Think about a bubble of air, exhaled by a diver deep under the ocean. It is compressed by the pressure of the water around it. It starts out small. All the oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide molecules are close together. But as it rises, the pressure lessens. The bubble gets bigger, and as it does so, the space between individual molecules increases. Nothing fills those spaces between the molecules, it just gets bigger. But the distance between atoms in those molecules does not change.

Our universe is a sort of bubble of space-time, expanding into a higher-dimensional space or a quantum vacuum. Like the atoms in our air molecules, local distances stay the same. But looking further away, we can see that things far away always get further away, wherever we look. This is the expansion of the universe.

Unlike a bubble under water, our universe does not have a edge that can be detected from within it. No matter where you look, it all looks the same. Space-time might be a closed sphere, so that if you travelled in a straight line, you would end up where you started. It could be a torus (like a donut) where you might travel in a straight line and never return to where you started. There are many other curved options for our universe. Some are closed and some are not. We don't know, and we may never know.

I never figured out how Captain Haddock didn't suffer from thiamine deficiency, cirrhosis, ascites, portal hypertension or seizures while also suffering from his regular bouts of delirium tremens.

It didn't help. Hera kept taking potshots at Heracles. She eventually made Heracles mad, and he slaughtered his wife Megara and their three sons.

Because of that sort of logic, they ended up with the Pharaoh having a public wank into the Nile to make the crops grow.*

• Apparently not true, according to a quick Google.

I'd let you watch, I would invite you

But the queens we use would not excite you

Particularly one that was remade about a decade ago with Gillian Anderson as Miss Havisham.

The Tiger Who Came For A Pint, maybe?

Because to make cement for concrete, you heat calcium carbonate (limestone) to drive off carbon dioxide to make lime (calcuim oxide). This process is energy intensive, requiring quarrying equipment, crushers, heating, cooling and grinding, as well as emitting vast amounts of carbon dioxide as waste product.

Share buybacks can be used for various purposes, and some of those purposes have more of an impact than others.

First - a company may buy back shares to replenish their employee stock remuneration pool. The total number of shares does not change, the value of the shares does not change significantly, and the employees eventually gain that benefit through share issues and discounted stock purchases. This is a valid and important way of cycling some of the companies cash-flow back to employees who gain stock benefits.

Second - a company may buy back shares to replenish or increase their management stock remuneration pool. This may or may not be positive for the company if this is used solely as a way to transfer company liquidity (cash) into the hands of management. This may also change the balance of control in the company from external investors to company management.

Third - a company may buy back stock and cancel the repurchased shares. This increases the value of the existing shares by the proportion of shares cancelled. Lets say the company has 50 million 1$ shares, and buys back 25 million shares and cancels them. The company has spent $25 million dollars, but the value of the remaining 25 million individual shares has increased significantly. They may not have doubled in value (due to the spent capital), but if the company is solid then that value will increase. This is seen as a quick way to again convert company cash into value for significant shareholders (both external investors and management). This approach may also be used to boost value of shares when the company is failing, allowing those in the know to cash out.

As you can see, only one of these approaches benefits company employees, and they do benefit management with significant stock holdings. The cash used for stock buybacks is no longer available for dividends to be paid to external investors - those investors must give up their investment to get a return. I addition, if the company only has significant liquidity due to support that has been provided for pandemic and other economic relief, then that cash being used to benefit management and investors as opposed to employees should be a cause for concern.

First, pure alcohol (ethanol) is tasteless. However, the process of making and distilling alcohol includes congeners - other chemicals that are the result of the fermentation process and then selected (and in some cases modified) during distillation.

The congeners depend on the raw material (cane sugar, beet syrup, barley, malted barley, grain, corn, or potato) and the yeast strain that feeds on the sugars to produce alcohol.

Distillation then extracts the alcohol from the water in the ferment. Along with the alcohol comes the methanol (the heads and tails, which are discarded), some water, and some of the congeners. The heat of distillation also chemically modifies the congeners.

The temperature, type and material of the distillation still further modifies the congeners - copper stills react with and remove sulphur-containing congeners, for example. Modern column and vacuum stills can have very selective distillation. Cycling the distillate through multiple distillation and filtering stages allows for highly selective congener selection and end-product.

However, better source sugars, distillation stills and multiple distillation stages result in more loss and wastage. This is expensive. So cheap spirits use cheaper raw materials and cheaper distillation methods, and their products have more congeners that generally result in a harsher taste. Better starting materials and distillation/filtering smooths out those congeners for a better raw spirit.

Then comes the flavouring process (for gins) or cask aging (for bourbons and whisky/whiskey), which have been discussed by others. Again - more expensive starting materials at this stage produce better results. Proper barrels vs wood chips, burnt casks vs charcoal filters, more cheap vs fewer expensive botanicals - it all adds up to better flavour in the end result.

However, as also pointed out, selection should be based on blind tasting and not on price alone - the human brain is hard-wired to appreciate more expensive tastes.

It is actually tethered to a counterweight that is beyond geosynchronous orbit. The center of mass of the entire elevator system is at about geosynchronous orbit level.

In Arthur C Clarke's The Fountains Of Paradise, a space construction engineer dies after stepping off the counterweight, because it is not in orbit. If you step off something in orbit, you stay in the same orbit and rescue is trivial. If you are not in a stable orbit, you are going to have a completely different trajectory that will either end up hitting atmosphere or escaping (depending on the non-orbit you start from).

Damn right I am enjoying Rogue Heroes

I knew a lad who was in the Royal Navy as a weapons specialist. He got to sink a cocaine-smuggling boat apprehended in the Caribbean by his ship. The video was great fun.

NB: the boat was empty when it was sunk. No drug smugglers were harmed during the sinking.

The vagus nerve is responsible for many autonomic functions, and runs from the brain stem to the colon. Digital rectal stimulation of the vagus nerve has been used to resolve intractable hiccups.

My theory (and I am not a doctor) is that inserting a bellows/pipe stem and introducing air into the rectum can stimulate the vagus nerve, which in some cases was sufficient to trigger a gasping/coughing/breathing response.

It almost certainly failed in many cases, as well ...

And my invention thrive, Edmund the base. Shall top the legitimate.

I grow; I prosper: Now, gods, stand up for baskets*!*

William Shakespeare, writing for the BBC