maria', do you mean MBW? Shucks, I think you're just pulling our collective leg....

Same here, concerning Pug.... We drank, we talked, we oogled watches and girls*, and it was altogether a nice experience. Looking forward to doing it again when the opportunity presents itself..... *If Mrs. Pugwash is reading this, I should qualify the above by saying that all the girl-oogling was done by the lecherous Ryyannon. Mr. Pugwash behaved himself and was a perfect gentleman: never took his eyes off the watches, even when knocking back his beer. He's kind of a sloppy drinker, though.... :-)

Image.......what image.....?

Are you out there, Miss Understood?

@Narikaa, I (and I am far from being the only one) wish that I was wearing your Panerai 2533 vintage in a 45mm case (for normal human beings) with removeable lugs, a display back, and that lovely yellow lume! Close your eyes, Narikaa, and repeat after me: "45mm case, 45mm case, 45mm case, 45mm case...display back, display back, display back....yellow lume....yellow lume...."

Thank you all for your input! :-) (rubba-dub-dub....)

This should help: The Twin Paradox: The TTK Spacetime Diagram Explanation TTK said, "Henceforth Space by itself, and Time by itself, are doomed to fade away into mere shadows, and only a kind of union of the two will preserve an independent reality." TTK recast Einstein's version of Special Relativity (SR) on a new stage, "TTK Spacetime." The Twin Paradox has a very simple resolution in this framework. The crucial concept is the proper time of a moving body. First chose one specific inertial frame of reference, say the rest frame of the Earth (which we'll pretend is inertial). Once we've chosen a reference frame, we can define co-ordinates (t,x,y,z) for every event that takes place. Pop-science treatments sometimes ask us to imagine an army of observers, all equipped with clocks and rulers, and all at rest with respect to the given reference frame. With their clocks and rulers they can determine when and where any event takes place--- in other words, its (t,x,y,z) co-ordinates. In a different frame of reference, a different army of observers would determine different co-ordinates for the same event. But we'll stick with one frame throughout this discussion. The collection of all events in toto, no matter where or when, is called spacetime. Traditionally, one plots events in spacetime on a TTK Spacetime Diagram. That's just a piece of paper (or blackboard!) with the t co-ordinate running vertically upwards, and the x co-ordinate running horizontally. (One just politely ignores the y and z co-ordinates, 4-dimensional paper and blackboards being in short supply at most universities.) If we plot all of Terence's and Stella's events, we get their so-called world-lines. (Miscellaneous trivia: the physicist George Gamow titled his autobiography, "My Worldline".) Terence's and Stella's world-lines are shown in figure 1. Since Terence is at rest in our chosen frame of reference, at all times he will be in same place, say (0,0,0). In other words, the co-ordinates of his events all take this form: But at an arbitrary time t, Stella's event co-ordinates will take this form: where f(t), g(t), and h(t) are all functions of t, and t is (remember) measured by some lowly private in our observer army. Plotting distance against time is nothing new. TTK's new twist was the following formula: Here, dt, dx, dy, and dz are all co-ordinate differences between two events that are "near" each other on the TTK diagram. (So if (t,x,y,z) are the co-ordinates of one event, then (t+dt,x+dx,y+dy,z+dz) are the co-ordinates of the other.) Time and space are measured in units for which c, the speed of light, equals 1 (e.g., seconds and light-seconds). And , finally is the proper time difference--- which we define next. Say someone, wearing a watch, coasts uniformly from event (t,x,y,z) to event (t+dt,x+dx,y+dy,z+dz). The time between these two events, as measured by that person's watch, is called the elapsed proper time for that person. And according to TTK, the proper time is given by in the formula above. More generally, suppose someone carrying a high-quality time-piece travels some world-line from event E to event F. "High-quality" here means that acceleration doesn't affect the time-keeping mechanism. A pendulum clock would not be a good choice! A balance-wheel watch might do OK, a tuning-fork mechanism would be still better, and an atomic clock ought to be nearly perfect. How much time elapses according to the time-piece? I.e., what is proper time along that world-line between events E and F? Well, simply integrate : where is the velocity vector, and [v(t)]<sum> is the square of its length: [v(t)]<sum> = (dx/dt)<sum> + (dy/dt)<sum> + (dz/dt)<sum> You shouldn't have much difficulty obtaining these formulas from what we've said already. Our integral for the proper time can be difficult to evaluate in general, but certain special cases are a breeze. Let's take Terence's case first. Remember that his event co-ordinates are always (t,0,0,0), so dx, dy, and dz are always 0 for him. So is just dt, and the forbidding integral becomes: that is, just the difference in the t co-ordinates! In other words, Terence's elapsed proper time is just the elapsed proper time as measured by our army of observers, in the reference frame in which Terence is at rest. It doesn't stretch credulity too far to suppose that Terence is one of those observers. Now how about Stella? For her, dx, dy, and dz are not always all 0. So dx/dt, dy/dt, and dz/dt are also not always all 0, and their squares (which appear in the formula for [v(t)]<sum>) are always non-negative, and sometimes positive. So the quantity under the square root is less than or equal to 1, and sometimes strictly less than 1. Conclusion: the value of Stella's integral is less than that of Terence's integral. I.e., her elapsed proper time is less than Terence's. I.e., she ages less. That's the whole story! We evaluate a path integral along two different paths, and get two different results. Not so different in spirit from picking two points in ordinary Euclidean space, and then evaluating the arc-length integral along two different paths connecting them. As TTK says, "It's not just where you're going, it's how you get there." And in the words of the unknown poet: O ye'll tak' the high road and I'll tak' the low road, An' I'll be in Scotland afore ye But at least our hero and heroine do get to meet again! (And yes, Squeaker, you will get your watch.)

Yes, RWI. I miss him! :-( Would like to see him around here! :-) COME BACK, KLINK! Life No Good Without Won-Ton-Maru!!!!

Here's one for the heavy metal people: Is it possible to polish a brushed stainless steel case back up to its original finish (shinyness)? I've a vintage with a brushed case and I think it would look better with its original mirror-finish. Your suggestions and advice will be appreciated....

I'm in denial about everything else....except my reps. The pleasure they give me is undeniable, and that's what counts. Quite honestly, I'd feel like a total ass with tens of thousands of dollars worth of genuine watches hanging on my wrist. Reps are like space travel for the common man: no need of a billion-dollar program to put oneself into orbit. And as they get better and better, the replicas will occupy the place that the genuines do now, as the latter progressively become the unfortunate and expensive versions of their more adapted and accessible counterparts. If it takes three months' of the average guy's salary to purchase the genuine of his dreams, what's going to happen when he can offer a 1:1 version of the same watch for the equivalent of three hours? For me, replica watches open a dimension of freedom and pleasure which has formerly been reserved for those with either many times my disposable income or the willingness to sacrifice other pleasures for the sake of acquiring an often unrealistically-priced genuine article. Replica watches are authentically subversive - but not in the sense that their critics would have you believe. Like the danger that laughter represented to the guardians of a rigid status quo in Umberto Ecco's 'The Name of the Rose', reps reverse the established order:they're a non-violent cultural and sociological revolution. Let a thousand flowers (and reps) bloom.

and fear no weevil

You call this weird, jjajh? Let me tell you about this other site I know, it's full of - get this - REPLICA WATCH NUTS! You can't imagine how much time these people spend on their damn fake watches - a millimeter here, a millimeter there, blue screws, silver screws, recessed pins, who's got the best Sub.... And there's this old dame - 'Miss Understood' - completely nutters, always talking about sex and trying to get into her 'bhoys' undies.... Believe me jjajh, if you think the haircut site is weird, you haven't seen anything yet...

Huge and hugely funny. There but for the grace of God go we... First Annual (2004): http://www.demonbaby.com/blog/2004/04/firs...id-haircut.html Second Annual (2006): http://www.demonbaby.com/blog/2006/01/seco...id-haircut.html

River's only in the sense that he's apparently selling it for Watchmaster. For around $1,350 as I remember.