TheFool

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• Commented on Continental imprisons 50 passengers overnight in grounded plane with no food, overflowing toilets
  You know, a bunch of us have commented here about what we'd do about it if we were stuck on that plane. But nobody on that plane did any of these things. Why not? Once you're actually in that situation,...
• Commented on Continental imprisons 50 passengers overnight in grounded plane with no food, overflowing toilets
  Note one point, it was an ExpressJet, which is the operator of the smaller regional Continental-branded jets....
• Commented on Continental imprisons 50 passengers overnight in grounded plane with no food, overflowing toilets
  I'd rather spend a night in jail than on a plane. I could at least lie down somewhere. Though there is still the risk of being disappeared to some terrorist holding cage, and then once again, not being able to...
• Favorited This American Life live in movie theaters across the US on Boing Boing
• Commented on Teens send balloon into space, get aerial photos of Earth
  I don't know why none of the sites reporting on this story link to the students' own website. I'm pretty sure this is it though: http://teslabs.com/meteotek08/...
• Commented on 419 scammer impersonates the nation of Ethiopia, takes $27 million from Citibank
  The correct nytimes URL is http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/21/nyregion/21scam.html...
• Commented on Al Gore addresses US Senate: don't let economic crisis get in the way of addressing global warming.
  (Sorry, it was Dan Sarewitz, from Arizona State University, who had the "ag extension" idea, not Richard Harris, the NPR reporter.)...
• Commented on Al Gore addresses US Senate: don't let economic crisis get in the way of addressing global warming.
  I found Richard Harris' commentary on NPR this morning to be interesting: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=100229450 He says to de-emphasize the regulations, time lines, subsidies, etc. and just put together a set of pragmatic government programs that help people quicky understand and adopt...
• Commented on How to get rid of Vimax ads
  I've always felt that advertising by linking to an ad provider's site in the HTML page is the wrong approach. It slows down page loads, places both performance and reliability outside your control, and is susceptible to attacks like this....
• Commented on Clueless hack tapped to be Obama's Transport Czar
  Are people just now realizing that Obama isn't the far left progressive that they assumed he was? That he's in fact a moderate political pragmatist? Well I guess part of his realpolitik was letting voters assume things about him so...
• Commented on More Resistance to Free Range Kids
  Part of the problem is that adults have become afraid of anonymously watching out for other people's kids that might be out in public; instead of helping out and keeping an eye on kids around us, and other people in...
• Commented on A visit to the coldest town on Earth
  Can anyone on BB explain what the "dew point" means, I've never been able to understand what it means in a practical sense (i.e. what are the effects of low and high dew points in warm or cold weather)....
• Commented on Truck driver refuses to allow police car to pass
  Was he trying to pass or pull the truck over? If the latter I guess he could just hang back and wait. Maybe the truck driver was just really drunk. Lots of ways he could have passed. He could have...
• Commented on Steampunk Second Life machinima -- drop-dead gorgeous
  Too bad SL is an artistic dead end. Cool artwork tends not to last due to the bogus "virtual real estate" model of SL that requires payment for an arbitrary amount of *virtual* space, plus object limits within that space....
• Commented on Video mashup screen demo
  Wow, the ECC! Somewhere I hope I still have my "Rocked By Rape" and "The Whipped Cream Mixes" records. Sadly I have long lost my "Double the Phat and Still Tasteless" CD/floppy disk. Listen: http://www.last.fm/music/The+Evolution+Control+Committee/_/Rocked+by+Rape http://evolution-control.com/index.php/discography/past-releases/37-past-releases/62-rocked-by-rape-7q-on-eerie-materials http://evolution-control.com/index.php/discography/past-releases/37-past-releases/63-the-whipped-cream-mixes-7q-single-on-eerie-materials some more fun...
• Commented on PeaPod pop-up portable kid-bed -- tensegrity for your toddler
  Cool. We use a "Bird Nest" (from Badger Basket) but the baby is quickly outgrowing it, and I'm not sure the company makes it anymore. The Bird Nest was also useful as a bag to carry all the baby stuff...
• Commented on Paper and pencil better for the brain than software?
  For those of us who write and design software, are there any lessons we can take from the pen-and-paper world that can make our software less restrictive, and more of a useful tool?...
• Commented on US Congresspeople Told Martial Law Would Be Imposed if Bailout Bill Didn't Pass
  "The President has the power to declare martial law, not Congress." Constitutionally, not really. There is a variety of laws that allow the executive to do different things in the face of some emergency or other. Though practically.... only the...
• Commented on Roman siege engine for sale
  A trebuchet might get better distance, but the ballista seems like it could have a higher initial velocity on a flatter curve... so I wish they'd thrown the rock at some kind of wall and measured or estimated the force...
• Commented on Wade Davis: an Inuit elder and his shit knife
  Kyle Armbuster: Maybe, but still every culture that dies is a loss of knowledge and wisdom for humanity at large (i.e. the rest of us). You can't bottle up a culture for future use after all its members are dead...
• Commented on Debate Uncut: McCain audio reveals profanity, insults hurled at Obama
  This video may be a joke but McCain's attitude towards Obama and the debate was clear from the continuous smirk on his face throughout. He clearly doesn't take any of it seriously....
• Commented on North Texas house burns because local authorities switched off hydrants "to fight terrorism"
  Welcome to the exciting future of privatized public utilities and services!...
• Commented on Does the US military have some super new capability?
  RINDAN #71: "Prolonged conflict just gives Americans time work the problem." I've come to believe that this is actually the real reason that the Bush administration started the Iraq war. To buy time and stall before another terrorist attack on...
• Commented on Does the US military have some super new capability?
  The clue is the phrase "*operational* capabilities". It's not a new weapon per se. It's probably not a new tactic or strategy really, based on his comparisons to airplanes and nukes, but it could be closer to a very specific...
• Commented on Agro-veillance: Using satelites and drones for precision crop maintenence
  "Organic farms typically take 4 times the amount of land to produce the same amount of food as a modern farm." This is a pretty worn out myth. Lower productivity does not really follow directly from generic organic practices. What...
• Commented on Macropayments: Why I don't take tips for my books
  I don't really understand how your position on micropayments vs. macropayments relates to the dandelion metaphor... are you saying you are like a dandelion or not like a dandelion? If the dandelion was like you, then it would ignore the...
• Commented on Douglas Rushkoff on the RNC
  "Sarah Palin built her career on fighting corruption, sweeping out special interests..." Except her own of course....
• Commented on HOWTO build your own A-bomb
  According to the article, their designed used plutonium, not uranium, btw. Testing out the design without being noticed would be hard......
• Commented on Horse Whisperer author poisoned by wild mushrooms
  mintphresh, blanket rules of thumb like that are a bit dangerous. You must identify an individual mushroom with certainty (including ruling out any toxic kinds that look like it). However, eating wild mushrooms isn't quite as dangerous as some people...
• Commented on Kids can't "go out and play" anymore
  MT: "nd ys, wll b shwng my chldrn hw t ld nd sht gns. kd wh knws th dngrs f gns wll nvr, vr sht n by hmslf. kd wh dsn't ndrstnd thm ds. t s mch bttr t trn...