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Eeeeh, Isn't It Cold?

Hamburger Pimp

By Hamburger Pimp
in Talk of the Town

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Sw@lnalla

Sw@lnalla

Posted
Posted
I'll tell you what, it's cold enough to freeze the balls off of a brass monkey.

And that's swearing.

I thought I heard a distant clinking sound, must be the tinnitus acting up again.

Denzel

Denzel

Posted
Posted

Snow is officially crap. It's for blokes to surf down on overpriced ironing boards, giving it 'big air' and drinking Pepsi Max. 'Whoa dude, that was like, so rad'.

Hamburger Pimp

Hamburger Pimp

Posted
  • Author
Posted
Snow is officially crap.

Easy with the swearing there, Denz. We aren't all East End costermongers, scuffling on the cobbles after a debate regarding the relative merits of our respective blood oranges.

Denzel

Denzel

Posted
Posted

Apologies to anyone who may have been offended by my use of such profanity. I'll keep the !*!@# swearing down to a minimum.

Pencil_Neck

Pencil_Neck

Posted
Posted
Apologies to anyone who may have been offended by my use of such profanity. I'll keep the !*!@# swearing down to a minimum.

Tsk :angry:

Appalling behaviour fat man

Joe Rooney

Joe Rooney

Posted
Posted
Sorry, my use of vernacular is a bastard disgrace.

As one of my long gone uncles would say, (In suitably booming voice of course) "COLD!, let me tell you about cold!!"

November 18th we came to the end of a two week Chinook (A warm wind from over the Rockies. It had been up to 21 degress celsius daily.

Then the Northern cold stream swung South, and the cold Arctic air came flooding in behind it. For over a week now the nighttime temperatures have fallen to 26 to 34 below zero. The daytime highs have been anywhere from minus 8 to minus 21. It is cold enough to make us welcome a mere minus 8 as a definite warming up. we haven't had too much snow yet, too cold for more than about 12 inches, but what we have had is frozen in place. Earlier this week one of my sons was out on a night service call, he is an electonics tech, and normally parks his car in the underground parking garage at his Condo, which of course is heated.

After about three hours he left the service site to get his car. He got in, started up, and couldn't move. The warm tires had frozen to the now solid snow. So he had about a couple of hours wait until the Automobile association service truck could thaw him out and get him on his way. On the Prairies it is customary to plug cars into a electrical outlet which is available at many parking sites. This keeps the engine and battery warm,

but no such luck for the tires in the snow.

You can send all your little woolly offerings such as Balaclava's to me . Do not be too amazed folks, Winter on the Prairies is cold. And even the avid skier has to call it quits at about minus 35 degrees Celsius. (Not too mention the wind chill. But thats another lecture!)

But from the inside with the furnace cranked up the Prairie is a beautiful sight. Even cold as it is to us, we have a daily visit from a small herd of Mule deer, two adults and two fawns. They graze on the hills above us, feeding on our bushes, and taking frozen little crabapples from the trees. It's quite a nice way to have a leisurely breakfast , watching them eat. But the cold doesn't seem to bother them unduly, any more than we do, as they come to our back patio in search of morsels of last Summers withered shrubs and small plants.

Oh God is it cold? But that is Winter in Alberta, and all in all, it is worth the occasional deep freeze!

Warm up folk's, head for the pub or stay in front of the television.

Joe

Mr Darn

Mr Darn

Posted
Posted
I'll tell you what, it's cold enough to freeze the balls off of a brass monkey.

And that's swearing.

swearing?

i had the (mis)fortune of having a grandad who told me a few stories, one of which was the source of the 'brass monkey' story, which i diddnt believe for a minute.

but it seams thru further investigation he was right, to a point!

so, if anyone wants to know the real source for the saying 'freeze the balls off a brass monkey' let me know and all will be revieled!

Denzel

Denzel

Posted
Posted
swearing?

i had the (mis)fortune of having a grandad who told me a few stories, one of which was the source of the 'brass monkey' story, which i diddnt believe for a minute.

but it seams thru further investigation he was right, to a point!

so, if anyone wants to know the real source for the saying 'freeze the balls off a brass monkey' let me know and all will be revieled!

Howay then tell us!

Mr Darn

Mr Darn

Posted
Posted
Howay then tell us!

ok, you asked for it, heres the boring roots of the phrase "freeze the balls off a brass monkey":

unfortunatly it has nothing at all to do with the furry tree swingers but more to do with ships and cannonballs.

i am currently re-looking for the sites i confirmed this information on, and they will be available shortly...

anyways, i digress...

as i was saying, ships and cannonballs...

we all know the pirate ships and british armada used cannons and cannonballs yes? but i ask you this...how did they stop the cannonballs from rolling all over? they stacked them in a pyramid shape:

..........B)

......:o<_<

.. :unsure:;):huh:

:angry::rolleyes::P<_<

consisting of 16 balls on the bottom, 9 on row 2, 4 on row 3 and 1 on top.

now, to stop the bottom balls from rolling away a brass plate with 16 indentations was forged, and the balls were placed on this. you guessed it, it was called 'a brass monkey'

now, Cannonballs were not made of brass, but were made of another metal, and this brass monkey stored the balls perfectly....until it got cold. at a certain temperature, the brass would shrink to such a size that the indentations no longer stopped the balls from sliding away, and therefore 'froze the balls off the brass monkey'

again, let me tell you how impressed i am that you read thru this whole post, i found the subject VERY boring lol

Sw@lnalla

Sw@lnalla

Posted
Posted

The theory about the canonballs was debunked years ago, all balls I'm afraid. :wacko:

"# The purported method of storage of cannonballs ("round shot") is simply false. Shot was not stored on deck continuously on the off-chance that the ship might go into battle. Indeed, decks were kept as clear as possible. Furthermore, such a method of storage would result in shot rolling loose and rolling around on deck, causing a hazard, in high seas. Shot was stored on the gun or spar decks, in shot racks — longitudinal wooden planks with holes bored into them, known as shot garlands in the Royal Navy, into which round shot were inserted for ready use by the gun crew.

# Shot was not left exposed to the elements, where it could rust. Such rust could lead to the ball not flying true. Indeed, gunners would attempt to remove as many imperfections as possible from the surfaces of balls.

# The physics simply does not hold water. All of the balls would contract equally, and the contraction of both balls and plate over the range of temperatures involved would not be particularly large. The effect claimed possibly could be reproduced under laboratory conditions with objects engineered to a high precision for this purpose, but it is unlikely it would ever have occurred in real life aboard a warship."

Dave

Dave

Posted
Posted
The theory about the canonballs was debunked years ago, all balls I'm afraid. :wacko:

"# The purported method of storage of cannonballs ("round shot") is simply false. Shot was not stored on deck continuously on the off-chance that the ship might go into battle. Indeed, decks were kept as clear as possible. Furthermore, such a method of storage would result in shot rolling loose and rolling around on deck, causing a hazard, in high seas. Shot was stored on the gun or spar decks, in shot racks — longitudinal wooden planks with holes bored into them, known as shot garlands in the Royal Navy, into which round shot were inserted for ready use by the gun crew.

# Shot was not left exposed to the elements, where it could rust. Such rust could lead to the ball not flying true. Indeed, gunners would attempt to remove as many imperfections as possible from the surfaces of balls.

# The physics simply does not hold water. All of the balls would contract equally, and the contraction of both balls and plate over the range of temperatures involved would not be particularly large. The effect claimed possibly could be reproduced under laboratory conditions with objects engineered to a high precision for this purpose, but it is unlikely it would ever have occurred in real life aboard a warship."

its true!!!! my balls contract at equal rates in the cold

Mr Darn

Mr Darn

Posted
Posted
# The physics simply does not hold water. All of the balls would contract equally, and the contraction of both balls and plate over the range of temperatures involved would not be particularly large. The effect claimed possibly could be reproduced under laboratory conditions with objects engineered to a high precision for this purpose, but it is unlikely it would ever have occurred in real life aboard a warship."

well, thats what i was told, and it was backed up on the war-stories website i looked on.

oh, and i wasnt saying the balls would shrink at difforent rates, i said the plate, being made of softer metal than the dense balls, would shrink under extremly cold temperatures.

and whats stopping these balls being brought up from the store and placed on these 'monkeys' if war was inevitable?

it might be all ball locks, but i dont hear a better explanation, or are we sticking with the old brass statue's balls falling off? :blink:

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