After Philo seemed to recover from some of the business woes around the 30s and WW2, and worked on many inventions in the 50s after his company was bought out, he was also one of the early pioneers in fusion work and developed the Farnsworth fusor. Through the late 60s, trying to push forward on this project ran him into all sorts of financial problems and kind of drove him back into depression as he dumped everything he could into it. Although I am not sure of the exact timing of things, as I don't think it was the first (ZETA was producing neutrons in 1957, earlier designs and stellerators were around before that in the 50s, and Farnsworth's earliest patents was in 1966, although he already was in trouble from his employer for spending money on it earlier). The design is still used today as a neutron source, although unfortunately doesn't seem likely as a source of fusion power. But refinements of the design are at least simple enough to be built by high school students today.

Also, there is a reason the professor on Futurama is named Prof. Farnsworth...

With gas it is easy enough to add other flavors by putting a small tray of moist wood chips below the grill. You can get the best of both worlds in the cases where it matters, although some times it won't make much of a difference. And if you actually want flavors from wood, you should use actual wood, not charcoal. Depending on what type of charcoal you have, it could be just carbon and ash, or might have a bit of saw dust mixed in to make it easier to light. Even in the latter case, the amount of wood compounds it is going to give off is going to be pretty minimal compared to a handful of actual wood, as otherwise, the point of charcoal is that the volatile compounds have been removed or broken down.

Arguing the wood compounds in charcoal add a lot to the flavor seems to me like someone arguing grain alcohol is better than water because it has some traces of the grain left, but ignoring whiskey.

Surprised it didn't make any mention of how the women tried to stop men from being aggressors in one of the visits by T. N. Pandit's group:

"Quite a few discarded their weapons and gestured to us to throw the fish. The women came out of the shade to watch our antics... A few men came and picked up the fish. They appeared to be gratified, but there did not seem to be much softening to their hostile attitude... They all began shouting some incomprehensible words. We shouted back and gestured to indicate that we wanted to be friends. The tension did not ease. At this moment, a strange thing happened — a woman paired off with a warrior and sat on the sand in a passionate embrace. This act was being repeated by other women, each claiming a warrior for herself, a sort of community mating, as it were. Thus did the militant group diminish. This continued for quite some time and when the tempo of this frenzied dance of desire abated, the couples retired into the shade of the jungle. However, some warriors were still on guard. We got close to the shore and threw some more fish which were immediately retrieved by a few youngsters. It was well past noon and we headed back to the ship..."

There is a lot to be said about some of the other tribes on near by islands that are colonized. They have a mix of isolationism, but want their kids to use hospitals and schools on the island. And the government has been cracking down on "human safaris" by tourist groups at near by resorts.

A couple things:

For a long time, I've not seen any difference in price between portabello and button mushrooms for the same size. The only difference is that the portabellos come in a much larger size that cost more. So I am not sure if that the fact they different stages of the same mushroom matters much (and there are a lot of other veggies that are different variations of the same plant or species).

Meat glue never seemed like a big deal to me, as it is an enzyme that occurs already in the human body and not much is needed for typical uses. The most common uses are to maximize use of scrap material and to achieve consistency in products otherwise not possible. But there are a lot of creative uses for it, to make forms, textures, and foods not otherwise possible, like noodles that are actually made from shrimp, or combining two different meats in a way that the textures, moisture and fat components complement each other. You can get the stuff for experimenting at home, although in the past the issue was with bulk orders that would go bad way before you could use it, some specialty places now are offering it in much smaller quantities.

And there are many studies on wine, but sometimes the details can make a huge difference. A lot of them are not necessarily showing we can't tell the difference between types of wine, but that we are easily mislead by external influences. And I'm not sure if I would say people getting the expensive wines mixed up 50% of the time is the same as guess, as it may depend on if the same people are getting it right and the same ones are getting wrong multiple times, as they may just have a misconception about what is supposed to make a wine more expensive (I haven't been able to find more details with a small amount of searching for an actual paper for that one). There are a lot of reasons to be skeptical of the snobbery and costs of things related to wine, although I think some people will go way too far the other way and end up misrepresenting results that are somewhere more in the middle.

Neat uses if you have a few too many around. But based on the experience of previous times family members needed crutches, in many cases it was better to have a set already on hand than trying to suddenly find some at an odd hour or get to a doctor's office without some beforehand. Unless you are short on storage, crutches seem like a good thing to have on hand.

That doesn't look like a two-person costume, that looks like a one person costume with some sort of extension on the arms to make them similar length to the legs. It would be just like the Toothless costume you showed not too long ago.

When I got married, there were a few people who helped covered the tab at dinners before and after, and a couple that gave more elaborate presents, but in the end, the presents that made the biggest difference and went the furthers were the simple staples. We were trying to start a family, not furnish a vacation home. If you are fortunate enough to not need or appreciate any help with basics, even snack food, then you can probably just relax and enjoy the celebration, which is what I thought the point of such things was supposed to be.

I'm not a fan of calling that creme brulee. It is not so much that I am a purist about food, just more a fan of calling things by what they are. I.e. you can like whatever you like, and something might taste good, just don't label it as something it is not.

That said, vanilla pudding does make a reasonable substitute for creme brulee, especially if you are going to be serving it with something else. Quite a few restaurants use vanilla pudding instead, although maybe a step up from pudding cups. It gets the job done, and in some cases customers have remarked they like that version better (you never know how many noticed it wasn't normal and didn't say anything...). Although you can learn a lot by making the actual custard by one of several methods, and the science behind custards is at least slightly interesting...

And don't go buying one of those $40+ creme brulee torches from a kitchen store, get a $10-15 propane torch at a hardware store. Unless you are going to try to draw detailed images with the burned sugar, the larger, cheaper propane torch is faster and seems to do a better job anyway.