Playing Cops & Robots and Touching Faults, Part 2

The other half of last week’s fun was responding to a request from UC and Berkeley Police Departments to assist them with some training for their bomb squad unit. While they’re quite familiar with what to do with explosives, they wanted to get some practice in with radioactive sources just to work on potential “dirty …

SCIENTIFIC DRINKING TOUR 2011 (Updates)

Tickets are officially purchased for upcoming the May and June parts of the 2011 Scientific Drinking Tour plus a new addition in September! This is your opportunity to get direct hand off of either Steins of Science or BBotE while we’re on the road. They more detailed itinerary looks like this: May 12th-17th: Fairbanks, AK We …

Playing Cops & Robots and Touching Faults, Pt. 1

There’s nothing quite like the end of the month, which is always paperwork crunch time, for new and interesting opportunities to crop up. Despite knowing the certain long hours they will demand in make up time, you just can’t…say…no. Two of those happened this week, I got to enter into UC Berkeley’s Lawson Adit (definition: …

Spambot(?) Q&A

As an increasingly infamous denizen of the Internet, I am forced to reckon with the potent evolving AIs that want to give me formidable never-ending erections for the Russian girls that want to talk just to me. Our robot overlords only want what’s best for Herr Direktor Funranium, obviously. Charles Stross had a very good discussion about …

Attacking Befuddled Travelers With Kindness & Stein Tragedy

Wednesday evening I had the pleasure of picking up Test Subjects Brian Clevinger, Scott Wegener, and Scott Wegener’s Beard from San Francisco International Airport.  Both of them had just completed an arduous journey through several of this nation’s finest and most delayed airports. My Lovely Assistant and I felt it appropriate to greet them on …

Buffalo, Hear The Plight of Your Canadian Neighbors

I have an email folder devoted to messages of “Yeah, you weren’t kidding about the 100ml/day thing” but I could start a second one, nearly as large, regarding “Why is it so expensive to ship BBotE to Canada? WE’RE RIGHT ACROSS THE BORDER!!!” There’s normally a bit more swearing in the email than that. The …