@Metlin

The high price of gas in Sweden is mostly due to taxes, we tax the hell out of our pumps.

I want to correct one thing you said: Sweden is NOT a tiny country. We have a tiny population, but our surface area is quite large. The population density in Sweden is 20/km², in the US it's 31/km². Our surface area is quite a bit larger than Germany's (slightly larger than California), while they have a population nine times larger than us.

Added to that, Sweden has a very "inefficient" shape, it's rather long, meaning that if you want to from north to south, it's like traveling from London to Rome.

That's staggering problem for public transportation to solve. Much harder than most US states. So don't go around saying "Oh, well, it's not the same in Sweden, they're tiny!". We're few, but we ain't tiny.

I just checked, in Sweden we pay (about) 12.70 swedish kronor for one liter of gasoline. Plugging this into Google's excellent calculator/unit converter gives this:

12.70 SEK/liter in USD/gallon

Almost exactly 8 dollars/gallon. You Americans are wimps :)

"It's like the musicals you love, only evil"

That's sounds like an xkcd-line :)

First off all, speaking of nothing, V.S. Ramachandran has the greatest voice in the history of radio. He appears with some regularity on Radio Lab (a fantastic, science/philosophy-show).

Awesome list. I love to see A Mathematicians Apology by G.H. Hardy there. It's a fantastic book on the reasons for studying pure mathematics.

And if you're going to grow up to become a developmental psychologist, obviously you love Alice in Wonderland :)

About Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep: I don't really know why so many people love it so much. Yes, Blade Runner was (very loosely) based on it, and it's a fine book, but it's no where near the best book Philip K Dick wrote. It can't hold a candle to Ubik, A Scanner Darkly, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, Flow My Tears the Policeman Said, or even the VALIS trilogy (which you have to be clinically insane to get through). I mean, it's not even close to any of those. Was it like the first PKD book they picked up, then they loved it to death, and then NEVER read another one? It's strange. Still, nice to see some of Phil there.

11-year old me that had wet dreams about the cartoon Jessica Rabbit just totally woke up and and cheered. Juvenile sex-dreams are the best!

I'd really love to see someone make an Analytical Engine, instead of building Difference Engines. I mean, sure, the Difference Engine was revolutionary, but not nearly as much as the Analytical Engine. Is it just too impractical and hard to build? I really hope not.

I have the proud distinction of having read every single Tintin-album, including the unfinished Tintin et l'alph-art. When I started studying French in school, I read Les Sept Boules de Cristal (The Seven Crystal Balls, one of my favorites, along with The Secret of the Unicorn and Red Rackham's Treasure) with the comic in one hand and a dictionary in the other (the truth is all the books that were double-issues are fantastic; Cigars of the Pharaoh and Blue Lotus, Destination Moon, Prisoners of the Sun, etc.)

I always loved General Alcazar. I love how he just shows up in The Seven Crystal Balls, like, from out of nowhere, and then again in The Red Sea Sharks, and then disappears until the last album. I mean, he's a General fer chrissakes, what's he doing as a knife-thrower in a variety-show?

Correction: 12.34 kg

Such a solution would fool a human, but it wouldn't fool a scale. An ingot that would normally weigh 12.5 kg would weigh 12.33 kg, which is almost 200 grams difference. That's quite significant, but a human would almost certainly not feel the difference, so it does pass the "pick-up test".

But, as Zen points out, this is easily fixed by adding a little bit of some heavier element.

Yeah, that thing does not look safe. Some dinky metal contraption from the '30s isn't going to go trebuchet-style on me! You'd fly into the next state, fer cryin' out loud!

Seriously, Imagine the stress on that one metal beam holding the thing up when the cabin descends. Not to mention the joint between the cabin and the arm!

Did the Depression totally like undermine peoples sense of danger or what? "Yeah, I'd totally ride in the crazy loop thing, and I love to have radioactive stuff in my toothpaste!"

Charlie Stross: Yeah, I figured something like that. It's such a shame though, Cory has such fantastic ideas about the future of content ownership, and to have him in a position of leadership in such an organization would probably have a huge impact.

On the other hand, people like Burt are like king Canute, trying to order the tide to not come in (I love that parable). The future is inevitable.

I have no idea whether you'd be interested or have enough time (or support from the community), but seriously Cory, you'd be PERFECT for the job. Cory Doctorow as president of SFWA: talk about Awesome Fearitude.

Despite the suction cups, that looks like a pretty sweet little invention. I mean it's a whole little tray where you can put your sandwiches and stuff! I wish my car had that, It'd be very nice to have when stopping by a drive-thru on road-trips.