ablestmage

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• Commented on Hacked climate scientists' emails in context
  What's peculiar to me about this story, is that somehow a hacker who retrieves information illegally is instantly a credible source for information. (S)He elaborately lied and manipulated false identities to get into the system, but apparently is trustworthy enough...
• Commented on Visualizing up to ten dimensions
  I'm pretty sure this is a repost....
• Commented on Scenes from an oxytocin party
  I came to the comments specifically to poke fun about the "lozenger" pronunciation but it seems about a dozen people beat me to it. I thought at first she just goofed, but then it happened again. And again. From the...
• Commented on Creepy unmarked cage for people in Superior, Colorado
  The most obvious answer: it's more than likely a fundraiser jail for charity festivals held at the park. An "officer" arrests someone, and the "prisoner" has to raise money from passers-by to bail him out and the money goes to...
• Commented on Michael Jackson -- unrecognizable motivations and constant ruination
  I take Michael Jackson at face value - a completely fucked up person. Your estimation of face value smells more of plastic than your purported adversary was ever beset with. There's no way in the sharts of all China that...
• Commented on John Hodgman quizzes Obama on his nerd cred
  "Of course, I was also disappointed that..." CHEAP SHOT ALERT...
• Commented on Media Matters: O'Reilly falsely claimed he only "reported what groups" were calling Tiller
  I don't see how Bill could possibly be inserted somehow into the murder case. Inspiration is impossible to discern -- because at the same time, it could just as easily inspire someone instead to defy Bill's preaching and promote abortion....
• Commented on Russian Roulette, balloon style
  I seem to recall this device used on "Ayaka's Surprise English Lesson" episodes numerous times, 5 years ago minimum. In Japan....
• Commented on Man detained, threatened and abused by TSA for flying with $4700 in cash
  Again, a very misleading and deceptive headline, boingboing. The fellow was CLEARLY detained for refusing to answer perfectly legitimate questions -- just like the infants who rant on and on about why they don't have to produce a receipt when...
• Commented on Malthus: vampire slayer
  What this seems to overlook is the factor of a vampire oversight committee (such as in "Sucks To Be Me" by Kimberly Pauley. Other (and better) oversight groups might examine the siring of vampires in the world and executes them...
• Commented on Bank pushing 120% APR loans
  I can't really see that as a 120% APR loan. It's more like a "getting your money early" penalty of 10%. You're not paying anything back like a regular loan, as you'd never received it in the first place....
• Commented on Violating Terms of Use by Default
  I encountered a near-identical problem with the image collection known as Littlekenadie.com (which is incidentally linked from here in a 9-17-07 post). The terms of use very strictly prohibited any copying of any images. I wrote to the site admin...
• Commented on Slow motion video of grid of magnets lining up after being disturbed
  That video blew some wicked fat goat, Mark. I liked the first five seconds, and was waiting for the replay after about 10 seconds, but instead we just get 15 more seconds of some high-speed teetering. Whoever edited it should...
• Commented on Poor sleep leads to more colds
  What if I get 7.85 hours? Only 1.238x as likely?...
• Commented on Laughing gas, imagination, and suggestibility
  I call BS on the hypnotic voice, also. I've unashamedly had many many fillings, and still against the advisement (and to the amazement) of my dentist have I opted only for the N.Ox instead of injected locals. There are certainly...
• Commented on Susie Bright: Rick Warren can either come out of his closet, or go take a hike
  I tend to avoid calling anyone a bigot for fear of committing the identical crime in the very accusation. Other fellow bloggers seem to have the shoe primed and ready for the mouth....
• Commented on Tonight: Biggest, brightest full moon of the year
  Does it not slowly grow larger (in appearance), therefore tonight it would merely be an inchy-squinchy bit larger than the previous night? Most all of the articles I've read about it seem to make it out to be "whoa check...
• Commented on Take Jane: a video from NO2ID on the dangers of Britain's burgeoning surveillance state
  Oh, certainly, attack the technology, not the human flaws that abuse the technology. Prediction: one dude out of a zillion misuses a freaking SPOON and suddenly there's anti-spoon videos crop up, anti-spoon foundations emerge about spoon awareness, and task forces...
• Commented on Religion and nanotechnology
  Could someone please explain at what point, ever, nanotechnology had anything at all to do with creating life? My understanding was that it had to do with making better sweaters with microfibres, or tiny gears to make tiny clockwork pieces...
• Commented on Prince rewards spendy fans with DRM-crippled downloads
  @Red Leatherman: I'll not be having kids if I can possibly help it ^_^ "Wanting it to just work" falls under the "not wanting it bad enough" sector, methinks, so those folks who refuse to pay attention or fail to...
• Commented on Prince rewards spendy fans with DRM-crippled downloads
  @Red Leatherman: Because knowing how stuff works is part of learning how to make it work better. If actually were a parent, I wouldn't suspect you'd want them to accept something purely at face value. It is entirely plausible to...
• Commented on Prince rewards spendy fans with DRM-crippled downloads
  All you have to do is get an audio recorder software, like Advanced Audio Recorder, that records any sounds that come off the computer. Hit record on the software, play the file as you normally would, hit stop on the...
• Commented on Gross cartoon art
  I never understood why this form of art was so appealing, and still don't. I visited a gallery showing of a grad student at my local university a year or two after I graduated, to find similar topics addressed: children...
• Commented on Church Tank: The Illuminati's Secret Weapon
  I smell a homebrew MegaMan spinoff being tossed around in these comments....
• Commented on A week with the NZXT Avatar Gaming Mouse
  keyboard. only....
• Commented on Artificial foreskin lets you keep your sensitivity AND the covenant of Abraham!
  I'm curious as to how exactly they measured increased or decreased confidence -- a male who would would participate in a study about confidence wouldn't exactly have any control-group kind of experience to compare with, as most all foreskin snippity-snippages...
• Commented on Zoomdoggle hires personal assistant from India to blog for him
  Apparently he's writing for BoingBoing also -- two posts in a row snarfed from Zoomdoggle ^_^...
• Commented on NASA: "We have water" on Mars.
  FTW = For The Win, #51/61.. So now that we've discovered water on Mars, we can all shout a hearty whoop-de-frackin-doo and wave adios to those trillions of dollars in manhours, and thousands of gallons of fuel we spent to...
• Commented on Yahoo Music shutting down its DRM server, customers lose all their paid-for music the next time they crash or upgrade
  Just get yourself a handy little program called Advanced Audio Recorder from Audio-Recording.net, and the program will record any audio that comes from the computer at all. Play each song and record them with the software, and bz0nk, DRM-free tunes....
• Commented on Programmer and murderer Hans Reiser leads police to wife's remains
  @29/30 -- Apparently not, because he's a "linux programmer _turned_ murderer" according to the summary. To be a linux programmer, one must clearly swear an oath to be non-murderous, from which this gentleman has so blatantly transgressed....