Word: amateurisms
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...plutonium or the uranium. Either material will do the job. But since much of the nuclear stuff offered for sale is bogus, a smart buyer would need access to a no-questions-asked research lab, perhaps in a place like Iran, to test the material. An amateur would use about 18 lbs. of 94% plutonium-239 or 55 lbs. of uranium to make a Hiroshima-strength bomb. Then you have to detonate it. The basic principles of bomb technology are available to anyone who knows where to look up the information, but actually constructing one is not quite that simple...
There was jubilation in conservation circles last month when a newly formed U.S. Park Service antipoaching unit pulled off a classic sting operation, arresting 27 citizens from Texas to Florida in the biggest poaching bust in Park Service history. The feds posed as amateur herpetologists and would-be buyers; the crime ring's alleged kingpin, who regularly carried a semiautomatic pistol, gave up without a fight. The Park Service carried out the operation for only...
...amateur astronomers are still peering intently through their backyard telescopes to get a glimpse of the bruises that Shoemaker-Levy 9 left on Jupiter -- the most prominent features ever seen on the giant planet -- and others are thronging to observatories and planetariums to see what all the fuss was about. Scientists who last week barely had time to sleep, let alone think, are finally turning their attention away from spectacular pictures and starting the long, difficult process of seeing what they can learn from the great comet crash of 1994. Says Keith Noll, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science...
...Amateur astronomer David Levy, who with Eugene and Carolyn Shoemaker discovered S-L 9, points out that comets were originally distinguished by their appearance. They are objects that look like fuzzy stars with tails, and in any previous century astronomers would have called this discovery a comet. On that basis, argues Levy, "S-L 9 is a comet, period...
...California husband and wife were found guilty in federal court of transmitting obscenities through an Internet computer bulletin board in Memphis, Tenn. "This case would never have gone to trial in California," said Richard Williams, defense attorney for Robert and Carleen Thomas, who founded the Amateur Action Bulletin Board System from Milpitas, Calif. He may be right, since the case was built on the issue of whether the sexually explicit material violated "community standards." The couple plan to appeal, and the case could make it to the Supreme Court...