My wife got me an owl-shaped cover of the same style, and even without any bits sticking out, it unfortunately makes the keys unusable. It does bend, but this makes simply unlocking your front door into a frustrating task.

That's good and well, but what's the point of calling an entity, agency, or process "god" if it doesn't do either of the following:

1) Control the universe in an interventionist and appeasable way
2) Provide for an afterlife

Rare is the religion or religious/spiritual person who believes in a God so generic and abstract that it can neither be prayed to for specific action today nor expected to judge the good and the bad after we die. Take those out of the equation, and you'll be left with few believers. Even the most new-agey, non-organized "spiritual person" believes some variant of the above two; otherwise, what content is there to their belief in a "something somewhere"?

Being an atheist, I'm not really opposed to calling Nature by the name "god", but that's a linguistic trick, not a philosophical one. It should be clear that this is not at all what the word "god" means and has historically meant to nearly everyone; might as well call the universe "Zeus".

This will be a bit of a digression...

I understand, agree with, and fully sympathize with the sentiment that most people should just eat the things most moms have always told us to eat (veggies, especially green ones, and varied, as-close-to-natural-as-you-can foods). However, being in an unusual position myself, I'd like to offer a brief defense of food obsession and micronutritional nitpicking in some (typically rare) cases.

I have been diagnosed with Wilson's disease; essentially, an inability to remove copper from the body, which then deposits in various tissues, leading to organ failure, paralysis, insanity, and death in untreated cases. It's a "real" disease; it's not a choice to abstain from gluten or dairy or HFCS or whathaveyou. This means that I have to watch my copper intake carefully and keep my liver, which gets hit with the copper first (and is now in chronic cirrhosis), as clean as I can. This means no alcohol.

Most people are understanding about my dietary restrictions, but some get a "bah, crazy new age nut" attitude, arguing that *everyone* should have a glass or two of alcohol, or that mushrooms can't possibly be bad for you, or that there's nothing wrong with cooking using copper pots (when I'm eating, anyway).

I'm not at all implying that Pollan is ignorant of food allergies and other "valid" food restrictions, and I understand that the overwhelming majority of people don't have to tabulate their nutrients religiously. I just wanted to offer one case where obsessing over nutritional content - and you have to search pretty deeply to get info on copper in most products and produce - definitely matters.

For what it's worth, I'm from Eastern Europe and I've never seen anyone count bills the way he shows Russians doing it. The "American" way is the most popular.

A minor correction: those titles are hand-lettered. That's not a typeface.

Two reasons I think this *is* at least embarrassing for the president:

1. He didn't just say the painting depicted a Methodist *to him*; he claimed this was the painting's history. He may want to research something like that before coming out with it. I'm embarrassed if I have the history of a family keepsake wrong; he's the president, and this is his favorite painting. He should at least look into it for the sake of PR, if not out of personal curiosity.

2. I find it really odd that he saw a religious message in a painting which to anyone I've asked looks to be showing some Western-action-type thing going on.

You're entitled to consider it a beautiful painting, but don't be surprised that to at least some, it looks like what it is: a dime-a-dozen illustration of a cowboy story.

"But what if you've got a hard-to-communicate, subtle idea and you want to maximize its spread?"

Seems obvious - you do some or all of the following:

1. Make your idea easier to communicate
2. Make your idea less subtle
3. Hope luck is on your side

1. Does anyone go over menu selections one by one with the waiter standing there?
2. Does anyone pay any attention to the waiter while they're looking at their menu?
3. If the waiter is going over the specials or desserts or something like that, I immediately throw out the things I know I won't have (he could be nodding 270 degrees while mentioning curry and he'd get nothing out of me)
4. No references given for these "studies". Nice. They can be traced back to the Jim Sullivan Institute for The Enrichment of Jim Sullivan, I'm sure.
5. Over the PHONE?

Yes, they're related. They're both laughable crap.

You might as well call that a cheesecake; it's no closer to one than to a pizza.

If what you really wanted was a Pihlly cheesesteak, why didn't you just get one of those?

Gee, sorry, David Lynch. I didn't realize I had to spend a 6-hour flight watching the back of a seat so you would feel better about your "art".

The "get real" at the end is incredibly ironic.

That looks like one of those Photoshop jobs where they throw in the squirrel with big balls, the mustard guy, the Star Wars kid, the Moran guy, and the Peter Pan guy.

I.e. you're piling on a lot of individually entertaining things and amounting to total crap.

A few years ago I took a tour of my college's Funeral Services department and I asked the program director what his personal burial wishes were. He said he would be cremated, but to anyone insisting on a casket, he would recommend going to CostCo as funeral homes charge crazy markups.

He was an upbeat, extremely funny individual, and his family had run a funeral home. He seemed to resent the whole business.

"As to whether or not the Yeti is real as we envision it, I think it’s more than safe to say that with thousands of years of history and legend surrounding this creature, it’s a complicated task to separate the zoology from the mythology, but that’s exactly what needs to be done."

Now substitute "Yeti" with "unicorn", "fairy", or "fire-breathing dragon".

I don't think it's impossible for Dawkins to be a jerk, but I can't say I can remember a particular quote or action of his that would qualify as such. He's a very nice guy in person as well (Hitchens doesn't have that reputation).

In any case, I would recommend that anyone who's read Dawkins's specifically anti-religious works also check out his science writing. He has a marvelous style and a sharp mind. Harris and Hitchens lack in that department, actually contributing to the fuel behind their fire - a rational, scientific view of the world.

Where "functional" means "unsafe, unwise, and nonfunctional".

“The frog in its well was convinced that this well was the whole world. And then came a turtle from the sea. The turtle told this frog that there was a big ocean and the well was nothing. The frog said: ‘OK. This turtle is crazy’.”

Living a solitary life in the woods, cutting himself off from the rest of humanity... he's the frog in this story.

Since we're sharing anecdotes...

I went on the Atkins diet for two months in 2004. It was gastronomically and psychologically the most miserable a diet has ever made me. I gained 4 pounds.

I then switched to the opposite of it, pretty much: I became vegetarian (I eventually re-introduced high-protein, low-fat seafood for a pescatarian diet) and increased my carb intake. I eat at least 4 pieces of fruit a day and have simpler carbs (bread, pasta, no added sugar) at pretty much every meal. I eat low-fat products over full-fat ones whenever the alternative is available. I do light exercise - long walks, hiking, biking (I can't get myself to do serious exercises or jog)

I've gone from 225 lb in 2004 to 155 lb today. My cholesterol and blood pressure are near-ideal. I don't feel like I'm "on a diet"; there isn't any food I miss.

Make of it what you will - until we know more about why and how certain dietary decisions work for certain people, you could try this as a diet and see how it works for you. Don't believe any talk of dietary panacea, and never go on a "just until I drop 20 lb, then I'll eat normal again" diet. Make decisions you can live the rest of your life with.

"One soon realizes that one of the goals of this “game” is to decide which cabinets, in which wood or wood-like material, would, could or should be combined with which counter materials, and then to match them to a particular style sofa and upholstery, and finally, to select the color and texture of floor material that would coordinate best with all the above."

Heh... And that's a videogame-like task? Here are some other things that are like videogames then:

- Hiking in the woods
- The DMV
- Returning a book to the library
- Watching TV
- Walking the dog
- Oh, and in addition to IKEA, every other store ever

If calling any series of enumerable "tasks" with "goals" and obstacles a "videogame" is a brilliant observation, well, I can supply you with plenty of brilliant material.

That's a heartbreaking story.

Let's see how long until someone implies that those poor police officers were just doing their job and it's the immigrants fault for not speaking English.

So how long until Boing Boing is defending some dude for spraypainting his local AT&T storefront in this manner? Because it's, you know, so edgy and provocative and sends such a strong message.

Good luck righting your paper, Alphaman. I suspect there will be many wrongs in it to keep you busy.

Bng Bng s jst tctc t bst sc-f bk sls?

Uh... what?

"Over the last four decades, the short shaky film has ignited countless young people's interest in cryptozoology and strange phenomena, including my own."

And that's a good thing, yeah?

"As Loren Coleman suggests over at Cryptomundo, let's take just a moment to shelve preconceived notions and rumors, put "belief" and "disbelief" back in the province of religion where they belong,"

Lolz. I'll try that one some time... "what, dear cashier, you don't believe me when I say that this photocopied $100 bill is genuine? Let's take a moment to put 'belief' and 'disbelief' back in the province of religion...."

How far back do you have to bend over in order to defend someone's obsession (beyond the fourth grade) with a lame old film of a dude in an ape costume? Jeez.

Well, the awful, awful harm caused to you certainly seems worth $5,000,000.

P.S. Thanks for the EULA-like PDF. A great read for sci-fi fans.

"When you buy a physical CD, there's something called (surprise) BOOKLET. In it you can find from lyrics to all kind of information (i.e.: who was the drummer?)"

They have that info in every CD booklet you've had, huh? And not having a physical booklet is a problem Yahoo Music is solving... how?

"Why some of the art on iTunes is so badly scanned, with blank borders and so on? Haven't they the original art?"

No, they don't have the original art for a 1972 jazz album.

"This is why salad in a bag sells so well."

I think that in that analogy, salad-in-a-bag is a DRM track from iTunes. It comes with a number of limitations (freshness, type of greens available in that form, taste) which most users won't run into because they use it in a very limited way (pour ranch over it).

From the clarification page:

"A cast of Bigfoot prints that are believed to be real."

Or, more correctly, "...believed to be real by total dopes."

People, people...

Who told you that you couldn't unlock your iPhone? When did Apple ever state anything like that?

All they said was, if you unlock it, the software update may render it useless, and you'll be voiding your warranty. So if you want to be a 1337 hacker and unlock your iPhone, go nuts. But don't expect software updates or warranty service.

Simple, no?

Sorry to be the language police - it's "die stacking", not "dice stacking". You use the singular form in such combinations - compare "mouse trap" to "mice trap" or "tooth brush" to "teeth brush".

Mike: the terms of the FairPlay license are such that Apple can't make already purchased content unplayable for the end user. Why do you think they would do that anyway? With Google, it was a matter of the whole project being scrapped.

I wonder if the genius at NBC who went into negotiations with this sort of demand now has a plan for making up the generous-margin profits from iTunes sales.