They absolutely have the right to dress in burlap; and I have the right to drive instead of fly. I'll take driving. Someday, air travel may return to its luxurious beginnings, and if it does, I'll fly again. I see no reason to put up with seats designed by one-armed, one-legged midgets, "flight attendants" who bring nothing to my seat but a nasty, dried out bag of peanuts, and boarding authorities who want to stick their hands up my ass without the courtesy of a reach-around.

Air travel today is a miserable, lowest common denominator mechanism for achieving the most irritation from the most sources in the shortest possible time. No thank you.

Oy. Don't put your money in Bank -- that's the last place you want it!

Banks pay interest because they *use* your money. They use it to leverage loans from the fed up to 10x the amount you deposit (you put in $1,000, the bank can make fed-backed loans up to $10,000.) When these loans go sour (as they are now, country-wide, in real estate) *your* money is at risk if the bank fails. Also bad, the interest they pay you is nowhere NEAR the interest they charge the borrower; you enable what they do, and they hardly pay you back at all.

Better places to put your money are (1) in retail if you can find time to manage it -- retail tends to earn from 60% to 100% on investment, especially if you can set up a web enterprise. Retail, in this case, can mean your own product as a writer, once you're popular. (2) Loaning money yourself. See prosper.com for a good example. Income here is far greater than a bank will provide, and you're doing a lot more good, and you can choose what loans you fund. (3) private investments among friends, otherwise known as being an angel.

Banks are not your friends. If you think they are, that scratchy feeling over your eyes is wool. A lot of wool.

And another:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/fyngyrz/582936293/

...we keep most of our paperback SF up there.

Use of artificial i-beams (BCI's) at close spacing and without the requirement of supporting anything other than furniture overhead pretty much eliminates any concerns of overloading the beams.

Hopefully this won't be like the previous director's cut, where they removed the 1940's flavored overdub by Deckard. Pretty much changed the entire character of the movie, and not for the better, either.

Still, it's worth getting and seeing in HD either way. I have both HD-DVD and Blueray on a 204" projection system, so bring the HD version on, baby.