Tungsten, not lead. Tungsten has almost the same density. In fact these fine folks will sell you fake gold bars, coins, rods, bullion, and jewelry based on tungsten.

It seems many of the car-owners have an inflated opinion of their cars' worth. Looking at the prices people in my area want to charge, they tend to be at least double what ZipCar would charge me (and ZipCar includes gas!). That kind of kills their business model in major cities.

Your claim that housing and fuel are not in the CPI is categorically false. Housing alone is over 41% of the CPI calculation, and motor fuel is another 5.5% You can read it for yourself: http://www.bls.gov/cpi/cpid1205.pdf (page 4). Now, if you want to say the CPI under-estimates inflation, the place to start is with the hedonic adjustment factors...

From the linked article:
Because we will only launch KickSat into a low-altitude orbit, we can guarantee that all of the Sprites will re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere within a few days or weeks, leaving no trace of space debris. KickSat itself will last somewhat longer, but should burn up in the atmosphere within a few months.

That is not what droll means. Iiiiiiiiiiiiiiirony!

What? Drawing the inference that because they only award one person a medal each year, you should only read one book is beyond flawed. According to you, the Fields Medal committee only believes one-to-four papers in mathematics should be read every four years.

While this does sound like shady dealing, there are legitimate reasons to build a stockpile of an alternate vaccine. The current one is not without its risks and side effects that significantly limit the population to whom it can be safely administered. In particular, they've had to stop immunizing first responders because of the risk. When the WHO was using ring vaccination to eradicate the disease, they accepted that a on the order of 1 in 1,000 would die from the vaccine. Obviously that's something we would like to avoid if possible.

As far as great classical catalogs go, the smaller labels such as Hyperion, Harmonida Mundi, BIS, and Naxos have the big boys beat hands down. While some of th big name soloists still sign DG and EMI, their heydays are over if for no other reason than that they don't record interesting repertoire. After you own twelve different Beethoven cycles, it takes something special to draw your attention, and the big boys just don't seem to like taking any chances.

Except that buying local can increase your carbon footprint. Basically, for things not involving expensive inputs (e.g. produce), the price of a commodity correlates pretty well with the energy expenditure required to produce it. There is a reason local produce tends to be more expensive--it is less efficient.

It only needs to be started once....until the spacecraft tries to turn, and the gravity simulation wheel acts as a gyroscopic stabilizer.

If they raise $100K, that's starting to get into the range of reasonable contracts to have great orchestras record one or two symphonies with named-above-the-orchestra conductors. Bear in mind that even a small chamber orchestra (sufficient for Beethoven, but not going to cut it for later romantic era works) is going to have at least 35 musicians. Each of them will have to be paid for both rehearsal time (alone and as a group) and actual recording sessions. On top of that, a recording session isn't just a play-it-once-and-we're done affair. A forty-minute symphony will take at the very least six hours in the studio, and frequently if will take more than that (Glenn Gould was notorious for recording less than ten minutes of final product per day, but that's an extreme case). Without getting into technical personal, we're talking many hundreds of man-hours per symphony. Add to that studio costs, instrument transportation, engineers, and all the other costs of recording, we're talking over $50K just paying union rates. Bear in mind that this is just for one symphony and for basic performers at union scales. Big names will carry correspondingly higher costs.

I may not have noticed the previous poster, but I'm not sure why that makes me a troll. Unless of course by "troll" you mean "somebody who disagrees with me."

I really can't see much use for this. I mean, it would be nice to have some of the great treasures of western culture available to all without being restricted by copyrights, but there's so much more to performing a symphony, especially a great one, than just playing a C-sharp when the sheet music says so. Interpretive choices and abilities are what really make the music great, and I just can't see a budget pick-up orchestra led by a rent-a-conductor doing a good job. If they were capable of such, they'd be charging a lot more. On top of that, even if there is one open-license performance, and even if somehow turns out to be a good performance, so what? That won't alleviate the need to buy others. This is one of the great things about classical music--each interpreter adds his personal stamp to the work, and performances can differ wildly (compare Glenn Gould's 1955 and 1981 recordings of Bach's Goldberg Variations to see what I mean). The major benefit this will provide will be for people who need to use a Beethoven symphony in some other work, for example a documentary or the like, but that's about it. I know there are those (perhaps many) here who will argue that something is better than nothing. I disagree. Who wants to listen to a boring, lifeless rendition of a great masterpiece (something sadly common enough with professional orchestras)? Even for education, I can't see this having a great use. Boring children with mediocre performances can only have one outcome: that they won't care. In short, I would suggest that those behind this project are doing it more out of a political motivation (one that I happen to share) than out of a true understanding of or appreciation for classical music. This error (and there really is nothing else one can call it) of conflating a performance of a symphony with the symphony itself or even assuming all interpretations are equal is just so fundamental that this whole exercise strikes me as a waste of money.

Actually, that's a quite generous description of Lang Lang's playing. The man wouldn't know sensitive dynamics or intelligent phrasing if they were shoved down his throat. There's a reason he has the nickname "Bang Bang." He earned it.