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Dr Brad Barlow was nominated by his Astro 001 students for a great honour - whichever class collected the most money for this year's THON would get to designate a lecture style of their choice, and Brad won... so he got to lecture as a character from a "classic christmas movie"[sic] As you can see, he really got into character.
Talking to submarines is a very a tricky business - most communication systems are based on radio or acoustic signals, but neither travel very far in water. This means that to pick up radio signals, submarines must surface or raise communication buoys very close to the surface, neither of which are appropriate for nuclear-powered stealth submarines that remain deep underwater for months at a time. Radio operators can overcome the problem of poor signal penetration by using giant arrays broadcasting in extremely-low frequency ranges, but these are expensive, difficult to build, and…
When I heard the news that day ... Oh boy. I had received an email from a man whom I knew only as the father of a (now former) student. We had met once, a few years ago when his son graduated, and he gave me a very nice bottle of wine, which I shared with a select group of wine experts only last Christmas. The wine had aged well and was outstanding. He gave me the wine as a gift for having "done so much for his son" while he, the son, was an undergraduate student. It was true. I had done a lot for the young man. I had many long conversations with him about lofty sciency concepts, and…