The pic also reminds of why I always loved doing table-top shots in the photo studio. It's so darn fun arranging a bazillion items like that, while taking into account the keystone effect of the camera angle.

Honest!

There's no shame in buying Craftman tools. Their main-line tools are priced right and are perfectly acceptable for damn near any job. And, of course, there is the lifetime guarantee on the handtools.

They're an especially good choice for someone just starting out and needs a viable box full of tools but hasn't the cash flow yet to go the MAC or Matco route. Most of the guys I know who have big sets of Matco tools have accumulated them piece-by-piece over many years. They started with Craftman tools and always advise new guys to do the same.

One caveat...Sears recently introduced a budget line of tools that gets stocked along-side the regular tools. Made in China. Avoid.

Instead of mileage requirements, let the market rule. Guarantee that this would lead to innovation in the market place.

Yeahhhh...I shudder to think what sort of gas-guzzling behemoths Detroit would've produced if they had never had to worry about CAFE standards in the first place. There's absolutely nothing about milage standards that are keeping car makers from innovating.

The market rarely acts proactively for the greater good, especially when it comes to larger societal problems.

Algae can employ saline water, and jatropha grows in dry conditions on degraded lands...

So, algae can "employ" saline water? What, exactly, does this mean? Obviously, algae can grow in ocean water. Is that all that "employ" means, in this context? If so, this is meaningless, as far as the ultimate impact on the environment goes.

Just how much fresh water would an algae-based biofuel factory need to consume? I seriously doubt they would use salt water in production. The current biofuel industry darling, ethanol, consumes an ungodly amount of fresh water in production, potentially depleting local aquifers where these plants are built (usually low-income rural areas where people are more likely to rely on wells for their water needs)

There is a very important part that often gets overlooked when the discussion turns to biofuels.

Please, oh, PLEASE, bring that hack to my neck of the woods!
They started rolling-out these obnoxious billboards here. Talk about fugly. And way too bright, especially at night. It's like a mini-sun.

Wow. Larry needs to come up from his Mom's basement and get some fresh air. The furnace must be leaking a little gas. It's making him delusional.

So, Larry...at what point in your democracy/capitalism fever dream do the workers and consumers get to criticize the businesses? It seems that you feel everyone should just shut up. Anyone who dares criticize the business practices of the companies is automatically a "sore loser"?

Despite what you seem to believe, capitalism is not carte blanche to do business in any manner one sees fit. Nor is it a free-pass to avoid criticism when your practices begin to negatively affect employees, communities, consumers, etc.

...instead of moving forward as a knowledge economy where people rely on research, science, design, and innovation to create new markets and wealth?

The problem with the holy "knowledge economy" is that, in execution, it leaves a sizable part of the population behind as far as realistic, living wages go. Sure, the "knowledge economy" is a no-brainer if you're located in a hot pocket of "innovation" or have been blessed with the correct education to make yourself a player. For the rest of the country, though, "knowledge economy" jobs pretty much equate to low-paying call-center work. Not exactly jobs you can support a family with. Or pay the mortgage with.

Such concepts as the "knowledge economy" willfully ignore the very real fact that the education necessary for one to truly succeed in said economy is quickly being priced out-of-reach for more and more people. Add to that the fact that there will always be a very substantial portion of the population who simply never get that far in the first place. Not because of laziness, mind you, but more because they are never exposed to the possibilities or shown how to get involved.

The "knowledge economy" is a great concept as long as you're in the middle of it. For the others who are outside, looking in, it's a cruel joke.

Hey, at least they didn't go with one of their first ideas..."Work makes you free."

A great example of this thinking in practice is Nine Inch Nails' new album, released in a sliding scale of fan-dom...

Are you including the millions of dollars spent over the years by the record companies to promote, record, and distribute Reznor's music in order to build the fan base in the first place?

Acts like NIN (and Radiohead...let's not forget them) can move in these directions because they have the monetary base from which to support this. A monetary base built thanks to long-lived partnerships with corporations.

Okay...I am in serious need of a new cutting board and that thing would completely rock my kitchen.

I saw this list about a week ago.
It still reads more like a list for the self-impressed/absorbed digerati with-which to condescend.

Everyone should know how to drive a manual transmission. You never know when your brilliant career might tank and you have to drive a truck for a living.

I gotta agree. As foul as most caff-free diet pop is, the Pepsi variant is über-foul. Would-rather-drink-my-own-Britta-filtered-urine foul.

I would like to find some of the old gory drivers education tapes that showed car wrecks complete with mangled corpses.

Signal 30

#20
When rich white babies start dying, you hope someone finally realizes the need to change.

Fixed that for you, too

That's the creepiest thing I've seen in a long time (true or not)

Meanwhile, here in the Great Lakes area, where water tends to be in large supply, the small local governments are crawling over each other to land deals for locating ethanol plants in their territories.
The ethanol plants which promise to suck obscene amounts of water from the local aquifers on a daily basis. Drying up wells, etc.

Y'know...if these rugs didn't come with the "cowhide" reference already attached, I don't think I would have made the connection. They look more like someone "spilled" a rug on the floor.

My one and only encounter with TSA was when my wife and I were waiting to board a short-haul flight from Pittsburgh to Indianapolis.

The droids came into the area and looked over the crowd of us waiting to board, pointed to the guy dressed in black (me) and asked to submit to a wanding.

The first pass...BLEEEEEP. Remove all change from pockets.
Second pass...BLEEEEEP. Remove belt.
Third pass...BLEEEEEP. WTF? Nothing metallic left to remove, except for the zipper on my pants.

Then, one of the droids got the bright idea that, maybe, we should move away from the big METAL table they were using.

Fourth pass...all clear.

Oh, man, I remember Space Food Sticks! I seem to recall the peanut butter flavor being especially acceptable. Or especially hideous. One of those two.

Well, we wouldn't want those pesky independent monitors to be able to contradict the official announcement of a dirty bomb being released in Manhattan, and the resulting nationwide declaration of martial law, right before the election...would we?
~removes foil hat, takes a deep breath

I'd be much more concerned about why the government that is supposed to fund public education has chosen not to do so.

I think you'll find that it isn't government, necessarily, that has chosen not to fund education. Rather, it's the parents, through their unceasing anti-tax mentality, that forces government to underfund schools and, thus, schools to crawl into corporate beds just to make ends meet.

You get what you pay for. And, if you demand to pay nothing...well...guess what you get?

Considering cops regularly utilize the work "fuck" by the metric-boat-load, I find getting busted by them for using the word quite ridiculous.

Classic.

You can hear the laughter rolling through the mountains surrounding Bin Laden's camp. Set-off a few bombs, then sit-back and watch the western world eat itself. Sweet plan.

We had toys like this back in the 60s. They probably existed even further back. They were great fun.

I'm constantly amazed at how many old things show up here as if they were something new and amazing.

That's a simply beautiful thing.

Y'know...a cynical person would look at this mess and think that these people were put in place with the expressed intent to destroy the good name of the Smithsonian and to legitimize it's privatization.

This is not a problem with capitalism... This sort of bad behaviour by executives is a problem with HUMAN BEINGS

But that is exactly the nexus where modern capitalism lives and, ultimately, utterly falls on its face. Capitalism today, as exemplified by the sort of short-term, maximum-profits-above-all-else business model we see today, almost seems to depend on human greed and arrogance to function according to theory.

Recently, my daughter's high school contracted with a private corporation to enact a new system for purchasing school lunches, using biometric scanners. The kids who wanted to use the system had to submit to being fingerprinted by said corporation. Absolutely no information or assurances were given that the fingerprints weren't going to be re-sold to 3rd parties...like the FBI, for instance.

We opted not to take part in the system. Cash is king.

You have to feel for the cops on this one. All they want to do is reward people for being good citizens.
On the other hand, it's quite apparent just how oblivious they are to the effect they have on said good citizens when they roll-up behind them with the lights flashing. In most people's minds, getting pulled-over is never a sign of good things to come. Doubly-so if you honestly were doing nothing wrong.

It's sad when a nice idea is so wrongly enacted.

At this point, I can no longer tell if the art showcased on Boing Boing is meant to be ironic, post-ironic, or post-post-ironic.

How about merely "cross-promotional"?

Regardless of whether the VFW might have been profiting from the game, a paramilitary raid is simply overkill. If the purpose was to shut-down the game and the VFW, then I would think a couple of Texas Rangers armed with a warrant would easily suffice.

Cool bookshelf.
And, yeah, that website crashes the heck out of Safari for me.

This is so cool! I'd love to see one of these running.

I'm actually amazed that it was dismantled after the war. I mean, couldn't it have continued to be of use to intelligence bureaus ? Or was it seen as some sort of dead-end?

Don't worry...The market will fix this problem.
Oh...wait...

I recently bought a scanner at BB (yeah, yeah...I hate the place, too. But the price was right, and I needed it that day) I noticed that, at checkout, when I declined BB's extended warranty, the cashier made sure that I understood I had to deal with the manufacturer if anything went wrong with it.

We're living in a world of diminished returns and expectations. Operations like BB have figured out that they don't really have to invest in customer support anymore...not unless the customer is willing to pay extra for it.

The sad part is how easily customers have rolled-over and accepted their diminished position in the marketplace.

It's so sad to see what this administration has done to FEMA. What was once a great example of how good a government agency could be, has become just another "never trust the government" joke.

Um...why?

I've been reading posts from Comcast customers who use Apple's iChat for video conferences. According to them, the image quality becomes degraded to the point where the conferencing can't continue.

By reading my comment you agree to any and all terms I may invent, now and in the future, with no recourse to appeal or arbitration. Sucks to be you.

Rossifumi's right about dying in your sleep. It was quite blissful.

Yeahhhh...count me in the "bad feeling about this" camp.
Spielberg might be "a lifelong fan of The Adventures of Tintin", but that doesn't mean he's necessarily going to avoid the full Spielberg treatment...over-the-top special effects, loud and predictable John Williams score, and a runaway-roller-coaster "adventure" that bears no resemblance to an actual Tintin story.
Apparently all in mo-cap 3d.
Whee!

We blindly revere the constitution without ever considering that the hallowed "framers" were really quite afraid of popular power.

That, or they understood that the will of the majority ("popular power" as you put it...otherwise known as "mob rule") is often exactly the wrong thing to do (re: history of civil rights, women's suffrage, etc.)
The Constitution as restrictive shackles? Sounds like the ranting of a libertarian who assumes he will be in the elite class that others will follow.

I recall, back in the day right after FOIA was enacted, you could request your data from the FBI. The catch was that, if they didn't have a file on you, they would start a file on you. I'm betting something similar will happen with this, too.

Wow. Great time trip. I had just discovered DEVO a few months before this aired, and remember it well. Great, great stuff. Amazing how well a lot of their music still holds up.

For mechanical pencils, I've always like Pentel Hi-Polymer leads (HB or softer) I've found them to produce a fairly rich, dark line with smooth glide quality.
And, yeah, it'll smear, like any good lead.

I used Blackwings for, literally, decades and genuinely loved drawing with them. I know it sounds silly to some but, if you draw, you do fall in love with certain tools. Blackwings were one of those sweet tools. Smooth, dark, eerily effortless. It was sad to see them go.

That said, I would never drop $35 for a single pencil. That's just crazy talk.

~~ Is it horrible of me to find the whole thing funny...? ~~

Not at all. It's really quite hilarious.