Narmitaj

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• Commented on Inside Antiques Roadshow
  In the UK they have done follow-up shows seeing what happened to some big items - paintings found on a fly-tip, a load of silver brought by a family whose dead husband/father had collected it over the years and kept...
• Commented on List of books read by backpackers
  Not that I've done a hell of a lot of backpacking, but I think a good travelling book is one that is large and meaty, something that you feel sure will last you should you be stuck for 12 hours...
• Commented on Motor attached to series of reduction gears - final gear fixed in concrete
  Isn't this how homeopathy works?...
• Commented on The Math Book: From Pythagoras to the 57th Dimension, 250 Milestones in the History of Mathematics
  Anonymous @ 10 - the book is on Amazon UK already, though not yet available. It is also cheaper here than the US price - £9.99 (£10 off) vs $17.97 - plus it qualifies for Free Delivery (the barrier in...
• Commented on Robot negotiates with mentally ill man who threatened White House (UPDATED)
  @51 "a way to hijack and take over our massive armies of drones, ROVs, and suchlike" Hijack implies, to me, taking control of mobile machine by compelling their live human onboard operators to do your will, and Hack implies, to...
• Commented on Shrink: I will create a WoW guild of shrinks to treat WoW addiction
  As a consultant for an NHS Trust Dr Graham may not be quite the multi-millionaire we all imagine. However, I imagine he wants Blizzard to waive charges to help signal that his involvement in the game is acknowledged as a...
• Commented on We're in the Future: Scientists Warn of Robot Overlords
  Cicada @ 18 - "a robot-owning aristocracy" - Sounds rather The Penultimate Truth....
• Commented on Settlers of tiny Pacific island go nuts
  It all looks a bit Ballard to me - Pacific atoll, vast and probably little-used runway, consumer goods, terminal ennui and psychological turmoil. It's probably already getting rising sea levels so all it needs is some car crashes and a...
• Commented on Tip to encourage dinner party guests to dispose of olive pits
  The trouble with leaving only one is that it looks like the olives are bitter, or the cake stale. So I always eat 3 or 4 of each. More seriously, yes, this is a good idea. Also pistachio nut shells....
• Commented on Who is copyright for?
  This chap works for an extremely large corporation, so must be expressing that corporation's belief that "creators are merely an expense item on a balance sheet, to be reduced as much as possible", in order, presumably, to increase their own...
• Commented on New research on shark repellents
  Yay! Inspired by the Shark Repellent Bat Spray at 2:30....
• Commented on "Pop Music" performed by popping balloons
  Oops, I read this as from Rolf "Jake The Peg" Harris at first....
• Commented on Why didn't Alexi Leonov take that one small step?
  Nanuq @ 3 - There are lingering rumours that the Americans didn't land on the moon, you know, and that 9/11 was an inside job and the Holocaust didn't happen. And as with the Gagarin-not-in-space but Ilyushin-flew-first, they're just bollocks....
• Commented on Baltimore transit wants to use microphones to record all conversations on trains and buses
  Obviously the main problem here is that people may have started their conversations before getting on the bus, or carry them on after they've left. It's rather limiting to have these mics stuck in one place. It wouldn't work to...
• Commented on MyDishBiz runs photo and false testimonial of murdered newlyweds
  @12 - similarly, the article mentions several times that the couple were murdered in Antigua, as if murdering never happened anywhere else. The Welsh are clearly too nitpicky about matters of fact. Or it could just be the Wales Online...
• Commented on Baby goose with homemade leg brace
  Remove brace before microwaving....
• Commented on Britain's loony rules for artist visas embarrass festival organizers
  I'd like to make a call for new internal controls, pass laws and internal-migration-paperwork within the UK. After all, the 7/7 bombers didn't sneak in from abroad, they were British. But an internal border, say just outside the M25 London-orbital...
• Commented on Britain's loony rules for artist visas embarrass festival organizers
  I didn't know anything about Dorothea Rosa Herliany up to now but looking at this from the Frankfurt Book Fair, as well as having published 20 books of her own she's a director of a small publishing house in Indonesia...
• Commented on If woowoos ran the emergency room
  @ 10 "This third series has been excellent, before its always been a little hit and miss" They have in-between-sketch micro-sketches, where the actors sit around the studio between takes discussing meta-topics such as their own action dolls. In one...
• Commented on Production stills from Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland
  I liked Big Fish, and the way it illustrates a form of imaginative story-telling where words generate great pictures in the mind....
• Commented on The Chappe Optical Telegraph
  Another SF deployment of these kind of land semaphores: Keith Roberts' alternative-history Pavane, esp "The Signaller". From the review at http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/nonfiction/pavane.htm : ""The Signaller" develops one of the most enduring images of the book: a network of semaphore stations spans...
• Commented on World's Rarest Insect found on Rocky Spire
  @ 14 - the island is a third of a mile in height, so would easily be visible from cruising altitude, which is about seven miles, even if you're ten or twenty miles away on the ground. After all, from...
• Commented on Searching for "purveyors of curiosities"
  Maybe a bit specifically toy and toy-theatre oriented for you, but Pollock's in London - a shop originally from the 19thC, museum attached 1956 - might be worth a look. Just a few yards from Goodge Street tube station on...
• Commented on Lutheran Halal cafe
  On the Beeb's "Have I Got News For You" this week one of the guests was Iranian comedian Shappi Khorsandi, who at one stage complained about finding buttons, not coins, in her piggy bank when she was a kid, and...
• Commented on Ryanair serious about charging to use toilets in-flight, may charge extra "breathing fee" for inhaling during flight
  I don't think I've had a bad flight with Ryanair - they pretty much do what they say on the tin, ie get you somewhere on time and usually cheaply. Several I took have been 1 penny plus taxes (£20)...
• Commented on Bicycle with oddly shaped wheels
  A Times article today by Marcus du Sautoy discusses this bike. [Who he? - Ed][He a maths prof who in October 2008 took over from Richard Dawkins as Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford]. "He believes...
• Commented on Beautiful Clouds
  Don't forget the Cloud Appreciation Society, "fighting the banality of ‘blue-sky thinking’."...
• Commented on Crazy-ass freeway exchanges of the world
  @ 22 Beanolini - "Where's J. G. Ballard when you need him?" Actually, they're talking about these very interchange photos over on the Ballard yahoogroup. As for the Swindon magic roundabout - it has five mini-roundabouts, but the Hemel Hempstead...
• Commented on Uglified theft-resistant camera
  Nanuq @ 14 - "He couldn't just buy a cheap camera to begin with?" I tried this strategy on a trip to Beirut in 1993. I wasn't worried about theft so much as the camera being confiscated by customs or...
• Commented on "The Second Coming of the silos will be abstract mysterious"
  In Vienna for a day a year or so ago I rounded a corner and found a massive Ballardian concrete tower in the middle of the city, called HAUS DES MEERES and with the legend SMASHED TO PIECES (IN THE...