@ #5:

Popcorn coating, dry skin protectant, degreaser, Turkish wrestling lube, and now shaving cream.

Is there anything olive oil can't do?

@ #12: Not sure why extremophile vs. non-extremophile off world life makes a difference.
But depending on your definition of "bible thumper" they've already covered it.

@ #4:
I can't see how this proves that human activities aren't influencing the climate in significant ways.

It also sounds like you're blurring the confusing the survivability of a few hardy or extreme-adapted organisms with the balance of every ecological system on the entire planet.

Most likely no matter what happens to the biosphere some form of life will survive. The question is what proportion of currently existing vertebrate, macroscopic, or even multi-cellular organisms will adjust to the transition?

An interesting gallery, but given other recent articles here I'm surprised no one has brought up the unique creative process involved in these artists' work:

Martin and Muñoz are known for their extensive collection bizarre and often tragic or cult-related real-life incidents which happened to be caught on film. In their recent work the artists have generally chosen to tilt-shift these images and recontextualize them as snow-globes to symbolically "contain" the situations and thereby make them more accessible to the public.

When I read the Robert Charles Wilson's Darwinia years back, I'd expected it to focus on some sort of alternate reality where evolution had taken a different course. But the title belied the content in that regard, as it's actually more of a virtual reality story. Maybe not the most gripping read, but I thought they put an interesting spin on the premise.

The Escape Pod s/f podcast has readings of a couple neat short stories along these lines as well:

The House Beyond Your Sky:
http://escapepod.org/2007/05/17/ep106-the-house-beyond-your-sky/

Save Me Plz:
http://escapepod.org/2007/09/20/ep124-save-me-plz/

@ ill lich:

"In fact, WHEN are we going to bio-engineer "meat plants" so we don't have to bother with cows anymore?"

Mmmm... sure could go for a Chickie Nobs Bucket O'Nubbins right about now.

Maybe I'll get branded just another sheep buying into The Man's lies for saying this: but I sort of like the idea of a single card that I could use for many different purposes. Currently I have a slew of cards in my wallet. Even as a relatively healthy individual I have at least three different cards for medical purposes alone, not counting blood donor and dental cards.

I'm sure that there are terrible ways the Big Brother could abuse the information conveniently packaged in a single card/database for nefarious purposes, and not sure I like the whole idea of RFID tagging (as it's problems have been mentioned before hereabouts).

But since I have to carry all kinds of information on my person anyway, why not have it packaged more conveniently? Sure identity theft could always be a problem, but then if I lost my wallet currently I'd still be open to identity theft and would take awhile to remember all the cards I had to replace and offices I had to notify of their loss.

I'm not saying a government imposed and required card is the answer, but I certainly think it'd be more convenient of I could use fewer identification devices to get the same range of activities done.

Back when we were taking social psych 101 in college my friend and I used to joke about the wire-mommy vs. cloth-mommy experiments once done on young monkeys, and how someone would eventually come out with versions for human children.

Like if your kids went to summer camp and missed their mom, you could rent a cloth-mommy to help them cope with the homesickness. Parents were too poor to afford a cloth-mommy could rent their kids the cheaper wire-mommy for their children to cling to instead.

Yes, we realized even then it was a pretty sad and disturbing joke, the very idea still makes me cringe inwardly. And I'm sure the intent behind these hands is certainly not callous (no pun intended, honestly), parents might need some time to rest away from their infant after all. But any hint of an artificial surrogate for human contact available for purchase always brings the idea to mind.

@Scott Lenger: To get around transparent gifs couldn't you just look up the image's location in the page source and type it into your browser directly? I had luck with this technique in at least a couple cases.

It's fine enough that this is working for video games, but I'm more interested in whether it works for individuals with various forms of paralysis or movement related disabilities.

Is this something Steven Hawking or others could be using to facilitate communication or real-world locomotion more effectively?

The balloon bit wasn't the only time your name came up as part of the punchline, though it might've been the funnier instance.

Now shouldn't you be off making some noise about the inappropriate application of intellectual property or something?

Seems like every time someone on a mailing list tries to write the Definitive Guide on how to format e-mail replies it starts the format wars all over again.

I don't know about perception of discounts, but I'll tell you this:

Boing Boing has trained me so well that every third time I try to parse the title of this article it comes out as, "How digital rights affect perceptions of discounts."

Right digits. As if southpaws have some knack for finances that we dextrals lack.

Conceptually I love it (my wife and I are always looking for ways to wedge more books into our living space).

Realistically though it looks like one of the least comfortable, un-child-safe pieces of furniture one could wish to own.

“The Department stated that precluding broadband providers from charging content and application providers directly for faster or more reliable service “could shift the entire burden of implementing costly network expansions and improvements onto consumers.” If the average consumer is unwilling or unable to pay more for broadband Internet access, the result could be to reduce or delay critical network expansion and improvement.”

My understanding of economic theory is pretty lax so maybe I'm missing something here, but this makes it sound as if somehow the consumers won't ultimately bear the burden of "implementing costly network expansions and improvements" anyway. Do they think the "content and application providers" aren't going to find a way to pass along the additional charges to their customers?

Some of these are fascinating, but I'm afraid my bachelors level biology/anatomy courses fail me on a couple:

Does anyone here have an idea what condition this woman has?

Or what's up with these eyes?

Re: #16

A certain brother came to Abbot Poemen and said: What ought I to do Father? I am in great sadness.

The elder said to him: Never despise anybody, never condemn anybody, never speak evil of anyone, and the Lord will give you peace.

- The Wisdom of the Desert