From wikipedia:

There's non-official (e.g. Brian Shul's book Sled Driver) reports of speeds up to Mach 3.5 (4,200 kph or 2,600 mph), but those aren't official. Different official and unofficial analyses of the materials and production techniques of the SR-71 strongly suggest that it was incapable of reaching much more than Mach 3.5 (among other things the pressure wave from the nose would enter the engine intake and unstart the engine; also the metal divider on the windshield got so hot at those speeds it threatened the integrity of the windshield).

So yeah, official word would be great, but there is little doubt the SR-71 was capable of Mach 3.5 but not much more than that.

Indeed.

I don't fancy the U-2 or C-130 much, but the P-38 and SR-71 are two of the most aesthetically pleasing aircraft ever to have graced the skies. In fact, the SR-71 is probably the most beautiful plane ever to have flown. That it's also still the current speed record holder (air-breathing manned aircraft, record set in 1976) despite being retired since 1998 is just icing on the cake.

I'm quite grateful that I managed to squeeze in a trip to the Udvar-Hazy Center at Dulles last time I was in DC so I could get to see one in real life.

Hear, hear.

Slacker for life since late 20th century.

Sure, I've meddled with other distros; Debian, Gentoo, Ubuntu and a host of others, but I keep coming back to Slack.

Ah, my favourite Star Trek / Computer nerd pastiche:

"I am Pentium of Borg. Division is futile, you will be approximated".

Caused me endless mirth in the early nineties - and still does, although these day it's nostalgic more than funny.

That animation is from Bowling for Columbine, not South Park.

Sharks actually hunt with all their senses:

Hearing: up to several kilometres.
Smell: 100+ metres
Pressure: Up to 100 metres
Sight: Up to 100 metres
Electric: Up to 50 centimetres.
Taste, touch: Direct contact

But yeah, sharks cover their eyes with the nictitating membrane (or roll their eyes back if they lack a nictitatinig membrane, like the Great White) when they actually bite, so they don't rely on their eyes for the final attack; but before that final attack they do rely on their eyes (as well as their other senses).

Thank you for that link!

That Hangout was surprisingly informative, and the panel was excellent; not a dud in there:
Lori Garver, Deputy Administrator, NASA
Bill Nye, Executive Director, Planetary Society
Ed Lu, former astronaut and CEO, B612 Foundation
Peter Diamandis, Co-Founder and Co-Chairman, Planetary Resources
Jose Luis Galache, Astronomer at the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center

It does not, you bumbling hack. Fresh water freezes at zero degrees.

Seriously, leave Burma and Liberia behind and get with the program.

Perl is only as (un)readable as you make it; if you write readable Perl code, you won't have any problems reading and understanding it 6 months later.

But yeah, you can write unreadable Perl code - but then again, is there any language in which you can't?

I think you may be committing at least two errors here:

1. Confirmation bias #1: Thinking that "GW alarmists tout every earthquake, every drought, every flood as proof of global warming".
Global warming affects the climate, which affects the weather - generally, in making it more extreme.

2. Confirmation bias #2: Thinking that just because you experience cold weather there is no global warming.
The longer, colder, more snowy winters are actually an effect of global warming, counter-intuitive as that may seem.

The Mount Pinatubo eruption in 1991 emitted 42 million tonnes of CO2.
Human emissions in 1991: 23 billion tonnes of CO2.

Volcanoes emit about 1% of the amount of CO2 that humans do, per year.

Weather is not climate.

Neither the warhead nor the missile would gain much in either cost or simplicity of manufacturing from having a 3D printer available. Any part that could be made by a 3D printer is not a part that's hard to make or acquire by other means. The manufacturing challenges of both missiles and nuclear weapons lie in areas where 3D-printing is of no help whatsoever.

3D printing isn't magic, and it's not a sci-fi replicator. It can only work with one material at a time, and that material must currently be a (rather brittle) plastic. It is unlikely in the extreme that 3D-printers will ever be able to work with metal due to the temperatures needed.

So there's no need to Chicken Little just quite yet.

Two, actually:

Call of Ktulu [sic] on Ride the Lightning, and The Thing That Should Not Be on Master of Puppets.

Indeed.

Thanks, Iain.