Comments on: Restricting helium sales to prevent squeaky-voice foolery?

By: Hmmm

Hmmm — Sun, 25 Mar 2012 13:21:19 +0000

There’s something plausible and something just not right in the helium story. If helium were that precious,wouldn’t a speculator simply buy at the “below market” rate and hold. And wouldn’t the presence of those purchases tend to drive up prices now and being a better equilibrium. (if a balloon really holds $100 worth of gas, stockpiling should be very profitable.)

The article reads like a know-it-all telling us that helium is worth more than we think. And we need him to set the price for us.

By: John Burgess

John Burgess — Sat, 17 Mar 2012 14:18:35 +0000

@Bumper: The Hindenburg was floating on Hydrogen gas, which is highly flammable. The US refused to export Helium to Germany at the time, so the German zeppelin had to fall back on the less-desirable Hydrogen to stay in the air. The US government had already mandated that US blimps and zeppelins use the safer, though slightly heavier Helium.

By: Bumper

Bumper — Sat, 17 Mar 2012 03:44:07 +0000

And I just assumed that whole “Oh, the humanity” episode would have exposed helium sufficiently to prelude it ever being allowed in contact with humans again. Where were the helium nannies when we needed them. Just another failure of little government, we clearly need a bigger one.

By: ustus

ustus — Sat, 17 Mar 2012 02:16:53 +0000

Helium is the second most common in the universe after hydrogen. And i thought all my life it’s nontoxic gas. strange…

By: mojo

mojo — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 21:07:45 +0000

“Thinking for yourself” soon to be on the verboten list…

By: wfjag

wfjag — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 20:00:54 +0000

@kimsch: “Tom, there was a study I heard about the other day. Every six seconds !!!11111!!!1 a child goes to hospital to be treated for injuries sustained on stairs. Ban all stairs everywhere!”

The study, further, showed that 1 in 4 of those accidents occurred when a parent or other care taker fell while carrying the child up or down the stairs. Accordingly, if we banned parents, baby-sitters, nannys, au pairs, and all other care takers of infants/young children, a huge number of injuries to those children would be avoided each year.

By: Walter Olson

Walter Olson — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 18:37:03 +0000

And thanks to kimsch for catching a typo in the original post, fixed now.

By: kimsch

kimsch — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 18:35:04 +0000

Tom, there was a study I heard about the other day. Every six seconds !!!11111!!!1 a child goes to hospital to be treated for injuries sustained on stairs. Ban all stairs everywhere!

By: Greg Dwyer

Greg Dwyer — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 16:33:24 +0000

If this happens, I predict a future dearth of Chipmunk cover songs on Youtube

By: Mannie

Mannie — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 15:10:21 +0000

We’d be a lot better off, if we stopped selling this irreplaceable strategic material at bargain basement prices.