Interesting Links for July 12, 2010

Posted by base10 on July 12, 2010 under Geek Talk | Be the First to Comment

1. Price shocks waiting as US abandons helium business

John Timmer in Ars Technica:

The light weight of a helium atom, which makes it perfect for party balloons and blimps, is also the key to its scarcity. The Earth simply doesn’t exert enough gravitational force to keep it on the planet. Once in the atmosphere, helium will migrate to the stratosphere and be lost to space. All the primordial helium in the Earth’s vicinity when it formed is long since gone, and only flukes of geology have given us the opportunity to study it on Earth

2. Flickr Blog: Photos of Military Decay

My friend Marc has three sets of photos, too, of the former Mather AFB in Sacramento, Calif., where my father was stationed a long time ago.

3. Swap Idea Emerged Early in Case of Russia Agents

Peter Baker, Charlie Savage and Benjamin Weiser in the New York Times

On a Friday afternoon in mid-June, President Obama sat down with advisers in the Oval Office and learned that the F.B.I. planned to round up the largest ring of Russian sleeper agents since the cold war. After discussion about what the agents had done, the conversation turned to the fallout: what to do after the arrests?

In that moment was born a back-to-the-future plan that would play out four weeks later, a prisoner exchange with surreal and even cinematic overtones as Russian and American airplanes met on a sunny tarmac in the heart of Europe on Friday to trade agents and spies much as had been done during a more hostile era.

4. Ride the Trans Siberian, via YouTube

It’s a map and video of the Trans Siberian from Moscow to Vladivostok. I watched the first seven minute segment leaving Moscow. One of the audio options is listening to War and Peace, in Russian, in it’s entirety. Pretty neat. (via Hacker News)