Telecustard

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• Commented on Entertainment Weekly ad with a video-screen glued to the pages
  Is this obscenely wasteful, or is it that other devices that use LCD screens are obscenely overpriced?...
• Commented on Coincidence?
  In the tracts of one of those new agey esoteric books by von Daniken or Velikovsky or Toffler that used to be published in the '70s with regularity, there was an idea, something along the lines of how humankind has...
• Commented on Cigarette lighter video-camera
  Having the lens in the middle of the barcode makes it obvious that something is amiss; furthermore, carrying around a lighter that doesn't work would look suspicious (it would have been better to have the lighter be functional, and the...
• Commented on Seeking John Dillinger's preserved privates
  There was an unusual book back in the '70s called The Book Of Lists, which was exactly as it sounds. In the second volume of the series, if memory serves, there was a list of famous preserved sex organs. What...
• Commented on HOWTO make an 8-track cassette walkman
  The best way to listen to your 8-track is on a modified reel to reel tape deck. You have to dissect the cartridge, but since most of what you find now has broken its endless loop right at the splice...
• Commented on Evidence in support of UK DNA database is "most unclear and badly presented piece of research"
  "innocent people who have been arrested are as likely to commit crimes in the future as guilty people" Boy, that just says it all, doesn't it? We're all criminals, and they're eventually going to get all of us for something,...
• Commented on Richard Metzger's Tell It Like It Is Review of "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince"
  It has come to my attention, over the years, that the more critics pan a particular movie the better it is. I think the reason has to do with the fact that critics, as a class, do not produce anything...
• Commented on Boulder park warns that all bags "subject to search"
  the rot spreads http://statismwatch.ca/2009/06/24/illegal-victoria-transit-bag-searches-reinstated-under-new-policy-for-canada-day/ My Canada Day experience in Victoria has never been ruined by drunks, but the illegal searches sure have made it unpleasant. It would have been nice to have the bus as an option if one was...
• Commented on Dozens of US Military personnel spotted on Nazi networking site
  So neo-nazis sign up for active duty, thus neo-nazis are more likely to get killed. I don't see the downside. Apart from the Afghani and Iraqi civilians that must deal with the dickheads, of course. If it makes more people...
• Commented on Dozens of US Military personnel spotted on Nazi networking site
  Here's a scary thing to read before bed. This is the FBI's intelligence assessment on the situation as of a year ago: http://crooksandliars.com/files/uploads/2008/12/whitesupremacistrecruitmentofmilitarypersonnel2_a0a33.pdf...
• Commented on Dozens of US Military personnel spotted on Nazi networking site
  They don't seem to have a problem with discharging decorated war veterans who happen to be gay. What's the count now, 12,000+? I'd say that's a lot of boots... It doesn't make much sense from our point of view, but...
• Commented on Dozens of US Military personnel spotted on Nazi networking site
  I remember seeing an article about this in Rolling Stone a year or two into the war in Iraq, about how neo-nazis were joining the army specifically to receive training and actual combat experience. The big clue that this was...
• Commented on Death by Chocolate (no, really): worker dies in hot cocoa mixing vat
  So help me out please; who's winning the name-calling contest? At this stage both sides are feeling brave enough to say what they want because they feel they have a number of other bOINGers supporting them. But personally I would...
• Commented on Death by Chocolate (no, really): worker dies in hot cocoa mixing vat
  I work in a factory. I know I'm supposed to either marvel at the surreal absurdity of something as wonderful as chocolate turning deadly, or I'm supposed to feel sympathy for my brother worker perishing in an industrial accident, but...
• Commented on Cheap Trick releases an album on 8-Track
  I do not think that they really made any new 8-tracks. I base this feeling on the photo, because surely if you could photograph the actual product with its cardboard sleeve, wouldn't you? Hoax-ish....
• Commented on New images of the lunar surface
  What softens the edges of the older craters? Micrometeorites?...
• Commented on Canadian gov't: you have no expectation of privacy on the Internet
  When they do finally have mind reading machines, a handy way to stymie them is to hum an original tune to yourself in your head. Then, when they present evidence in court of your thoughtcrimes, you can at least use...
• Commented on Life with a 100 lb rodent that sounds like a Geiger counter when it's happy
  It would be interesting and useful to train one to be happy around sources of nuclear radiation....
• Commented on HOWTO ask good skeptical questions
  I don't think you examined their claim of possessing an actual "Massey Lecture Ringtone" with the ten criteria, did you?...
• Commented on The Corpse Flowers of Sumatra
  #14 but when you are at something all day you get used to the smell Unless the something you are at is, say, a natural gas or hydrogen sulfide leak. In both cases you would smell rotten eggs quite strongly....
• Commented on The Chappe Optical Telegraph
  "...transmitted morse code by using light signals which were detected and translated electrically into morse code pulses. The light pulses were amplified and used to modulate a carrier current." Pardon me if this comes off as pedantic, but I'm pretty...
• Commented on Bulletproof "tactical" corset
  "...when you're done showing skin and you're ready to draw blood." I'm pretty certain these will be worn by people who do not consider these activities to be mutually exclusive....
• Commented on Hundreds of top British cops defrauded the taxpayer for millions in phony expense racket
  Just think. These are "top cops", the elites, the best that Scotland Yard has. Kind of makes the term "criminal" meaningless as a distinction, doesn't it? Because that's the system of law enforcement as it stands today - A battle...
• Commented on New Jersey police officer enjoys clubbing man for complying with another officer's request to zip his sweatshirt
  I wonder if there are any good statistics? Who counts all the times that cops calmly and quietly arrest someone with no ensuing violence? Let's see. For counting/tabulating the "Cops calmly arresting someone" stories I don't think you'd need more...
• Commented on Temple University Med School: Skull yearbook, 1942
  With a cover design like that and the fact that it's from a 1940's school of medicine, does anyone else wonder what kind of leather it is? It would make an awesome motorcycle jacket with that on the back though....
• Commented on WWII Stalingrad diorama photos
  If there's anything to be said about this disturbing detail, it's that it's disturbingly dense. You gotta let dioramas breathe. But I do like the cumulative effect of seeing all the pictures at once. They have a sort of sameness...
• Commented on Knit replica of village took 23 years
  The 23 year timespan for completion is what worries me, as well as the decision to sell the lot off. Can't you see it's a bunch of voodoo dolls, surrounded by voodoo buildings, in a voodoo village with voodoo cars...
• Commented on Storks' nests in odd places
  I was hoping to find out more about the stork/baby meme that comprised the sum of reproductive knowledge by those who were raised on a strict diet of Warner Brothers cartoons. On this site http://creagrus.home.montereybay.com/storks.html I found an interesting quote...
• Commented on Danger Mouse's EMI-killed CD will be released as a blank CD-R, just add download
  Perhaps it's just me, but when I look at the picture, I don't see Danger Mouse. I see Penfold....
• Commented on Montreal cop cuffs, busts and fines student $450 for not holding escalator rail in subway
  From the article: Isabelle Tremblay, a spokesperson for the STM, seemed relieved to establish late yesterday that Laval police stopped Ms. Kosoian. “We were quite surprised to hear about this, we don't give fines for such things,” Ms. Tremblay said....