"But programs must complete." Bah. Killbots made this same argument when they invaded Vietnam.

RE: #17, AB3A, only-children and their parents hear this all the time, that we're spoiled. My parents were pretty conscious about why they stopped at one child. Have four kids, you have to split your time and money and resources between four kids. Have one kid, it gets all your time and money and resources. That doesn't seem like a "lost perspective" to me. It seems like good planning. If anything, people who decide to have many kids have lost perspective on the practical value that children used to have, helping out on farms from an early age, getting jobs at an early age, ensuring that one or two of them might survive childhood diseases, increasing the chance that one might take care of you when you get too old.

Maybe I'm being cynical, but there were a lot of financial or practical motivations for having five and ten kids 100 years ago. The reason that tradition of large families has fallen off seems to be a matter of practicality. Having more kids won't increase income or increase your farm's free labor force within 5 or 6 years like it used to. Having another kid used to be a short term cost but a long term benefit. Now kids are all cost, short term and long term, and they're likely to go off on their own when they're old enough to work. Adult children are no longer expected to provide all the care for their elderly parents, so that benefit of having kids is lost. (Because our society is callous now or because no one can afford it?) It's like you pay for all these kids and they split as soon as they can. You can't really blame them if you live in an area where there are few good jobs. Again, have extended families lost their mojo because people don't care about each other anymore, or because people have to find jobs in other towns and other states just to get by?

For anyone who decides they want the luxury of having several kids, or even the luxury of supporting one child at this point, more power to them. Is my perspective lost because I have weighed the costs and benefits and decided not to have many/any kids? No.

I agree with the sentiment of not being an overprotective parent, but my first reaction to the "Free Range Kids" blog is that it reminds me of an old Mad magazine joke survey asking you where you work, how much money you make, where you live, what days you're planning to be on vacation this year, if anyone will be watching your house while you're away, where you hide valuables in your house, and there's a little square on the survey where you're supposed to trace the shape of your house key.

I don't want to stir up UK-style "omg the pedophiles are everywhere" hysteria but can't you just picture "Free Range Kids is having a big picnic fundraiser in Springfield park, right in front of the statue of Jebediah Springfield, sponsored by the Springfield Chapter of NAMBLA!"

I'm sure Free Range Kids will have responsible advice. There's some balance between overprotective and underprotective, and I thankfully don't have enough parenting or even babysitting experience to know where the line should be drawn.

You can't trust a publisher's website to list the latest issues. That's not very good evidence of a hoax.

For tiny door fetishists, check out the "fairy doors" of Ann Arbor. About a dozen stores, homes and the library have tiny doors outside or inside for urban fairies.

http://www.urban-fairies.com/locationspages/locations.html

#5, I wonder how many current directors will be discovered in 2035 to have been doing public relations work for the US govt.

I'm mostly concerned about how this affects the verisimilitude of the movie Without a Paddle.

Wait, that's not an illustration of the seven new sins in the style of Hieronymous Bosch? They're sitting around a table planning their infernal experiment with stem cells.

This is a minor quibble, but the headline was slightly confusing. "Ray-gun defense" could mean defense that consists of ray-guns or defense against attacks by ray-guns. That would just be silly.

When you paint things that don't belong to you, it can't be art. Like the Sistine Chapel. Oh, I mean unless the owner is a patron who wants you to do it, and then suddenly it becomes art. Because owners get to tell the rest of us to do.

Let's pretend that property has been fairly distributed. Wheee!

For punishment, this bastard was banished back in time approximately 15,000 years to live in a cave in the area that will later be known as Lascaux, France. That'll teach im!

Couldn't the thing be made as just a belt buckle to attach to any belt, or any standard-ish belt with two holes like that?

Re: TSA security theatre. I haven't flown often enough to see how it works, but my groundbreaking business idea is that somebody should open "Mailboxxors Etc" concessions just outside of airport security. For those devices interpreted as dangerous by TSA but harmless enough to pass postal standards, and worth enough that you don't want to throw them away, you just put it in a box and mail the thing back to yourself, either back to your home or on to your eventual destination. I'm sure TSA would find some excuse to object to this, or it wouldn't be worthwhile if you'd have to go back out of the "secure" area to mail your junk and then endure the same 45 minutes of pat-downs and bullcrap a second time.

Has anyone commenced printing stickers that say "Cory Doctorow has a Poesy"? Image of Cory must include cape and goggles.

Professional ethics come into play when psychiatrists try to make long-distance diagnoses. The American Psychiatric Assoc established the "Goldwater Rule" in response to a 1964 survey from Fate magazine in which psychiatrists called the candidate "warped" and "paranoid schizophrenic" and speculated about his toilet training. This is Doctor Phil vs. Britney territory.

Among their statements on ethics, the APA says, "On occasion psychiatrists are asked for an opinion about an individual who is in the light of public attention or who has disclosed information about himself/herself through public media. In such circumstances, a psychiatrist may share with the public his/her expertise about psychiatric issues in general. However, it is unethical for a psychiatrist to offer a professional opinion unless he/she has conducted an examination and has been granted proper authorization for such a statement."

I realize psychotherapists and psychoanalysts are not the same as psychiatrists. I can't imagine why the ethics of this situation would be different for them.

Here's a pretty comprehensive blog post supposedly by a practicing psychoanalyst/psychiatrist, discussing similar ethical breeches or controversies:
http://shrinkwrapped.blogs.com/blog/2006/10/psychblogging_a.html

Oh noes! People who subsist on beets will starve as crops are diverted to de-icing duties!

Another positive result here is that ppl in Cinci will be able to dip their quill pens in the gutter to use the beet juice for ink. Mud will be prettier!

This is a little off-topic, but has anyone else round here received phone messages with similar passive user (listener) agreements? I've heard a couple that said, "Please hang up now if you are not John Blahblah. By listening to the rest of this message, you certify that you are John Blahblah. This call is from Whatever Collection agency...."

Poor John Blahblah doesn't want the fact of his delinquent payments broadcast to wrong numbers in his community. Our privacy is supposed to depend on the goodwill of strangers to honor the disclaimer and hang up, instead of the company to keep that info private? I'm not John Blahblah, and I listened long enough to hear what it was about. Why would I not listen to a whole message left on my voicemail? Why would a company that valued privacy dump that kind of info with an obviously useless disclaimer?

Do legit companies give out private embarassing info in phone messages like that, or is this more likely a phone phishing scam? Somebody put Cory on the case!

No relation to "Tcho-Tcho", the fictional short, hairless, "abominable" human-like race mentioned in the Cthulhu Mythos?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tcho-Tcho

Unless we're jumping to conclusions, the headline should be "Big Time Record Producers Neglect to Backup Album".

I find it hard to believe this data couldn't have been transmitted digitally faster and more reliably than carrying the data across the border in a physical container.

Does this mean the Boing Boing Boing audio podcast will be considered obsolete, since you could accomplish the same interviews and discussions with the addition of visible shining faces on BBTV? Please don't anyone use the phrase "value added" or I might cry. Just curious if I should remove Boing Boing Boing from my subscriptions.

Gene Autry figured this out around 1935. Or at least his character did in "The Phantom Empire" (singing cowboys vs sci-fi lost civilization!). Gene tells young listeners to his radio show that they can join his fan club, the Thunder Riders, and he'll send them a costume pattern their mothers can sew for them.