Limited connectivity weekend!
on April 1, 2012 at 7:53 PM
Sorry for the blackout; I was in a remote location somewhere in rural Missouri, and my parents’ getaway retreat didn’t come with internet installed. It came with neighbors who have an open network, but any serious attempts at surfing seemed to end with lots of 404′s, so I decided to wait until my eventual return.
Not that this helps. Today appears to be some kind of ancient disinformation holiday, so some or all of the following may be untrue. I leave it up to readers to determine which is which, bringing this post into accordance with the spirit of the season, right?
• Minecraft creator “Notch” has unveiled a new sci-fi game, Mars Effect.
• I want to enroll in this guy’s school, just so I can vote for him.
• If only Fallout 3 had included a load of these capsules, they wouldn’t have needed Project: Purity or the GECK.
• Ever wonder what Mass Effect would have looked like as a 1980′s cartoon show?
• The full trailer for the new version of Total Recall can be seen on this page over here. They’ve totally flipped the premise of the Schwarzenegger film. I mean, in this version, it’s Quaid’s wife that has a funny accent.
• And here’s a round-up of all the major website pranks for 2012… or are they?
I wouldn’t drink that water.
The capsule sounds like it’s intended to draw chemically-active heavy metals out of solution. That’s fine, but it doesn’t sound like it’ll do much for the main contaminants of concern (iodine-131 being a good example: highly soluble in water, long enough half life to spread, short enough half life to kill you).
If it did work, you’d also end up with a capsule that contains concentrated radioactive waste. That will be a disposal nightmare paperwork-wise.
Long story short, it doesn’t sound like an april fools article, but it doesn’t sound terribly useful either. As a chelating agent for picking up heavy metal waste cleaning industrial sites, on the other hand, it sounds lovely.
I received an email from tigerdirect.com with this linked item http://www.tigerdirect.com/sectors/campaigns/kube/kubex15.asp?SRCCODE=WEM3063C
I thought the Kube X15 sounds like a wonderful product, but they didn’t list the price on the page. If I have to take a second mortgage out to get one, then it may not be that great a deal.
The “slowpoke-3″ reactor was intended to be pretty much that (installed on-site to heat medium-sized buildings). It didn’t sell.
(These were designed to be low-maintenance and to self-stabilize due to heat expansion of the core. They were certified as being safe enough that you didn’t need a nuclear tech on-site 24/7, unlike most reactor designs.)