Comment Re:I have a crazy idea! (Score 2) 228
To be fair, I often laugh before the punchline while watching TBBT myself; it's because the setup writes the punchline and some of us get there a bit faster.
The adage you're looking for is: "It's always easier to apologise than to ask permission."
If noone catches you for not asking permission, then you're free and clear; but if someone does catch you, it's a second opportunity to look good and you've saved all the time from asking permission for all the times you weren't caught.
Not only urine, but mere sweat contains uric acid and so the jeans must have developed that distinctive ammonia based "stale urine" scent.
Urine being sterile or not, still stinks. And old urine stinks more.
...When they were scrabbling to find exoplanets one at a time?
I'll say it again: we live in interesting times.
See now, that's one use I never thought of...
And Daniel Staal's idea (http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1957378&cid=34930046) of this leading to a closed resource loop really makes this hard core sci-fi stuff.
So this could potentially lead to colonising Mars or other planets
I'm glad there are others out there who understand the question: "of what use is a baby"?
I'm usually one for going to the source rather than a third party, but the Wikipedia article includes a link to the RFC fairly early on, and has a lot of additional information that was quite enlightening. (For instance, the link to "Victorian Internet" in the see also links.)
I think it was a good thing that the Wikipedia article was linked.
About the only bad thing about going to Wikipedia first was that you got the joke explained to you before you got a chance to experience the ah-ha moment (if you didn't already know what IPoAC was).
The summary covers a lot of it, but this is pretty fascinating (if it reaches production): something that can be added to the exhaust of a fossil fuel power generation station that reduces the carbon footprint and provides fuel to use in either that or other processes in addition to supplying oxygen for other processes. All it really takes is concentrated sunlight for an energy source.
I'd be interested to see in a few years what other uses are figured out for it.
We live in interesting times...
However, for the heat engine pole encircling tube thing to work, it doesn't matter which 'side' of the moon is dark or at what time. It's a continuous loop.
Of course, would it be worth it considering the scale of creating a tube large enough to encircle the pole of a small planetoid?
There are two ways to write error-free programs; only the third one works.
