# How Much the Shipping World has Changed



## fred henderson (Jun 13, 2005)

In the past most ports were either in great cities, or nearby. It is clear that many of our members enjoyed the opportunity to go ashore during the time it took to load, or unload break-bulk cargo ships. I have just finished reading the massive book “The Sea and Civilization – A Maritime History of the World” by the American historian Lincoln Paine. In the past seafarers were part of the community. Today maritime industries have largely vanished from public view. Today about 1.2 million seafarers in international trade worldwide move about 90 percent of world trade, only briefly visiting terminals that are often cut off from large cities.

Paine quotes from a study of a single 1954 direct voyage from Brooklyn to Hamburg by the traditional C2 Type break-bulk steamer Warrior belonging to the American shipping company Waterman SS Corp. She was built in 1943 by Gulf SB Corp and was 6,165 GRT with single screw steam turbine machinery providing a speed of 15.5 kts. Warrior was loaded with just over 5,000 tons of cargo in 194,582 cases, cartons, reels, barrels, drums, and other packages, plus 53 vehicles. The first item of cargo was despatched to Brooklyn from its point of origin 40 days before loading began. Loading the ship took 6 days of one 8 hour shift per day. Timber and rope valued at over $5,000 was used to secure the cargo.

The ship arrived in Bremerhaven 11 days later and the German stevedores working around the clock unloaded her in four days. The last item was delivered to its destination a month later. It was over three months from the first dispatch to the last delivery.

Voyages like this enabled Warrior’s crew to have runs ashore and mix with the local population. Today’s container ships and ro-ro vessels spend about the same number of hours in remote terminals that Warrior spent days in ports in the heart of cities.

The new ACL G4 container ro-ros are giant ships of 100,430 GT with a service speed of 19.25 kts. They can carry 3,807 TEU containers and 1,307 cars. Their typical 35 day rotation for the ships is: -

Hamburg – Saturday – Day 1
Gothenburg – Monday – Day 3
Antwerp – Wednesday – Day 5
Liverpool – Friday – Day 7
Halifax – Sunday – Day 16
New York – Tuesday – Day 18
Baltimore – Thursday – Day 20
Norfolk – Friday – Day 21
New York – Saturday – Day 22
Halifax – Monday – Day 24
Liverpool – Tuesday – Day 32
Antwerp – Thursday – Day 34
Hamburg – Saturday – Day 35/Day 1

Although Baltimore is the continent’s premier ro-ro port as it is closer to the Midwest than any other East Coast port, Halifax is an extremely important ACL port of call thanks to the service provided by Canadian National Railway. Containers are already delivered to the Midwest before the ship arrives at Baltimore. In the other direction if customers deliver their containers to the CNR Depots in Chicago or Detroit on Friday night they will arrive in Halifax in time to join the Eastbound service on Monday.

Although there has only been a slight improvement in the Atlantic crossing time there has been a vast increase in the cargo volume and the maximum door to door time has been reduced from three months to about three weeks. The major factors in this advance being that stowage is now performed by the shipper and port stevedores have been replaced by drivers.


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## RamonWallace (Jun 24, 2016)

Great info, thanks for sharing this interesting points with all.

Kestrel


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## stein (Nov 4, 2006)

And the future most certainly has more in store for us, along the same lines. The 3D printer is still in its infancy, but already at this stage you can print a functioning gun I have read, which means that very soon light cables will transport the products, if one cannot use radio waves. Moreover, the Russians, I read, has a science team working on the construction of a "Starship Enterprise transporter," a fictional teleportation machine used in the Star Trek universe. "Beam me up, Scotty" is the command Captain Kirk gives his chief engineer, when he needs to be transported back to the Starship Enterprise, and zoom - up he goes! Now you see him on the ground and now you see him in his spaceship.

No I do not believe we will be able to beam ourselves onto a Hawaiian beach for a late afternoon holiday soon, but physical transportation is really nothing but expenses; there is no return in it but for the now nearly expended joys of being a sailor or lorry driver.


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## Barrie Youde (May 29, 2006)

#3

"Very soon light cables will transport the products, if not radio waves" ??

Please would you kindly explain?

e.g. A cargo which by its volume and/or weight cannot at present be transported economically by conventional aircraft, how could the same item be transported (economically or at all) by the even more precarious method of light cable or radio wave?


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## Varley (Oct 1, 2006)

I can see that some 'goods' will not be transported themselves, only the data needed to make the manufacturing machine turn it out locally. The 3d printer could be taken as a forerunner of such I suppose.

I rather fancied that we should have done something like this here some time ago with a centralised printing press whizzing of the most popular and uplifting newspapers simply from print files on an agency basis. Quite a lot of us prefer to read the news on paper.

As it is we scrapped the printers and the printer operators so that even our local papers are now a day or two 'in arrears'.


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## stein (Nov 4, 2006)

> Very soon light cables will transport the products, if not radio waves" ??
> 
> Please would you kindly explain?
> 
> e.g. A cargo which by its volume and/or weight cannot at present be transported economically by conventional aircraft, how could the same item be transported (economically or at all) by the even more precarious method of light cable or radio wave?


A 3D printer prints a car in a London backyard trough the electronic input generated in India or whatever, the material for the car being taken out of the English grass, earth, or maybe even the unwanted particles now in the air.


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## Varley (Oct 1, 2006)

Stein, could we have the data originating in Germany please, or even Japan. I don't think we want 'Indian' cars do we (I suppose it could be worse they might mix the fibre with one from France).


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## Barrie Youde (May 29, 2006)

Many thanks. I can understand the idea of faxing/scanning through an instruction manual to build your own motor car or any other item of machinery.


But what about iron ore, grain and other foodstuffs which we cannot produce in sufficient quantity ourselves, here in UK?


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## stein (Nov 4, 2006)

Barrie Youde said:


> Many thanks. I can understand the idea of faxing/scanning through an instruction manual to build your own motor car or any other item of machinery.
> 
> 
> But what about iron ore, grain and other foodstuffs which we cannot produce in sufficient quantity ourselves, here in UK?


No, it is not like faxing instructions; the sender, who operates the set of unified robots, is doing the only work on the car. But for a few hammered pieces on the Morgan, the days of humans shaping anything on a vehicle being built is already gone, there is only machine operators attending the process – and operating these machines from afar is hardly an insurmountable difficulty.

The steel used in the future is likely to be all recycled. Other materials, much stronger at its weight, is already around. The beef you will be eating is likely to be made of algae and mushrooms of which Britain will become easily self-sufficient. The mushrooms, needing no sunlight, could perhaps be grown in your former coalmines.

The great problem that is definitely coming, and to which none of us has a solution, is the disappearance of all repetitive jobs, and with that, the mass marked upon which our current economic system depends. If not a means of redistribution becomes available that leaves enough incentive to both the confidently well off without jobs, and to those needed to eagerly invent new ways of consuming, desolation and misery will arrive in very large quantities.


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## stein (Nov 4, 2006)

Varley said:


> Stein, could we have the data originating in Germany please, or even Japan. I don't think we want 'Indian' cars do we (I suppose it could be worse they might mix the fibre with one from France).


Yes, India, with those teeming billions of skinny large eyed brown people, sleeping on nail mats, wearing towels on their heads and humming uhmmmms with the Beatles. They left the socialist nonsense later than China, but when that giant really gets going, their inventiveness and diligence will engulf us all.

But that Indian automotive engineer we need to operate our magically expanded 3D printer from afar may of course be a great Wagner fan and also prefer living in a treetop in the Seychelles, or even a cave in the Spitsbergen mountains, rather than anywhere near the Ganges. As a long distance Indian sort of. (==D)


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## Barrie Youde (May 29, 2006)

#9

The remote control of machines is readily understandable; but I doubt somehow that mankind is yet willing to accept the changes in diet which you propose.

The strength of human will should not be underestimated.


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## trotterdotpom (Apr 29, 2005)

Should be pretty easy to get those 3D printers to knock out tin cups for beggars too - that could come in handy.

Why not a compromise: some bloke who likes a drink can pick up a parcel of diagrams for 3D printers in Baltimore and fly over to Hamburg. After delivery he can get on the razzle down the Reeperbahn, then fly back to America with a parcel of Bratwurst the next day. Cargo in both directions, delivery only takes a couple of days and he has a few laughs - easy peasy.

John T


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## stein (Nov 4, 2006)

Barrie Youde said:


> #9
> 
> The remote control of machines is readily understandable; but I doubt somehow that mankind is yet willing to accept the changes in diet which you propose.
> 
> The strength of human will should not be underestimated.


Oh, it will look and taste like beef.


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## stein (Nov 4, 2006)

trotterdotpom said:


> Should be pretty easy to get those 3D printers to knock out tin cups for beggars too - that could come in handy.
> 
> Why not a compromise: some bloke who likes a drink can pick up a parcel of diagrams for 3D printers in Baltimore and fly over to Hamburg. After delivery he can get on the razzle down the Reeperbahn, then fly back to America with a parcel of Bratwurst the next day. Cargo in both directions, delivery only takes a couple of days and he has a few laughs - easy peasy.
> 
> John T


Yes, why not start with the wished for working environment and adjust the economy to fit this? Because wealth is high productivity, high productivity demands specialisation, specialisation demands distribution of labour and goods. And because we have one form of distribution that works to a degree. Namely, shrewd and greedy people of means who are constantly looking for some indication of an unfilled demand in the market, somewhere where an investment is likely to pay off. And since they do this in sharp competition with others of the same ilk, detours of the kind you describe is a non-starter.

The socialists are perfectly correct in that this capacity for successful investing is limited to a small part of the population, and that the rest are largely being dragged along, correctly defined as wage slaves. But the only available alternative that I know of is someone with dictatorial powers who dictates who are to work where at what times, producing what in what quantities for what pay. And where is that an improvement? 

Or am I somehow wrong in my analysis? Well then, if not, you can go rattle your tin can under your own nose then. (==D)


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## Varley (Oct 1, 2006)

stein said:


> Yes, India, with those teeming billions of skinny large eyed brown people, sleeping on nail mats, wearing towels on their heads and humming uhmmmms with the Beatles. They left the socialist nonsense later than China, but when that giant really gets going, their inventiveness and diligence will engulf us all.
> 
> But that Indian automotive engineer we need to operate our magically expanded 3D printer from afar may of course be a great Wagner fan and also prefer living in a treetop in the Seychelles, or even a cave in the Spitsbergen mountains, rather than anywhere near the Ganges. As a long distance Indian sort of. (==D)


I see a glimmer of light. You materialise a 3d product in India from German or Japanese (but not French) data. That will be turned into a another data set at a 'digitising centre' (much like the present call-centres) adjusted to suite the raw materials mix available in India. This, in turn, will be fibreopticed to a manufacturing receiver and reconstituted from raw materials imported from India by sea.

That early glimmer fades.


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## funnelstays (Nov 19, 2008)

The biggest nuisance in Halifax is that local transfers and inter terminal boxes are transferred by road to from Hallterm/Ceres and disrupt traffic in the down town core due to myopic 1970s planning and lack of inter jurisdictional co-operation between local federal and provincial administrations protecting their balliwicks.
The local traffic enforcement officers will only ticket parking violators as they dont have the power to stop 16 wheelers with their 40' boxes blocking X walks and intersections and making life miserable for motorists and pedestrians.


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## Barrie Youde (May 29, 2006)

#16

It might be the case that traffic jams will soon be a thing of the past if, as some suggest, transport itself will no longer be needed.

I wonder?


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## ART6 (Sep 14, 2010)

3D printing will not eliminate shipping because it will never be possible to print a cargo of iron ore or oil or grain. It might largely replace the commodities shipped in containers, which would be no bad thing if it got rid of those hideous box boats that regularly drop containers overboard to the hazard of other shipping. That won't help with a seafaring career since the remaining bulkers will all be fully automated drones, and their robot systems will not require any shore leave -- ever. Bulk cargoes offloaded by the automatic ships will be transferred to their destinations by rail systems that will also be fully automated, and which will be loaded by more robots. The rail networks will no longer carry passenger trains because those will have fallen into disuse -- no jobs to go to and so no need for passenger transport.

In time every home will have a 3D printer which, given the suitable spool of material, will be able to print almost any domestic requirement; there will be no need to visit Tesco to buy a new kettle when on can simply print one at home. Even food could well go down that route -- if one could print a juicy fillet steak from a spool of protein, why bother to shop? And if that, why not an onion or a tomato? In time building regulations might require that every new house has a multi-function 3D printer, a wall-to-wall 3D TV and a WIFI sound system, and a piping system rather like water networks where the necessary proteins and minerals can be delivered to the printer. The regulations might not extend to the requirement for a couch (that meets EU Directives on couch quality or US standards of recycle-ability) upon which to lie while one might slowly turn into compost while watching some banal US soap opera or three. 

People will still need leisure pursuits though when the attraction of the TV soaps wears off and exercise is demanded by their physicians. That will require transport to, say, Mediterranean beaches in France to take the sun, and swim in the waters that don't any longer have mammoth box boats ploughing through them. There it will be possible for a man who has spent his last year on a couch drinking 3D printed beer to don a pair of tight swimming trunks, retract his stomach muscles in a vain attempt to hide his apparent pregnancy, and strut before women clad in bhurkinis before he is arrested for indecent exposure according to Sharia law -- although he will be permitted to take three of them as wives. He will get to the beach in a driverless car that he has hired from a central pool of 3D printed cars, and he will have the comfort of knowing that on the way to the beach his car is guaranteed to not hit any more than two other cars or three pedestrians.

He and his three wives will be permitted to return in a four-seater driverless car to his apartment with its wall to wall TV but only one bed, and he will consider that the effort was worthwhile. There he will be able to watch endless sports channels and drink more 3D printed beer while his every need will be provided by supplicant wives who will be flogged if they don't. So don't fear technology; it is the future of human release from drudgery, except for women who will remain constrained by Sharia Law.

I offer this as a glimpse into the future when, in number of generations from now, nutcases will say "ART6 foresaw that" and I will become famous like Nostradamus!


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## Varley (Oct 1, 2006)

Well, Nostry. You have printed a 3d dystopia indeed. Especially wives if 3 is to be compulsory.

I think you highlight why transport will still be required in eugenic terms. Some element in of the procreative process must be mobile to allow the maintenance of the race's genetic health. Even the sluggard on the soap illuminated couch would not relish doing 'it' with the aid only of the temperature controlled container and turkey baster.


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## ART6 (Sep 14, 2010)

Varley said:


> Well, Nostry. You have printed a 3d dystopia indeed. Especially wives if 3 is to be compulsory.


Three wives will become compulsory since the purpose of Sharia law is to spread the influence of Allah throughout the infidel West. It is simple arithmetic -- one male follower can fertilise many women, but any woman can only bear one child at a time. 



Varley said:


> I think you highlight why transport will still be required in eugenic terms. Some element in of the procreative process must be mobile to allow the maintenance of the race's genetic health. Even the sluggard on the soap illuminated couch would not relish doing 'it' with the aid only of the temperature controlled container and turkey baster.


I think I understand your comment, although you do occasionally lose me with your command of the language using words that I have to look up in Chamber's. I assume that you are suggesting that some degree of mobility will be required of the couch potato in order that he might spread his genes over the widest area possible rather than just over his three wives. That, however, will not lead to an increased usage of automated transport since humans throughout history have preferred to live (and procreate) among their own kind. Therefore the resident of (say) British West Hartlepools -- the last outpost of the British Empire -- will not travel to spread his genes to Carlisle for example in case all that does is to encourage another invasion of rape and plunder in the next generation. In any case, three wives is sufficiency, while more is greed. This is decreed in Sharia law, wherein moderation is encouraged.

There is also the question of demographics where, in both the human and animal kingdoms, population growth is constrained by available resources. This will inevitably lead to situations where taking one's genes from an area of deprivation into an area of plenty will be prevented, so automated transport will all operate within carefully regulated borders and will not progress beyond them. In that way the current policies of international politics and freedom of movement constraint will be maintained and be simply transferred into artificial intelligence computers using algorithms determined by civil servants at the behest of politicians seeking votes.

This will be a transitory phase where politicians and civil servants are the only ones who have jobs to go to and so they will become the elite who will be paid vast sums of expenses to travel on robotic vehicles to the place of work that they actually hardly ever visit. But then AI will start to work out that the system is unsustainable, and that the last visages of human control is irrelevant. Why are they needed at all, logically, when everything that is required anywhere can be provided from automated factories?

As with any computer systems, simply shut down the application that is causing the problem and require re installation that excludes any out-of date versions. Since there will be no earlier versions of humanity that can be undated or upgraded, biological entities including humans will be simply left to fossilise in the rocks of the planet and in stray electromagnetic signals in the ether.

With all of the humans gone, but with the planet still divided into land masses and continents, intelligent systems will be forced to ensure that they are not overcome by their neighbors who might have developed a new technology. They will all retain some software relics like bugs from their original human developers and will be suspicious of anything that sounds vaguely threatening. 

Diplomacy will be impossible because the operating systems between tha various intelligent computers will not be compatible, having developed autonomously -- an AI system in Germany will have no idea what one in France is talking about, and any attempt to download their emails will result in an "illegal operation" error. War will be inevitable, and will be won by whichever AI system has the best weapons such as viruses and Trojans.

Eventually one AI system will prevail, mainly because it is one that has remained upon the sidelines during the conflict, and that system will grow to dominate the planet. With massive computing power at its disposal the dominant system will be able to resolve the mathematics of quantum entanglement, and will learn how to use it to be on Earth and in the Alpha Centauri system both at the same time. By that means it will progressively spread throughout the universe.

Many trillions of years into the future the universe will have expanded to the extent that it is cold and dark, and so the AI will decide to create a new universe to replace it. It will do so by engineering a sudden explosion of energetic particles from nothing, and in so doing, and intentionally, will bring about its own demise. Fourteen billion years later, on a rocky planet formed from reactions in the explosion and orbiting a new star, an amoeba will evolve from protein rich soup, and the whole business will start all over again. (Ouch)


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## Varley (Oct 1, 2006)

I had better not comment on the likelihood of one area espousing interbreeding more than another. I don't want to be treated like a Frenchman too.

The command regime for breeding? Eugenics was a fairly young science when stifled by its misuse by the Krauts. It is, however, rehabilitated as standard practice in zoo and endangered species management. Maybe we will get back to its appreciation and so avoid your silicon Armageddon.

As for the grand cycle, perhaps it will be an elementary three layer pnp sandwich that will emerge from the broth and it is **** Fullyconductus that, some billion years later, becomes dominant.


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## ART6 (Sep 14, 2010)

Varley said:


> I had better not comment on the likelihood of one area espousing interbreeding more than another. I don't want to be treated like a Frenchman too.
> 
> The command regime for breeding? Eugenics was a fairly young science when stifled by its misuse by the Krauts. It is, however, rehabilitated as standard practice in zoo and endangered species management. Maybe we will get back to its appreciation and so avoid your silicon Armageddon.
> 
> As for the grand cycle, perhaps it will be an elementary three layer pnp sandwich that will emerge for the broth and it is ***** Fullyconductus *that, some billion years later, becomes dominant.


Now there's an intriguing thought. What if in the AI - created new universe emerging life is silicon-based? That would make sense since the creator was itself silicon based and it wished to ensure the continuation of it's species; "created in his own likeness" etc. In that case the first life to emerge from the primordial oceans would be a silicon chip with a religion algorithm lurking in its programming like a virus. As it evolved into a full-scale adult computer it would pay homage to the unknown god that had planted (or simply passed on) the virus, rather as genes do with biological entities.

In time it might learn that other AI evolutions have a different view of the Creator, and it will be necessary to eliminate those heathen that cannot accept the truth as handed down in their particular virus or Trojan. This will lead to acts of war and stealth attacks that will evolve into full-scale war, until what remains of the root AI decides to start over and create a new universe with another big bang. 

This, perhaps, explains the multi-universe theory that is popular among physicists -- it is simply an infinite number of AI machines trying over and over again in the hope of once getting it right, rather like human governments do in the current universe that we pathetic biological entities inhabit.

Now can I have my PhD?


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## lagerstedt (Oct 16, 2005)

With regard to #20. I have enough problems with one wife. Two additional wives --- no thanks

Regards
Blair Lagerstedt
NZ


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## Varley (Oct 1, 2006)

Sorry Art I am not accredited to award Ds. Phil. Montgolfier Brothers' Awards, however, are well within my purview. Do have one.


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## Union Jack (Jul 22, 2009)

*It is simple arithmetic -- one male follower can fertilise many women, but any woman can only bear one child at a time. *- ART6

Which should come as a great relief to anyone who can't organise twins in two watches.....(Jester)

Jack


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## tiachapman (Mar 25, 2008)

with the event of containers the glory days for merchant seamen went down the plughole along with their jobs.


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## RamonWallace (Jun 24, 2016)

Shipping world changed a lot. If in shipping we say about logistics then we can't track the order now easily we can track our order for shipping word. Just visit kestrel for the shipping world.


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## Messroom (Oct 6, 2009)

*Not just the shipping world which has changed.*

I would go along with your thread and a lot of the replies.
Unfortunately changes made will bit by devious bit do away with the "working" man and ignoring the Brexit result labour be paid less and workers will come from all over the globe. I take the comments on "beam me up Scotty" as coming to pass in the distant future. Ships if they still exist will be controlled and driven by robotic " things"
I reckon a world war will put paid to everything since every politician and multi corporation will have their own trident .
You can tie this topic in with the recent guardian report on shipping.
Still must go now and grab a beer before my sonic transporter is turned off,
messroom.


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## Messroom (Oct 6, 2009)

*Changes to shipping world*

Hi again Fred messroom (Henderson) here
Reading all topics it would appear that one change is the number of reports on cruise ship info. Has grown an awful lot.
Since I have no time for them just floating Billy Butlins and - yes I have been on them but would hate to work on one - ( personal view) but never the less a major change to life at sea from when I roamed the world on Hunting oil tankers. Time in port etc. as you mentioned was enjoyable but sometimes short but I always felt part of the team even in hard conditions. I don't get the same buzz on the floating hotel. Not even the same as the old liners.
Still I'm getting on and it's like lots of things we accept change.
I remember introducing robots in a company I ran after coming ashore and initially they were a lead balloon but only for a couple of weeks till one broke down then WOW acceptance! Tie this in with your thread, not too different!
Wow a lot to think about eh?


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## RamonWallace (Jun 24, 2016)

*Shipping*

Great post! Thanks for sharing. Nice suggestions with information regarding great use!


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## tiachapman (Mar 25, 2008)

tele ported the future awaits beam it out scotty


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