Some physics grad students that I know use Mathematica for note taking in their physics classes. I haven't used it myself, but apparently it has decent shortcuts for notation.

I've just recently begun to get involved in academic research and I've been amazed at how expensive things are. New manual spin coater? 3k. Want a better one? 5-8k.

Bearings in a turbomolecular pump go bad? 3k to repair, unless your boss lets them have it when said pump has less than 1000 hours on it and they decide pissing off a department that they make a lot of money from isn't smart. Same pump brand new is 10k.

Helium leak detector goes tits-up? 4.5k to repair. Of course that's better than buying a new one!

Let's not forget the 3.5k balance. Of course it's "accurate" to 0.00001g or some similar nonsense.

Completely insane.

Edison probably stole the recording in the first place, much like he stole many other ideas and "IP".

No it didn't. The timeline starts after the series. It seems likely that River was caught at some point after Objects in Space and the beginning of Serenity shows them rescuing her.

He's my hero, does that count? (I'm 31 though).

For a slightly younger person, perhaps Garrett Lisi? He's older than what #2 seems to require, but he's still quite young at 42 and is doing some interesting work. He's also a surf bum :D

My father gave me his slide rule when I transferred to uni. I wonder what my profs would say if I busted it out during an exam. :D

http://www.setileague.org/ has loads of info on horns that can be built or bought.

Ironically, in the area of Louisiana I lived in the parochial schools were the best schools in the area. They also only taught actual science in science class. They kept religious things in classes about religion.

I had non-christian friends who sent their children to the private parochial schools in the area because the education there was so much better. I'm not sure if their children were forced to stomach the classes on loving Geebus though.

Having lived in Louisiana this doesn't surprise me at all. You couldn't go a quarter-mile in most areas without seeing a church.

I'd swear they've had this option for ages. It was just buried in a non-obvious place.

Hmm maybe, but I'm thinking more Barry White.

Oh, also try seeing if there's a local astronomy club. Often they're very happy to help schools out.

Any Nebula you can see. The Great Nebula in Orion is real easy to find. Please do more than just pointing the scope at something and having them look. Give them a tour of the winter circle. Tell them a few stories of how some of the constellations and asterisms got their names. There's so much more to Astronomy than just using a telescope.

Have students pick objects they'd like to look at using Stellarium, or some other software, that you can see with your telescope. Get them involved or they're likely to find it pretty boring.

Yay my using >, part of my message got mistaken for html :D.

It should say "when you enter '(car make here) P####'"