Anyone who doesn't think we need stronger antitrust enforcement is crazy.

Get the best (Ha-Dec) mount you can. (I would not get an Alt-Az mount for a beginner on a budget.) Most department store type scopes have adequate optics, but very crappy mounts, and that makes for a miserable viewing experience. Get a very sturdy mount with a cheap scope,and then if the kid wants to move up, they have the mount for it.

I suspect it will be like the 1999 Mars Climate Orbiter - "what we've got here is a failure to communicate."
 

Got a link for that? I know that most pulsar observers filter out GPS and other satnavs (GLONASS sidebands are especially annoying) but I have not heard of GPS receivers having pulsar ephemerides.

Or maybe because observing pulsars requires a substantially bigger antenna than a hand-held smart-phone - 170 m^2 (and 500 Watts!) for a phased-array radio dipole and 0.1 m^2 for an X-ray Pulsar Nav system in Becker et al. (and the latter could only be used in space, outside the Earth's atmosphere).

The Fregat has a reputation as being an incredibly reliable and accurate upper stage - I have heard of on-orbit accuracies on the order of 100 meters - and there were no initial reports of upper stage technical problems (such as a premature shutdown). That tells me that this is likely to be either a communications problem, or a simple screwup.

Not quite - it's more that there were a number of different units for different purposes and different locations - inches and feet and rods and yards and chains and furlongs and fathoms, etc. (and these are just for length - there are acres and oxgangs and virgates etc. for area, and on and on). Over time, some of these dropped out and the others got rationalized, leading to a bunch of different ratios.

At least some of the duodecimal units (and I believe all of the base 360 units, such as degrees) are straight from the Babylonians.

This will for sure mess up the constellation, which is designed to minimize the times where some places on Earth do not have 4 satellites above the horizon, and also the places where this is going to happen (i.e., coverage gaps over the far South Pacific are likely to be more acceptable than over Northern Europe) . Since these satellites are too low, they will have shorter periods and will thus not be commensurable with the existing constellation, and will drift in and out of place.

You can be sure ESA engineers are busily looking at orbits this weekend, to see what can be salvaged from this debacle. Now, they may be really lucky, and have gotten an orbit where these two satellites can be used to fill a hole in the current constellation. I would bet in that case that both satellites would serve to fill the spots normally filled by one satellite; so at best only one, but if (as is more likely) they are unlucky, two satellites will have to be launched to fill the gaps.

In other words, while these satellites are not a loss, and will be used, new launches are likely to be necessary to make the constellation whole, which will cost as much as if they were lost.

If you truly believe that, you have seriously not been paying attention these last 45 years.

Or that none of this will really help get you laid?

I suspect the Japanese, and specifically the Japanese resupply modules (and that is not a joke). They are launched near the coast from a culture that makes extensive use of sea-weed; either way there could be contamination with sea plankton.

The idea that plankton could drift by itself up to orbital regions is... interesting. The idea that it could survive a 7 km/sec impact with Station is not; I don't think that is viable on either sense of the term.

What, you think that these cameras were set up after a careful consideration of how to balance the needs and rights of the citizenry against the desire to improve traffic conditions? No, it's based on lobbying by the camera sales staff, promising easy money in return for a right to prey on the citizenry. This being Chicago, some of the easy money was kicked-back to the local politicians, but the process isn't really that much different in regions where there is enough moral fiber for the state to keep all of the proceeds.

Yes, and if supermarket automation is any guide, what it will really mean is that you will have to bus your own tables.

The CIA doesn't do borders. They use Andrews Air Force Base for that sort of thing. (Or, at least that's the persistent rumor here in DC.)

Won't stop them from seizing it anyway.

It turned out that the gases are a set of trace chemicals, including aldehydes, furans and organic acids.

No! Gases are chemicals! Who knew!