Beluuuuuuuuga.

Hear hear.

Well the problem is, a lot of people fat-finger the bulb and touch the bell as they're striking, which does muffle the sound. What you are supposed to do is move the striker a centimeter or so away from the bell and use your index and middle fingers from behind the striker and act like you're clicking a mouse with…

I used to ride down hills in one of those things - they are spectacularly unstable above about 30mph.

You see this Yeoman holding the ship's bell? She's doing it wrong as well, which is pretty sad as that's the first result for a google image search of "ship's bell". She is holding the tassel, AKA the tail, not the striker. The striker is the bulbous part that actually does the hitting of the bell. You're supposed to…

I'm totally sending a pair of these to my super-duper-wine-snob parents for Christmas.

Neat clock! As a guy who's spent plenty of time striking Naval bells on quaterdecks (done my fair share as the POOW), your article needs correcting - the bell is struck at the top and bottom of every hour - ergo, every 30 minutes, not 15.

Include a Lb to Kg chart in it somewhere and it's perfect.

F*** BABE WHY DID YOU TURN!?

25 Gigawatts, eh? That's pretty much more than the combined output for every power plant... on the planet. I should think that if that were true, it would probably be bigger news than its blade span.

"Sort of funny how a basic 1960s design (with roots in the 1950s) is still going."

"If you ask Israel, Iron Dome is knocking down nearly 90% of the rockets Hamas flings at it—which is majorly impressive, if accurate. But it could be inaccurate."

The US used to do precisely that in Iraq - it has a system called C-RAM that works very well, and it used to feed launch locations to artillery positions and UAVs/Apaches. You launch a mortar, then 10 seconds later you die.

Oh I understand perfectly. But.

Oppo Gangnam Style.

If you think that was a cool story, you should buy and read "Skunk Works" by Ben Rich. He's the guy that took over the famed Lockheed division named in the book after Clarence "Kelly" Johnson died.

Yeah, the reason for that is that the U2 is pretty much always on a razor's edge between flying and fireball, and that includes the landing phase. You may have noticed its lack of outboard landing gear, which is the main reason for the car. The pilots in the chase car are in radio contact with the pilot in the plane…

Sadly, only fully-qualified U-2 pilots are allowed in the chase car. But, you can go for U-2 pilot and fly one of the neatest planes around!

I would simply point out that a FrankenStrom would be far, far worse than this Frankenstorm.

What Huddy said - any insurance you buy specifically does not cover damage to the roof from running into bridges, under trees, etc. It's something a lot of people neglect to read.