As pointed out in the original article, Helium supplies are limited, and the price has spiked recently. I can see a Hydrogen / Helium mix getting off the ground. Tougher, less inflammable materials, better safety systems, and I'll get on one with no qualms.

Sure, Hydrogen will explode... if you mix it with Oxygen and apply a flame to it. It didn't catch fire of its own accord on the Hindenberg, it caught fire after the gas bags were ruptured by the burning skin: the flame and oxygen it needed to complete the Fire Triangle.

If you've ever seen the show, you'll know that Paul Merton in particular goes off on some incredibly surreal rhetorical excursions. I don't know if I've ever fallen on the floor, but I have had the occasional respiration difficulty. "Am I the only one who's always tempted to light the wick on top of a beret?"

Stuff the Temporal Prime Directive! It only mattered in Back To The Future because the heroes knew they'd be directly affected by their machinations. If I went back 1000 years, with no prospect of return, I'd let the future take care of itself - or I'd try to improve it. Could it be much worse than the last century has been?

The Renaissance started in the 15th Century: why not 500 years earlier? We call the preceding years in Europe the "Dark Ages", because dissemination of knowledge was suppressed by the Church. I would therefore make it a priority to write down and safeguard the knowledge I had, before I would display it.

Steam power would be great to have, but for that I would need to produce metals of better quality, and it so happens I have studied basic metallurgy. For example, I would build a coking furnace to produce coke, which lets you produce wrought iron, with less carbon and other impurities.

If I had the chance, I would learn Latin, and travel to Italy to study Roman technology. They invented Concrete, but that knowledge was lost for about 1600 years, and I know enough about it to re-invent it. Never mind Gothic cathedrals, I'm thinking of the kind of masonry skyscrapers they built in Chicago before steel became available.

Actually, HP still do make some RPN calculators, including the old 12c (Financial), 33s and 35s (scientific), and the bigger 50g (successor to the 48/49). I like RPN, but I've been seduced to the dark side by the full algebraic editing system on my Casio FX-570ES...

The Arbroath article has some snotty comment about "people unwilling to take elementary steps to improve their finances" - and they don't allow comments there.

My interpretation of the results suggests that people are rightfully wary of things that look too good to be true. When someone approaches me on the street, I have to assume they are doing it for THEIR benefit, not mine - why else would they go to that much trouble? TANSTAAFL is the word.

This goes double for "Chuggers" (charity muggers) - they get paid to "Chug", which is money that doesn't end up supporting the charity in question. No, I'm not suggesting they should do it for free: I'm suggesting that they just stop doing it altogether, saving us all the hassle.

"Nuked" is close enough for Rock 'n' Roll. 8)

I'd hardly call that a "TSA" machine - it's old tech that pre-dates the TSA, and is in almost every airport in the wurrld...

I think Heavy Weather is even older than Distraction, but just as crazy, with its nomadic storm-chasers and bizarre lifestyles. These guys carry near-disposable laptops with ubiquitous internet connectivity, a vision of the future close to coming true today.

It's about time I got it out again, it's been at least 6 years, and I have a bit of time this summer...

It's looking pretty major. If you go to the Pager details for that quake on the USGS site, it shows estimates of population exposed to it. If correct, over 100,000 people felt it at severity X (extreme), the maximum on their scale. From VIII (severe) to X, over a million people were affected. Not good, but according to reports the response by the Chinese government has been very quick.

A reel-to-reel version of this kind of setup was used by Brian Eno on his Ambient albums, his collaborations with Robert Fripp (No Pussyfooting), and Robert's later guitar experiments (Frippertronics). If I understand this build correctly, it will be possible to increase the delay time by simply moving the two decks further apart - as long as there are no cats around to play with the tape...

"kosher salt"? So who was the Goy then, the Sodium or the Chloride?

Instructions for DIY Home Trepanation? I need to see that like I need a hole in my head...

Not impressed with that second formula, it's unnecessarily complicated. You have kW HOURS, so to get kW, just find the number of hours, and divide by it - that leaves you with the kW. Say there are 30 days in a month, that makes 30x24=720 hours. So: ( 122 kWh / 720 hrs ) = 0.170kW = 170 W

Oh, and how many days are there in a month? If I convert that seconds figure to days, there are apparently 34.167 days in a month. (Must be a typo, the result is still correct.)

I hope other slides have an explanation of where those figures come from. 140MJ per km? 120kWh per month? My last electricity bill had about 3X that, thanks to an all-electric flat (incl. heating). =8-/

- Scientific American podcasts: 60-Second Science & Science Talk: (http://www.sciam.com/podcast/)
- half of KCRW's output (www.kcrw.com/podcasts) including: Martini Shot; Left, Right & Center; Design & Architecture; Second Opinion and The Urban Man;
- The Economist's podcasts (http://feeds.feedburner.com/economist/audio_all)
- and last but not least: Betty in the Sky with a Suitcase (http://betty.libsyn.com/) 8-)
- bnt