Ugh. It requires IE.

Doesn't this beg for a "Make" your own?

Zappos and most every other online retailers don't inform us where they are made. This is an advantage for marketeers with products from undesirable places like China. They get to hide the origin until it arrives. One's only option is to send it back every time they send you a pair with the "Made in China" label, quite a hassle.

Zappos isn't any innovator marketing shoes via mail, internet interface or not. I've bought work boots (Made in the USA) from BA Mason company for 15 years. The service is better than Zappos, but not as candyland. Boing Boing is pimping for what reason?

In fifty plus posts, no one asks exactly what vitamins/herbs/drugs is he taking?

I can recognize some of them. He has the glucosamine et al, a bunch of fish and/or flaxseed oil gels, CoQ10, alpha lipoic acid, Acetyl l-Carnitine. It doesn't look like too much of a departure from LEF protocols. I know a lot of people who take a similar quantity. How do you think all those Mall Vitamin stores stay in business?

I like the idea of being able to have 100's of titles on hand, but the silliness of these products and the codes of usage make them undesirable. These aren't designed by people who understand the psychology of "book people". They are designed for techies and gamers. E-formats are great for public domain texts, but there isn't a profit base for those. The only "readers" I use are totally open source, the only e-books I read have no limits.

If I like an author that is still living, I'm willing to pay patronage, buy their book, go hear them speak. I don't care about the publishers and distributors at all. They have to make their products convenient enough to deal with the changing world. The Kindle and it's ilk are bizarre, expensive, and not even readily available. They will be forgotten in a few years; replaced by something else.

The german helmets look like Civil War kepis. Without fylfots, they remind me of the uniforms from Verhoven's "Starship Troopers", which also had a thinly veiled National Socialist aesthetic.

I still have the much more realistic figures included from the Navarrone playset sold back in the 1970's, which didn't have fylfots either.

There is plenty of room for development here. Tasers, stunguns, telescoping batons, portable sonic weapons. Anyone nuts enough to pay for these will expect realism.

Blu Ray wins? I don't buy any Blu Ray discs, none of my friends buy any, and we say bad things about it. Where is the Blu Ray porn (the canary in the coalmine of widely accepted profitable formats)? The inflated prices and limited selections alone are harbingers of doom.

Here's a chain for the paranoid:

Tuesday Weld starred with Martin Mull in "Serial" circa 1980. Martin Mull is the brother of Anodea Judith, who is(or was) a High Priestess in the "Church of All Worlds", a neo Pagan group based on the writings of Robert A. Heinlein, specifically "Stranger in a Strange Land". Robert A. Heinlein derived much of the plot for "Stranger" from his interactions with Jack Parsons and the Pasadena Ordo Templi Orientis, which does claim to distill the wisdom of the Illuminati in it's teachings.

How do I know this stuff?

Here's a chain for the paranoid:

Tuesday Weld starred with Martin Mull in "Serial" circa 1980. Martin Mull is the brother of Anodea Judith, who is(or was) a High Priestess in the "Church of All Worlds", a neo Pagan group based on the writings of Robert A. Heinlein, specifically "Stranger in a Strange Land". Robert A. Heinlein derived much of the plot for "Stranger" from his interactions with Jack Parsons and the Pasadena Ordo Templi Orientis, which does claim to distill the wisdom of the Illuminati in it's teachings.

How do I know this stuff?

Off on a tangent that has nothing to do with hot pots.

Earl Grey, green or otherwise is the clove cigarette of tea.

Bergamot oil may block the absorbtion of potassium, and has phototoxicity than when exposed to light, turns into free radicals. How it all works in your stomach is still an open discussion, but a bit of awareness when consuming the stuff is warranted. If your back hurts after consuming it, or you notice increased acne you might want to skip the EG.

All hot beverages increase your lifetime risk of various bladder disorders.

The bergomot oil might be useful if you have intestinal parasites, similar to the use of wormwood in absinthe.

My guess is that this is a device given by miserly parentals to a subteen to make them feel guilty for leaving the lights on. "See Bobby, your Game Boy Advance is costing us 53 cents a month!"

You could use it to prove to drunken friends that the wall warts do really use electricity when not being engaged.

I'm sure it is just one of many new anally- retentive products soon competing for our attention.

I can only imagine how the world would have been more different if more people had read the "Saracen" books. They were great introduction to the realpolitik and history of the Middle East.

A Japanese professor at CSUS loved Shike, which is a testament to the quality of research done to produce it.

All Things that are are Lights, is a beautiful/tragic take on the Crusades, and it's personalities. If I hear the names, I think of his characterizations.

Having read almost everything written by Wilson and Shea, it was obvious that Shea was a better overall writer. Wilson tended to recycle the same material, much of which was someone else's, be it Leary, or Fuller. I have to wonder if the bulk of the wordsmithing in Illuminatus was done by Shea.