I'm trying to give directions that one could use to actually locate something. Saying "it's to the north" is meaningless. It's 80 degrees east.

The longitude center of the eastern hemisphere is 90 degrees east longitude. Dome A is about 80 degrees east longitude.

Of course it saves the rhinos. You put 100 times more fake stuff on the market and the price for rhino horn collapses, meaning people stop hunting them.

The brilliant part is that this makes use of something that's normally a bad thing - China's extensive peddling in fakes - to achieve a good result. I doubt it'll stop the really high end of the market, the sort of people who would instruct their buyer to send what they buy sent off to a lab (I don't think some rhino DNA alone would fool a lab, surely it looks different under microscopic examination), but for the rest of the market, it's a neat idea.

Why do you think over a dozen observatories have been built there? Think it's cheap to sent giant pieces of delicate scientific equipment from the mainland? TFA doesn't even mention the actual reason why Mauna Kea is one of the best places on the planet for optical telescopes: seeing conditions (aka, how much celestial objects "twinkle" on average. Outside of deep Antarctica (Dome A, not far east of the South Pole), there's no other better known location on the planet (a couple are pretty close, like La Palma and La Silla, but none exceed it). Good seeing requires high altitude with the area around being as perfectly flat and uniform as possible for hundreds of kilometers.

For optical telescopes, seeing is the most critical factor for resolving fine details. And this telescope is all about resolving fine details. Adaptive optics help counter seeing problems, but the better your seeing baseline, the better the final result.

You know, I should really learn to google things before I suggest "new" ideas ;)

They mentioned that the flow temperatures recorded in the hot pixels are colder than typical basaltic / rhyolitic flows and were speculating that they didn't catch freshly erupting material, but rather material that had a little time to cool. But I can't help but wonder.... does Venus have carbonatite flows? They're colder, and if there's anything Venus isn't short on, it's carbonic compounds...

(BTW, with those not familiar with carbonatite lava, its really weird stuff - incredibly fast-flowing and smooth (often less viscous than water), erupts looking black or dark gray like oil, doesn't (visibly) glow during the day (just a fast moving black substance), at night it has a weird maroon glow, and it oxidizes to bright white as it ages)

(Just one of many unusual types of volcano :) )

Ahh I think I see the problem, it was giving me the results for the city of Hyde near Manchester, not Hyde Park!

Okay, so according to the site, Dorking or Guildford to London is about an hour by rail during rush hour, 45 minutes during off-peak (15-20 quid each way); while according to Google Maps it's 1-2 hours during rush hour, 60-80 minutes during off-peak.

When I was in the UK, I found a strong inverse correlation between "how close I was to London" and "how polite and friendly people were". I could only verify the rule out to Northern Ireland, but if it continues to hold up, then the people of the Pitcairn Islands have to be the friendliest people on Earth ;)

Victoria shows a much faster time - a bit over one hour and 15.70 quid. Probably because it has only one change (Hyde Park had three) and because I'm searching longer in advance. It's also possible that some routes were sold out at the last search time.

Still over an hour by rail, 1-2 hours by car, during rush hour (I'm searching for departure time 17:30 on a weekday each time - earlier it was today, now I'm searching for Monday)

No, you're right - you're a serf locked into a large city against your will. My mistake.

I love how you called it an "official area of outstanding natural beauty". ;) Are the swans trained to stand in just the right places? ;)

I wasn't even thinking of standing-room only trains, I was picturing being in with a bunch of people sitting down. Yeah, crammed together standing up like a Tokyo subway would be even worse! And you have to "work flexible hours" to be able to avoid that? Geez...

OMG, I just looked up the Surrey Hills, and its literal name as marked on the map is "Surrey Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty". I thought you were just reading off of a brochure or something - that's hilarious!

I just went to a UK rail planner website - http://ojp.nationalrail.co.uk/ - and picked a site downtown at random - Hyde Park (all stations) - and the nearest town I saw to "Surrey Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty" (snicker), which was Guildford (all stations). The cheapest ticket is 89 bloody pounds and takes 4 hours 28 minutes. I then tried to Dorking (all stations) on the other side of SHAONB... same cost, same time.

Okay, so maybe it's absurdly long by rail not but not by car? Google Maps says 1-2 hours each way. Judging from the current traffic report, much of it spent dawdling along in-town.

(BTW, your opinions of "outstanding" are rather different than mine, apparently ;) )

Technically a fjord is a glacier-cut U-shaped valley with the bottom submerged. There are some in Scotland but none that I'm aware of in England.

Since when is London not an oppressive dystopian nightmare?

I don't get why people want to live in cities - I really just don't understand it. For example:

From stations within a few minutes walk of where I live, I can be at Victoria station in less than 20 minutes and London Bridge in less than 25.

By comparison, from my land in 25 minutes I drive past my neighbor's waterfall on the other side of my canyon, past the fjord, down between the mountains and the ocean and into town. You share a ride with little personal space with strangers in an underground tunnel.

I just don't understand why people want that kind of life.

I'm not sure that the people he's meeting are as happy with him as he thinks.

“I meet people around London and they ask ‘when do you go back to San Francisco?’

Sounds to me like a polite way of saying "It's it about time that you get the F* out of our country?"