Anselm, there's a huge difference between "Disney" and the moderation of a Disney-owned online chatroom. There's good as well as bad. Just mentioning.

If it's anything like Disney's Magic Kingdom Online, it's censored to the point of unusabilty. The one time I tried "MKO", it censored words like "Hello!" "Come on!" "Stupid" and "That's nuts!"

After half an hour of trying to hold a basic conversation and having half my words censored, I typed "I hate this," and it censored the word 'hate'.

Agreed with these folks. Adding a little water releases the esters and brings out the flavor. Scotch is meant to be drunk room-temp, not chilled.

You're right, MMBB! Adding the LED makes it instantly Epcot-worthy.

Given the way the Xbox and PlayStation consoles have evolved, adding a few red stripes to the NES case is a pretty weak bit of 'visionary' evolution.

Ewg. That's OK, Crax, don't bother, really.

#30, exactly. When I get taunted by people looking to needle the vegetarian with questions like, "would you eat meat if it was grown in a lab?" I just point to Quorn and say "sure!". The stuff is so realistic it approximates muscle tissue; I'm not sure what else PETA hopes to accomplish... authenticity?

(And if you're looking for ways to irritate vegetarians for fun, just stop, folks. If I don't want to eat meat from cows barely kept alive by antibiotic injections, I think that's understandable.)

#6, I can't agree more. It drives me nuts as a long-term Mac user that I might have to buy a half-decent PC just so I can have a second machine with a decent video card.

I always thought the Baum Plan for Financial Independence involved traveling to a magical land over the rainbow which doesn't use money at all! Or am I thinking of the wrong Baum?

Not the greatest option for a Mac -- not updatable? Ack -- but might make a great Mac running XP under Boot Camp for the occasional Windows need and game.

Yep, that's Shepard Fairey all right. As a graphic designer, I'm a tad envious of the idea of someone like Fairey getting paid handsomely to re-use their 'signature style' for clients across the board; folks dig it, and what an easy way to keep the paychecks rollin' in!

"Let's see... got my signature dark red swatch loaded up, my star motif, my barbed wire, my radiating sun-rays, my CD of woodcut clipart... cut and paste aaaaand done! Who's next.. Led Zeppelin, okay..."

(disclosure: I dig his style)

I have a copy of this guide! It's got amazing concept art of various attractions, as well as a page talking about the countries coming soon to World Showcase -- Spain, Russia, Equatorial Africa, and Israel.

#88 BCW20, to be clear, he's not "hating". He's helpfully pointing out that any argument or point you might have is hard to take seriously, given how terrible your spelling and grammar are. (hole = whole, by the way.. and 'benefital' is not a word.)

In my former life, I worked in marketing for a large consumer products company. I often got to see how things were behind the scenes as they negotiated with Wal-Mart for ad placement, product placement, and sale prices. In essence, everyone loathed and feared Wal-Mart. The cavalier attitude that Wal-Mart would play different corporations against each other -- callling and saying "well, your competitor is willing to lower their price five cents. Can you go lower?" ad infinitum -- was crushing to everyone involved. They're a terrible company that needs to feel some pain.

#9 -- I'd like to dive into some of these illustrations and live there, too, but not because I think an all-Caucasian sanitized future is ideal. It's more that I admire the sense of futuristic design that Syd Mead brings to ordinary things like stairs, handrails, furniture, and houses. Looking at the dishwater-dull apartment blocks around me... yeah, I'd prefer to live in a house like the one above!

For as well-known as Syd Mead is, I'm surprised his work is so hard to get ahold of. Portfolios like these go for hundreds of dollars on eBay, and he seems to only do extremely limited edition reprints (with signatures and numbers, natch) that sell out instantly.

Which is why it's nice to find high-res scans of his work on Flickr....

#4, all of those things might be true in a literal or philosophical way for you, but being tender-hearted toward critters isn't the only reason people choose vegan or veggie lifestyles.

Some do it for health reasons, others because they want to eat lower on the food chain. A lot of vegans are already lactose-intolerant and simply enjoy vegetables more than meat, so it's not really a preachy lifestyle shift so much as just the way they like to cook.

But when it comes down to it, most vegans I know just feel better about themselves because they're eating food without guilt attached to it. I never understand why that makes other people so upset.

Not to belittle the guy's talent, but I can imagine his opponents being a bit intimidated and/or psyched out by the idea of wrestling a guy with his physique. I'm sure that helps his chances a bit.

@Teresa: The game was renamed Canis Canem Edit for the UK market after Jack Thomson took Take Two to court over the game, so they're definitely aware of the confusion the game's title creates. But as to the marketing, I'm guessing an ad campaign around "Do well in school! Be nice to teachers! Escort pants-wetting D&D players to the bathroom!" wouldn't generate many sales... which is a pity, because it's a great game.

Good to see this article on the same day that I read about Nine Inch Nails making $1.5 million in two weeks on their self-released new album. There's no need for record companies anymore.

@Vinotrip: heck if I know, but the Korean guys who run the sushi bar down the street from me shovel rice, so maybe so.

@Artbot, speaking of which, I can smell the jealousy.

Losing a cheapo celphone is one thing. Losing an iPhone is like losing your telephone, your PDA, your iPod, and a surrogate laptop all at the same time.

@Avram: Bully was indeed totally marketed as a game where you get to be a bully and wreck a school. That's what I assumed it was, too, until I played it.

The game starts out with you starting a new school after getting kicked out of your old one for bullying and truancy. You're given your class schedule and the ability to bully kids, and you learn really quickly that all that gets you is time doing boring, stupid detention mini-games.

But if you actually talk to kids, you learn that the Nerds are being bullied by the Jocks, so you stand up to the Jocks to stop the bullying. Then the Jocks get bullied by the Preps, so you have to stop that bullying, too, and so on.

The only way to advance in the game is to do well at your classes, make friends with the teachers, help the other students, and protect the school from kids who're working against it.

In the spirit of the GTA games, you can choose what you want to do -- beat up on kids, punch teachers -- but that only gets you detention. If I were the Canadian Teacher's Federation, I'd be damn well championing this game, not banning it.

You do not play a bully in "Bully". Your job is to STOP the bullies and protect the kids being bullied, and to do well in school.

Holy crap. I can't believe that has to be spelled out.

If BULLY was called by its European/UK name, "Canus Canum Edit", would it be banned ignorantly as easily?

@43: I'm still not sold on the cynicism. Whether they fudged research or not, taking Airborne is pretty much the same things doctors have been telling me for years to help keep colds away: take a multivitamin with a vitamin C supplement. If anything, Airborne is better than a pill, since it's easier for your body to absorb.

Basically, if it works for people, what's the problem?

Works well for me -- nothing 'fake' about it, unless vitamin C is now 'snake oil'.

The Cloudmakers game created for A.I. was far more engaging and complex a storyline than the actual film... and in a way, made the movie a bit of a letdown, since the ARG seemed to be setting up a brilliantly intriguing storyline that the movie never paid off at all.

May he rest well in his Magnificent Mansion.

I have friends who drink this stuff like water. Two or three 2-litres per day.

If I drink more than one or two glasses I start getting headaches and my lower back (around my kidney area) starts to hurt.

But seeing as how it tastes like ass, I don't feel like I'm missing much.

@1: Yep, that's the Actual Japanese Way to do it.

And sushi is eaten with the fingers, fish-side-down.

@Rugerredhawk: that's exactly why Starbucks is investing in improving their espresso and drip coffee. You can't get a decent espresso at home without a $300+ machine and a lot of hassle, and the Clover machines give you a $2 cup of "drip" that's miles better than anything your Mr Coffee can do at home (or even a French press).

Now, how people can afford to go in twice a day and get their venti caramel lattes, I have no idea.

I should note that several Starbucks here in Boston are testing the crazy $11,000-per-machine Clover coffeemaker. It makes individual cups of vacuum-extracted coffee, sort of an industrial Aeropress.

It's by far the best cup of coffee I've had at any coffeeshop.

@Hyperkine: Not to play devil's advocate for Starbucks, but if you can find an indie coffeeshop with (a) high quality coffee at (b) prices significantly lower than S'bucks and (c) no Apples in use, I'll be amazed.

I've seen Stefan Sagmeister speak, and the funny thing about this project is that the individual phrases, when presented as photography in a book, or in a video on his site, fall kinda flat. But presented in person by Stefan, they take on an engaging life as he describes the insane things he does to spell the letters out.

The most successful is probably HAVING GUTS ALWAYS WORKS OUT FOR ME, where he creates the letters from things like toilet paper strung from trees; the words take form as the camera rotates.

#21 Kyle, of course they're happy when you give them food that you claim is vegetarian when it has meat in it. That's because you lied to them, you colossal twat.

Do you get similarly enraged by Jews who eat Kosher? Or Muslims who eat halal? Would you tell a Jew his food is Kosher when it isn't, just for a laugh and to feed your own sense of righteousness?

PEDMANDS: Never in my life have I seen a plastic sphere of urine (or water) duct-taped to a gearshift. It's inexplicable and kind of surreal. I'd say that added to my day.

Re: C1JOSH

Also, rice cookers make it incredibly easy to get perfect brown rice every time (a touchy hourlong task on the stove) and the fancy fuzzy-logic models can keep a pot of rice hot and ready to eat for hours without it getting mushy or dried out.

Some researchers claim that when X-rayed, rat king skeletons show calloused bone in the tails and atrophied tail-tips, indicating they'd lived with tails intertwined for some time before dying.

Rat kings? Sure, why not.

Percolators are great, but I'm with Mark -- the Aeropress is the best coffeemaker on the market.

Re: folks complaining that pointing out the big guy's gun videos is a bit "intolerant"...

I'm no fan of guns, myself, as I think they're boring blunt instruments, but I'm fine with people having and using them responsibly. But I get a bit creeped out by firearms porn of people pointing their overly large guns at the camera, looking all macho and sinister. Yes, I'm impressed that you have an arsenal. Jesus.

Be sure to check out the big fella's other YouTube videos. He and his friends suuuure like their guns.

They were doing this at Boston Logan and Columbus OH last time I went through. All electronics had to come out. Plus the woman behind me had to dump all the ice out of her thermos.

#12 - Have you ever actually seen a performance? It's more than just "blue guys playing percussion" -- it's a whole stage show with a story, told through music and mime with lots of humor and a great message. It's one of the most audience-involving and entertaining shows you'll see, in my opinion.

But if "having fun" isn't really your thing, no big deal, that's one more seat for me and my friends at their show.

#3, please describe for us the cups of coffee you drink and how they're an improvement over what's found in the US.

I grew up in the Ohio Valley (Columbus, home of more pizza places per capita than anywhere else in the US, bizarrely) and I've never seen what the link calls "Ohio Valley Pizza". Most pizza in Ohio is cracker-crust "Midwest" pizza with a characteristically sweeter sauce.

My plug for the best pizza ever would be Dewey's Pizza of Cincinnati.

#1 -- Well, I could get all pedantic and state my case as to why Disney World and Disneyland are both showcases of groundbreakingly creative rides using storytelling and sophisticated design and art in ways that amusement parks had never done before...

...but anyone who uses the term "Fag Day" isn't smart enough to understand half the multi-syllable words I used in the last paragraph, so I probably shouldn't waste my time.

#50 -- I think that fear of people (read: reviewers) cheaply writing the film off as a 9/11 allegory is why the filmmakers changed the title to the ambiguous "Cloverfield" from its original title, "1/18/08".

I use Comcast out of need -- they're the only service provider in my area, at present -- but they're clearly monitoring my traffic.

If I run Bittorrent, the client dies and my ISP goes down.

If I VPN into a server, my ISP goes down immediately.

If I FTP a large file... ISP goes down.

In all of these cases, a call to Comcast results in someone saying, "let me put you on hold, sir... [removes P2P flag from my name].. there, you're all set to go."

#16 echoes my thoughts. The card that Gibson's talking about does, in fact, have a code number assigned to the area (implying that Central Park, as well as the rest of Manhattan, is a wasteland and military research area) and the wording used is purposefully military-awkward.

Also, as always, if you haven't actually seen the movie (I'm looking at you, Agnot), don't waste time posting bad reviews of it.

I only wish they made such smartly designed toys for boys!

Same system used at many hipster coffeeshops around Cambridge and Somerville, MA.

"Revolting"? "Should be shut down"? Because they offer clean spoons to use? I just don't understand comments here sometimes.

Is the teacher supposed to be a caricature of a celebrity of the day? His voice and mannerisms sound like he's imitating a popular radio announcer or show host.

Love these old jazz-age cartoons.

Some folks are taking the pull-quote way too literally. Pollan isn't suggesting you go through your grandma's recipe box. He's suggesting a critical way to look at the food you're buying: is this NutriGrain Bar with Antioxidants something your grandma ate? No. It's not "food", then.

#43: Have you read the book to know what "mostly plants" means?

#42: Well, is the meat in your corndog of any kind of quality (all-beef? kosher? grass-fed?) or is it a chemical-laden tube of offal from a factory farm? I think talking about your cold dead hands is kind of the point Pollan's making.

That's my concern, Joel. I was hoping Apple would introduce something really sub-sub-size so their notebook lineup would have three tiers of size and capability. But instead of creating something like the Foleo done right, or something really out there like the dockable tablet Wired theorized with wireless power... they basically just made an extra-thin MacBook.

So now people have to either assume one of two things:
• The price is really high because the new tech being used is so new, and the Air will eventually be much cheaper... so they should wait.
• The Air is the eventual replacement for the MacBook... so they should wait.

As nifty as it is, I worry that it'll have a hard time finding a market. The base model's pricey enough.. but good lord, the 1.8GHz model is over $3k. It's the most expensive notebook computer Apple offers -- it's pricier than the 17" MacBook Pro, even. And for that price you're getting only a 64GB hard drive (granted, it's flash memory).

Seems like this is new ground for Apple and the price reflects it.

Well, Ape Lad won four times, OF COURSE.

Love the sizzled Eustace.

Mujadaddy, that wasn't an argument for vegetarianism, it was a comment about being a bit of a dick.

There's lots of reasons people go vegetarian or vegan. Some people definitely do it because it seems trendy and lets them feel extra-special when restaurants are forced to cater to them by customizing meals for their diet. Some do it because they find it's easier to eat a healthy diet when they restrict their meals to vegetables, grains, and legumes -- it's a simple way to eat low-fat, high-fiber, etc. And some do it because they don't feel right eating animals (for religious or ethical reasons). Me, I went vegetarian because I just don't trust the meat that comes out of American factory farms. One too many encounters with salmonella and chicken breasts green on the inside. Don't want to worry about that crap when I can avoid it.. especially now that there's BACON SALT!! (which is, yes, vegetarian)

It's interesting that in America, vegetarians are largely ridiculed and tolerated with eye-rolling while in the UK it's treated kind of like eating Kosher is here in the US... as a legitimate dietary choice with some value to it.

that's no reason to trivialize vegetarianism in our current luxury society.

Sr t s, bcs t's trvl lfstyl.

There are good arguments for being vegetarian and "meat tastes good" is a rather weak counter-point.

n th cntrry, th njymnt f fd s n f th bst thngs n lf, sprsdd nly by crshng yr nms, sng thm drvn bfr y, nd hrng th lmnttns f thr wmn.

Who let the troll in? The one who smells like bacon grease?

Yes, the ticket agent was an idiot (or just didn't understand the guy). Yes, the rent-a-cop overstepped himself (or didn't understand the issue and reacted the way he thought he was supposed to).

But this guy really overstepped himself. His letter outlines the problem in a logical way, conveniently skipping some important details about the situation, and then demands a free flight with not-very-veiled threats against the company: "I don't want to have to post YouTube videos about this," etc.

If I were a Midwest exec, I'd hate this guy and send him a form letter, too.

Also, it should be noted that this was a fan-made parody created from the INLAND EMPIRE bonus material (DVD release, which Lynch only grudgingly accepts).

A filmmaker who's so anal about controlling how people experience his movies that he doesn't allow chapter selections on his DVDs wouldn't be the first to embrace celphone video.

The last time I was in a Circuit City, I was looking at portable CD players (which should tell you how long ago it was). I was trying a CD in a couple of different ones to see if there was any sound difference between the $40 one and the $70 one, when I noticed a button on one that said DESC on it in high-techy letters.

I asked the salesperson what that button did.

He looked at it for a sec, stared at me, and said "DESC! It a COMPACT DESC PLAYA!"

My XO-1 is the most adorable stack of brilliance I've seen for a long time, filled with smart design ideas (black & white mode! a battery so durable you can recharge it with a juryrigged car battery! a stylus area where your wrists sit!) and pre-loaded educational software that makes me grin (LOGO!).

I also love that it's truly 1.0. There's a half-dozen keys on the keyboard that do nothing at all... because they haven't been developed for yet. The XO is a living work in progress.

Is it my new favorite computer? No, because it's made for kids to learn with, not a 30-mwahmwah guy with big monkey hands to blog with at Starbucks. But it's a piece of history, as much as the LISA or the first Mac laptop.

Zydeco, the Adventurer's Club is still open, and still awesome. A hidden gem, and one of the best things at WDW.

Truthfully, having ridden Haunted Mansion in both US parks, there's rarely any spiel going on anyhow. I'll usually hear one say "move your bodies into the corridor..." and then, "Please move to the dead center of the room," before the Paul Frees narration starts.

Now, if they clamp down on the improv at the Tower of Terror or the Jungle Cruise, I'll be upset -- hell, besides nostalgia, the hope of getting a great captain is the main reason to ride Jungle Cruise.

@17: Yeah, you tell 'em! Down with fun and happiness! Down with creativity and joy! Sure showed us!

Seriously, what kind of curmudgeon would hate Disney parks so much as to bitch about it on BoingBoing? I know people who hate the place because they loathe children or resent the prices...

@Goldemi – the quote about Cohen's Jewishness was from the Times Online, not from the BoingBoing editors. Don't be a troll.

@#3: Cohen isn't Orthodox (he's said he's not a strict Jew) but he spent time in kibbutz and studied historic Judaism in college.

@#4: He certainly looks the part, but he's got the chops; check him out in Sweeney Todd. He's not a one-trick actor, from what I've seen.

I saw some interesting comments not long ago from the guru of sound, Brian Eno, about the inevitability of mixing music for mp3. His take was that music evolves along with the most popular storage medium -- that music before 1985 or so was mixed to sound best on vinyl, for example (which is why the first CDs sounded so terrible... you were listening to music designed to be played with a record player).

Designing music so that it'll take advantage of its storage medium and playback method (digital music and small earphones) makes sense.

I suspect this campaign will cause a lot of people to say things to their friends like “Ick! Now I feel uncomfortable and have to sleep with the lights on! I’ll never drink Orangina again!”…. and then wonder why they’re having thoughts of sexy bunny girls getting sprayed with Orangina the next time they see it in a store.

I've had the same problem with my first-rev MBP as well. No real pattern to it, just randomly sometimes won't work.

I've sometimes been able to find access points and connect to them using coconutWiFi with more success than the built-in tools.

Love the idea. Love the quips. Wish the graphics were better-looking... that's a hippo? (though I like the "redhead" one a lot)

PS, the original dialog in the auction scene was far baudier than it is now. As they're auctioning the redhead, one pirate sneers about how he's sure to be the winner and says "I be willin' to share, I be!!"

This popped up on Cartoon Brew a few months ago as a candidate for "worst cartoon ever", but along with the other readers of that blog, I think it looks kind of awesome. How great would something like Steve Canyon or The Phantom look done with this technique? Or Dick Tracy?

Here's the strange thing: sometimes the TSA gives instead of takes.

On a recent trip, a friend of mine opened his suitcase and saw the familiar "your bag has been searched" note from the TSA... along with a battery recharger and a handful of AA batteries that didn't belong to him.

I suspect that the TSA empties out electronic equipment from everyone's luggage onto a common table, scans it (or does whatever), and then guesses where it came from... badly.

That's the happiest looking croc I've ever seen.

I had very nearly the same experience, Joel, only in my case the Indian rep who answered asked me if my MacBook Pro was a "desktop or laptop MacBook Pro" and put me in a two-hour-long queue, only to be answered by someone named Bob who said "Uh, this is the Apple testing lab. You know, in the back. We're not supposed to talk to anyone."

I called back and got another Indian rep who kept confusing my hard drive with my fans. When I asked for his supervisor, he said, "No supervisors. I'm here by myself."

With his air-traffic control link, banks of readouts and equipment, and big fancy plane to fly, I'm sure the pilot wanted his moment of snarky glory after being questioned by some anonymous geek with a shiny new gadget.

But I think the iPhone guy was entirely justified. I've been lied to enough about airplane problems and delays – and heard enough horror stories from friends - that asking what the non-passenger-coddling reason for a delay is a good honest question. An answer like,"It rained earlier, causing delays which built up over the course of the day, and now our destination's backed up even though the weather's nice now," would make me feel like the airline I chose treats me like an adult.

Biiiicycle... Biiiicycle.... I want to hump my... BIIIICYCLE...

Aww, that spiny anteater loves his keeper so much.

I think it was highly alluded to in the last book, with Rita Skeeter's expose of Dumbledore hinting darkly at "more than a polite relationship" between Dumbledore and Harry. I doubt she'd have included that if it wasn't already at least an open secret among her readers.

Keep in mind that Yahoo! is a company of companies. Yahoo! Music exists very much independently of Yahoo! Mail, Search, Shopping, etc. If you want to show your support for what Ian's proposing, by all means use Yahoo! Music and write letters of support.

My beef with Yahoo! comes from a few months past when I got an email from them telling me that my account had been permanently suspended across all Yahoo! services. They gave me no reason for this suspension, but I instantly lost all access to my mail, finances, web hosting for my clients, DNS services, Flickr photos, etc. I appealed, called, wrote, talked to managers and supervisors... nothing. To this day I have no idea why my account was killed. I can only assume a glitch in the system, but for a glitch at Yahoo! to have this much destructive power without recourse is just .... unfair.

Strong words from a smart man; it's unfortunate that since Yahoo! Music isn't compatible with Macs, I have no way to use his product... and since Yahoo! Music isn't compatible with iPods or with indie distributors like TuneCore, I wouldn't want to anyway. Once Yahoo! stops its really crappy corporate practices and makes its products usable, I'd be happy to use them. Until then, hopefully Ian's ideas will spur people on with products I CAN use.

PERINEUM ORIGINAL is the best thing I've seen all day.

Feels like you're getting more comfortable with the format, I'm loving BBTV.

Thousands of companies make tools for computer graphics, Anonymous Snark, but Wacom's business is selling pressure-sensitive tablets that let you draw and paint as if you were using brushes and pens on paper. Shouldn't their logo reflect that instead of using primitive trumpet shapes?

At the very least, it's a little baffling that a company making tools for art and design would choose a logo with gradients that don't make any visual sense. Where's the light coming from? Your face?

The idea of a mo-cap 3D Tintin sounds so wrongheaded and creepy that I'm reserving judgement. If this was Zemeckis, I'd write this off right now... and Spielberg doesn't get a free pass either, after Transformers. But I trust Peter Jackson enough as a filmmaker to wait until I see what they come up with here.

As Ape Lad points out, there's no reason this shouldn't be hand drawn, so for two admitted Tintin fans to make this in 3D tells me that they've either beaten the Uncanny Valley effect or are doing it because mo-cap is the new hotness these days. I hope it's the former.

I don't know why Apple would engineer the new-gen iPods to be less open, but finding an alternative would be rough.

Any alternative to the iPod would have to....
• be compatible with the wide variety of accessories and options available to iPod owners
• play mp3s as well as high-quality files
• be compatible with Mac, Linux, and PCs equally
• and most importantly, be able to access the world's largest music store, iTunes.

That ideal gadget doesn't exist yet, I don't believe.