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FIlkertom Interviewed on NToddCast

NTodd, one of the regular commenters at Eschaton, also has a regular podcast, and for today's installment he interviewed me. :) It's pretty much Filk 101 for Mundanes, but we had fun.

Stories in America: Conversations at the Gas Pump

A must read.

Nanotech Breakthrough

This is really cool:

In today's edition of the journal Science, however, scientists from the University of Texas and Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization report the creation of industry-ready sheets of materials made from nanotubes. Nanotubes are tiny carbon tubes with remarkable strength that are only a few times wider than atoms. They can also act as the semiconductors found in modern electronics.

"This is fundamentally a new material," says team leader Ray Baughman of the University of Texas at Dallas in Richardson.

• Self-supporting, transparent and stronger than steel or high-strength plastics, the sheets are flexible and can be heated to emit light.
• A square mile of the thinnest sheets, about 2-millionths-of-an-inch thick, would weigh only about 170 pounds.
• In lab tests, the sheets demonstrated solar cell capabilities, using sunlight to produce electricity.

The team has developed an automated process that produced 2-3/4-inch-wide strips of nanotubes at a rate of about 47 feet per minute. Other methods take much longer to create nanotube sheets.

Happy 85th Birthday, 19th Amendment

You know. The one guaranteeing women the right to vote.

I'd Buy It

FAQ, walkthrough, and cheats for The Legend of Harry Potter and the Final Fantasy: Grand Theft Little Winging. (The author has since changed the title, but I laughed out loud at the original, so I keep it as a tribute.)

John Bahcall Dies

John Bahcall, a leading astrophysicist and one of the driving forces behind the Hubble space telescope, has died at the age of 70.