>I’ve been a fan since the print ‘zine, and a regular website reader for nearly a decade.

Why hello, Mr. Unwarranted Self-Importance. I'm sorry we, the commenters, aren't living up to your lofty, elite standards of opinion quality.

A tip: any time you play the "I've been here from the beginning" card, you just end up looking petty.

>It uses lye, 300-degree heat and 60 pounds of pressure per square inch to destroy bodies in big stainless-steel cylinders that are similar to pressure cookers.

What? That's a horrendous waste of energy compared to just sticking someone in the ground or burning them.

So, the suit that covers your body and leaves your head exposed protects your head from radiation?

Sold! I'll take fifty. I hate it when my phone microwaves my brain. Shit stings.

I don't see the problem here. Whether the dress was inappropriate doesn't matter - she violated the school's dress code policy.

>Did anyone even watch the video with the story? Apparently she did offer to cover up and they said no.
And did you listen to why they said no?

Here's the dress code policy of the school, which she would have to have agreed to in order to attend prom (there was a signature area on the form):

1. Only one inch of the midsection can be shown.
2. Bare backs are acceptable.
3. Slits in the dresses can be no more than three inches above the knee.
4. See through fabrics should not be in places with reveal private body parts.
5. Proper undergarments must be worn.
6. Tenis shoes of any kind are unacceptable.

2 wasn't a problem, 3 probably wasn't - the skirt was short, but it didn't have a slit, 4 probably wasn't - the fabric looked solid, and 6 wasn't a problem.

1 and 5 are the issues. The entire DRESS is midsection, and even if she covered up there would inevitably have been more than an inch showing. And she obviously wasn't wearing any kind of bra, which is probably the reason she was told she wasn't wearing proper undergarments.

If she had had no knowledge of the dress code and had been turned away from the hotel without warning, this would be a different story. But she was, by necessity, aware of the school's dress code and the potential consequences for violating them.

I wonder if he has any learning disabilities. Or does his brain do its daily upkeep while he's still awake?

>wouldn't leaving an ice cube in that contraption for a few minutes raise the temp so much that any increase in melting time due to the shape would be lost?

The ice cubes are only in the shaper for about two minutes. The amount of heat gained by the cube would be negligible.

>I find it amusing that someone that wants $500,000 for a nut that they made by gluing two halves together is met with laughter and whimsy and the ~$6000 chair that a person bangs into shape with a sledgehammer themselves is met with near-hate and disgust.

That's probably because people get the joke.

>@Anon (#2), I do not know of a single $6 coffee drink at Starbucks. Even the largest Latte is around $3.

You might want to take another look at the board then, because you can easily spent more than $4 on a single drink. I know because I've done it on multiple occasions.

$6 seems a bit exaggerated, but not as outrageously so as you're making it out to be.

I don't doubt that the instant tastes just as good as the percolated coffee - they both taste HORRIBLE.

I am insulted that Cory Silverberg is attempting to spin the documented destruction of people's lives into an attack on people he thinks are afraid of technology.

Denying the existence Internet Addictions is tantamount to denying the existence of gambling addictions, and I doubt he's willing to take that step to prove his argument.

>@42, Chevan: Almost every book ever published? That's news to me - I'm not even really sure if I believe it.

Exaggeration, to be honest. "Almost every book published in the last fifty years" would be more accurate.

>That is: is it closed communities, or something people like me could find and access?

All you need is an Internet browser and an IRC client.

>Seems like the labor involved in 'ripping' a book is high enough, and with books more numerous than software or movies it would be much, much harder to get everything converted.

From what I hear, the labor is less than you'd think. It pretty much amounts to getting your hands on a book and scanning the pages. OCR programs take care of the rest.

It specifies 100 hours of unpaid work, not community service, so I'm guessing that 100 hours is the time he'll be spending fixing the neighbor's house.

And if "home improvement guy" is the same thing as personal contractor, 100 hours of unpaid work is a pretty serious punishment.

>Book torrents are going to be the next big deluge.

That's just silly. Why would you torrent an ebook when you could just download a 500kb jpegrar?

There are already thriving communities centered around ebook piracy. If you know where to look, you can find pretty much any book ever printed, and if companies keep pushing this rental/faux ownership model I wouldn't be surprised if they start getting a lot more traffic.

#4 - The timestamp on the linked article says it was published yesterday.

Unless the BB editors are hiding time travel tech from us, there's no way they could have talked about this before.

I love the EEE PC, but I think it's highly unlikely that it will ever become a runaway hit.

I'm shaking with excitement at the modding possibilities.

I'm guessing the batteries are used to cock a spring; I can't see the gun using an air reservoir to propel the darts.

Throw in the standard mods (remove air restrictors, change out the barrel, stronger spring), extend the chamber to use more than 25 darts, and possibly rig up a way to quickly change chambers and battery packs, and you've got an amazing gun.

Now, if only the emphasis weren't on accuracy and range more than fire rate and capacity in Nerf circles.

Hmm. Neat.

I just wish I had a use for an ExpressCard slot.

I'm extremely reluctant to answer emails, and now that I think about it, I do breathe differently while I'm composing them.

>Just wait for the CD rot to set in on those 300,000 optical discs.

I literally shivered.

I think I'd just go crazy if that happened to me.

>Why do critics of Objectivism and Rand always resort to terms like "stupidity" and "psychopathy?"

That's simple: It's because they think Rand Objectivists are stupid and psychopathic.

I cracked up at the way the raccoon just stuck his hands in and ran away.

That said, it might be a good idea to shoo him away the next time.

We have indoor cats, but we also take care of a couple cats that live on our property. We found them under our shed when they were kittens, had them fixed, and we make sure there's always food and water on the back porch for them. We don't get raccoons much around here, but occasionally we get opossums, and THOSE THINGS are the ugliest things you will ever see crawling around on your porch.

Fearless things, too. You nearly have to go out and throw something at them to get them to leave.

Yet another compelling reason to split New Jersey in two.

You'll only find them up in North Jersey. We're blissfully free of them in the southern parts.

Congratulations!

Most of my high school tests were either of the "you can't prepare for this, but it's damn easy" or the "this is tough, but you've got a couple weeks to finish it" variety (God, I loved high school chemistry). Cheating was never necessary, so I never got a chance to try out the hare-brained schemes I'd come up with out of boredom in class some days. There are times when I wish I'd had a legitimate reason to cook up a cheating scheme. It would have been fun.

The last time I cheated was in fourth grade on a test of the NJ counties. Each of us had a desk to ourselves to put books in, and I just hid a list in the desk and checked it for the three or four I couldn't remember. I also nearly got in a lot of trouble for helping somebody ELSE cheat in fifth grade.

The first tipoff that this was bull, after the crap correlation/causation mixup title, was that Dune is ranked lower than Ender's Game on the intelligence axis.

Ender's Game is a great book, but putting it above Dune is just ridiculous.

>It is able to penetrate the skin and even get through the skull.

Bullshit.

@6

People on the linked blog's comments are saying that the discoloration may be from the bamboo vinegar that's an ingredient in the pads.

In which case, the pads are basically another "cheap music club" racket.

Chemically, anything can serve as a de-icer. Some are just more effective than others.

Sand is just as good as salt at getting the ice off roads, but it's harder to clean up than salt.

>THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A LONG HORSE.

YOU TAKE THAT BACK.

Guys, the photo of the mold that accompanies the article is a stock photo, not the actual house. You can find it for yourself with a Google search.

I commend the previous owner for placing the note. Real estate is a dirty, dirty business. I've had relatives who tried to become realtors, and listening to their stories is like listening to a "What Not To Do Because It'll Land Your Ass In Jail" seminar.

It's a near certainty that if the real estate company the previous owners had hired to sell the house knew about the note, they would have removed it.

>Seems like they should have just shot it.

Shooting things is harder than you realize if you're trying to kill them quickly, especially for an animal that has a brain not much bigger than ours that's hidden in the middle of a thick, heavy skull.

They very likely would have missed, putting the animal in extreme pain. It would have been crueler than hanging or electrocuting it.

#2+3: Ripping wasn't the problem; putting the ripped tracks into a KaZaA shared folder was.

It's worth noting that the problem in the Jeffrey Howell case, which opens the Washington Post article, was that he placed his ripped files into a KaZaA shared folder, not just that he ripped them.

Still, that doesn't mean Sony's litigation head isn't being ridiculous. Ripping for personal use has a long history of "legal" rulings.

>Utter nonsense from the TSA - again. Illusions of security - again. We all deserve better.

See post #39.

I seem to have done the impossible. Cory, I always thought you were unflappable and above petty internet fights.

Nice passive aggressive comeback, by the way. I'm ever amused by the ways that people get defensive when not everyone likes their treasured hobbies and bitching-hot stylings. And a merry xmas to you, too.

And here's some conciliation: I really am sorry I came off as an asshole, but I do have a reason. Steampunk is awesome, and I fucking love it to death. But do you have any idea how often someone will come into the proverbial internet room brandishing something with the slightest amount of brass highlights, screaming "LOLZ, IT'S STEAMPUNK. LOOK GUYS, AREN'T I SUPER-SPECIAL-AWESOME COOL?" Eventually, everyone else starts to develop an abrasive, knee-jerk reaction to that kind of thing. In hindsight, that's not a good thing.

The "steampunk has steam engines" thing is, as you've intimated, NOT a concrete rule. I'll admit that. I was wrong.

Sorry, and this time with sincerity, have a merry Christmas.

Or rather, post things that are actually steampunk?

Slapping some brass and leather on an everyday object doesn't make it steampunk. Steam engines do.

#16 - There's a longstanding feud between the northern and southern regions of New Jersey, and there's been a couple abortive attempts at separating.

Not exactly secession, though.

No one who lives in deer-infested areas is ever going to be appalled at the idea of killing a deer.

Make no mistake: They're a menace, they're stupid, and they're overpopulated. They're driving out their competitors and they make driving at night a potentially life threatening experience.

Imagine an animal that believes that stepping out in front of an oncoming car is a GOOD thing. Now, imagine that that animal weighs anywhere from 130 to 200 pounds, with most of that weight concentrated right in front of your engine block, where it will either severely damage your car or slide up the hood into the windshield, injuring the driver and any passengers, as well as putting the driver at risk for veering off the road into the nearby trees.

If someone wants to kill a deer, I applaud them.

If, at some point in the future, I accidentally leave expensive items in plain sight, I'd rather have my mistake pointed out to me by the police with a bright yellow sticker than find it out the hard way when my car is broken into.

Meh.

The beginning of the trailer was promising, but then it just got silly.

>"I had multiple shock treatments," Williams said. "It took five years to get my memory back..."

Immediately suspect.

Memory is highly malleable; the proteins that constitute the basic building blocks of memory are rebuilt and altered every time memory is accessed. Moreover, memories can be altered, created, or destroyed in the process.

I very much doubt his story, especially since it took him so long to build it up.

>Yet people throughout history have done so, and no one except for some totalitarian regimes has attacked books as dangerous.

Well, it's certainly not possible that people didn't understand the neurochemical bases of addiction before recent times. And it's DEFINITELY not possible that what was considered acceptable in the past can change.

I'll be frank: I don't understand the point you're making. Are you implying that people who discover that some activities have the same brain functions as drug addictions and the people who make decisions based on that information are on the same level as a totalitarian regime?

I'm sorry, but if that is your point that's utterly ridiculous.

>>Imagine that they were sending bookworms to be treated for their addiction like this. I'll bet a strong reading habit has a similar brain chemistry...

If said bookworms were spending seven or eight hours a day reading books at the expense of other obligations and at the detriment to their health, treatment for an addiction would definitely be in consideration.

The people who are being treated for Internet addiction are not analogous to people with a simple appreciation for reading. The people receiving treatment are the kind of people who die after spending days playing videogames, skip school, and think that spending 17 hours online at a time is perfectly fine.

>>I believe that it's possible to do anything to excess, but I balk at the use of the term "addict" to describe someone whose problem doesn't involve an actual substance with the concomitant changes to brain-chemistry.

Unfortunately, you're working off a pretty limited definition of addiction.

Many activities, such as gambling, have documented effects on brain chemistry, such as increased levels of norepinephrine, dopamine, and beta-endorphins during and for some time after the activity. If someone performs that activity enough, the brain becomes habituated to that state, thus qualifying as an addiction.

No drug need be involved for an addiction to form.

>Corrupt Congressmen
>politicians are so in debt to four of five ailing giants

Citations, please? Those are very heavy, almost fear-mongering, accusations to be throwing around, especially when the article you're quoting says nothing about the politicians behind the bill.

>>Strange squid with human-like "teeth"

You could easily substitute the name of any omnivorous/herbivorous animal for "human" in that sentence.

Yes, it's odd that it has teeth that seem to be adapted for grinding rather than pinching/biting, but it's a stretch to say they're "human-like."

Just make sure kids have a negative net caloric intake.

Force them to exercise and give them a lot of high-fiber, low calorie foods (like fruits and vegetables), and they'll be fine.

Magnet. Every item has a small snap when it's put down. Plus, if there really were "gravity waves" being created, the objects would be accelerating towards the speakers, not moving at a constant velocity.

Also, the objects are suspiciously flat to the ground when they're moving, especially the scissors.

Heads up: Balloon has two "L"s.

I applaud the effort Google went to to spread awareness for the event, but people with LCD monitors end up using more energy than before when they use that or similar blacked-out search pages.

Am I the only person who puts in enough milk to almost cover the cereal?

>This entry is about bad science,

The science hasn't been done yet. No one can say authoritatively whether the science is bad at this point. You can call it bad science if, after the research has been conducted, it proves unverifiable and unreliable. But until then, all you have are your own biases.