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As someone who lives with real coyotes and real roadrunners....

Roadrunners are adorable little goofballs that make you smile. Coyotes kill your pets and rummage through garbage cans. Also, coyotes never shut up at night and it gets a little annoying sometimes.....

Are you seriously going to nitpick over some cartoon characters? 

Cause in that vein Tom is always the good guy and Jerry the bad guy, cause cats are awesome, period! And mice are always vermin to be exterminated.

Everybody likes the Coyote. He at least has character. The Roadrunner has no personality other then being a smart ass. At least with Tom & Jerry they alternated roles. Sometimes Tom was the smart ass, sometimes Jerry. You could root either way. The Roadrunner was always the same.

In New Zealand, yeah. You either hire a wheelie bin and put that on the kerb once a week (or fortnightly, depending on the contract), or buy a rubbish sticker, put the sticker on your bag o' trash, and put that on the kerb for pickup.

In the Netherlands its up to the local governments to decide. Here in Nijmegen you have to buy green garbage bags which cost like a Euro a piece, but you can put all your plastic and metal cans into free see through bags. And paper gets picked up once a month, so the green bags only get used for leftover rubbish. But my friend who lives in a neighboring town he has to use a wheelie bin and pays for each emptying. And has grown very adept at dumping his trash in public trash cans wherever he finds them. And some people just refuse to pay for anything and dump their trash alongside the road. Which I see a lot.

The idea that you can force people to separate their trash and make those who produce the most pay more in practice always collides with human stubbornness and creativity. Some people don't like being forced, nor to pay more.

Don't get behind me in the self checkout line of a European supermarket!  I will have managed to screw up pre-weighing my produce at the separate weigh station, cause a nuisance because I'm trying to buy wine and need to be ID'ed or it's the wrong day or God only knows what, and generally fail to understand what is going on even though I nominally speak a little bit of the language. I'm better off taking my chances with the cashier and only half-understanding the conversation.

Also, after being conditioned (by Germany and maybe Italy) that shops, restaurants etc prefer cash and paying with a credit card is a big production that you only pull out at the department store, I was then a bit stunned to find out that it's not unusual for shops in the Netherlands to be cash-free. Is this really a major cultural difference between the countries or more a rapidly evolving generational thing?

Nobody uses credit cards over here to do grocery shopping. Methinks that's the equivalent of the elderly person wanting to pay with a signed check. It's all regular bank PIN transactions here. Which is why many shops opt to go cash free. We're used to paying PIN early on, you can even do it nowadays by just holding the card close to the reader. I hardly ever use any cash any more. And for some stores it has the advantage of there no longer being any cash in the place that would attract criminals. As our city centers are full of cameras, shops, restaurants and gas stations outside of the city center have seen more and more attempts of armed robbery. Criminals will go where they can still get cash money. Which is why I think the elderly will the ones that will get targeted the most. Not only are they the most vulnerable, they're also the ones more likely to still have cash money in their possession.

As for the Netherlands differing from Germany in this regard, the Germans seem more traditional when it comes to money. Maybe its because of the hyper inflation thing they had after World War 1? They're only now thinking about getting rid of their 1 and 2 cents coins and rounding up or down on transactions. In the Netherlands we've been doing that for as long as I can remember. I can't remember ever having seen a 1 cent coin when we still had our own currency. We got them back when we switched to the Euro but they quickly disappeared again. If you still get one chances are you get one that was coined in Germany and that person did some shopping in Germany.

On a semi-related note, does anyone else find that, when you're waiting in line at the supermarket or wherever, no matter how much you scrutinize the various queues for potential timewasters before queuing up, you always wind up behind:

That old guy from the eighteen hundreds who uses a checkbook... if you're very, very lucky, the person at the till will know what to do with these archaic clay tablets, otherwise you're in for an even longer wait than that.

That person with a hundred different things, who wants them put through in five different lots, and pays for each lot separately

That person with three dozen different types of produce, all of which have to be separately weighed before they can be put into the computer

That person who wants to pay cash (and not the quick, hand over a fifty and get their change back, quick-like, but someone who slowly works out the exact notes and coins to hand over)

That person who wants a pack of fags which, naturally, are not in the unmarked cabinet the worker has in their little stand, which means that everything is put on hold while they go for walkies and look for that brand of fags in another till area

That person who, you think, only wants to buy a case of beer, but engages in a long, lengthy discussion about the different kind of rubbish collection stickers the shop carries, the benefits and drawbacks of each sticker, how much each one costs versus how much rubbish the rubbish truck is prepared to take for one of those stickers, etc

I'm sure that you all can add to this list.

Always avoid old people. Nothing but respect for our senior citizens who built up our country, but as a rule of thumb you're better off not behind one in the checkout line, they tend to be slower and not so technologically savvy. Thankfully, more and more supermarkets here have no cash PIN only lines, that old people and those who insist on using cash avoid like the plague. So their checkout lines are usually the shortest and fastest. Even better are the self checkout facilities so you avoid the lines altogether. But in case you still have to, avoid lines with elderly (for obvious reasons), mothers with children with lots of stuff in their cart (their attention gets divided between paying, packing their groceries and their kids), and always, always when the lines are long, keep an eye on which cash register is most likely to open next and chose that line. Nothing more disheartening then having to endure a long wait only to see a new register open which is too far away from you to beat the rest of the mob.

And beware of German owned supermarkets, and supermarkets in Germany in general. For some strange reason German grundlichkeit does not seem to apply to maintaining as many open registers for their customers as possible, but as few as they can get away with.

I find metric is easier for math, but harder to understand... For example...

Can you conceptualize a pound?, a psi? a psf?  Likely.

But tell me what a kilonewton feels like.  Or a Pascal.  This convenient system of measurement

Then again... what the hell is a slug?

Is that just upbringing though?  I have no idea what a pound is.  I can easily conceptualise a kilogram, and a litre, and can vaguely judge how many metres away something is. 

I have no idea how many miles per gallon my car gets, but I do know how many litres per 100km it uses. 

It was years of wondering what an oz was before someone told me it's pronounced 'ounces'.   

That! A thousand times that! Imperial measurements are so damn illogical if you are brought up with metric. And I reckon its worse for us, because I get the impression that in the US and UK you at least are taught and use some metric in addition to imperial, whereas us Continental heathens are taught only metric. Some things are in imperial for some odd reason, probably because they were invented in the US or UK. TV screens are measured in inches, but I reckon that means little to us other then a bigger number in inches = a bigger screen. And bigger is always better. And feets seem to be still used in aviation. And those crazy mariners love their non-metric nautical terms.

For as many years as I can count, I have wanted a PRS. Throw another monkey into the wrench with the fact that I am a lefty. Here is my soapbox rant.......

Why are my choices the SE model at ~$850 and then the next available option starts at ~$4500!! 

Can anyone explain the $3500 difference to me? Is the truss rod made of platinum? Pickups with gold windings? Cavity filled with liquid herion? What is it??

Unicorn tears? Oh wait, Klons are made out of those. 

I'm moving on to DIY IEM's. If someone smarter than me here made little and boards with 3, 4 and 5 way crossovers for the knowles drivers the head fi crowd would love it

Could you post some pictures of what you've built?

I don't know why, but I was thinking of _King Solomon's Mines_, and _Allan Quatermain_, by H. Rider Haggard, at work today. The 19th century adventure novels

Sean Connery played Quatermain in _League of Extraordinary Gentlemen_, and I feel that it was a mistake. For one, his accent always sticks out like a bull in a pumpkin patch, and for two, Connery (who used to be a bouncer, IIRC) is too tall and solidly built. Quatermain was always described as short and wiry, with a thin face. Quatermain's skill at hunting, and his personality and charisma, is what carried him in the books.

Depending on accent (this is always a bit of a bugger in movies), someone looking like David Carradine or Daniel Day-Lewis might work well, if they were short and thin.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d1/Thure_de_Thulstrup_-_H._Rider_Haggard_-_Maiwa%27s_Revenge_-_Fire%2C_you_scoundrels.jpg

I don't think I've ever seen a film adaptation of Quatermain (from any of his stories) that have put a massive, boy-like grin on my face.

As if anyone still reads books these days to notice that Connery was too long. Also that movie suffered from far bigger problems then just Connery's height. How about lack of anything resembling a decent plot?

I reckon that in a few years, when we'll read about some insane crazy guy dying from lead poisoning, we'll know who he is.

I moved on to digital, Axe-FX. When I was still using an analog board I could justify to myself that out of the 4 to 6 pedals a month that I was building something might make it on my board. Now the Axe-FX covers all my needs, so nothing I build will get any use, so why build any pedals?

So now I build guitars instead. Cause the madness never ends, it just changes its face.

[Dutch retailers]

Halloween has never been part of the Netherlands, but the constant onslaught of American TV shows, together with shops trying to ram anything down our throats that they think will generate more revenue we see more and more Halloween things happening here. I reckon the tactic works as they managed to ram American christmas down our throats as well.

Have a problem with Americans?

Only with Dutch retailers ramming American valentine's day, halloween and christmass traditions down our throats so they can sell more stuff. Going to foreign places to see strange new cool things and tradition is an awesome thing. To see them get imported and even replace local traditions just so they make a quick buck, not so much.

Halloween has never been part of the Netherlands, but the constant onslaught of American TV shows, together with shops trying to ram anything down our throats that they think will generate more revenue we see more and more Halloween things happening here. I reckon the tactic works as they managed to ram American christmas down our throats as well.

With friends like this guy, who needs enemies, Trump probably thinks.

Im in the UK and its because of the EU that we have to pay high import on US goods. Shipping costs from China have gone up so much in the last year.

But those import charges would have disappeared if TTIP had gone ahead between the US and the EU. Unless the UK gets its own fully comprehensive free trade deal with the US after Brexit those import charges would still remain. Because governments willingly abolishing taxes for no political gain? That would be a first.

And this is why there are no winners in a trade war. Even if Trump does manage to bring down the Chinese, he'll only succeed in making things more expensive for everyone, as American webshops and shipping will not get cheaper. Same thing with tariffs on other goods.