Pretty sure a misogynistic hat is the Sorting Hat's German grandfather who he doesn't like to talk about much.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=mSt1m4NFUl8&feature=related
Seeing that drill reminds me of this clip for some reason.

Unicorn chaser and a mop, please! Some people eat before reading this blog!

@10: I don't care what you say. I will put neurotoxins on my penis to draw out the experience (extended pleasure condoms), I will put petroleum lubricant on my penis, I will put a latex barrier over my penis. But I will never put something made out of piss on my penis. It just isn't natural.

I just did the math to make my point clearer. At least in beef, just .04% of the meat is lost in the figures they gave. That's really not that terrifying a number if I were a farmer who didn't care about animal's pain. However, I like to think this did help improve conditions a little for some animals, as I've heard a lot of farmers believe that animals that experience pain or fear a lot release hormones that hurt the quality of the meat.

It said in the article that about $6.00 of meat was lost to bruising in 1/15 cows. I get that every bit counts, but think about it: A cow has about 500 pounds of usable meat. In today's dollars, you can buy about a pound of good quality beef for $4, give or take a bit depending on the quality of the cut. Even if we double the dollar value (I don't get inflation, and I imagine beef's a complicated issue thanks to the number of variables like the fact that we now feed cows GM soybeans which are cheaper than the old feed and the fact that we have rising energy costs), that's still just about 3 pounds of meat lost from an animal with 500 pounds of meat on the hoof, out of 15. This really shows how big the beef industry is if that was enough loss to warrant a nice illustrated pamphlet explaining how to better treat the animals. Or maybe they had the animals' interests at heart as some of the animal welfare people on this board feel and offered up the economic incentive for those farmers who might not be as concerned with the animals' pain.

So... it closes a little door when the toast is inside. Maybe that makes it more energy efficient, and thus "green?"

And then Albi cried a single tear that turned into a jellybean, all the colors of the rainbow. And suddenly, Albi wasn't racist anymore.

Looks great. I read online that there's a "mild hybrid" version of the Yaris with a big starter motor that lets it shut down the gas engine at lights and stop signs. Any chances they could hand down some of the electric technology into an all electric Yaris, or maybe even a hybrid?

I'm a college student on a budget, so I'm in the market for compact cars. If a company were to release a practical (In my mind, airbags, 3-4 seats, hatchback, top speed of at least 85 MPH with acceleration over 0 to 60 in 12 seconds) electric car for under $15,000, I'd seriously consider it.

Also, leave the doors off and just use force fields. They look better and don't fill up landfills. :P

This is why I don't go to anime club anymore.

That's great. I wish I could see the text better. I'm surprised a computer that old supported two monitors, but it's a great effect. Maybe someone could get a pair of Apple Cinema displays and a red rotary phone to better imitate the Portal decor, run that program, and then film it in HD so you can see the ironically low definition characters better. It's all gilding the lilly, but there's nothing too anal or crazy in the world of video game fandom.

Oh wait. I just realized it's TWO computers working in tandem. But I still want to see a higher res version. The one hosted on the site still isn't clear enough to really read the text.

@TumblingWall: Either you were trying to be random, or you were thinking what I just realized. Forget making beer, make ethanol (which is basically moonshine). Right now, ethanol appears to be a bad investment, energywise, but maybe if it were to ferment in this type of gizmo, the energy produced from that could help even it out. If it doesn't make things work out for corn, that's okay, as sugar cane ethanol in Brazil has been successful on the economic and ecological level, so it could work with fermenting sugar to recoup even more energy.

For even more energy collection, the bottles will contain pressurized CO2 by the time the machine is done. If the CO2 is bubbled up through an algae farm, then that makes even more fermentable mass while sequestering the CO2.

I'm not surprised just a little electricity comes from two bottles. What would interest me is how it would work with two really huge vessels of fermenting stuff. I wonder how much electricity a standard ethanol plant could turn out in a day...

What I don't get is how exactly it works. Has this guy gotten a patent or put up diagrams anywhere? Would the machine run until the yeast had completely fermented to the desired point, or would it stop before that? And does the sealed nature of the device make the environment inside the bottles anaerobic, cutting the reaction short, or do the "special valves" let in fresh air at any point? I do understand the basic mechanism from looking at the jpegs, though.

It looks like it might work well with vinegar and baking soda, too, as a quicker way of operating and a proof of concept. Probably not energy effective, but it would be great for a science fair, if I were still young enough to participate.

@10: I agree totally. There are already real engineers paid to work from 9 to 5 to find out safer ways to build highways, bridges, buildings, products, etc, and they don't have to worry about making good TV.

Why don't they instead try getting permission to film tests at Underwriters Laboratory, where they routinely test new products for safety and compliance? I'm sure there'd be a few problems making this unrealistic, but at least it would be more appealing than what Smash Lab has come up with.

Then again, they've only shown one episode so far. Part of the problem is probably that they just tested one thing, aerated cement's effectiveness against car crashes.

Also, it kind of bugged me about how they tried to always make the team look cool, as though they were in an action movie. I can't list them all, but there were a ton of cliches, like showing all of the members of the team walking in sync in slow motion, and then sitting down all at once. Mythbusters is more watchable because the show has a mild self-deprecating streak. The announcer's jokes are corny, and the scripted sequences always have members of the crew fighting back laughs, but it's humanizing. The cast of Mythbusters are real, down to Earth people, personality-wise, in comparison to the sort of people you see in shows that try to be cooler than they actually are, i.e. Smash Labs and Man vs. Wild.

I'd try it, but something about thinking about drinking oats through a straw makes me throw up in my mouth a little.

I used to call myself TVtheFleshtone based on an old middle school inside joke that, oddly enough, did not involve porn. When I was a sophomore in high school I realized that it sounded pretty stupid. So, I changed it to TVarmy, mainly because I was into Advanced Wars at the time, and it was back when the Iraq War was just starting and it was getting a lot of coverage. My name's not meant to be anything, it's just a quick change to a name that sounded immature.

@11: Shareholders. Doesn't mater what the company sells (assuming it's not something really unethical), they need to know if their investment is likely to pay off.

You don't opt in to Neilson ratings systems. The company that runs it is afraid of people gaming the system to boost ad revenues to certain networks/shows.

The part about the invention of keyboards is really interesting. It's a shame that new key layouts aren't made for devices we regularly type on with things other than our fingers. For example, phones are usually typed on with two thumbs at a time. Rather than 4 fingers (and two thumbs on one key), the user is just using his or her two thumbs. Everything there is a reach except for two keys, so I guess the smartest idea would be to put the keys in a pair of tight circles or squares around the two most-used letters (My money is on "A" and "E", but I could be wrong.

New layouts for game systems and touch screens would also be nice.

@2, 7, and maybe 8:

If you read the blog post, he explains that the arm is his Japanese girlfriend's.

Please tell me you were being sarcastic about that not being used on humans is unfortunate. Brains are fragile enough as it is. Of course, I guess if one is at high risk for having a child with a neurological disorder, this could come in handy when/if surgery needs to be performed.

That's awesome, but I can't find a pattern on the site. If she's not going to sell them, I'd really like her to give it out. I can't crochet, but this makes me want to learn.

This calls for a personality quiz. I want to know who my descendants will become. I'm a 6' 1" androgynous male who is about 20lbs overweight. I'm also a tad socially awkward. So, maybe goblin if I marry someone shorter than me?

My broadband company is owned by Comcast, but it hasn't been changed over yet. Bit Torrent and anything else useful is blocked on my college's internet. If Comcast starts blocking Bit Torrent, then I have no place to download stuff that I'll be wanting on campus.

Anyone know how to recreate the effect they did on GLaDOS's voice? I know it's probably 70% Ellen McLain that makes it so great, but I still think it sounded really cool and even just a bit of the effect would be fun to recreate if it can be done with software and nothing expensive like a vocorder.

@14: A low-protein diet makes people more submissive and less likely to lash out. Cults have been doing it for ages.

If you zoom out the satellite image, you'll realize that the building's shape makes sense in context. It's two jets about to bomb the Nazis. A bit outdated, but interesting nonetheless. I still see their reason, but I think people should at least get why they did it in the first place.