Gilded

"sky news reporting upto 23,500 dead" And there are regions where only rough, probably below the real amount estimates have been made. I read somewhere that this destructive quake-caused tsunamis happen like once in 700 years, that's one of the reasons they didn't have a "warning network" that would've saved a lot of lives.

Well I'll be damned if I get crushed by a 75 000 000 ton meteorite on my birthday! (

"Putting something in block capitals is not a substitute for explaining how it works." Lol. :> That should be included in the "read this before you post" section. )

"my friend couldn't get me gallium from the lab where she works :(" If I ever visit NY I'll give you some if you don't get any by then. ) Now then, what did I get? Btw, we Finns get the presents during the 24th, so a day earlier than you guy. Mwah. - A really cool and big periodic table poster - Guinness World Records 2005 - (I'm getting to borrow a freaking mega-expensive Geiger-counter, which is sort of a X-mas present) - The Half-Life 2 accessories that came earlier, which my dad hid from me and kept them until the 24th >:/ (Including HL2 soundtrack I'm listening to right now, a HL2 hat, three posters and so on) - Miscellaneous more or less necessary stuff

It's just that I can't see a scientifical reason for it. Perhaps if the roofing's made of lead or lead alloy it would absorb more cosmic rays that would turn the lead atoms into unstable isotopes... But I still don't think it would measure over background levels if measured with a standard radiation monitor.

"but overly expensive from most sources" I'd say the 20 bucks for 1g they got at UN is a bit over the the top. The 12$ for a 1g pearl or 25$ for a 5g pearl that they got at Metallium Inc. is starting to sound pretty good though.

You've got a point there Luke (btw, why do you use the nick of a Norwegian CS progamer? ) If a couple of proteins are found that are tied together in a way that the structure accumulates some kind of smaller proteins to grow, I hope they're not going to call it an organism.

"consider it an Enlightened Dictatorship. life will be so much less complicated for you :)" That sounds like something Stalin said!

Hmmh. I'm not going to believe the roofing-thing until I see it myself. Hope I don't fall of the roof and break my neck, or even worse, break the expensive counter.

You've probably been using crappy monitoring equipment. Of course, the roofing is attacked by cosmic radiation but not in the amounts that it would differ too much from the background.

A tragedy indeed. And it's not only the locals that are suffering, there are even thousands of Finnish tourists (and probably plenty more from other countries) there having a holiday.

Hmmh. First FinReactor and now SuprNova. Especially Finnish Torrent-users are having a hard time. :/

I wonder if a silver target is the best way to actually see the outcome of the bombardment at some point.

"The magnetic field takes about 7,000 years to reverse polarity, so we don't have to worry about it instantly changing in 2012." You know, as dull as a 15min presentation about "lake mud" might sound, it was rather interesting to hear that in the lakes, the magnetic mineral particles orientate according to the magnetic pole, and then get caught in the mud. Examining this mud let's the scientist know where the magnetic pole was back in, let's say, 10 000 years ago. And it indeed has changed place quite a bit.

"or a mobile phone" You know, a Geiger-Müller tube detects only ionizing radiation, and as far as I'm aware, mobile phones produce merely electromagnetic radiation. And with the roofing, do you mean technetium plating as it is used in some cases to provide protection against corrosion?

It's quite unlikely that some dust devils happen to swipe the rovers clean. And ExtraSense is probably jumping with joy right now. )

Beryllium is easy to get. The only thing that provides a challenge is pure polonium metal. Melt some beryllium and polonium together and you got yourself one serious neutron source.

This sounds quite odd. But hey, sillier things have worked in the past.

Now that I noticed this, all I have to say that after people made plush Cthulhus, why, why did they have to ruin even microbes' dignity too?!

Huh? Again?! (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6413598/) This is getting really, really weird.

Rofl. Have fun trying it. )

"As far as I know, you can't." What? Even the mods can't? Or did you just mean the "small people" ? ) I thought the only thing mods can't do is stuff like heating a burrito so hot that they could not eat it.

"you could measure your avatar and some reindeer!" Heh. It's a bugger though how reindeers STILL receive quite high Cs-137 levels from lichen due to Chernobyl and the Soviet nuclear experiments. :/ That's probably what causes Rudolf's nose to glow.

"they said it pompously as if to say that their chlorine dioxide data was acceptable for all chlorine dioxide" Oh I see. I must agree that Merck index is one damn good source for this kind of information, sadly I don't have access to it myself (though I'll probably buy it when and if I get the sufficient money out of somewhere ).

"actually, if i ever can make a neutron gun i'll try nucleosynthesizing some wp out of 2 micron al" You mean powder? Thin target plates (even nanoplates) are usually the best for this kind of experiments.