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RE: The Radioactive Boy Scout |
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Topic: Miscellaneous |
9:48 am EDT, Jul 25, 2005 |
Decius wrote: The mantle in gas lanterns, the small cloth pouch over the flame, is coated with a compound containing thorium-232. When bombarded with neutrons it produces uranium-233, which is fissionable. David bought thousands of lantern mantles from surplus stores and blowtorched them into a pile of ash. To isolate the thorium from the ash, he purchased $1000 worth of lithium batteries and cut them in half with wire cutters. He placed the lithium and thorium ash together in a ball of aluminum foil and heated the ball with a Bunsen burner. This purified the thorium to at least 9000 times the level found in nature, and up to 170 times the level that requires NRC licensing.
Teenager builds fission reactor in Mom's shed out of household parts. Seriously.
One of my colleagues at the PDL -- John Griffin -- (now at IBM) was "the" guy for the Boy Scouts Atomic Energy Merit Badge and was interviewed for the UK documentary for this. RE: The Radioactive Boy Scout |
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RE: Penny Arcade on GTA fluff |
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Topic: Technology |
11:44 am EDT, Jul 22, 2005 |
Acidus wrote: teh h4x0rs R 3vi1!
It sounds like what's going to happen is the existing copies are going to be re-rated "adults only" and pulled from shelves in most places and Rockstar is going to cut a new release sans the "hot coffee" minigame which ESRB said would get the old "M" rating back. I can't feel much sympathy for Rockstar ... if it was dead code that you had to patch to get into, that would be one thing, but apparently its also accessible on the PS2 version via a cheat code. For once, I can't really blame the folks that got outraged over this when it was rated without consideration of this submarine content. RE: Penny Arcade on GTA fluff |
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No Vaccine-Autism Link, Parents Are Told |
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Topic: Health and Wellness |
11:39 am EDT, Jul 22, 2005 |
Top officials from three of the nation's premier public health agencies held an unusual news conference on Tuesday to say that childhood vaccines are life-saving medicines with no proven link to autism.
My impression is that the link between thimerosal and autism is a conspiracy theory ... but by the same token, it seems pretty idiotic to be injecting people with mercury. No Vaccine-Autism Link, Parents Are Told |
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House Beats Back Challenges to Patriot Act |
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Topic: Politics and Law |
11:16 am EDT, Jul 22, 2005 |
The House voted Thursday to extend permanently virtually all the major antiterrorism provisions of the USA Patriot Act after beating back efforts by Democrats and some Republicans to impose new restrictions on the government's power to eavesdrop, conduct secret searches and demand library records.
Ugh ... House Beats Back Challenges to Patriot Act |
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Japan to test video over IP |
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Topic: Technology |
9:08 am EDT, Jul 22, 2005 |
Japan may allow terrestrial digital TV programmes to be broadcast on fibre-optic networks via the Internet to help speed the transition from analog services, a government source said on Thursday.
Japan to test video over IP |
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Beethoven vs Bono: the classic mistake |
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Topic: Music |
9:06 am EDT, Jul 22, 2005 |
As part of BBC Radio 3's recent homage to Beethoven, the corporation made all the composer's symphonies freely available to downloaders. You could go and stick the man's complete works (as played by the BBC Philharmonic) onto your iPod and it wouldn't cost you a penny, writes Bobbie Johnson.
Beethoven vs Bono: the classic mistake |
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HP drops 4 research groups in downsizing |
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Topic: Business |
9:03 am EDT, Jul 22, 2005 |
The technology giant has shelved a team based in Palo Alto focused on advanced software research led by Alan Kay, a respected computing pioneer, according to HP Labs spokesman Dave Berman.
I'm not sure I knew that Alan Kay was at HPL ... last I'd heard -- probably a number of years stale, now -- he was at Disney Imagineering. HP drops 4 research groups in downsizing |
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Stanford project mixes Darwin with hydrogen |
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Topic: Science |
3:27 pm EDT, Jul 21, 2005 |
Researchers at the Stanford, led by chemical engineering professor James Swartz, have discovered a soil microorganism that absorbs photons and subsequently metabolize the energy to split water, a chemical reaction that produces hydrogen, said Jim Plummer, Stanford's dean of engineering, during a presentation at the AlwaysOn conference taking place at the university this week.
!!! Stanford project mixes Darwin with hydrogen |
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NASA Plans to Launch Space Shuttle on Tuesday - New York Times |
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Topic: Space |
12:10 pm EDT, Jul 21, 2005 |
NASA will try to launch the space shuttle Discovery on Tuesday after having narrowed down the most likely cause of the fuel tank sensor problem that delayed last week's effort to fly for the first time since the Columbia disaster in 2003, space agency officials said Wednesday.
NASA Plans to Launch Space Shuttle on Tuesday - New York Times |
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Unsealed Declaration of Brian W. Kernighan, SCO v. IBM |
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Topic: Politics and Law |
5:28 pm EDT, Jul 20, 2005 |
Here's the Unsealed Declaration of Brian W. Kernighan [PDF], as text, thanks once again to Scott David Daniels. We've discussed this in the previous article and earlier, and really it speaks for itself. You can get the exhibits mentioned on that last page linked.
I hadn't been paying much attention to SCO for awhile... their case has totally fallen apart. But the shouting will probably persist for some years... Unsealed Declaration of Brian W. Kernighan, SCO v. IBM |
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