C64 Elite

Oh that was just painful.

And any of the Ultimate: Play the Game games for the C64 - the Spectrum got works of art, the C64 got big blocky messes.

Not so

The ages of the rocks are constrained by radioisotopic dating in associated volcanic deposits.

It's not proximity that's important

It's continuity.

The deposits in Montana and Wyoming extend across the KT boundary without interruption so it is possible to get a complete sequence of events.

In many other places the end of the Cretaceous is missing or very poorly defined.

Columbia

'The cause of the Columbia Shuttle disaster because they removed insulation from the external fuel tank to save on weight. This allowed ice to build up, which broke off and struck the leading edge of the Shuttles Wing. '

Not quite. The formulation of the foam was changed to reduce its toxicity to workers. This increased the amount of 'popcorning' as trapped gas expanded and blew off chunks of insulation.

The damage to Columbia's wing was done just by insulation, not ice.

@ spegru

b) Closing NoTW is a cynical move that doesn't hurt News International at all

It actually benefits NI. NotW was an expensive operation (all those fake sheikhs, phone taps and bin rummaging doesn't come cheap) with a separate newsroom. Closing that down and producing a 7 day Sun filled with long-lens shots of various microslebs and reality TV articles from the Sun's existing newsroom will save them several tens of millions a year.

The markets will love it, and Rebekah Brooks will get a bit smoochy kiss from Uncle Rupert.

Quite

'The only thing missing to make it the ultimate British experience is if it were a mass arrest, and you had five suspects all in the waiting room in an orderly queue waiting for their turn to be arrested.'

Alternatively the suspect tragically stumbles on to a policeman's boots and is then shot trying to escape down a long flight of stairs.

But what we're really waiting for

is 'thousand year old desiccated newspaper magnate exorcised.'

With the exception Grant Mitchell's ex

Everyone at NotW is on 90 days notice of redundancy. NI has said 'They will be invited to apply for other jobs in the company."

Domain

www.thesunonsunday.com was registered two days ago, by Identity Protect in Guildford - anyone know any more?

Dropping bad brands

Consignia

Dasani

Windscale (quite apt - another operation which poured toxic waste into the environment)

Hydrogen

Would be fine with most modern balloons, especially anything made of mylar or similar synthetics.

The real risk is handling large volumes of the stuff. Unsurprisingly it's not easy to buy canisters of hydrogen without a licence. But, that said, we all know how to make it...

Off on hols

It was well known that the holidaying Brooks demanded that electronic copies of the paper were sent to her so she could approve them before they went to print.

Massive counterweight? Green women?

It'll be Shatner.

Yep it's right there in the abstract

The article is a very selective reading of the accessible paper which includes the section:

'The finding that the recent hiatus in warming is driven largely by natural factors does not contradict the hypothesis: “most of the observed increase in global average temperature since the mid 20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations (14)'

These compounds are short-lived, they are incredibly reactive with moisture - in the atmosphere and in the human lungs and are stabilised as sulfates within a few months of their release. They don't even have the half-life of massive volcanic sulfur emissions which rise into the stratosphere and remain in circulation for years.

The Chinese and Indians will have to curb their sulfur emissions anyway no matter what effect they have on the climate for one reason.

They kill people.

Look up London smog if you have any doubts why massive sulfur emissions are a bad thing.

Agreed - this is a useful warning system

Sophie Ellis-Bextor, Sting, Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant? It's like the Four Horsemen of the Broadcasting Apocalypse.

'Any arrests yet on that score, I wonder?'

On the subject of investigating the financial crash - yes they've been busy.

Most of the people who brought Iceland to its knees live abroad and the Icelandic justice system is looking at asking for them to be extradited back to Iceland where the locals are flicking through their books of ancient viking punishments.

A number of lower banking officials have been under investigation by a special investigator and are either on trial or awaiting trial for financial irregularities in the run-up to the kreppa, but the big fish is that ex Prime Minister Geir Haarde is on trial for incompetence.

And since you're bound to be interested, the sale of the assets of Landsbanki is likely to go ahead fairly shortly and will either nearly or totally cover the cost of the British bailout to UK investors.

So the big question is, if Iceland can put its crooks on trial, why are the ex-heads of HBOS, Northern Rock and the Whitehall officials who watched the UK's banks go crazy still free?

I assumed

You had photos of most high tech movers and shakers in compromising positions with an eclectic range of livestock.

Disappointed if this is not the case.

Balloon

A mylar balloon would be trackable in orbit and not need any batteries or solar cells - the two Echo passive communications satellites in the 1950s were nothing more than huge balloons that reflected radio waves.

Don't be silly we live on a sphere.

We just drop it off Australia and it will fall down into orbit.

Didn't Canada also buy

Crappy British submarines?

Come on Canada, you should have learned a lesson that we can't do this death tech.

'I hope you've been training a new Moderatrix?'

Sarah's told us the forums will now be firmly spanked by Jude.

He does not sound like a moderatrix - at least not in my fantasies.

By the way Sarah, if you haven't left yet is there still time to tell you about my fantasies? Sarah? Sarah?

'Would you have clicked on this story if it had Dougray Scott in the headline?'

Not a chance, but had you mentioned the moustache himself - PETER BOWLES - that would have been another matter.

Good idea

But it must be a children's bedtime book.

The other way of looking at this

Is that anyone who bought one of these horrors probably has a nice collectable for The Antiques Roadshow'.

Did they ever get the clock started again?

The official clock in TrafalgarSquare went tits up on the first day of the countdown. Did they ever get someone along to fit a new battery?

Not allowed to do it

It would constitute dumping radioactive material into the ocean which is forbidden by international treaty.

Can anyone remember the last sane home secretary?

Anyone?

I think it might have been Ken Clarke sometime in the early Mesozoic, but if not you're probably back at Roy Jenkins.

Huge leap forward from the previous Z

Which had much the same price for an Atom processor.

It all depends

On the relative speed of the Earth and the impactor, the angle of incidence and the composition of the meteoroid. A head on collision tends to produce so much energy smaller particles are consumed. Grazing trajectories expose the particles to long periods of heating and they vaporise, and icy or carbonaceous material simply can't survive the deceleration through the atmosphere.

For rock and metal, a rule of thumb is that the very small stuff, like dust, survives intact, Things about the size of a grain of sand to a small piece of gravel burn up as a meteor and almost never reach the surface. Up to a metre they tend to burn up a a fireball, bigger ones may produce a meteorite. Above a metre to 10 metres they usually survive intact to the surface, minus whatever is ablated - but they may disintegrate into meteorite showers. Above that to 100m they tend to explosively fragment into pieces because of deceleration stresses, but large amounts of material will hit the surface. Over 100m and the atmosphere is too insubstantial to slow them and they hit with a catastrophic impact.

Depends...

...on what it is made from.

The size is an estimate from its brightness - although they might have made some direct radar measurements by now. If the body is made from iron-nickel it will be much brighter than a carbonaceous chondrite which are blacker than coal - so a smaller iron-nickel object will appear as bright as a much larger lump of tarry space goo.

And if it was iron-nickel it would stand a reasonable chance of surviving entry to the atmosphere as they are best able to survive the brutal deceleration intact which does for most stony meteoroids.

Pixmania

I used them twice. The first time was within a few weeks of them setting up and they were absolutely stellar - great price, fast delivery. The second time was a nightmare; you fill in all your details online, do the credit card bit and then they mail you with a scamtastic request for a passport or driving licence impression. Order cancelled, hello John Lewis.

There isn't a bargepole long enough for me to use either company.

If you're ever flying out of the UK, there is some amusement to be had (admittedly not a lot, but when you're at Heathrow you take what little fun you can get) looking at the Dixons duty-free prices and comparing them to Amazon's.

Jessops

Quite agree. Their prices are eyewatering in comparison to online stores, but if you have a good one the staff can be brilliant for advice. But when they are bad, they are horrid.

You do have to wonder

If JK Rowling has heard of slash-fiction.

As for your prediction of 'within a week' - five minutes tops.

The horror stories are true

And Comet are the worst - their cable brand of choice is none other than Monster - purveyors of overpriced crap for years now. My parents were conned into paying £60 for a set of cables when they bought their first LCD TV. It was the devil's own job to get Comet to accept the return - only when we brought the set back to the store and loudly demanded to see the manager about a refund on the grounds of misselling could we get them to see sense.