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####'"

There's this thing called the internet. On the internet there's a place called "google." It's amazing what comes up when you enter " P" on said site. No dealer involved.

Spend $60 on a hand held ODB II reader instead. The most common code set by vehicles is a fuel system code that gets set when you don't tighten your gas cap down all the way. You absolutely can get shop manuals for new vehicles (for GM anyways, I imagine Ford and Chrysler are the same), it's just not cheap and you have to know where to look.

In trucks you're just not going to get a useful amount of torque out of V6's. Small V8's maybe, but in the size trucks these were going in (generally 1 ton pickups and above) you'd be hard pressed to find a useful gasoline V8 other than a big block. If people need trucks diesel is the answer though, so it's not really a horrible thing from all perspectives.

No, the LS7 is NOT a big block. It's a large displacement motor with dimensions similar to a Chevy small block engine (but not actually a SBC, it's based on the LS1, which was a 346ci V8). High displacement doesn't not make it a big block. People have bored and stroked LS1's to around 427ci, but it certainly isn't a big block and shouldn't be mistaken for one.