I believe it ceases to be security "theater" when the threat is real. As was most gruesomely demonstrated at the Ludlow massacre. And I can think of few more successful military inventions. A Gatling gun is still standard equipment on nearly every fighter plane, many helicopters, and is used for anti-missile defense on ships. There's probably one being fired in Afghanistan or Iraq as I type this.

Sociopath. Thing of it is, they're never content to just take the money and run. It's the game that makes them feel. They do not stop until they're dead or locked up, and will even try to run their scams from prison if given the means. That's why he's writing this, and there will be a new angle soon. Maybe we'll start to see more believable 419s from Ethiopia.

h ys. Dmcrtc vtrs r rtnl, ndpndnt thnkrs, Rpblcn vtrs r jst prdcts f clvr prpgnd. nd wht Dmcrts nd t d t rch ths Rpblcns s b bttr prpgndsts.

gss h's prvd hs wn pnt thgh.

Clrly, Dmcrts >d sck t frmng. Smn wh ws gd t frmng cld b cndscndng, ltst, nd t f tch wtht sndng s cndscndng, ltst, nd t f tch.

The cries of, "it's for adornment, not function, you philistine!" ring particularly hollow when there are so many objects which fulfill both purposes. That's why skeleton and open-heart watches exist. Most of the beauty of gears is in their function. I can think of few things more aesthetically unpleasing than a dead gear, meshing with nothing, soldered down to never rotate again.

"I love animals! See all the dusty heads on my walls?"

I'm guessing that it has something to do with the miserable trying to drag the happy down to their own level.

Eh? People who believe that they live in or are in imminent danger of living in the kind of country where they'll get tazed to death for not smiling when they get a ticket are happy?

Meanwhile, those who think that tasers, while carrying some risk, are far less damaging than nightsticks, saps, or chokeholds - never mind firearms - and are generally satisfied with their local police are miserable.

I learn something new every day.

Dead Flowers is a perfect uke song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFIeHrVbdiA

I'd be willing to bet that 99% of TOR users are Nigerian 419 scammers using it to launder their connection to the web mail systems they abuse. Just like 99% of TTY relay users.

It's a fine idea in theory, but in practice it's been rapidly coopted by the lowest common denominator. Which seems to be the universal fate of idealistic anarchies, for reasons obvious to everyone but idealistic anarchists.

Unfortunately, everyone else now gets to deal with the fallout of a system that is a near-perfect fraud enabler. It's now necessary to create and maintain lists of TOR exit points, and add mechanisms for denying access to any service you don't want flooded with Nigerian fraud based on those lists.

#1.

No, it's perfect. Whedon is the kind of bad writer who forces his characters to conform to the desired plot of the week rather than allowing the plot to rise naturally from the nature of the characters. He must have gotten tired of being criticized for it, so he finally made a show where that's the whole premise. It's really rather clever.

#16 It's not the gas tube, it's the receiver cover. On an AK it's just a thin piece of metal held on by spring pressure, and a bullet strike could easily knock it off with that ringing sound.

Gas tubes on the AK are well-vented and large diameter, fed by a small port in the barrel. To blow one up, you'd need such high pressures that the barrel itself would blow first, or you'd have case separation at the chamber. In either event, there'd be a lot of smoke and the burning and the "Hey, hey, hey it hurts me."

#15,

Nah, she'll just start singing "Never gonna give you up"...

@23

Actually, those particular spikes will help damp vibrations. See, they come with adhesive foam disks...

Kind of silly - if that's what you want, the foam alone would accomplish the same thing - but if you're looking for real coupling you can just not attach the disks. I ordered a couple sets of these spikes a while back. Unlike a lot of "audiophile" spikes, they're relatively inexpensive, and if nothing else they're an attractive way to get some more airflow between components.

Any time you're looking for vintage kitchen devices, check out the Lehman's catalog. The Amish still use this stuff, and young couples setting up house can't just wait for an old one to come up for sale on eBay. All this stuff is still being made in some form, and for those of us who aren't Amish, lehmans.com is nice and convenient.

I'm trying to find room for one of those beautiful wood stoves.

What, is slapping a little metallic paint on something enough to be considered steampunk now? I thought steampunk was pointless when it involved brazing non-functional copper tubing and gears onto every surface, but these plastic toys haven't even been modded to that extent. It's an insult to real Victorian craftsmen - who spent hours of painstaking hand labor to create genuinely beautiful, precision objects that did something - that their aesthetic has now been appropriated to describe objects that have no substance whatsoever.

Let's see a Nerf launcher powered by one of these