@ #1:

This leaves me hoping that white supremacist tee shirt designers aren't familiar with hex-dec, lest we see a counter-argument.

The fact that one shirt insults us and the other doesn't means we're not done combating racism in this country!

It's a Twilek!

George Lucas, therefore, is God.

Darn it, busy all weekend. Set up another time! I want to BOINK everyone in the head my Louisville Slugger!

@#33 Greennigel:

"Is there a word that describes the inappropriate invoking of 9/11?"

Greennigel's Corollary to Godwin's Law.

Yes, he is experienced.

@9: I'll do you one better. Fur Affinity.

www.furaffinity.net

You have to register to see the stuff that make /b/-tards offended.

So you brought it up to the appropriate people who confirmed your right to take pictures, but titled the article "Disneyland bans pictures in its parking lots" anyway.

Someone get some baking powder for that beesting!

The problem with this is that every park and its mother had a skybucket ride. I never thought it was anything too horribly bad when Disney took them down.

Now, if someone could papercraft the ship-shaped hanging buckets of the Peter Pan ride, that would be awesome!

Filling in some question marks...

The guy to the right of Vincent seems to be the robot from Pee Wee's Playhouse, maybe?

Gigantor is to the right of the Bezerk Robot.

The middle guy facing Mecha Godzilla is a Rock'em Sock'em robot.

BBC-era Marvin is to the right of the '76 Cylon, and I'd wager the the guy to his right is the Terminator, but I am not sure.

That's Voltron to the right of Maximiliian, and B.O.B. (The Black Hole) to his right.

Reminds me of TMBG, and I like it for all the reasons I like them, and dislike it for all the reasons I dislike them.

The ball gets stuck in the edges, happened to me twice!

Five hundred thousand HTML errors? I'm skeptical on that little tidbit. Maybe it's just 50 errors repeated 10,000 times within a php or frames background? Maybe it's a programmer who doesn't close their {p}'s? What are we talking about here?

Good for her. We really need to break this cycle of American infantilism.

Somehow, some way, someone will use this piece of news for anti-alarmist sentiment.

Ah, BoingBoing. You walk the fine line between fan enabling and fan derision. It's always a surprise with you.

@ #9:

> I wonder how this compares to books about sex.

"Self-help" section. No, really.

But, but, but, I want one! It doesn't have to be just a joke!

I had thought the drawing of the old man was considered to be DaVinci anyway, or had been in the past.

Cory, what are your thoughts on the remake -- Tiki Room: under New Management?

#37: I agree with you in principle. I didn't feel particularly weirded out by this commercial, but I agree that an absence of context within many postmodern and electronic-age expressions adds to the feeling of alienation.

For example, look at some of the ghoulishly cool stuff listed on BoingBoing, like all the death and weirdness related art. There's a distinct line on what I do and do not like in BoingBoing - that which is created within the context of the environment, and that which is taken out of context and observed as a thing in itself. On the one side we have reporting on Tibetan protests, homages to Arthur C Clarke, and an atmosphere of richness. On the other we have a piece of macabre art masquerading as a video game, an animator creating an 8-bit Xeni, and an atmosphere of starkness that is subconsciously stressful to human minds.

I believe that we were (an are) in a period of experimental starkness in art and expression, reflecting the anxieties of living in teh modern world. My prediction is that the next stage will be pruposefully familiar and comforting to counteract our anxieties, already present in, for example, comfort-food restaurants in Manhattan.

How do you get past the Lich?

Keneke's Corollary to Godwin's Law:

Use of the word "irregardless" invalidates the argument, regardless of content.

Keneke's Godellian Corollary to Godwin's Law:

Use of the word "irregardless" invalidates the argument, irregardless of content.

I first read that as "Big Bang Boing", like it was some kids' video on the beginning of the universe.

I can agree that the smiley face is too common for trademarking, but how is the accompanying photo to this post realistically under a Creative Commons license? I would think that the sign in the photo, with "Wal-Mart" and "Always Low Prices" on it, in that particular layout with those fonts, would be trademarked?

Why does this EULA make me pity the mod? Probably because she's working in an environment that forces her to be this nitpicky. I do not envy.

A protest by any other name...

How do you imitate his sound? What's his sound anyway?

@ #21

> It's just inconceivable that more than one person might disagree with the hard science being posted here without us all being being part of a conservative conspiracy.

Hard science? All I see is an article making an observation.

Oh, and as long as long as we're all speaking our minds about the issue, I do think the post is a tad overassumptive. Not trying to smack anyone down, it's just my opinion.

This inspires the same feeling in me as that ET edit of substituting walkie talkies for guns.

If I were a total Dawkinsite, I'd say something like:

"'What it means to be human' is a vague, undefinable question. A human is the particular species of Homo Sapiens, an arrangement of DNA created just so. The unease we feel at the fact that a chimpanzee is only a few lines of codes different from us is of no import - we have classified ourselves by this taxonomy, and we cannot retain our old territoriality with this new knowledge."

But I don't really like that answer. It's the same subroutine they call when they say that defining God is impossible. It's basically literalists ignoring the lessons of Wittgenstein. People are looking for something different other than a strict definition when they ask what it means to be human.

Even though the entirety of airport security is overzealous and ineffective, I can see how their proposed redesign makes sense from an ergonomic point of view. It seems as if someone in the TSA wanted to monkey with the end-user portion of it to speed up inspection, without touching the unassailable position of security thoroughness, no matter how ineffective the overall process really is.

Not enough information. Was the pilot pompus? Was the kid really spoiled? Did he know the owners of the golf course? Did the owners press charges?

I don't think the comments here are really grapsing the overall arch of what the Singularity signifies. At its most general level, Kurzweil says that when computers are able to pass human thought, then we have an event horizon of human history. Assuming our thought processes are completely modelable, how could it not be a possible future reality?

My favorite part about the video is the grease stains the chicken nuggets kept leaving.

BTW, I see a historical inaccuracy. The US was close to taking Hanoi in the Vietnam war, then pulled out because of lack of support back home, so the depiction here is a little inaccurate. If they had shown fighting, then the hamburger leaving, and then the SVA wrap getting trounced by the NVA wrap, it'd be right.

I know, I know, way to get too serious on a cute little animation. Loved it anyway.

> If we can understand and accept our attraction for beauty we can manage it and temper our desire for it.

I would hope this last sentence is only in response to the unhealthy obsession for beauty modern society has. Otherwise, I find the sentence utterly inhuman. Why would I want to control and temper my desire for beauty?

For 90% of all modern adult contemporary, choose - CDEGBCDEGB

All insensitivity talk aside, I wonder if the Z$ will return someday? I mean, if you can get cheap Z$, and it bounces back at some point, wow. But if it's gone forever like the Jefferson Davis dollar, forget it.

#2: Because a woman out of a burka is an offense against God, dontcha know!

She wore a raspberry beret/
The kind you find in a secondhand store/
Raspberry beret/
And when it was warm, she wouldn't wear much more/

THE FILTHY HEATHENS

There you go, mixing 9/11 with Iraq again.

#5: a miracle akin to the loaves and fishes!

"on behalf of your employer"

LOL.

At least they weren't cosplaying Harry Potter.

SHOOP DA WHOOP?

Neuroscience....for kids?

>> In the end, these protests aren't just for laughs.

No, no....it's just the lulz. Otherwise you're just killing the goose.

#26: Regardless of authenticity, Catholic artifacts would catch a mint.

I just want to know what the judges were thinking. What was their rationale. That's all I want to know.

So much to say...

- Furry enabler! ;)

- "Slim" looks like the average kid today, sigh.

- So...much...death...

- Neat that the narrator is the same guy from Fractured Fairy Tales!

Yet another distinction to add the the rebuttal of #1, and probably the most important of all:

6) Consumption of alcohol in substantial amounts presents immediate danger to those around the consumer in the form of lack of judgement and coordination, especially when driving. Consumption of food does not present an immediate threat.

Here in Alabama, we have similar laws that we re passed 5 or so years ago. The law was fought long and hard (huhhuh) by activists in the state, and it went all teh way to the state supreme court before being struck down. In the end, a fine line was drawn - you can't sell them, but you can own them, bring them back from wherever, or buy them online.

Or can't you? There's a loophole in the state law that such things can be sold for medicinal or humorous reasons. Therefore, all the adult stores in the state, barring being able to explain how EVERY item in their store is good for your health, have adorned their sales floors with gag gifts, lingerie, and adult magazines and video, all of which are still legal to sell. Even the most hedonistic of vibrators still have "For Amusement Purposes Only" stickers on them.

So really, not much changed when the law passed.

#20 - Totally agree. The analysis of Bush's words shows just as much human foible in the analyzers as Bush's original interpretation of the painting.

#7: My thoughts exactly. I would so buy this for my toybox.

> LaVey was a wonderful character - full of dry humour and knowledge of arcane music and film.

You're breaking rule #1, Satanist. ;)

The picture on the page alone is heaven. Look at that thick-sliced meat.

Homey? What's next, curtains?

#11 Hear, hear.

Hey Cory - why was this neato system of reputation currency given such a funny name?

I'd really like to see this concept more broadly used:

- Create a Whuffie stock market, where people can keep track of (and possibly invest in) individual's whuffies. You could keep a cash vs. Whuffie exchange rate.

- Have Whuffie apps on your computer/PDA/phone, tied to a central server. Whuffietrade! w8 per transaction, lowest in the industry. Start trading today, just give us a call!

- See some business models (charities? Creative Commons community?) run on Whuffie.

> "away from any potential ground zero can also mean "over someone else's head".

The population density outside of cities in most of the world is small enough to almost completely eliminate the potential of falling debris damage.

> I also recollect Iran Air Flight 655. A civilian flight.

...with a human firing the missile. Your complaint doesn't seem to address the fact that Israel wants to automate, but only complains about missile systems and war in general. That's a completely different discussion.

US Missile Defense Engineer here.

Missile defense is all about the kinetic kill - a defense missile physically hitting an incoming missile is enough to vaporize both, no explosives needed. So if a missile defense system launches everything, you'll have "empty" missiles falling here and there as debris, no explosives anywhere, most or all of the fuel spent.

Sure, maybe there will be debris, but on the other hand, interception happens far away from any potential ground zero.

Scope is too broad.

Scope is just. too. broad.

Uhoh, look out, furry enablers! 9.9

> what if the persons personal journey puts them at a point where they're still following bits of religion to instruct them to kill other people for various things. its not their fault they haven't evolved past it yet right?

How seriously can you take a person who takes a peaceful religion (Thou shalt not kill, Golden Rule, "the first among these is love", etc. ad infinitum) and uses it for evil? I don't know much about Islam, but it seems to create a culture of aggression, unlike Christianity, which only has a few violent spots in its history, which I doubt that any 2000-year institution could avoid from time to time.

Or, to steal a line from the NRA: Religion doesn't kill people. People kill people.

#6: What's the difference?

I have to admit, it does cover different ground. Rowling's will be previously uncovered information - an extension of canon, if you will. The other project...isn't it supposed to be just a detailing of what has already been written, but put into indexable form?

This is also why bookstores have adjoining coffeeshops.

I think, at the level of reading most BoingBoing readers are at by now, this book either preaches to the choir or is a lost cause.

Awesome of course, but I find it hard looking at both sides of the bottom of the screen for visual silhouette gags. And 5 jokesters? That's a lot to take in. Who's speaking?

Where's all the over 100 year olds? ;)

Neato: the asbestos one is a double entendre of irony.

There needs to be a word made for that.

Funny how, with the complexity of humans and the vast amount of emotional depth each person has, that we still cling to 2 dimensional versions of Christianity. Does a belief in Santa Claus mean that you stay stuck in that belief because of itself? No, you grow out of it when you are ready. Same for the hell aspect of Christianity - you grow out of it, even while remaining within the church (or not), as your relationship with God grows. This is probably the biggest misconception of Christianity today.

I feel it's the same way for movies - violent movies do not corrupt society, violent movies are a reflection of the corruption already there. Therefore, if you see Christians acting on simplistic morality, don't blame the religion, blame the person.

#34:

"Who else has moved humanity like Jesus?"

True. Not really an ontological proof, but Christianity is momentous and decrying it is like decrying video games - you may try to change it, but you ain't gonna stop it.

BoingBoing is repeating themselves...were they affected by the writer's strike or what?

As important as skepticism is (I'm a former Randroid myself), I'm a little glad this sort of sneering confrontationalism is being assigned to history. I mean, I am all for protecting the average person from scammers, but I found myself in the midst of some buzz-killing bile over there.

My view: belief is as much a product of evolution as logical thinking. It is not a malaise or by-product. Yes, it must be (oft times aggressively) tempered by logic, just like our logic must be tempered by our sense of self. But we are more than just chemical reactions; even a materialist like Hofstadter amazes at emergent consciousness.

On a side note:

Oh noes, you linked to an Livejournal entry? How horribly out of date and uncool! Don't you know LJ is "expired" in this month's edition of Wired?

If you MUST link to a blog farm, you may only link to Blogger from now on. Harumph. Next thing you know, you'll be linking Myspace sites next.

Woe.

Forget what everyone say about each generation is worse than the last and that the world is going to hell in a handbasket. The world's becoming better. This would never stand in most countries today.

C'mon guys, let's get meta. All you believers and non-believers need to integrate your function.

So much for Disney's creative resurgence. Big step backward, here.

OMG, a non-Cory Disney artist post! A first!

Just teasing, of course Mary Blair was a prized aritst.

True: this site is subject to the whims of the bloggers. That means Disney from Cory, without end. But on the other hand, that's why I come here. I probably wouldn't visit BoingBoing if there weren't cool Disney stuff.

And out come all the people who want to throw out the baby with the bath water.

I am ashamed to know that that jacket/hoodie combo is sold at WalMart for $20. I almsot bought one, then decided I could just buy a hoodie for $10, a shirt for $10, and have more wardrobe options.

Yay, Walmart fashion. I'll go kill myself now.

BoingBoing: a directory of XKCD.

#1: All the commentary this post needed.

#16: I never saw anything more than a few similarities between the Mithras story and the Jesus story, even with the old-theory-new-format YouTube videos going around. Lincoln and Kennedy - now THERE'S some similarities.

A related note: Disney really needs to sell its Baby Einstein content, for all the bad publicity ultra-young Tv is getting.

Papparazzi killed Di! Ban photography! ;)

#10 FTW

TOS, TNG, DSN, VOY, ENT: Which has the prettiest women? (Or guys, for the women out there.)

I think that calling an obsession a religion is descriptive of the passion of the fanatics, not indicative of a psychological state akin to transcendent thought (remember the studies with the meditators and nuns?), unless great happiness itself is similar to transcendence. Perhaps a study could be done on a link between general happiness and transcendent thought?

I know people call obsessions 'religions', but I think it was meant to be a metaphor so deep that the word 'religion' came to be used in a more general sense. Obsessions and religions may have similar traits on the surface, but I believe the cause and underlying psychological workings to be very different. Indeed, by merely referring to these pasttimes as religions (and attempting to categorize them as such), the lecturer is presenting potential bias into the equation. Once people start to see obsession as religion, a positive reinforcement bias will come into effect.

Which bacteria will protect my teeth instead of eat away at them, and which will make my underarms smell good instead of bad when I sweat?

Neato. But not really "Rube Goldbergian" at all.

For some reason, this post just isn't interesting at all. Catholics made a comic book that is creepy because they try too hard to get their point across. Big deal. Where are my 2G1C tshirts???

Thus, our hero created the WWW's version of the appendix.

I don't care if it's a law or not, it's just sleazy.

Give me multiple independent studies and a scientific consensus before I switch, please.

"During the course of my shower, occasionally an arm, thin and yellow as an egg noodle, would squeeze through the crack in the door, check the water temperature, adjust the knobs accordingly, and then slip back out."

AIEEEEEEE!

I shat bricks.

Remember that bit about the hundreds of thousands of women executed in Europe when the next apologist attempts to explain away the witch hunt as an isolated madness.

What is "direct correlation"? Is a tighter correlation indicative of something more significant that...correlation?

All I see is two things that are probably just a sample of population explosion result metrics. I would wager to say that TB is caused by crowded conditions of increasing population, and coal usage/pollution follows the increase as well. I bet other communicable diseases follow this same pattern.

I dunno, that Martin Luther quote kinda pegged it - not the evil part, but the "no limit for this fever called writing" part.

One unicorn chaser, please.

If A = true, then A -> C
If B is true, then B -> C
B -> not A
A -> not B

C -> B?
C -> A?

More and more, I am seeing an invective on the side of secularism to match the existing extremes present in religion. Meanwhile, there are a large group of moderates on both sides of the aisle who already get along. (Think of liberal Christian denominations, searching agnostics, Buddhists, Apatheists.) I think this bridge-building effort is good if both sides feel that a full-blown culture war needs to be avoided, but many of us plain old Americans (of any mode of belief) simply watch from the sideline, curiosity aroused, like watching a bitchfight in a bar.

> It's the phrase "Little children are the fursuiters' bread and butter" that creeps me out -

Ha! Certainly didn't mean it to be creepy. I meant to say that fursuiters are amateur Disney characters - they delight in bringing smiles to children's faces. I guess I'll change my wording.

> So who won?

Klingons. Furries couldn't get their furred fingers in the ball holes, so they rolled the ball granny-style down the lanes.

I think you messed up the link. Here it is just in case: http://flickr.com/photos/14359698@N07/sets/72157602213115572/

What a horrible, morbid, depressing idea. The omnipresent hair-raising presence of a reminder of our mortality is enough to make me more stressed out than I already am. There's a happy medium between youthful immortality and cancer-patient desperation.