Kieran O'Neill

Recent Actions

• Commented on Unintentional Humor of the Day
  Lol. MSDN blog page overwhelmed by sarcastic comments in 3 ... 2 ......
• Commented on Senators draw maps of their home states
  How beautiful. I wonder how much the senators willingness to do this reflects on their pride for their home state (and hence how well they represent their constituents)?...
• Commented on Charts showing how much US residents pay for health care compared to people in other countries
  As near as I can make out, in most cases this is what the government-run medical insurance service pays to the health care provider (or what it costs them internally if they're the same thing), not what the consumer pays....
• Commented on Anti-vaccine fear versus science
  H1N1 epidemiology study, for those saying it hasn't been done: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/325/5946/1328...
• Commented on Anti-vaccine fear versus science
  "1) If you're immunized, in what way does someone else not getting immunized jeopardize you?" See the comment above about vaccines not being 100% effective - if I've been vaccinated, but it didn't take, I can get the disease from...
• Commented on Witches on drugs
  o/ Belladonna and aconite - Inkubbus Sukkubus Belladonna and aconite Give to me the gift of flight Take me up, ever on in the night In a dream, across the sky A hundred-million miles high Take me ever onwards in...
• Commented on Witches on drugs
  Oooh - flying ointment - a (very, very, very) carefully prepared mixture of sublethal doses of extremely deadly herbal poisons, usually henbane, aconite and deadly nightshade, with a few others sprinkled in. Apparently this kind of thing has been for...
• Commented on British tabloids endanger lives with bad reporting on cervical cancer vaccine
  On the topic of British science reporting, this coverage in the Independent on recent findings suggesting a link between a particular virus and chronic fatigue syndrome is possibly the best science reporting (apart from Dr. Goldacre's) that I've seen....
• Commented on Untitled 1
  @Arkizzle: Lol. Sorry I probably shouldn't have opened that Pandora's Box, although I doubt I'm the only one thinking that. I guess we can try and close the lid and hope nothing comes out through the crack... Anyway, I think...
• Commented on Untitled 1
  @FoetusNail: I think it's still theoretically accessible. The error I got (after about 5 minutes of trying to load) was a 500 internal server error, meaning it crashed the server. The problem is that the web coding behind the new...
• Commented on Epic Christian painting of historical figures and "lefty" archetypes
  Does anyone else think that "satan" looks just like the emperor from Star Wars?...
• Commented on Untitled 1
  Takuan has been in touch with me by email. I've been a little bit away from BB the last few days, so hadn't realised he'd been missing. When I asked him about it (yesterday), his response was: "I've not so...
• Commented on Olympic Committee Member to Chicago bid team: US Customs is "harrowing experience"
  @Timothy Hutton: The Brazilian immigration process is extremely enlightened - they practice extreme reciprocity. When someone else travels there on a U.S. passport, they get treated the way Brazilians at the U.S. border get treated....
• Commented on The Official Appreciation Page for the Best of the Wikipedia Rejects
  Yes mate, and the rest of us will calmly get on with making an encyclopaedia (minus "eternal fonts of the true flame" and SENTENCES IN ALLCAPS!1!!)...
• Commented on The Official Appreciation Page for the Best of the Wikipedia Rejects
  Oh, and for examples of just some of the trash that gets deleted (and this is just the stuff considered "cute" or humorous enough to remember, so not even the tip of the iceberg): Wikipedia: Deleted articles with freaky titles....
• Commented on The Official Appreciation Page for the Best of the Wikipedia Rejects
  [Wikipedia is] like a sausage: you might like the taste of it, but you don't necessarily want to see how it's made. - Jimbo Wales. BWAHAHAHAHA!...
• Commented on The Official Appreciation Page for the Best of the Wikipedia Rejects
  Note that these are only articles that were nominated for deletion. Some passed, some didn't. (e.g. I'm slightly surprised that Bacon, egg and cheese sandwich made it through - can you imagine if every conceivable combination of ingredients on bread...
• Commented on Downward Facing Dollar
  I thought this was fairly well understood and accepted by now. What I'm more interested in is what happens when you have an economically tripolar (plus a few) world. Do you end up with China, the US and the EU...
• Commented on Augmented iPhone app shows you crappy fast food joints
  @The Unusual Suspect: I had wondered about this when I saw the astronomy app for the Android, since it seemed to be able to sense direction and orientation as well as location (and I was fairly sure it wasn't doing...
• Commented on Augmented iPhone app shows you crappy fast food joints
  @RedRichie: Check out Bruce Sterling's blog over the past few weeks. He's been going crazy over AR, and, since he owns an Android phone, has been posting quite a few non-iPhone apps. e.g. Check out Google Sky. Now that's a...
• Commented on It's Gadhafi Mania!
  Perhaps the question is "who is he paying his expensive team of plastic surgeons to make him look like"?...
• Commented on Church converted into magnificent bookstore
  @BCSIZEMO: I'm with you there. Steel gantries belong in factories, and really jar with the soft, beautiful curves of the space. It astonishes me that so many architects find them so appealing. It reminds me of the Vancouver City Square...
• Favorited Zombies vs Villagers chess set on Boing Boing
• Commented on Death row Inmates' last words
  I wanted to talk about statistics and the kinds of nations which practice capital punishment, about ethics systems and the inverse golden rule, but I think Cave and Cash do a much better commentary upon this particular topic....
• Commented on Death row Inmates' last words
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGGSTiDOjKU...
• Commented on Game economy credit-crunch: mismanaged bank freezes player accounts
  A thought: AFAICT, the Eve economy lacks inflation - growth usually comes from new content/game mechanics, but the same item tends to cost the same price over time (apart from market fluctuations). So, where is this interest coming from? @10:...
• Commented on Creeps tear down hundreds of handsome posters for African gay/lesbian film fest
  @Bonegnawer: Interestingly, South African law is pretty clear on hate speech - it's not covered under freedom of speech, and in some cases is criminal. Then again, South African law is also clear on marriage not being gender-bound. But taking...
• Commented on Game economy credit-crunch: mismanaged bank freezes player accounts
  Oh, and on the topic of embezzlement, there is a group of players called the Guiding Hand Social Club, whose primary purpose is to infiltrate high-powered PvP alliances and steal huge amounts of their stuff. Search around the Eve forums...
• Commented on Game economy credit-crunch: mismanaged bank freezes player accounts
  Well, Eve was designed to be as open ended as possible, which is why I play it over other, strictly-scripted MMOs. And yeah, I guess interest must be it. I wonder how many of the high-rollers in the Eve economy...
• Commented on Creeps tear down hundreds of handsome posters for African gay/lesbian film fest
  Yes, South African society has a long way to go, but, well, what Antinous said. It's not possible to protect every citizen, all the time. It is possible to effect social change to reduce hate crimes....