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• Commented on Chickens terrified of dried sunflower head
  "Look into the eyes of a chicken and you will see real stupidity. It is a kind of bottomless stupidity, a fiendish stupidity. They are the most horrifying, cannibalistic and nightmarish creatures in the world." — Werner Herzog In this...
• Commented on Richard Metzger on Ayn Rand
  Relatively logically consistent worldviews that are wrong come a dime a dozen. Humans are very good at being rational, but not so good at paying attention to things that conflict with our established worldviews. That set of things that Scott...
• Commented on Science Question From a Toddler: Omnivore Dinosaur
  Definitely agree with Ben. There are clear instances where herbivorous dinosaurs descended from carnivorous lines, which strongly implies intermediate forms. More importantly, though, it's clear that animals are rarely so picky about their choices. Alligators, for example, will eat fruit....
• Commented on Anti-vaccine fear versus science
  I can certainly understand why most agencies continue to recommend more investigation. The breadth of almost any scientific research on a topic really doesn't ever sink into anyone's head. It is increasingly clear to me that without reaching 99.9% certainty,...
• Commented on Abandoned bowling alley becomes furniture
  I miss Tava Lanes. They just razed the place in the last couple years, it was still active until a year or two before that....
• Commented on Anti-vaccine fear versus science
  Ah, damn, sorry, artemisinin. To actually add something, it's isolated from Artemisia annua....
• Commented on Anti-vaccine fear versus science
  zyodei, 3) is pretty ridiculous. Botanical research generally focuses on plants identified by indigenous peoples as effective. Artemisium, for example, is one of the more effective malaria treatments. I'll freely admit there's a lot more skepticism, but it is certainly...
• Commented on Anti-vaccine fear versus science
  Re: Too many humans, due to success of vaccines. Unfortunately, no. Turns out people have more kids when the survival of said kids is uncertain. The less control you have over the number of kids that survive, the more kids...
• Commented on Voting machine source-code leak shows election-rigging subroutines?
  Looking forward to actual analysis of this code. I appreciate the heads up that it's out there....
• Commented on Like Ghibli Barfing Rainbows: the Art and Motion of Capybara's <em>Critter Crunch</em>
  Good lord, that is gorgeous....
• Commented on Parish leader denies marriage license to interracial couple
  I initially misread this title as "Pariah leader denies..." and am convinced that this would be more rational....
• Commented on Here Is Where: A Bevy of Alternate-History Plot Bunnies
  This is what augmented reality technology is designed for. I would love to have a device that told me this sort of thing, and just wander around the city with it....
• Commented on Boing Boing: The World's Greatest Neurozine!
  I really do like the new functionality, the sidebar stuff, even the headline. The design is getting better!...
• Commented on HD TV and the placebo effect
  When I was watching football (a replay of a tackle) on my parents' new television the other day while I was home, I realized that hey, I wouldn't have been able to see that before. Convincing people that two very...
• Commented on Boing Boing: The World's Greatest Neurozine!
  I appreciate the interim font you've replaced whatever that foggy roundness was. Putting the two designs side by side with no prior knowledge, I would have guessed that yesterday's was the streamlined, well-designed new site. The boxes are not inherently...
• Commented on Tiny bug could wipe out California's citrus trees
  Personally, I buy the gallon jug because the stuff takes forever to go bad. Too much eponymous acid for things to grow in it quickly, it seems. Orange growers in California are already calling it quits. With water prices and...
• Commented on The awfulness of Windows vs. the creepiness of Mac
  Hah, yeah, I am inclined to agree with the shutting the hell up about it. Of course, every time it starts to confuse me that people keep trying to convince other people how great something that's got a strong scent...
• Commented on Robot fish
  I'm hopeful! David doesn't really point out why this fish is special, which is the ridiculous simplicity (relative to earlier robofish at least) of the design....
• Commented on Robot fish
  I have no idea why people are claiming this is impractical. It's vastly more efficient than propellers, and the whole point of this particular swimming fish is that it's simple enough to actually manufacture cheaply and in bulk. That swimming...
• Commented on Laughing, flywheel-driven mechanical bellows robot
  I would like to have this in a garden, driven by a small fountain, in place of the tipping bamboo pipe....
• Commented on Power On Self Test: Spooky Lamps
  Exactly what I was going to point out! Earthworm Jim is, historically, the best....
• Commented on A $3,000 steampunk thumbdrive
  Ha, I appreciate that. He's got his price, even if it's something he'd rather keep. If you want it bad enough to pay $3,000 for it, he'll let it go, but you're a crazy person....
• Commented on Sumo chair available in bright green
  Green things!...
• Commented on John Madden admits he's not good at Madden NFL
  @Airpillo, I don't expect video games to be fairly rapidly understood by a 73-year-old major media figure who is almost certainly pretty busy. Plus, he's not someone who grew up paying attention to screens and buttons. Anyway, playing the game...
• Commented on Coin-tosses aren't fair
  @Samsam again: Whoops, missed your last paragraph! My first line would have sounded a little different....
• Commented on Coin-tosses aren't fair
  @Samsam, the second argument is correct. However, the coin is still biased. Unfortunately for the article's author, the paper (PDF) says that's not why. I mean, it's a nice mathematical way to look at it, but it's also wrong, and...
• Commented on est reincarnated
  "You didn't go" does not imply you can't comment. An outside look at how someone who has gone ends up changing is a valuable perspective. Similarly, "I went to one" doesn't guarantee that you're much ahead of someone who didn't...
• Commented on Tell, don't show: QLOCKTWO gives time in plain English
  @Bazzargh, they dumped it into the same row as "PAST" for compactness....
• Commented on Computers' limitations, as seen in 1967
  @Brainspore, heh. I'm expecting it eventually, but even Moore's law won't get us up near human processing power for a while. Assuming we don't keep revising our brainpower estimates upward, as we've also been doing for the last twenty years....
• Commented on 1945 patent for a one-legged hopping tank
  Turns out to be a remarkably complicated balance problem. And then Raibert made it happen. http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/leglab/robots/3D_hopper/3D_hopper.html Admittedly, it's small, uses offboard power and a lot of near-intuitive-leap control principles, but the damn thing worked! Back in 1984....