News You Can Bruise

Geocaching variant: are there collect-them-all lists of coordinates bound together by a certain shared property? I keep thinking of stupid, unworkable sets like "coordinates of all green things", but you know what I mean (do you?). Like the coordinates to every embassy in a country's capital city, or to one country's embassies worldwide. There is nothing like this on geocaching.com, but that is still a cool site and is where I got the idea. Time for me to go to sleep, or at least stop typing.

With GPS Drawing, you can visualize your wanderings from the air as an elephant, or a lattice of explodingdog-ish geometric shapes. If Conan Doyle were still around, Holmes could locate the jewels right where they appeared when you superimposed over a map of London the Punch cartoon depicting the theft, in an amazing feat of deduction and high-stakes geocaching. Maybe Stephenson will come through with something similar. Link from the abyss means...

Geiger counter watch (from Manoj), would be cool if it cost $50 instead of $1500. Handhelds are in the $240-$330 range, though, so that seems unlikely. What is the Moore's Law curve for Geiger counters?

My dream useless 'convergence' machine would be a combination Geiger counter/GPS system/ham radio. Fearmongering use case used to sell this device: "Help, I'm trapped near an old Soviet test site in Kazakhstan!"

One of the most pressing problems of modern piracy is where to hide the booty. Development and ecotourism mean that even the most isolated beaches will eventually attract visitors. Here's a simple burial technique using equipment any modern pirate ship should already have.

Put the booty into an empty shipping container you have lying around. While en route to your next raid, simply lower the shipping container into Davy Jones' locker and take a note of the GPS coordinates (do this at night to avoid your activity showing up on spy satellites). If your container won't sink, fill unused space with sand, silt, or any other dense material; you can use ballast water if your booty is gold or otherwise waterproof. Years later, you and your shipmates can retrace your steps, raise the barnacle-encrusted container, and claim your prize.

Unsolved problems: are shipping containers watertight enough? What about trawlers?