A Cory Doctorow story

http://craphound.com/?p=573

Old chemist trick

Mould a spoon out of gallium and get the victim to stir their coffee with it. It looks like stainless steel but has a melting point of 30C.

Now such hilarity is available to the masses:

http://www.disappearingspoons.com/

Mind you I've been in some labs where the coffee can melt a stainless steel spoon.

You've just won the Internet

Stop the competition Lester, this is just too good.

I agree

I'd rather they'd named them Truck 1, Truck 2 and so on rather than give them the names of great scientists. It's not a very impressive memento to be filled with odds and sods, emptied, loaded up with sewage and then crashed into the ocean.

I expect Einstein would be more impressed with his element (99) than this thing.

Skype deal

What was so odd about the Skype deal is that Microsoft didn't actually say what they were going do with it.

Had they announced the deal and used the same event to say something definite like 'Skype is coming to Xbox Live' then journalists would have at least known what was planned and be able to tell consumers that Skype would bring videophones to millions of living rooms. That buys good headlines, gives the Xbox a boost and should have raised the share price.

It's incredible that a company like Microsoft has such woeful spin doctors.

Outraged!

The laptop lovely was the only thing that made Asus at all interesting and now she's gone.

Couldn't be more untrue

Microsoft has nine research labs around the World, they're doing some seriously cutting edge work. If you ever get an invite, go, their work is fantastic and it's beginning to appear in products like Bing, Mindstorms and Kinect.

Running Man

Another reason you may not have connected King with the book is that it was published under the pseudonym Richard Bachmann. Although wildly different, the book's not much better than the movie, so you aren't missing much.

Only the beginning

It'll be followed by the 'Mysteron' whose voice will have you soiling your pants right across the Atlantic.

Not corrosive - but...

Liquid O2 will make almost anything burn. In the 1950s the Americans had a number of nasty fires and explosions when liquid oxygen boiled out of their Thor missiles and dripped on to asphalt.

Absolutely

Get the buggers to crack the Voynich Manuscript - THEN they can post their amusing cat photos.

In that case

At 368m, the Fernsehturm in Berlin is still taller than anything in the UK.

Here it is (was)

Well remembered sir, it was Wardenclyffe Tower on Long Island:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wardenclyffe_Tower

Fragile?

I haven't used a phone with this sort of display, but wouldn't a curved display be more likely to be damaged when the phone is dropped?

Thank you Sarah

This guy is being treated as a harmless nutter when he is actually culpable for a great deal of distress and misery; and not just to his deluded followers, but to their friends and family (who may not be believers) who will have had to deal with the consequences of his actions.

Obviously I'm sure he'll be returning all those millions just as soon as the banks reopen.

And what have NASA just fired into space?

Squid would laugh at 25g - and still sucker your face off into the bargain.

Sheep in a vacuum

After Lewis' story yesterday, shouldn't we consider revising the standard and base it on squid, which are at least decimal?

Vegetarian sorbet

Well here's prior art which I make on a regular basis.

500g caster sugar

250ml fresh lemon juice (that's about 6 large lemons)

Zest if you like more lemony goodness

Dissolve the sugar in 750ml water and simmer for a couple of minutes. Remove from the heat and add the lemon zest. Allow to cool.

Add the lemon juice. Put in the fridge until really cold.

Place the mixture in an icecream maker and churn until it starts to solidify. If you don't have a machine place in a shallow dish and freeze for an hour. Give it a good forking (fnarrr) to mix the ice with the unfrozen goop. Freeze again for another hour, repeat a couple more times until it is completely slushy. Whisk vigorously then freeze. It'll keep for up to a week in the freezer.

I suspect the cure for cystic fibrosis is somewhat more complex.

Not always

You can make a lighter sorbet by adding beaten egg white. But it's not worth it.

Yep!

And fine them the full cost of refunding every passenger who was late.

(Although you'd have to be VERY late indeed to get a refund from our oh-so-wonderful railway companies).

Not happening

There were plans to bring back Hubble but these were canned on the grounds of expense and that the Shuttle could not abort to the ISS if there was a failure during the mission. Another plan was to attach a booster that would have shoved Hubble either into a safer higher orbit, or down into the atmosphere for a controlled re-entry. This also didn't go ahead.

Instead a better attachment point for future missions called the SCRS was placed on the telescope. The next mission to Hubble (which no one has a clue about) will be to deorbit the telescope. Currently, Hubble will be decommissioned sometime between, and you've got to give them credit for narrowing it down, 2013 and 2021 - the latter being when it will definitely re-enter the Earth's atmosphere.

Which won't help

Since developing nations can't afford to buy reactor technology anyway.

Doesn't work that way

The Shuttle's components aren't designed for very long durations in space. Just to get you started, the tiles would get dinged by micrometeorites (and larger stuff) and various plastics and rubbers would degrade from atomic oxygen.

And what use would it be going to Mars? There's no runway for it to land even if it could be brought down to a reasonable speed after entry to the very thin Martian atmosphere.

Already invented

and it's called the hydrogen bomb.

Having said which, there are some minor wrinkles regarding the range of its effects, the unavoidable millions of fatalities and unfortunately persistent fallout which still have to be ironed out; but I can say with 100% confidence that you will never have to worry about mobile phones or personal stereos ever again.

It's also great for getting stones out of horses hoofs, warding off dangerous dogs, sterilising river water and attracting attention if you are lost in remote areas.

Zeppelin thought of that

The original design for the Hindenberg would have used hydrogen 'anti ballast' held in relatively small gas bags buried within the much larger helium-filled lifting bags. As the ship burned fuel, hydrogen would have been vented, reducing the lift.

For all sorts of reasons, mostly to do with the cost of securing helium, the design was abandoned for a single set of gas bags.