Slashdot Mirror

the closest thing to reportage here is links to a blog and also a graph of some sort i honestly don't have time to bother figuring out.

The graph is showing that every available temperature data set, whether it be it from USA or UK, land or satellite, and even those by skeptics - all show the same thing. Temperature is warming by about 0.2C/decade. The later period is warmer than the former. The climate modeler had greater insights into the mechanisms that affect global mean temperature than the solar physicists. The winner is clear.

For more authoritative reportage, you can read this nature article from when the bet was made, this New Scientist's article on Five scientific theories decided by wager, or this Russian article on why the losers welched, even though they lost.

PS. Since when Trayvon Martin is considered "a man who is an expert in all things physical"?

Since GZ almost got killed by TM, an unarmed man. Perhaps TM was not an expert on Olympic scale, but he was expert enough for GZ - and that's all that matters. After all, TM was a trained athlete (a football player,) and GZ would be unable to defend himself against a mouse, short of shooting it :-) The great equalizer was invented exactly for those reasons.

I didn't comment on your assertion that a trained fighter will be unable to disarm or disable an opponent armed with a makeshift weapon. That assertion is not very easy to prove. I am not an expert in martial arts, but I read some training materials out of curiosity. These materials clearly describe those scenarios - and in many cases there are actions that you, as a trained fighter, can take to do what you need. One of them is running away, of course; that is strongly recommended if you are unarmed against an opponent with an edged weapon or a gun. What we see in movies is not reality. But there are many other situations and recommendations for them. Do you think that if you in an open confrontation pick up a random stick and take a swing at Bruce Lee you will take him down? Just a week or two ago there was a news article about a martial arts expert who killed another man who pulled a gun on him. His skills certainly didn't fail him when it mattered.

And only once failed. In 1972 in Kharkov region failed to block the emergency gas blowout. The explosion was mysteriously left on the surface, forming a mushroom cloud. Although the charge was minimal - just a 4 kiloton. And laid deep - for more than two kilometers.

Could somebody who reads Russian please check the original text from the Komsomolskaya Pravda?

Translation starting from first paragraph:
                It's obvious that unsuccessful attempts at trying to stop the oil leak from the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico will make specialists go to extremes. [One solution]: to explode an atomic bomb next to the source of the leak. It sounds horrible and unbelievable, like some idiotic joke. But in reality there were several times when such methods were used to fight similar catastrophes. In the fomer Soviet Union - five times. When nothing else helped. Like in the Gulf of Mexico, where oil is seeping from three spots.
                The first time it was used to extinguish an underground natural gas leak in Urta-Bulak (80 km from Bukhara [capital of Bukhara province in Uzbekistan]) on the 30th of September, 1966. The explosion had the force of 30 kilotons. For comparison the explosion at Hiroshima had a yield of 20 kilotons. Except at a height of 600 metres. And under Bukhara, at a depth of half a kilometer.
                The idea is simple: the underground explosion compresses the ground and and closes the leak.
                Powerful atomic "plugs" - like 3 Hiroshimas - were used here until 1979. And only once without success. In 1972, in Kharkov province, covering a catastrophic gas fountain didn't work. Even though the yield was minimal - just 4 kilotons. And put deep - a little over 2 kilometres down.
                So, the likelihood of failure in the Gulf of Mexico is 20%. The Americans could risk it. The chances of dying during the flight to the moon were higher. Granted, we used the atom bomb on dry land, while the Americans will need to do it underwater, in the ocean, where the depth reaches 1500 metres. But there is no principal difference, the leak still needs to be stopped far from the actual source. The bomb must be lowered there, like in the movie Armageddon with Bruce Ulis [not well translated]. Granted, the explosion must be done properly. Yet the United States has many experts and powerful computers. Maybe Russia could help - it still has experts on peaceful use of atomic bombs.

After the two pictures:
              The Soviet Union performed underground nuclear explosions for peaceful purposes in the period between 1966 and 1988. Overall, the total number of atomic bombs used in the territory of the former Soviet Union equaled over 100 bombs. Some estimates have the number at 124, others - at 169. And this does not include army use of atomic weapons.
              Officially, the explosions were done in the name of national interests. They were used mostly for explorations of valuable materials [and something else]. They created underground caverns for gas storage, dug canals, and other things. And they weren't thought to be dangerous, although to be sure, 100 atomic bombs would never be used in every atomic war.
              Peaceful uses of atomic bombs were done in the United States too, which started such activities in 1962. Yet there weren't nearly as many uses for the capitalist interests, even though the plans were far more grandiose.

Could somebody who reads Russian please check the original text from the Komsomolskaya Pravda?

Word is he made enough money while in the United States to retire for good, before he returned home.

He doesn't looks like a man well off. It's more likely that as former a Soviet citizen he can live economically, off the scarce amount of money.
photo in the train
photo on the street

Word is he made enough money while in the United States to retire for good, before he returned home.

He doesn't looks like a man well off. It's more likely that as former a Soviet citizen he can live economically, off the scarce amount of money.
photo in the train
photo on the street