mjfgates

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• Commented on I am unicorn, destroyer of ponies
  That's gonna need a... no, wait......
• Commented on Dead guy on balcony 4 days, neighbors mistook for "Halloween dummy"
  That this *is* a unicorn chaser (to the "They Shoot Porn Stars" link) is kind of disturbing....
• Commented on Neil Gaiman's library
  Which book do you pull to make a section open up to reveal Neil's Secret Writing Room? It'd have to be a volume that would never be grabbed by anyone who'd visit the room... wait, is that a copy of...
• Commented on Craigslist is great the way it is
  I love craigslist; it doesn't yell at me....
• Commented on Architecture of evil: the lairs of games villains
  I'm remembering the second boss encounter in "Stubbs the Zombie," which happens in a shopping mall. Works beautifully. (Although some folks might not consider the people you're up against in Stubbs to be "evil," per se.)...
• Commented on Fake DHS "photography license" for fake no-photos laws
  Everybody's worrying about whether it's legal to show one of these, given that it doesn't exist. Meh, whatever. The real problem here is, if you get bothered by Mr. Annoying Cop and show him this, and he goes away, what...
• Commented on Personal Freedom, by State
  So these guys made up a statistic purporting to show "personal freedom", and then drew up a graph purporting to show that Democratic states have less of it... only, their criteria for "freedom" are *very* traditional-conservative, and you look at...
• Commented on Star Trek original bridge and action figures reissue
  Wake me when they reissue the Space:1999 Eagle playset. The one that was a *complete* Eagle, over a yard long, that opened up to reveal figures of all the main characters and enough equipment to run a minor war....
• Commented on Hugo-nominated webcomic The Body Politic as a free download
  But go trawl through the archives anyway. Schlock Mercenary is pretty funny here and there, and it's good science fiction, and you can watch the guy's drawing skill go from "kinda meh" to "hey, he's good at that!" over time....
• Commented on Driving from Brooklyn to Oregon next week; What weird should I espy?
  Instead of following I-80 down into Salt Lake City at the west end of Wyoming, you might want get off on US 30 and head up through Kemmerer. It saves you about an hour, and the route goes through the...
• Commented on Magenta isn't a real color?
  My personal favorite for a color with no particular wavelength is black....
• Commented on Free book on Free Range kids
  I've gotten panicked at by more people for letting my kids start walking places when they're about nine... principals, police, random neighbors... I'll have to buy this book in hardback, so it hurts more when I throw it at them....
• Commented on Ragdoll Metaphysics: Good Grief, The Victory Of <em>Eve</em>'s Space Goons
  Eve generates a huge amount of cool meta stuff. 'S got beautiful spaceships, too. Now, if only the GAME part of it didn't suck so hard....
• Commented on ELECTRIC Cannon Uses No Gunpowder
  I love the arrangement they've got with the wires and the generator and those mysterious boxes, all hanging directly off the barrel. It's got to be HUGE fun to aim all that....
• Commented on Hans Moravec's slide on computer power and intelligence
  People are ridiculously inefficient at many of the tasks we identify as "intelligence." In some ways, even our current fish-equivalent machines are superior to human beings. We might get "reasoning machines" sooner than this guy thinks. Luckily, they'll probably be...
• Commented on Manhattan Project plutonium has been inside a rusting safe in a pit in WA since 1943
  Hey, look! Orange juice! And still good, too. It's interesting, but I guess not surprising, that salts of plutonium should be brightly colored. Heavy metal-based dyes have been used for millenia, after all. There's an art form to be made...
• Commented on Proposal: buy a London Tube ticket, consent to being searched
  "Police seek new rights...." Well, of course they do. The cops try to intrude further into the rights of the citizenry all the time. Doesn't matter that they could have given the matter of these "knife-detecting arches" BEFORE they bought...
• Commented on The Corkscrew by Rob Higgs
  They are NOT making a hundred of these. Not with the process shown in the video, at least....
• Commented on Pools at Foreclosed Homes Transformed into Illegal Sk8 Ramps
  Now, if somebody were to just set up some ramps, people could jump from one pool to the next. Neighborhood skate park? Try "skate park neighborhood."...
• Commented on Susie Bright: My Little Chat with Playboy Today
  I always need to see to find the g-spot. That's why I keep an endoscope by the bed....
• Commented on Report: Pentagon Pro-Troop Group Misspent Millions.
  Even with the, shall we say, form-fitting nature of Spidey's costume, it's still only a faint echo of previous (NSFW) ones....
• Commented on Getting Started with Arduino
  There are good books about all that stuff. With Google and various forums, it's even simple to find them amid all the bad ones....
• Commented on Ridiculous $550,000 crystal Earth-pustule watch (want)
  So, if I get my *own* skull encrusted with diamonds, is that still consumerism, or is it just accesorizing? Because, you know, I've already GOT the skull....
• Commented on Shanghai 2020: a 1,000 meter^2 diorama
  Of course, before you get in, you have to go through a basic security check to make sure you aren't carrying any firearms, explosives, or rubber lizard suits....
• Commented on Smithsonian magazine on synthetic diamonds that fool experts
  I suspect that in thirty years, diamonds will be sold a lot like the way the colored stones are now. You can buy huge, perfect gems-- sapphires, rubies, topaz-- right off eBay. They're cheap enough that my eighteen-year-old has a...
• Commented on Photos of strange-looking goats
  I have been responsible for feeding goats in the past. I believe that this gives me at least a small base of knowledge in the field of goat aesthetics. Those are some of the ugliest damn goats I've ever seen....
• Commented on Cloned human embryos
  But without clones of myself, how will I manage the brain transplant? I'm going to have to go back to that "kidnap some rich guy's heir" notion, aren't I......
• Commented on In the Year 2000: Gargantuan, Trans-Oceanic Ground Effect Wingship
  The nosie-engines on the real ekranoplan are only run during takeoff; they provide extra lift partly by blowing air over the top surface of the wing. Presumably, on this conceptual design only the outermost engines would keep running once the...