If the skull is 150 years old, the owner could not have given consent. It would be interesting to know where it was acquired; there is a distinct possibility it came from a grave robbery.

In any event, I tend to think it is an inappropriate use of someone's remains.

Using a urinal is like playing golf: Eyes down, concentrate on the grip, and try not to veer off to the side.
/red dwarf

As sad as this story is, it is yet remarkably honest. I'm think disputes about penis size is one of the things which separates us from the apes.

Ugly Canuck wrote "That's why your pres. needs a 300-hundred million dollar personal helicopter but 40% of the pop. get no health care..."

Strictly speaking the replacement of Marine One is not one helicopter, but 28 helicopters at a cost of $11.2 billion. For perspective, this is almost double the annual budget of the National Science Foundation.

This purchase reminds me of the APCs guarding the airports in the weeks after 9/11. Just in case Al Qaeda decides to attack with an infantry charge. It is just more security theater.

I would think that regardless of the precautions against public viewing, people have a reasonable expectation of privacy under their clothing. Maybe scanning before boarding a flight is constitutionally reasonable, but I don't see how general public scanning without notification could hold up under constitutional scrutiny.

TSA: "What is that, electronics"
Traveler: "Yep, it holds batteries"
TSA: "You know what else is made of electronics? The TIMING DEVICE of a BOMB!"
Traveler: "Huh?"
TSA Supervisor: "That's some good work, Lou."

Of course, replacements for the President's helicopter fleet of 28 dedicated helicopters are coming in at 11 billion dollars, according to the Washington Post. For comparison, the entire National Science Foundation budget is about 6 billion per year. (Notably, however, Bush won't actually use the helicopters--they won't be ready until after he leaves office.)

From his affidavit is sounds very much like this officer knew there was nothing illegal about the Conover's activities. I am not a lawyer, but I would think that makes a pretty good case for false arrest.

I think the interviewee handled himself with more decorum than I would have had patience for. The first thing I thought of when he asked "have you ever seen a woman naked" was "yes, your wife."

In retrospect, however, his response was the right way to go.

Obi-Wan: That's no moon. It's a space station.

A few years ago I was a legal observer at protests for the National Lawyer's Guild, which for me mainly entailed shooting video of protests, including the 1999 WTO protest in Seattle. I will from experience that many police officers do not want to be videotaped (even when the same department has police with video cameras on the ground).

A cynic might say that they dislike having video surveillance which are independently reviewed and/or are not controlled by the police.

I have to agree with Satan and emayoh's eloquent views. No one would argue that BoingBoing does not have the right to go back and delete posts; they even have the right to go back and write new posts, alter posts, etc. Formally, even the most prestigious news organization has the right to do so. However they will lose the trust and respect of their readers by their actions.

An analogy, suppose a political blogger spent years opposing issue A, but then wishes to endorse a candidate who favors issue A. If the blogger goes back and deletes all of their previous references to opposing issue A, then endorses the candidate, there might be a bit of legitimate distrust of the blog. This is not to say a blogger does not have the right to do so, of course, it is just a questionable thing to do (blog or no blog).

If Violet Blue did something so reprehensible that you think she should be publicly condemned, do so. If not, ignore it.

Minor correction to my post; there is one ulna visible (upper right, beneath the scapula).

Wow a chance to apply my zooarchaeological training!

My conclusions: (i) It is an artiodactyl, and (ii) someone may have deliberately arranged the bones.

Most of the bones need a much more detailed image to be identifiable (other than maybe "terrestrial mammal"). However the bone which is partially obscured by the rock is a metapodial of an artiodactyl (the last image on the link is clearer).

There are notably many bones missing. There are no femurs, humeri, radii, or ulnas, and only half of the innominate. In addition, most of the verts, most of the metapodials, one of the tibias and phalanges are missing.

The arrangement is very curious; the arrangement is roughly anatomical, however the scapulas are both facing the wrong way (heads in), the verts are unarticulated but in a line. My best guess is that scavengers carried off parts of this fellow, and then someone came along and arranged the bones. I would not have expected the degree of arrangement found here if the animal had been scavenged.

Hmm, with a count of 5 right and 1 left, the siding issue does not seem overly peculiar. Conditioned on the unlikely event of finding 6 unpaired feet, with random siding, the probability of getting 5 right and 1 left is 0.09375; the probability of getting five of one side and one of the other is, by my calculations, double that or 0.1875. This is within the realm of what might occur by chance.

My conclusion is that the oddity is that feet keep washing ashore; not that they are predominantly one side. The siding is reasonably attributed to randomness.

Well, the real take-home lesson of the day: don't trust your teachers. That is a worthwhile lesson too.

For the record, I was once a high school teacher and think this is unconscionable.

#5 and #7, with regard to the general culpability of the Virgin Group for the offenses of Virgin Media, there seem to be two questions.

According to the Virgin Group website, Virgin Media IS still part of the Virgin Group.

Moreover, it seems to me the purpose of branding is to establish a recognizable reputation of business practices. That is, a company would do business under a brand to gain the trust of consumers. Well, if one company destroys that trust, I don't see why customers should stick with the brand. It seems perfectly legitimate to boycott other Virgin branded businesses. They chose to swim together, let them sink together.

Brought a smile to my cynical face. That is a wonderful clip.

Why don't we just weigh each passenger; those who are heavier than a duck are witches terrorists.

Of course, administering a placebo also relies on the kid not figuring out that the pill is a placebo.

I was 16 or so and I had a MD give me pills which I'm quite sure were placebos (I'll bet he thought I'd convinced myself I was sick so as to avoid school, which may well have been true...). I figured out almost immediately that they were placebos since (i) Doctors don't give you pills, pharmacies do, (ii) they were allegedly "antibiotics" but there was only one dose (to limit antibiotic resistance, a full course is always prescribed), and (iii) he said I probably had a cold (for which antibiotics would be useless).

Mind you, he still did a throat culture and I still took the pills. We were both, I think, hedging our bets. Maybe I was unusually geeky for a 16 year old, but I'd bet a fair number of kids would work out what was going on.

I think the broader and more concerning issue is not the presentation in the paper, but that many if not most papers do not publish the data their analysis is based on. In general people will send you the original data on request (sometimes only after an argument), but since there is no central archiving, as time goes on the data are lost. Publication will generally place the research in the best possible light (not necessarily because of dishonesty).

The blame can not be shifted from scientists who falsify data. They should know better. However we should design a system which does not foster dishonesty. If data collection were valued at the same rate as analysis, we would be in a far better place to both (i) freely disseminate data and (ii) provide incentives for people to provide the unaltered record of their research.

I wonder what is their species. Does anyone know? Are they related at the crazy yellow ant (Wikipedia)? Sounds pretty nasty; invasive species are one of the prime drivers in the loss of biodiversity.

I'll have to try the flashlight-spider thing. Finding scorpions with UV lights (blacklight) is great fun, however. Their bodies fluoresce quite dramatically under UV. And then you never walk barefoot again.

For human camera detection, I prefer the mask approach. Or the social-engineering method: "I understand you've been having some problems with your CCTV, could you point out the cameras?"

pork musket: Although Virgin America is a separately run company, they are using the same brand name, licensed from Virgin Group. I think boycotting all Virgin Group holdings would be reasonable. If others in the Virgin Group will tolerate one company abusing their customers while maintaining their branded ties, then they all deserve to sink together.

As a former high school teacher it certainly seems to me that punishment is suspect, at least if the news report is the whole story. What possible purpose could the punishment have, other than to suck all the fun out of school? Gold stars for the students indeed, and I am writing the principal's name on the board. (I'd send him to the front office, but who would he talk to?)

I concur that it is graffiti and should not be tolerated. The message here may be more in line with our sensibilities, but I don't see how this could be acceptable while "anarchy4evAr!!!" slogans (or "Limbaugh4President") are not.

Fortunately, we can count on the new chief of Heathrow security: A former loss preventions officer from the duty-free shop, who is (at least allegedly) in a relationship with the airport managing director. (Daily mail article pulled from Fark).

Well, as the economy tanks, at least we can count on bolstering business through intellectual property rights lawsuits--America's new growth industry!

What is the constitutionality of such actions? If the government effectively prohibits certain actions, when does that become an question of liberty under the fifth amendment (the taking of which requires due process)?

Wow, when I was a kid they gave skittles to kids for the vitamin C.*

Keeping junk food out of schools: good idea. Suspending students who buy candy: bad idea. If only they would ask me before making policy.

*Skittles contain 45% of the DV of vitamin C per serving (1.8 oz).

It seems like, from the linked article, the 2.1 trillion refers not to the value of orphaned loans, but to the value of bundled loans (some of which may be well tracked). Regardless, this is a huge amount (on the order of 15% of the US GDP, in round terms).

The relative responsibility of Mr. Lents, to my mind, pales in comparison to the responsibility of managing such a sum of money. Mismanagement on the order of trillions of dollars could cause widespread effects, so to do so on the basis of personal gain is reprehensible.

Good idea: Conduct job interviews from behind this desk.

Better idea: With people unfamiliar with the Star Wars movies.

A cop who loses his temper talking to teenagers? He should definitely not be a cop.

Thank goodness I was always suave and timelessly stylish through my late teens. My wavy blond mullet was both attractive and functional for all occasions, formal and informal. (At least the internets were not around then to attest otherwise.)

These guys are kids (maybe early 20s), and like all kids, they think they're the new hotness. No different than this guy or these guys (SFW: modern picture of leisure suit and greasers) were in their day.

I, for one, welcome our new peach overlords.

I concur with the spook theory here, although not necessarily due to an error. A known break in the cable may be the cover to install tap in the cable elsewhere (assuming that tapping an optical cable interrupts it if it is operating).

It rather puts an interesting spin on the Weird Al Yankovic song "Canadian Idiot"

How long until the only way to listen to music legally will be from a personal CD player on inner-ear headphones, with noise canceling headphones on top of them to make sure that no hint of music escapes them to the outside world?

I checked. That's slated for a week from Tuesday.

What is interesting to me is that it was a fairly unlikely event that they were caught. It is possible this is an isolated incident, and lacking evidence to the contrary, it should be treated as such. But what supervisor would ask an intern to create an photo of a dog in a santa hat ex nilio, or when presented with such an image (from an intern who would not have means to have independently created it), not asked where the image came from? If I were a betting man, my money would be on responsibility above the level of an intern, and a problem wider than a single image.

The best response (whatever the case) is not to sue Fox for infringement (at least not simply "to give them a taste of their own medicine, as it were"), since this only validates their tactic (even though the circumstances here are different).

Instead the opportunity is to draw up a reasonable list of 'demands' (things like "We (Fox) will carefully review any material used in our program for copyright infringement," and "we won't claim a copyright over material which we do not own." etc.--things which they could hardly say no to and ought to be doing anyway) in exchange for allowing use (post facto). The acceptance of public agreement to these demands will read as an apology, at least to the public. If they turn down an agreement to do what they are obligated to do anyway, that is also newsworthy. It probably won't change a thing at Fox, but will attract positive attention to copyright issues and excesses.