After your brief nap, one side of your face looks normal and the other is beet red from the hot laptop pillow. Nice.

I think this is also the first time minifigs have cleavage, outside of the Princess Leia as Jabba Slave minifig.

I dunno; I'm constantly wiping my kids' fingerprints off of the screen, and even my dad, who doesn't own a computer nor use one at work, will touch the screen. Then again, the prints are almost always left by the second person at the computer, saying "click here".

@ #10 - I'm a Christian, and I wholly approve the mocking of this album cover.

They may have been heavy and hard to ride, but those things were the bike to have in my day. It was definitely a case of style over function.

We had one of these when I was in jr. high. I was such a geek I actually was excited at the chance to use it at the store.

I bought mine a little over a month ago. It didn't take too long; once it was my turn, the whole thing took less than ten minutes (with a new contract, though, which, for some odd reason, is faster). Buying a new computer takes longer. For a comparison, I was at an AT&T store later that day to get phones on the contract for my kids, and a couple buying matching iPhones spent close to an hour during the setup. I don't know why it took so long at the AT&T store.

If y'all don't reward failure, then I guess Mortgagae Securities Trader is out.

Damn, yet another chore.

Details here:

http://www.apple.com/support/usbadapter/exchangeprogram/

@13: I shoot TtV. I use a Kodak Brownie Reflex Synchro, and though you can find film for it, it's very expensive to buy and develop, and the results are different. With TtV, the images oftentimes end up with an ethereal look to them, something you might get through the film, but in a different manner. Because the lens in the viewfinder is convexed, the edges are slightly out of focus and there is a distortion, but not quite as drastic as with a fisheye lens. Also, a lot of the old cameras are fixed focused, whereas with TtV one may adjust the focus for lots of fun effects. Finally, it's digital; I can shoot 10 shots and pick the best of the bunch and post it on Flickr.

I'm not knocking using the camera for it's intended purpose; in fact, I'd love to put film in it and see what happens. TtV has its own aesthetic quality, though, that is different and that's why it attracts some people.

A business analyst? Pshaw.

Man, it took me a while to realize she's a robot; that's exactly what a bare breast can do to a guy.

I wonder if the resolution is fine enough to write a letter to someone with it. Or maybe a break-up note, y'know, served with the morning coffee.

I always figured the "other" was Steve Jobs' DNA code.

The story does state that BBC may use the location of the ship if the container is buried in the stack.

As of right now, it's outside Crewe, which is inland from Liverpool, in a railyard.

George Bernard Shaw had preprinted postcards with stock answers. He'd grab the relevant card and initial it, then his secretary would address it and drop it in the post.

No self respecting gay man would wear a short sleeved shirt and a necktie.

Doomstalk: I said "my old phone", not iPhone. My point was there are plenty of devices out there that don't even offer a mediocum of this level of security, broken or not.

I'm with Claud9999; just don't put that much on there to begin with.

Okay, I'm gonna play devil's advocate here. Mac OSX was developed by Apple; shouldn't they liscence it and protect as they see fit, considering it's their intellectual property? And do they have a monopoly, being as that they have just a small share of the market? This is just a countersuit by Psystar to get Apple to back off a little. It won't fly, and I doubt Apple will back off any as well.

And I'm sorry, Bardfinn; if you tamper with any item, then the warranty is void; standard operating proceedure. Apple is not being unusual about that. If you make a Doohickey and offer a warranty on it, do you, at your own cost, need to replace the Doohickey because I didn't like how it was designed, opened it up and modified it and then possibly messed it up?

Hey, it's a screw up, but it's easy to fix. Besides, you couldn't even lock my old phone, so it was always open to anyone.

What? Damn! I wish I could eat a whole meal in a minute.

No doubt, dogs are efficient eating machines. My dog once swallowed a boneless pork chop whole. And he only weighs 32 lbs.

Language is organic; all words were made up at some point; said words often change meaning, sometimes subtly, sometimes completely; language is a communication tool, and if you are able to succeed at being understood, who cares what the tightasses think?

It's... it's so beautiful...

I had a call the other day offering me a three day trip to anyplace I wanted from some travel company. Since I couldn't convince her that I wasn't interested, I just blurted out that I'm unable to travel, and the woman apologized in such a way that I knew she felt bad for calling me.

Well, that certainly explains a lot. I always wondered what point there was in that.

For what it's worth, it supposed to have a gas-powered engine, can run for 20-30 minutes and meets FAA ultralight regulations. Unfortunately, one of those regulations is:

"No person may operate an ultralight vehicle over any congested area of a city, town or settlement, or over any open-air assembly of persons."

Nova on PBS had a whole episode about Engima, and you can even use an online version at their site:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/decoding/virtwave.html

ditto #2

That was so pedestrian, it was cool! And she's right; what can you buy for $.25 nowadays?

The top of the document states "Top 10 reasons why the iPhone is still not BlackBerry". I'm willing to go out on a limb here, but aren't BlackBerries designed for business-oriented users, whereas iPhones are designed for the consumer market?

For instance, a BlackBerry is designed for push e-mail, text-messaging and document editing, all business oriented tasks. The iPhone, while it can do these things (and doesn't do one of them well, apparently), is better designed for lifestyle and entertainment (video, music, photo management, etc).

This is (almost) and apples and oranges kind of thing and a confusion in the market about it all. Why argue about which is better when they aren't even the same thing?

What I don't understand is why this gut isn't steering folks toward AT&T's Tilt or LG's Vu instead, since they are designed for the same market as the iPhone (unless they totally suck, but I don't know).

The best cold caffeine delivery system in the world is affogato; a scoop of vanilla gelato with a shot of espresso poured over. It's Italian, and no one seems to mind if the espresso is shocked when they are enjoying it.

A rotating cab would be better with a gun turret on top.

Judging from all the fingerprints my kids leave on the screen of our iMac, I'd say a touchscreen iMac would be a big hit.

Man, it makes me feel good reading this.

BTW, someone figured back when he was the richest man in the world that Bill Gates must have incredible wisdom to share and asked him to do a monthly newspaper column. It was written pretty much like this rant; single sentence paragraphs indicating how out of touch he is. The column didn't last long.

Lucky me; I'm a dissatisfied Sprint customer with 2 months left on my contract. Then again, I really wouldn't want to give them $50 for nothing just so I can go contract with someone else who is only marginally better.

My Wi-Fi is as open as the skies; then again, my neighbors all have it, too, or they are older and don't even have use for it. But I do turn it off at night or when I'm gone from the house.

When I was in Hawaii staying at a condo, a lot of the other condos had internet connections (mine didn't). Some tourists would bring their own routers and then label them "compliments of 203" or some such; basically, openly sharing their bandwidth. And you know I used it every day!

I like how it's extravagant AND minimalist; all that wood, the fancy table, the ornate rug, but no knick-knacks, papers laying around or wall hangings; just the minimum amount of furniture, a phone and the computers.

@airshowfan: I'm just guessing, but I think he may have built this so that it can be moved easily. That would be one of the first things I would think of if I had done this.

$275?? I could make one in an afternoon for $30.

That's so beautiful, something I thought I'd never say about traffic control devices. The design, the color, the functionality, the aesthetic, everything. They'd be even cooler if they were back-lit.

I could see through my hand while watching that vid.

I'm not trying this at home. I'm trying it at work.

I think Jobs is going to announce the serrated MacBook Air soon.

Better a dancing guy than the guy who sold be a printer at Best Buy while eating candy.

It's a theft prevention device. Would you steal an iPhone running Vista?

@#5: Why do conservatives like equating Democrats with communists and socialists?

Warren Buffett, for instance, is a staunch capitalist and Democrat. And I know plenty of small businessmen who complain Republican policies are making their lives hard and therefor consistently vote Democratic. So I doubt it has anything to do with suppressing free enterprise.

There are some in the party who want a national health care system, true, but not one too different from the UK's or Canada's, hardly bastions of communism.

Yeah, Democrats have a reputation for taxing things, but then again, somebody's gotta pay for all that military hardware.

If I remember correctly, it isn't the Democratic Party that has been chiseling away at the rights of American citizens the past 6 years, or pushing more power into the hands of a single individual, the President.

Oh, and by the way, Pres. Clinton, with Al Gore's help, privatized more of the US government than Ronald Reagan did. Hardly could call that communist, either.

Needs windshield wipers.

For me the big advantage is the increased thickness, as I keep it in my front trouser pocket.

Hell, my Grandma used to make some wicked eggnog and she'd give us some, I think mostly to calm us down because it was Christmas and we were bouncing off the walls and ceiling. When my brother and I were in high school, we'd drink the leftover eggnog for breakfast. Hey, it's made of eggs, right?

Then there was the time I was 19 and ordered a Long Island Iced Tea, thinking it was some flavored tea. They served me (I don't know why), and I drank half of it before I knew what I was drinking. Good thing my friend was smarter than me and was able to drive afterwards.

So yeah, folks give their kids booze sometimes, and sometimes folks are buying booze and don't know it.

Then there was the time my brother ate some brownies he saw on a plate in the kitchen, ate them for breakfast, and got in trouble with my dad because there were "special".

Over at Obscure Store and Reading Room there was a lengthy debate on cops illegally parking. Many a person said cops need to park close to where they are in case of an emergency call. Well, this woman ain't a police officer, so she won't be going on any emergency calls. Yet there she is, parking illegally because she knows she won't get in trouble, and there was the predictable back-up, spouting scare tactics to keep her out of trouble.

Cause of the terrorism. Geesh. Seems to me, if you're a cop breaking the law, you'd want terrorists to know. That way, they'll know you don't respect the law and you'll get medieval on their asses if you catch one.

Thanks, w000t. I should've noticed; my brother does the spatchcock method on a grill. A mighty fine way to cook a bird.

I can believe ten minutes easy. It looks like he's deboned the chickens, making them flatter and allowing a much faster cooking time.

@Dustin Driver: the article says he does 50 chickens a day, and it shows him cooking a dozen at a time. He really only needs an hour of sunshine, in ten minute chunks.

Now the bit about being able to roast a suckling pig because of global warming is a bit of a stretch. You could do this as easily in Iceland as Thailand; you just need some good sunlight and a hella mighty mirror.

I can't wait for the 22nd century to reach us.

Ironically, the one thing duct tape is awful at holding together is ductwork. Really.

I have a gun, but I can't say it's why I'm generally happy. In fact, I only have it through bizarre circumstances, not because I wanted it. I'd be just as happy a person without it. I'm pretty neutral about gun control, but I do wish there weren't so many handguns on the streets.

My youngest brother is a gun nut, NRA all the way, goes shooting, has a full gun vault, subscribes to magazines, whole nine yards. He'll say he's happy, but he's usually discontented with one thing or another.

So obviously there are different kinds of gun owners, with varying degrees of happiness, just like the general population.

I'm pretty tired of studies like this. One small aspect of someone's life or personality mixed with some emotion doesn't really mean much in a larger societal picture. As we've seen on this board, people tend to see the word "Christian" and automatically there is a stereotype applied, completely ignoring the fact that there are different kinds of Christians, with very different beliefs and political persuasions. Any poll that says "X % if Christians think blah" says nothing, because some of those Christians are liberals, and some are conservatives. Same with gun owners; some are liberal, some conservative, some radical libertarians and others totally apolitical.

Some are happy, some are depressed. Big whoop.

Now that I think about, maybe some of the depressed gun owners shot themselves.

Hilarious. I knew one guy who had a Doberman. Their fence blew down in a storm, but the dog wouldn only go through the gate that was left standing.

Everyone should watch the Aldous Huxley interview. I watched it a few years ago and it haunts me how much he predicted has happened over the past 6 years.

a real hero - with any luck, he may have turned that kid's life around

Didn't it occur to anyone in the Bush administration what with 6 billion people on this damned planet, there are going to be multiple people with the same or similar name, and that names don't make you bad people? Geesh! Either they are incredibly incompetent, or they are purposefully making government look bad for whatever nefarious purposes they have, because I can't figure out any other reasons for this nonsense.

Is it possible to be a Mac fan and not care for Apple's other products? I really like their computers, but the other stuff I'm pretty much meh about, some things I'm sure are a rip-off, and please don't get me started about iTunes. (Okay, I admit it, I'd take an iPhone in a heartbeat.)

I do like Skeptobot's last sentence.

More like this:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/diastema/2261207346/
only I think hers are better.

You kind of wonder who really had mushrooms.

Believe it or not, Bibles get stolen a lot. Go figure.

WTF? I learned about this theory over 20 years ago as an undergraduate in anthrolinguistics. Cultures that have only three names for colors (black, white and "red", very consistently) don't regard blue and red as being different, just variations. How did the researchers know that it's always "red"? Because the speakers would always pick a shade of what we call red as the representative color. Obviously, we only perceive blue as being different from red when there's a name for it, likewise yellow, green, etc. Wish I could cite the study about all this.

Hilarious and well done, but it does make me appreciate my laptop even more.

Prarie View A&M is pretty remote, and it's obvious that at best, county officials were inconsiderate about placing polling stations so far away, even early voting. And the reason they walked down a highway? Because I doubt there are sidewalks for them to use instead.

@Bevatron Repairman: this is about voter disenfranchisement. Yes, all of Waller County is in the US 10th Congressional, but so is part of the City of Austin and part of Katy, a suburb of Houston, a distance of 134 miles. The 10th used to be Austin's district, but was stretched out through conservative rural areas (like Waller County) and into Houston's suburbs (also conservative) just to get Lloyd Doggett out of Congress. He moved to another district in Austin (yep, Austin got divided up between three districts; the 10th, the 21st, which stretches to San Antonio through conservative counties, and the 25th, which had stretched to Mexico until the courts called foul play) and won in the 25th. A single urban area with over a million people deserves it's own congressional district and not be forced to share with farflung, opposite minded communities.

Whether you make it difficult for a select group of people to vote (by placing polling places in inconventient locations) or diluting a population's ability to express itself at the polls (gerrymandering), it's still voter disenfranchisement.

My brother was in the US Air Force way back when. They'd have war games, and he'd get berated all the time for actually trying. Someone would sneak up to his post, he'd detain them, then get in trouble for not letting them through to the other guys. One time he single-handedly captured another post but got in trouble because it embarrassed the commanding officer. He kept doing stuff like that, though, because that's how real war is; you don't know what your enemy will do, you don't know when they'll attack, and they aren't gonna just let you by. That's probably the same for these guys; there was a situation and they dealt with it quickly and efficiently.

a must have!

About as helpful as any other police sketch I've seen.

Hey, they also said the same exact thing last week about auditory hallucinations in the deaf! And yes, Patrick, apparently the cells do get bored. So they do their own thing to keep busy. Sort of like phantom pains for the deaf or blind, I guess. Well, sort of.

@Stefan - I am so going to steal your quote and use it for everything, especially the next time I buy a car.

I want one of these, and I have zero use for it!

Man, I can see this being handy for a lot more than iPods; like those road trips with the three kids in the back seat and the portable DVD player...

I live in Texas. Fearmongering is an art with the governor's office. The capitol building is a semi-fortress that can't be approached by vehicle, and they just announced they are beefing up security even more; conversly, on a recent trip to Olympia, Washington I drove up to the front of their state capitol, parked, walked around, took photos, etc. Also, a lady spent 20 minutes rummaging through her trunk during that time. In Texas I she would've been questioned.

There is also a new law here that all employees for all school districts have to be fingerprinted and felons can't be teachers. Busted for pot in 1970 but have been clean since? Sorry, you can't teach kids. Anymore.

Oh, and the "we can't say because of safety concerns" bit means either they have no idea what they are doing, or someone got a big fat contract out of this and they don't want to admit it.

I like Austin a lot, but I'm getting real tired of being a Texan.

What would really add to it is a RFD chip detector. Keep the chip on you, and you can approach the box without it slamming shut. No chip, no peeking.

I reviewed a Vietnamese phrase book on Amazon some years ago. In Vietnamese. With phrases from the book. Last I checked, it was still there.

@ Not a Doktor-

Thanks, but the point was those babies will keep needing money for a long long time and will manage to come up with their own ridiculous ways to spend it.

Geesh, whenever my wife and I had a kid, we were too broke from having the baby to even consider anything as frivolous as a special gift for her. And besides, the miracle of a newborn child was so overwhelming, I'm not sure jewelry would've had much of a sentimental impact.

Then again, I had an argument with one of those bundles of joy just this morning about why I wouldn't break the cell phone contract just so she can get a new phone, so I guess I'm just a cheapskate.

My solution is simple; don't bother with online social networks. Complaining that old unwanted acquaintances are finding you on Facebook is like complaining that people are staring at you when you pee on a street corner.

Now, I'm not out to trash e-books or Amazon. But the demise of the book was suppose to happen 30 years ago, and e-books aren't new or anything. I'm thinking, for $400, this isn't gonna do printed books in either.

I read e-books on my Palm Z22. Yeah, it has a tiny screen, but variable sized fonts help, and the flow of reading isn't interrupted much by frequently "turning" the pages. Also, I can easily download software and free books for it.

I like my electric kettle a lot, but for other reasons. Since it heats up water quickly, it's great for making pasta; heat the water up in the kettle, maybe a little more in the cooking pot, and the wait time is cut in half, sometimes even to a third. Now, being a coffee drinker, I must admit that the Kenwood Response Kettle, besides the thoroughly goofy name, has a lot of appeal.

@ Bricology - I'm not going to get into that arguement. The point of my post is that black & white viewpoints in politics and religion are incorrect, that labeling someone as "Christian" doesn't take into account their politics, and labeling someone as "Progressive" doesn't take into account their religious beliefs.

I'm a Christian. I'm also a progressive, in every sense of the word. So is the pastor of my church congregation. Many members of my church congregation vote Democratic, Republican or both. The mainstream denomination I belong to doesn't take the Bible literally, and doesn't have any problem with evolution. My denomination is also notorious for not prostelyzing, which might explain it's shrinking membership.

There are secular conservatives. Dick Cheney has as much interest in religion as the big rock in my front yard, unless it gets him some political gain. In fact, the neo-con movement is almost entirely secular.

My point? Religion is a broad spectrum, politics is a separate broad spectrum, and they overlap in some places and don't in others. Just because there are some loud conservative Christians (that inappropriately claim to speak for all Christians) doesn't mean all Christians are like them. There are secular progressives, religious progressives, religious conservatives and secular conservatives. It's not all as black and white as everyone wants to believe.

Bonzo McGrue - It's not just at political events that Team Bush has turned away possibly unsympathetic attendees. There have been official events as well, and government paid security used to back up that policy. So yes, that kind of behavior has been going on.

As far as the video, I think it's clear Rev. Yearwood had no intention of being arrested, but I think it's also clear he had no intention of physically confronting anyone, either.

I always thought this was a joke, and still do. However, if it's for real, I'm real glad I live in Austin. I wanna see a giant floating banana in the sky!