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• Commented on Woman accidentally buys wrapping paper covered with swastikas
  Don't buddhists celebrate birthdays? This is just a cross-cultural f-up, but maybe the store can recover their losses by donating or selling it to a buddhist organization...
• Commented on Do you understand my first-grade child's homework?
  "...teach your kid to count on her fingers like normal first graders" Better yet, teach your kid to count on her fingers in binary, like Isaac Asimov. Bart: Cool, I can count up to 10 on my fingers! Nigel: That's...
• Commented on Do you understand my first-grade child's homework?
  The arrow functions as a transformation indicator. 8+3 becomes 10+1 when you write it in positional decimal notation....
• Commented on Wee English church rebuilt on 22nd floor of Osaka tower
  Reminds me of the chapel/mah jong club building on top of the school building in the Saki anime - http://www.crunchyroll.com/library/Saki...
• Commented on Police veteran critiques TSA procedure
  "Is crime prevention the TSA mandate? No." Are you saying a terrorist attack is not a crime? TSA's specific mandate is to prevent terrorist attacks. The problem is the usual Washington scam of "we have to DO something" and then...
• Commented on Hit-and-run driver who hit cyclist
  Here's some food for thought. When the laws that designate bicycles as vehicles were drawn up. The speed and weight differentials between bikes and vehicles were a lot smaller. Cars were a lot lighter and a good bike could keep...
• Commented on The woman who can't stop orgasming
  Ma'am, you have a hell of a case of sciatica there......
• Commented on San Francisco police officer arresting skateboarder: "I'll break your arm like a fckng twig."
  Proving once again that stupidity is the only crime. If you're smart, you either don't do the crime (or provoke an officer unnecessarily) or you don't get caught....
• Commented on Here come the airport rectal exams!
  No worries, if the TSA is required to inspect assholes they'll be too busy checking each other to let anyone through security. I predict replacement of airport scanners with MRIs....
• Commented on Indiana prosecutor says she's duty bound to prosecute grandma who bought cold medicine
  I wonder if this law was pushed by big pharma to force people to buy the expensive anti-allergy meds that are still under patent, rather than the generic pseudoephedrine....
• Commented on Library in necklace form
  I realize part of the point of this exercise is to have actual print books, but some of those look big enough to hold a mini USB-stick or a micro-SD card. You really could fit a library in there if...
• Commented on 3D movies are doomed to gimmickhood
  I'd buy this argument except that R&D has already started on 3-D television/video. So making 3-D movies _could_ become mainstream. On the other hand, once it becomes mainstream, then you're back to the situation of killing off the theaters as...
• Commented on 8-bit house numbers
  Those aren't bits, they're pixels. Although this does give me the idea of putting my house number up in hexadecimal...binary is just too big....
• Commented on Terrifying huge breakfast is free if you eat it in 20 minutes
  Heck, pay the tenner and feed a party of six for about $3 each after currency conversion....
• Commented on Lawyers for TV überdouche Glenn Beck go after satirical website, saying the url itself is defamatory
  1) So what makes them think that the URL refers to their client? Glenn Beck isn't that uncommon a name. I would say a legitimate defense would be if anyone named Glenn Beck committed such a crime. 2) Is there...
• Commented on IT restrictions hurt productivity
  As an IT person, I personally favor opening the machines to the users. Coupled with an IT policy that says if they abuse company resources or install malware (knowingly or unknowingly) they will either be demoted or terminated. If your...
• Commented on Bob Dylan mistaken for hobo, 40 years after Woodstock
  Joe Mommasan @78: even before WWII, the cops in the US could lock you up or ride you out of town for "vagrancy". In many cases, you'd probably get a beating thrown into the mix, especially if you were black....
• Commented on Slate's Dear Prudence: "Should I score pot for my diabetic sister-in-law?"
  "Pot no worse than alcohol" For sake of argument, I'll grant that may be true medically, but it certainly isn't true legally or socially....
• Commented on Sprint executive killed when boulder drops on his car.
  Anonymous @21: That was the thought that led me to refrain from about 4 or 5 snarky comments that came to mind. His wife is one heroic woman. The situation was not only scary, but (I imagine) rather gory as...
• Commented on Primer on "high frequency trading" -- AKA stockbots
  Isn't this basically a high-tech form of front-running? Capture incoming orders and if they diverge too far from normal trading volumes, start manipulating the market prices so that your arbitrage difference is maximized....
• Commented on Response to IEEE paper that characterizes P2P as undesirable and illegal
  This issue isn't really related to the legality or desirability of P2P. It's an endemic group-think between network managers who see usage patterns blowing through their capacity plans and business managers who don't have the budget to expand capacity faster...
• Commented on Abusive "coal-thugs" try to break up anti-mountaintop-removal festival
  Hmm, wasn't the president of Massey Energy the guy that donated a few million to the judge that then ruled in his favor in a corporate lawsuit? The one that the US Supreme Court just ruled on and said the...
• Commented on Photo and original diagram of the world's first ethernet cable
  But where's the ether bunny?...
• Commented on Colorado passes law to allow rainwater harvesting
  I wonder how the new law will interact with the Federal water rights "treaties" between the states out west. If most rainwater runoff fails to make it into streams as stated in the article, it should stand up....
• Commented on The Marshallese in Arkansas and other unexpected diasporas
  Urban Mennonites in Puerto Rico. I believe it's mostly a missionary presence from the US. http://academia.mennonite.net/...
• Commented on $134.5 BILLION worth of US bonds seized from smugglers at Swiss border
  Maybe the ultimate payoff from a Nigerian 419 scam that goes a little bit further than most? Points against counterfeiting: 1) How many people have seen a $500M or $1B bond? 2)How do you convincingly counterfeit something you've never seen?...
• Commented on Keeping a bald eagle feather could result in a $100,000 fine and a year in prison
  I believe that "400 m/f pairs" figure was for the lower 48. One reason they didn't die out completely is there were still thousands of them in Alaska (not to mention Canada). If these feathers are the wrong shape for...
• Commented on North Korea Finds Two US Journalists Guilty of Unspecified "Grave Crime," Sentence: 12 Years Hard Labor
  Rindan @36: You're forgetting about China. Considering that the DMZ is where it is right now because China beat McArthur back after he went too far north during the Korean war, that's a big mistake. Even after all this, I...
• Commented on Odd photo of the week
  And here I thought it was a cast candid from "Land of the Lost"...If I was in that movie, I'd be throwing up too....
• Commented on Limo with a sink on the fender, 1940
  The hood ornament looks like a pair of wings rather than the springing cat of a Jaguar (although admittedly I'm not sure what the Jaguar hood emblem was in the 1930's and '40s). Maybe we can find a match on...