The F-117 Nighthawk stealth fighter is being officially retired. The main reason is to free up funds for other aircraft, in particular the F-22 Raptor that's replacing the F-117.

This isn't a bad thing. Despite it's name, the F-117 isn't a fighter. It's aerodynamics don't permit it to do dogfighting or otherwise keep up with a modern fighter. The F-22 can carry as large a tactical bomb load, has more modern avionics and better stealth characteristics, and can perform as a fighter as well as a light tactical bomber.

My apartment building's put in blue recycling bins. But they're not nearly as useful as they should be. Look at some of the restrictions:

• No cans that've been in contact with food products. OK, that right there eliminates 90% of the cans I throw away.
• No glass. Most of the drinks I buy are in glass bottles, so none of that can go.
• No milk bottles. OK, that's the majority of the plastic bottles.

So what's left? The occasional plastic soda bottle. The plastic bottles I get distilled water in, that's about 2, maybe 3, a month. The advertising flyers from my mailbox. Shredded mail. Cardboard boxes. Everything else has to go in the regular trash.

If they want the recycling bins to be really useful they need to add more things:

• Clean metal cans of any sort. It doesn't take much to rinse them out.
• Clean plastic milk bottles. Same thing.
• Clean glass of all sorts.

The main problem is the "clean" part. People won't take 5 seconds to rinse out a bottle, can or jar before throwing it in the bin. That makes for a horrible mess in the bin.

There's a lot of uproar lately over methods of carrying out a death sentence. What I don't understand is why the gas chamber hasn't been resurrected and done right.

The basis for a good one is this simple observation: the human body doesn't detect a lack of oxygen, it detects an excess of carbon dioxide. As long as you keep the CO2 concentration from rising, your body will happily tell your brain that there's absolutely nothing wrong at all right up to the point where your brain isn't functioning well enough to receive the message. You won't notice any difficulty breathing, no discomfort, no gasping for breath. You'll basically slip right off to sleep as your body shuts down.

So, to do a gas chamber right, get rid of that stupid cyanide gas generator. Use argon or xenon or nitrogen, basically one of the inert gases. Anybody with a background in technical diving should be able to give you lots of pointers on how various screw-ups in the gas mix will kill you without giving you a hint of anything being wrong, which is exactly what you're looking for. Fill the chamber with the gas, replacing all the O2, make sure you're cycling the gas through a CO2 scrubber to keep the level down, and wait. It'll take a bit longer to insure death, you'll want to forego the stopwatch in favor of monitoring pulse, respiration and brain function to be sure you get it right, but it should be fairly fool-proof.