Marley9, that does sound rather hard to fault yes :D

Marley9, I'm British and I've never heard anyone say that. It is meant to be boiling. There is less agreement on whether to add the milk before or after the tea and I've heard reasonably convincing arguments on both sides.
In my experience of drinking tea in the US though, you need to worry less about fancy teapots and get some decent tea. I could never get it strong enough. Same goes for continental Europe.

I'm not so sure that Sony have lost the reader mindshare to Amazon as you say. That may be the case in the US but there ain't any Kindle's anywhere else and there's a an awful lot of everywhere else. Sony are currently doing a deal with Waterstones, one of the biggest book shop chains in the UK to sell ebooks in their format.

#14 How about "ych y fi"? It's a Welsh expression of disgust and has the advantage of only having one (English at least) vowel.

A hair dryer works pretty well for this job I find. You only need the tiniest amount of fire (say by using newspaper first) and then apply the dryer to it and watch the sparks fly (that's the best bit but obviously make sure no-one's the other side).

Whilst I have been a very interested watcher of BoingBoing in the past, I'm getting a little weary of the amount of self-referencing going on of late. You used to comment on the kookiness of the internet and the world. Lately you seem more interested in your own kookiness. I'm finding the recursiveness and self-reverence a bit tiresome. Sorry.