Alex_M

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• Commented on Senators draw maps of their home states
  Seriously, how busy is a guy like Mark Udall to not have time to do this? Your state is a rectangle, man! :)...
• Commented on Do you understand my first-grade child's homework?
  Jesus. I've got a PhD in physics (meaning knowing enough math for at least an undergrad degree in the subject) and I couldn't figure that thing out after staring at it for a minute. Not the first time I've run...
• Commented on Color film of 1927 London
  Fancy seeing the Tower without the skyscrapers of the City behind it! The old PLA building on Tower Hill looks huge! Compare the skyline at 0:55 to how it looks now: http://globalconnect.ucsd.edu/events/images/Willis_building_skyline_000.jpg...
• Commented on The $147.72 "audio grade" power socket
  Well, with Suzanne Somers having written a new book, and all the virus/vaccine nutcases out there right now.. I guess it's a nice diversion to see a bit of pseudoscience that's not actually endangering anyone's life, at least....
• Commented on More bad news for Shepard Fairey: AP amends countersuit, claims purposeful deceit
  Hey Stefan, note the word "counter-suit" up there? Fairey is the one who sued the AP! Stupid: A famous artist 'borrowing' from a photo from a major agency, apparently thinking he could get away with it. Incredibly stupid: Said artist...
• Commented on Legal battle over Shepard Fairey Obama poster takes an unexpected turn
  Fairey filed the lawsuit against the AP first, so while the AP have certainly been assholes in the past, I don't think it's fair to portray them as the bullies in this case. I'd be the first to agree that...
• Commented on Saturday Morning Science Experiment: Meat Stick Blowtorch
  Dewi, no, you can't 'burn' oxygen to ozone - ozone is significantly higher in energy than oxygen (which is why it's a more powerful oxidant, which is why it's toxic) And for the rest who are confused: Oxygen gas itself...
• Commented on Watch What You Say About Welsh
  Anonymous: Right, Mitchell is Welsh-Scottish-English, in short British.. So he's got his pick, and often goes with Wales: http://www.channelflip.com/2009/02/19/david-mitchell’s-soapbox-wales/...
• Commented on Watch What You Say About Welsh
  Oldest language? Weird claim. Really, only _Dead_ languages can be 'older', since they're not spoken. Modern Welsh isn't the language it was 1000 years ago, and neither is English, so which one is 'older'? Whichever is more similar to the...
• Commented on Pee as fertilizer ingredient
  Yeah, using human excrements of either kind is a REALLY bad idea for fertilization in general. Basic bioaccumulation: We're at the top of the food chain, so our crap has the highest concentration of bad stuff in it. (heavy metals,...
• Commented on Industrial robotic pancake production video
  I've worked for ABB. My grandpa worked for ABB for over 50 years. I've never been more proud :)...
• Commented on Wingnut extreme: Glenn Beck says "Story of Stuff" is Commie propaganda
  It is NOT empirically true that religious people are happier. SOME religious people are happier than atheists and other religious people, but religious people in general are not happier. Oh and what about the fact that countries like Denmark and...
• Commented on @BBVBOX: recent guest-tweeted web video picks (boingboingvideo.com)
  BTW: Russia's worst Beatles cover still has NOTHING On Sweden's worst Elvis impersonator, Eilert Pilarm: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joncSCoF8eU Lest you think it's a joke: This guy recorded six albums and played over 600 gigs before he hung up his blue suede (swede?)...
• Commented on @BBVBOX: recent guest-tweeted web video picks (boingboingvideo.com)
  Judging from the text on the singer's hat, it's the Russian Black Sea Fleet! Maxoid: Dunno, Russian is a fairly articulate language. I'm thinking that maybe he learned the lyrics by listening rather than reading....
• Commented on Harper's Weekly for September 29, 2009
  No, #4 didn't nail it, IMO. By that same logic, slaughtering and eating mentally handicapped kids would be just fine as well. You can't let a marginal group represent the whole. Most normal kids _would_ be hurt by being raped,...
• Commented on 1971 French translation of Chester Himes novel shows woman with smart phone
  Davidorban: The _title_ is Italian, the translation is in French. (see "Poche Noire" on the side?)...
• Commented on 1971 French translation of Chester Himes novel shows woman with smart phone
  Obviously it's the titular imbroglio. :)...
• Commented on HOWTO make mushroom shelves
  Yeah, I wouldn't call polypores mushrooms, but maybe that's just me. These things are going to save the planet.. perhaps :) A Swedish biochemist was walking in the woods one day a few years ago, and spotted a rotting piece...
• Commented on Jackson Pollock's name hidden in his painting Mural?
  "it could hardly be random coincidence to find just those letters in that sequence..." Oh, I can agree with that. Given that psychological experiments have shown that we humans are great at finding patterns, to the extent that we'll easily...
• Commented on Lamp that runs on human blood
  MDH: Not everything everyone says is about you, sometimes people are just commenting on the story. So you're saying that if you were forced to use such a lamp, you'd be more irritated about the fact that it's a one-time...
• Commented on Lamp that runs on human blood
  Oh how clever. Or not. It's not exactly the energy expenditure that's annoying people. It's the being forced to cut yourself, causing pain, to extract some blood. If you wanted to teach someone how precious energy is with a flashlight,...
• Commented on HOWTO reproduce a key from a distant, angled photo
  My grandma had a safe-deposit box where the key came with a brass sheet-metal sheath that snugly covered the teeth....
• Commented on Man with hair styled as hat
  Better get this old meme out of the way immediately: My hair is a hat, your argument is invalid....
• Commented on Crowdsourced translation of Moby-Dick into Emoji
  That's astoundingly useless. As pointed out: Turning the verb 'call' into a phone confuses two meanings. It's a visual pun that only an English-speaker would understand. What's the use of a pictographic writing if it only works with knowledge of...
• Commented on Scary alien hand in real estate listing photo?
  That IS weird. They misspelled "Sibeliuksenkatu". As in their most famous composer? Oh well. Huh. rents in Helsinki are lower than I'd have thought. That's pretty central. (Also, I just discovered that the parliament building is confused with the cathedral...
• Commented on Perfect Daily Mail headline
  Well of course, Gordon Brown's campaign slogan was: "A line of coke on every table, a machete next to every door!" dculberson: Well a "Daily Mail" article NEVER qualifies as a data-point on whether things have gotten better or worse....
• Commented on MP3 player in an old training-grenade
  Lobster: I'm not sure people should really be taking anything looking THAT much like a grenade (what with actually BEING one) anywhere. "There was much fear and freak-out".. Exactly. There's a line between 'cool' and 'simply scary', and I believe...
• Commented on SGI releases personal supercomputer
  Seeing as there's 120 jobs in queue for the supercomputer I'm using at the moment - I could really use one of those!...
• Commented on Years-old fast-food cutlery chunk removed from man's lung
  Sounds like drug-lore.. "Hey, I heard that if you grind up Wendy's forks into tiny pieces and snort them you get a really great high!"...
• Commented on How Islamist gangs use chat rooms to lure, torture and kill Iraqi gays
  I have a solution that works well for all parties, I think: We in the USA should give asylum on humanitarian grounds to gay Iraqis. And we should deport all our own fundamentalist Christians to Iraq....