A lesson I offer for free

It is possible while gargling with mouthwash to bungle the job so that vanilla-fresh mouthwash comes gushing out one's nostrils. I do not recommend duplicating this feat.

¡ʎʌɐu ǝɥʇ uıoɾ

The current state of space exploration: Ragnarok or Apocalypse?

Nicked from nwhyte:

In Stephen J. Pyne’s recent book, “Voyager: Exploration, Space, and the Third Great Age of Discovery”, he also believes that the Voyagers were a never-to-be-exceeded peak of space exploration. He thinks that there was a huge exploration phase in the 20th century, starting in the 50s with the explorations of Antarctica and the seafloor, culminating in Voyager, and declining since.

The author of the article takes a look at the actual facts, which indicate just the opposite of Pyne's thesis, which raises the question of what Pyne based his model on.

Unconfirmed results reported on in an excited manner!

As reported in many, many places:

The CERN research institute near Geneva said measurements over three years had shown neutrinos pumped to a receiver in Gran Sasso, Italy, had arrived 60 nanoseconds sooner than light would have done -- a tiny difference that could nonetheless undermine Albert Einstein's 1905 special theory of relativity.

This is what comes of Science!

A space satellite the size of a bus is expected to re-enter Earth's atmosphere later today, but experts are saying that chances are slim you'll see any of the bits hit the ground.

Well, that's kind of boring. Let me edit this better:

A space satellite the size of a bus is expected to re-enter Earth's atmosphere later today, but experts are saying that [...] [w]hen it falls, it will break up into thousands of pieces and scatter, with the debris field expected to span 800 kilometres.

And since there are regions where tens of thousands of people can be found in a given square kilometer - actually this article a bit vague on how wide the REGION OF CERTAIN DOOM is so let's say 100 km because that's a round number - nearly a billion people could be at risk. I recommend widespread panic, some mention of deadly plutonium and giving me sweeping powers to deal with the emergency.

Please check my math and such

During a discussion of Farmer in the Sky an interesting claim was made:

There are actually areas in India that consume more calories than the total insolation. Another green revolution is not going to fix that.

(which, if you're talking a dense enough city in a dim enough area, actually isn't completely impossible: The Kowloon Walled City had about one person per m^2, for example, and insolation there doesn't look much above 200 Watts per m^2; a more northerly city like KWC should consume more energy in chemical bonds in food than falls on it in sunlight).

"India" is later corrected to "Bangladesh".

Which I will freely admit is no worse than talking about France when I actually mean Scotland. They're both totally part of the Auld Alliance! Almost indistinguishable.

A little digging says that the monthly averaged insolation incident
on a horizontal surface (kWh/m2/day) in Bangladesh (over the whole
year; it's pretty variable) is about 4.7 kWhr/m^2/day or 16.9 MJ
per day or about 195 watts. Bangladesh is 147,570 km^2 or a million
times that in square meters so total insolation probably runs around
2.9x10^13 Watts or around twice the total amount of energy used
by all of humanity, IIRC and I have not made an error in research
or calculation.

I am very keen to hear how Bangladesh manages to consume more than
twice the energy consumed by all humanity including Bangladesh.

Let's say the light > food runs at 1% efficiency: 2.9x10^13 becomes
2.9x10^11 Watts in food chemical bonds. Humans run at about a hundred
watts so we can tell that the population would have to be around
2.9x10^9 people/wasted food ratio to exceed the insolulation in
chemical bonds in food consumed.