Another, probably apocryphal, story was John claimed to have star tested a scope using the glint of light off the eye of a blackbird, perched on a telephone wire down the street - really, really good telescope makers can identify the condition and quality of a mirror by studying the shape of the image from the scope just inside, and just outside focus.

John stayed with us in the UK back in 2002 - that Wikipedia article picture should have me just out of shot... We took him to see the city of Chester - which John insisted on seeing the city walls "The last city I saw with walls was Beijing in 1920" I think he said. We took him to North Wales to see the sights there, and then he stayed in my home for a couple of memorable nights, when he baby-sat my eldest son while I rushed my baby son to the ER having found him bleeding and screaming after climbing a bookcase and cutting his head open. "John, I really, really need to get this little guy to hospital. Can you tell my wife where we've gone and look after this one ? " "Aw, sure, no problem". I came back to find John reading a book to my son. I have video of John "lassoing" the kids out in the yard with a rope he always carried to demonstrate with !

One of those visits that will stay with me forever- the youngest son is now 13, and still has the scar......

Not many atheists go to warlord controlled countries to delivery medical supplies while unarmed and unprotected. Christians do and that resonates with people.

No, what happens is that many "atheists" go to warlord controlled countries etc , etc, they just don't feel any need to mouth off about why they are doing it, and they are only doing it because they believe in a sky-fairy.

And they wonder why people wear Burquas.
Mohammed, at the cutting edge of the consumer fight back

Are you US based, out of interest ?

Some kill themselves.
Like Aaron Schwarz

And who brings on the brighter kid, handicapped by his dull team-member ?

Peltiers manage around 5% conversion efficiency.

He, some of MY friends were students when Tom Kilburn was head of CS at Manchester. We went to a lot of the Manchester 50 events, with our baby son. I doubt he remembers.

Not true. The greater decline in manufacturing came under Blair and Brown. At the end of Mrs Thatcher's time as PM, manufacturing fell from 25.8 per cent to 22.5 per cent, under Blair/Brown, manufacturing accounted for more than 20 per cent of the economy in 1997, the year Labour came to power, by 2007, that share declined to 12.4 per cent.

That ONS figures

Yeah right, like you'll be able to tell the effects of 1Mt of bomb in 100Mt of impact damage

Nukes can be designed to have a lot of residue, or not a lot of residue. I'll take mildly radioactive rocks than a wiped out city.

Hal Clements wrote "Mission of Gravity" and "Iceworld" where physics and chemistry is extrapolated into wonderful new types of world - the Ellipsoidal "Mesklin" in Mission of Gravity for example.

Also, Robert D Forward's "Dragon's Egg" about life on a Neutron star's surface is an exploration of nuclear chemistry.

Bullshit. See: My Lai massacre. The Nuremburg defence was accepted.

Find yourself an F-1 engine primer.... The turbines were powered by a BIG generator based ( I think) on hypergolic fuels. 170 pounds of gas a second pushing a , pumping around 500 gallons a second of kerosene into the combustion chamber by a turbine powered pump.

First designed in 1957 !!!

Steve