Posts by George Nacht

NZ bloke's drunken poker bet ends in 99-letter name

I see your Nigel and Stanley

and raise you Chauncey and Gaylord. But what the hell is wrong with Elisabeth?

New exploding whale vid once again shows true porpoise of internet

A bit off topic

but how they were planning to clean the bones, once the knifework is done? I mean, do they have a vat big enough to boil the bones? Or are they going to use REALLY MANY hide beetles to eat away the remaining flesh? Both ways, it would be almost as interesting to watch as explosion itself!

Latest global menace: ELECTROPULSE NORKS, apparently

Re: I have to say that EMP is one of the real assymetical threats that causes me concern

Nigel 11, one little detail. I believe the necessary height for any nuclear EMP being produced is rather bigger, like 500km and up. The EMP itself is produced by electrons, being knocked out from Ionosphere by gama flash, and sent as giant wave of electrons (in other worlds, electric current) through Earth magnetosphere. 50km above Earth is too low. Otherwise you are spot on.

One comment to ComaToes below, I would add, that during first Gulf War I read about US Navy using EMP shells (shot from battleship Missouri, no less) being used to knock out Iraqi coastal radar stations. While I must agree, that real 16inch shell filled with TNt is probably better for these uses as well, I also would not discard the possibility of non nuclear EMP weapons being more that concept.

Air mattress blast blows German man across room

Re: He was only supposed to blow the bloody bed up

You need further reasons to avoid large groups of subathing Germans? You have better nerves than me...

May the fourths be with you: Muso John Williams returns to Star Wars

I concur, however...

You probably means "decent movies". Descent, while many people associate closely with Star Wars lately, has different meaning.

Otherwise, I agree with your sentiment and keep my opinions to myself until i actually see the movie.

Russian cargo ship drops off spacesuit puncture repair kit at the ISS

The CO2 problem interests me

Chazmon touched a interesting question up there. I always wondered, how the life support works on habitats, isolated for longer terms, like space stations and nuclear submarines. I mean, I know how to maintain breathable atmosphere for a few hours, like in minisub or bathyscafe, using common chemicals,but I doubt you can do it for months.

I searched the Internet, but to no avail. Do they have some closed system up there, using plants or algae? Or is there some really smart device, into which you pump electricity and it dismantles CO2 into oxygen and ...carbon, I guess? Can anybody give me a link?

Many thanks in advance.

Burger-rage horse dumps on McDonald's: Rider saddled with fat fine

Never saw Mr.Thomas,

but you do not have to go so far in the past. Richard Hammond, when testing South African Marauder, did very interesting things in drive through (and elsewhere). Pulling the bag through the gun-port was funny, too.

On the other hand, for a love of God I can´t remember whether it was McDonalds or otherwise...

Inventor lobs spherical, throwable camera

I wonder...

I wonder if creators of Thief II: The Metal Age will get at least some credits.

C´mon, Garrett fans, raise your voices!

I told you I'd be back: Arnie set for another career revival

C´mon, think positive

It´s not like he hurts someone with his decision to act in movies, and the movies are easy to avoid, should you decide so. I rather appreciate Arnie as source of inspiration, as I too hope I won´t curl up and wait for death, come my fifties. As long as there are no erotic scenes, mind you…

Off topic, the last jab at Wayne Johnson, alias Rock, was not entirely deserved. The guy was in much better pieces than Mummy Whatever, Be Cool and lately Snitch were pretty watchable movies, and the guy can actually act. Well, better than Arnie anyway…

Germans purge selves of indigestible 63-letter word

Wow

Slavic languages can only silently stare in awe. The best we Czechs did was "nejneobhospodarovavatelnejsi" paltry 28 letters, meaning roughly "least suitable for agriculture".

WW II U-boat attacks prompt new US response

Re: Trivial factoid

Off topic a bit - I believe Norwegians bought the wreck of Tirpitz from German government and turned it into scrap metal decades ago, so I also believe they sorted out the fuel problem at some point. Otherwise, I fully agree with your point.

Soylent Corporation prepares to DEFEAT FOOD

Re: Resources?

Exactly my thought when I read the article for the first time. With the planet going the way it is going, the question is less and less "will we have a perfect food" and more and more "will we have any food at all?".

And, on the other note, yes, apparent lack of fibre in this stuff is fishy at the best.

Life on Mars means subsisting on grim diet of turd-garden spinach

Re: "bit windy today"

I agree wholeheartedly with this, as well as with all the grim notes above - yet let´s look at it from the other side: Maybe a bit a artificial greenhouse effect is what Mars needs to be terraformed, and in such case a little methane gas from cabbage diet can be quite helpful...

Oklahoma woman cuffed with loaded .22 in pork holster

Re: A revolver?

That one spent shell is what bothers me most. Mind swirling in scenarios, one more cringeworthy than the other...

Ask Google this impossible question, get web filth as a reward

Bit of a disappointment...or relief

that the sentence" 1 next to a 4, but not containing 4" is NOT some obscure slang for some weird group action bang....

Now Spanish sperm takes a kick to the cojones

Blame here, blame there...

Whichever mechanism causes such changes, they all can be put under the same label: The planet is pretty fed up with us.

Makes one stop and think, is what I say.

Waiter! There's a phone in my soup

The shape of the bowl...

...reminds me of laboratory mortar, rather than anything kitchenware-related. Will using an iPhone as pestle void the warranty?

Holy classic car auction, Batman! They sold THE Batmobile!

Re: Not the original Batmobile

I bow to your knowledge, hardly anyone heard about 1943 and 1949 serials today.

But I am afraid there was no Batmobile in these series. In 1943, Batman used the same limousine as Bruce Wayne, and in 1949, Batman and Robin were drivin Ford Mercury.

So I believe the one auctioned is the first Batmobile in existence.

And a pretty one it is. Batmobile in Tim Burton´s Batman was impressive, yet at the same time too cartoonish.

And Tumbler is infinitesimally more practical, but not much to look at.

I stand ready to be corrected.

Razzies set to torpedo Rihanna's Battleship

I do not want to sound like

self-righteous old movie nerd with no sense of proportions or humour, but Resident Evil franchise is sort of world on its own, and given the limits of this world, Milla Jovovich is perfect.

And all if or buts aside, David Hasselhoff in Piranha 3DD was nothing short of LOVELY!

Brazilian slammer guards nab mobe-smuggling CAT

Unless...

..the owner will claim that the catnip is for his glaucoma...

North Korea releases first computer game

Speaking of Ryugyong Hotel

I can not access it now, but can someone (less lucky) tell me, whether the Ryugyong Hotel eyesore is actually featured between the "monuments" in the game? I know North Koreans have a habit of photoshopping it out of all Pyongyang postcards, photos, and the tourist guides often pretend it does not exist at all. Did they put it in game?

Yahoo! To! Sell! Home! Gene! Test! Kit! In! Japan!

Send the sample to lab...

...and wait 60 days? Not exactly DIY, as I understand the acronym.

Yes, yes, I realize I can not expect DNA analyzer for home use any time soon, but I just expected something a little more groundbreaking.

And as for my genetic info including predisposition to diseases being on "personalised URL", well.... I will pass on this one, thank you.

Boffins explain research with interpretive dance

Well, I would likely pay a good money

to see Large Hardon Collider explained in interpretative dance...

Royal Society hosts edit-a-thon to get women onto Wikipedia

Am I the only one...

..who read the title as "edit a thong" and was seriously disappointed?

If that joke does not disqualify me from commenting, I´d like to say, that this problem, if indeed it is a problem, seems to be a complex one. If the time needed for my sideburns to go gray taught me anything, then a complex problems do not have simple solutions. And this seems to be an attempt on simple solution.

Now pay attention, 007: James Bond's Q re-booted

I do not know about that Cambridge requirement...

Please, correct me, but isn´t Cambridge a notorious hatchery of double agents?

But "camera with hidden lighter" - priceless!

ScanJet sings number one hit

Anybody remember....

...that golden head from W.Gibson´s Neuromancer, who talked not by synth, but through a set of controlled pipes and such? We are getting there, baby, we are getting there!

Christian footie match ends in almighty brawl

Well, on more "serious" note...

It took place in West Bromwich?

Please, correct me, as I do not have access to proper sources right now, but isn´t West Bromwich the place where Hellboy was summoned to this world as first phase of Nazi project Ragnarok?

No wonder peace, forgivenes and all encompassing love does not abound there!

Global strategic maple syrup reserves hit in Canadian mega-heist

You got it all wrong

Tis was not man´s work, stealing at such large scale. All the syrupy goodness was clearly taken to Heaven, and we here are Left Behind....and without a maple syrup.

ROBOTS battle bunker-buster bank blast blaggers

Re: Does anyone have the ...

Sorry to disappoint - the flour is the fuel here. Any dry organic powder dispersed in the air can explode if ignited, being it flour, sawdust, or coal dust. This is how many mills and sawmills were destroyed by large fires, not to mention coal mines.

Very difficult to do anything useful with it, I am afraid, as it settles down quite fast. (That being said, one of the first internal combustion engines, so called "pyroleofor" was working with a fuel in the form of a powder.)

'Maybe we'll just call them 'Surface-like devices'

I misread it again

Again I read it as "heaviest bosom".

I must scrape together enough courage to ask my mom, how did she fed me....

Sozzled Americans nagged by talking urinal cake

I thought exactly the same

Without built-in alcohol sensor (I would be satisfied with a simple sensor, no need to measure the actual alcohol level) it doesn´t make a sense at all. It will be pretty awkward, being pestered by female voice in men´s room, while sober.

There is a joke in there somewhere.

By the way, how much will the talking component cost above the price of regular cake? Will it also dissolve and be flushed down, or will some poor cleaner have to fish it out, when the cake itself is gone?

PFY vs Bearded 80s Netscape Bore: BOFH

Funny looks from around the office?

and just for sniggering at the monitor?

I actually went "Jesus Maria!" aloud, at the "USB floppy drive".

This was really sneaky, can hardly remove the image from my mind.

Great read indeed!

Super sushi-bot churns out 2,500 rolls an hour

Nauseating?

I read the last two words as "Gungan sushi". Now THAT would be nauseating...

'That's a FUBAR train wreck waiting to happen'

incredibly, HULK is not difficult to smash

Nice.

Just.......nice.

Thank you

WH Smiths tills insist shop sells The Queen's Knickers only

Now I feel really old

I still remember times, when a company would do anything to blame any troubles on "hackers".

Now the situation reverts itself, and company rather claims their own mistake than admits software vulnerability.

Or, of course, it was really their technical mishap and they are simply honest people...

Anything´s possible, I guess.

What does the Titanic's sinking tell us about modern science?

Sorry, just thinking aloud

Ships sunk, sinks and will sunk in the future, collision with each other or with anything solid that does not get pushed aside fast enough being the major cause. In my opinion, year 1912 ship, steaming at 22-24 knots and hitting a large iceberg, is entitled to sinking, technology and materials be damned.

Tragedy of Titanic was never a loss of large steel box with propellers at one end, it was staggering death count. Said tragedy more or less ignited a process which gave us a modern safety standards on ships. And here I always thought:

If the captain really commanded the ship in the last 2 hours, instead giving up and letting the officers without clear orders...

If the officers filled each lifeboat with 85 men, women and children, which was perfectly safe, especially on calm sea, instead of measly 25+...

If the rest of the crew grabbed tools and built a few rafts from whatever wood and barrels were on board...

Maybe the death count would have been much lower at the end. And maybe, the safety enhancing process would be slowed and we got a safe ships much later, after some even worse tragedy....

I really do not know how to finish the note, sorry.

With this ring, I thee frag

Congrats to the happy couple.

Really.

My ex-girlfriend gave me elaborate instruction on how, where and WHEN am I to propose her.

All the way down to type of flowers and how big tip should I give to the waiter to bring them to table at exactly the right moment.

Sad thing is, we broke up for completely different reasons....

So, what IS the worst film ever made?

Re: every

No, I am not American. And I really did not expected such an outrage, meaning, I did not expected to gain attention of and insult so much fellow commenters.Please, let me apologize, you are right, the new I.J. is not really a remake, and I should not have been such a ... well... my English is not up to correct word in this case.

I am very well aware of the cult status of original Italian Job, and I love M.Caine all the way from "Zulu" to "Dark Knight".

It is too late to remove my comment, so please consider me thoroughly corrected now.

Re: every

OK, I´ll bite. The new Italian Job was way better than the confusing original. And no, I am not a troll. I love heist caper movies, in a sense that I want to see a handful of likable characters overcoming the odds. In the original I was treated to an army of anonymous,disposable thugs, that looked like they could pick up the armored car and simply carry it away. Michael Caine was simply a jerk in it. And do not get me started about the sickening ending...

OK, this is about the vote for the worst movie.... Well, Pearl Harbor comes to mind very fast.

STUNNING NEW APPLE DEVICES that will follow the iPad 3 HD!

Re: Well actually............

Precisely. That´s why telling the truth to monarchs was always a job (and privilege) of jesters.

Giant stick insect saved from extinction

Tree lobster...

...and everyone here resisted temptation to make some reference to tree octopus.

I am proud of my fellow commenters.

On another note, it is refreshing to hear about saved species for once. No chance of finding a pair of Queensland wolves somewhere? After all, they are pronounced extincs only since 1937.

Nepal asks for a leg-up to nail Everest's height

Right on money, sir

Himalaya´s height is indeed pretty unstable, but I do not mean the snow. Himalaya has risen, when the then-separatedly moving India crashed head on with pra-Asia. The movement continues to this day and so, the Himalaya is still growing. We have multiple evidence of this, some of it quite interesting. For example, the camel caravans used to walk through some of the himalayans passes. Today the same passes are, ehm, passable only with ice-picks and crampons. Forgive my English.

So, to me it is not much about who was right during last measuring, but rather how much the Everest grew since Mallory/Irvine´s days...

Daniel Craig like Connery, Skyfall helmsman suggests

Looking for conflict where there is none?

No point in arguing who was the best/only true Bond. The character of Bond was molded over generations by several actors, of which each one added something to the final image.

Connery created the new, unusual kind of hero, and would he done nothing else in his career, I would love him still.

George Lazenby contributed a fact, that even Bond must be played by real actor. Also, kilt.

Roger Moore gave Bond something invaluable: A humor.

Timothy Dalton turned the spy into action hero.

Pierce Brosnan actually made him more believable, by openly admiting how he enjoys being a bit of an asshole. Also, he is a good actor, his accent or whatever be damned.

And Daniel Craig gave us, so far, a perfect presentation of the origin story. He is a very good Bond, standing on shoulders of several previous good Bonds. I am lookng forward Skyfall, I really do. And stupid gadgets and mood-killing oneliners can be unplugged from life suport, as they should be twenty years ago, thank you very much.

Japan enlists foreign bloggers to revive tsunami-hit tourist biz

I apologize to D.A.Monsters...

...but was the sentence above some kind of slogan? If so, I can propose a few more:

"Come for vacation, stay for rescue attempt!"

"You will glow with happines the next day!"

No, I do not find it actually funny. I really stick up for Japan to crawl back up from the pit they did not dug themselves, however, I do not know any easy, fast and working recipe. And dare I say, nobody does.

Android users more likely to put out

Sex on first date, well...

I am sure a dozen people before me already said it, but is there an app to discern those "more slutty" from "more braggy"?

Stab victim protected by Bulgarian airbag

Titties and safety go together way back

I believe older Reg readers must be familiar with term "mae vest" , referring to blow up lifejacket, worn by sailors during WWII, which made them look (remotely) a bit like the famous actress Mae West.

Very remotely, I hope.

Pope praises Twitter and your 'profound' tweets

Do not take me for troll, please

But does the question "is Hell exothermic or endothermic" even make sense (assuming Hell exist) ?

I was always under impression that only reaction or process can be "exothermic" or "endothermic". Hell is not a process, Hell is a place. At least girls alway tell me to "go to Hell", not to "Participate in Hell".

I fully admit that this would make for a very, very lame answer for the above mentioned bonus question.

The fact that this question was asked by Professor of engineering, make me very uneasy. Either there is something wrong with this university, or, indeed, I have huge holes in my own education.

Apple wants to OWN YOUR VERY SOLE

As my very German old friend said,

..while being drunk and relaxed:

"Well, we in Stasi used to stuff people´s homes and cars with bugs, but we never asked people to pay for it!"

'My product is driPhone, not iPhone'

We are Aplle...

...for we are ..

(deep intake of breath)

...MANYYYYYY!

Google execs eye NASA's Hangar One to park their air fleet

No brainer

It needs renovation funds, it is, at the end of the day, a hangar, and they want to park airplanes inside. I say go ahead. It is not like they want to tear it down a build a parking lot there instead.