I wouldn't call that pretty. Bad ass, maybe, but not pretty. It's cool but kinda incoherent looking to me.

Pretty is the Alfa 8C (still Italian!).

#17: You're exactly right. However, a lot of societal woes could be solved by violating our constitutional rights. Screw the 4th amendment...if we just searched everyone's house regularly, we could wipe drugs out completely. Which is apparently what happened.

From the wikipedia article on Cory Maye: "Jones, though not a member of the Task Force, had received a confidential tip that large quantities of marijuana were being stored and sold in the apartment of Jamie Smith, who lived in the other half of the duplex. The officers obtained search warrants for both apartments. Whether the warrants legally allowed for a no-knock entry is still not clear."

So, the police suspected his neighbor of having some pot....and then decided to raid his part of the duplex, too? I have a lot of sympathy for the cop that got shot, but here I am, imagining myself in that situation. I'm a law abiding citizen who has no reason to expect a police raid. I'm armed because I'm worried about break ins. A group of men dressed in military gear breaks into my house unannounced, then comes and starts busting down my bedroom door while I'm in there WITH MY CHILD? I'm not listening for them to shot out "Police!" once they're in the house, because at that point I'm frantically preparing to defend my defend my child from what I assume is a gang of homicidal maniacs.

I know sounds a little alarmist, but the reason the founders added the 2nd Amendment was to give us a tool to protect ourselves from EXACTLY THIS SORT OF THING. What would Jefferson think of this type of government raid?

We've become a nation with midnight raids on unsuspecting, law-abiding citizens who happen to live next to a guy who might have contraband the government thinks is, at the most, immoral. He defends himself and gets sentenced to death.

Police state, anyone?

P.S. Guns are not the cause of the problem. Switzerland is the 4th or 5th most heavily armed country, and has one of the lowest murder rates in the world. Why?

#32: Correct me if I'm wrong, but he wasn't breaking the law. He was asked to leave and he left. Prior to that, he was not informed that he was on private property, and a port or parking lot without a fence around it normally open to the public.

-1 point for not using AA's like the Flip.
+1 point for the bigger LCD
-200 points for copying and not trying to improve upon the Flip, despite having much deeper pockets.

Not that my Flip is perfect, but I'd rather give my money to the innovators rather than the copycats.

FYI, #33, numerous studies have shown that the street is an order of magnitude safer than sidewalks or multi-use paths. Like, 30 times safer.

Funny, that part about bikes being disposable. If by upkeep, you mean turning an adjustment screw on a derailleur, you're right. My early '90's Trek cost me about $80 over the last 3000 miles, which I think you'll agree is a fairly low cost of ownership. My fixie hasn't needed anything other than a new bottom bracket and a new tire or two in the last seven years.

Road bikes are fine on ANY road if you're in decent shape. Rough roads suck if you rest all your weight on the saddle (read: seat) because it's like having a jackhammer shoved up your ass. When it gets really bumpy, take some of the weight off your butt and put it on your legs. If it's still a problem, get a road bike that can take fat tires (cyclocross bikes) and run lower tire pressure.

Worst. Cycling Article. Ever.

I'm so glad someone else beat me to shouting out "Hick Hop!"

@12: "Many people are growing their own. One hop plant, within 2-3 years, can provide 20 lbs of hop flowers, and since they are 'weeds' they grow pretty well in many climates. 2008 and 09 may be bad for hops, but after the farmers who return to hop farming, and many people grow their own, the prices should drop rapidly."

The yield per plant is more like 1 1/2 to 2 lbs, not 20 lbs. Still, 5 gallons of VERY hoppy beer uses maybe 6oz, so a few plants will keep you and your friends drunk for a while.

My four new plants went in a week ago. Hopefully will be popping any day now...

Whether or not it was _all_ CCTV video, this is still the most brilliant thing I've seen in a while.

#22 "Agree or not, Steampunk is a bona-fide design movement. Like all other art movements, it will grow in usage and popularity- (think 'modern ar't)...It will morph in it's initial concept as it is adopted and applied by a variety of creative people who will use it as a basis for many different mediums of expression. "

Or perhaps it will die a quiet death as copper and zinc prices continue their steep climb.

A story in the NY Times? Steampunk has officially jumped the brass-plated thermodynamically-inefficient pneumatic shark.

Craftsman is no longer (never was!) the greatest tool manufacturer in the world. Matco, Snap-On, Mac, S-K, etc all make undeniably better stuff. For critical things like torque wrenches and other 'precision' equipment, you buy the premium brands or you'll regret it eventually...

However, I've got a big craftsman socket wrench set that has been through the wars. In twelve years of doing all my own car repairs, I have broken exactly one socket (17mm, 1/2" drive being beaten to death in an impact wrench) and it was replaced for free. Their basic tools are _completely_ adequate for anyone who is not using hand tools to make their living.

Plus, their stuff is cheap enough that you don't feel too bad using it in off-label applications. :)

Finally, foosball can be as low-scoring and boring as real soccer!

@92: Mike's tastes like candy and I can't imagine any child NOT liking it. FWIW, at least one baby I know likes the taste of beer and wine and would happily down a sippy cup full if he were given the chance.

I'm all for the state snatching away babies that are being physically abused or are otherwise in _immediate_ danger, but isn't there some middle ground in these cases that involve sending the kid home and having a followup interview the next week?

This isn't meant condescendingly, but maybe it's hard for some to understand magnitude of this because your children are not your entire existence. You know that guy locked in the elevator for two days? I think many or most parents would agree that this would much, much worse.

It's terrifying to think of the government taking your child away for the sort of mistake that an average parent makes daily, or creating some bureaucrat's idea of a "moral hazard," or because of a complaint filed by an angry neighbor. There are certain things you just. don't. do. without a _really_ good reason. Breaking up families, even temporarily, is one of them.

Only those who have gone on critical mass rides can understand the complete sense of invincibility that cyclists feel when they can shut down a city street and piss off motorists and ride circles around the cops. The riders become raving lunatics.

I'm pretty sure that all involved were happy to be martyrs for cycling. That's the point. If they didn't get arrested from time to time, people wouldn't even be aware that CM exists. The cops here where I live _completely_ ignore CM and guess what? It gets no press and the rides are boring. :)

The cops are totally in the wrong here, for turning a stupid annoyance into a civil rights showdown...however, it's hardly a sign of a new police state emerging. This sort of stuff has gone on for a few hundred years.

As others mentioned, I don't see how this can possibly be OK under most municipal nuisance laws... I predict dismal failure for this company.

Leather is _heavy_. Good nylon is hard to beat...I've got messenger bag that still looks A-OK after 10 years of hard use.

The laptop section should have the option of dropping in a stiff metal or heavy plastic plate on one side to protect the screen. Padding is great, but my laptops tend to get LCD bright spots due to stuff poking the lid while riding around in my bag.

Modularity rules. I want something that can do padded compartments for lenses and cameras one day, and books/office supplies/laptop the next. Compression straps, expandability, etc are king.

Warped priorities.

We freak out and kick kids out of school for anything that might possibly maybe be a sign that they're going to commit one of the INCREDIBLY violent school flip outs, but we don't do a damn thing about the routine torment that the kids at the bottom of the pecking order go through.

Nerdy (presumably) kid produces relatively harmless prank device, gets arrested. Jock asswipes beat on 'weird' kid every day for 4 to 12 years? Get occasional reprimand. WTF.

Driving is something the state lets you do if you behave, firearm ownership is (arguably) a fundamental right for everyone in this country. How would you feel if you needed a government permit for public speech or to avoid unlawful searches?

All constitutional rights come with some downsides. We let KKK members march on our streets. Criminals get let go because we're unable to use illegally obtained evidence. Too often, people get killed by guns. In return, we're granted the ability to overthrow the government if it goes bonkers, or defend against an occupation.

Context is important. In today's world, it seems preposterous that we can own guns without licenses. A lot of the constitution seems ridiculous, though; when was the last time we had to worry about troops being quartered in our houses? The constitution has a few insurance policies that might only be relevant once every 500 years, which is hard to put in perspective when we only live 80 years.

Is it hard to imagine a scenario, 20 years down the road, in which some nut detonates a nuke in NYC? Maybe the government cracks down on us in a way that makes Bush look like Jimmy Carter. People get rounded up for stuff said on the internet (like this!) decades ago and detained because of some statistical association they have with a known bad guy. Then the government takes the next step and ban guns. In that world, you might be happy that you're allowed to own a shotgun without a paper trail.

That said, we can lower the premium on our anti-tyranny insurance policy. Go ahead and regulate machine- and hand guns. Instate mandatory conscriptions for a weekend so people can get firearm training, or make it part of the curriculum in schools, or spend the money we waste on anti-drug ads on firearm safety PSAs. There are ways to alleviate the problem without trampling anyone's rights if we're able to get past stupid pro/con NRA-style rhetoric.

A computer chip with millions of dollars in R&D has a _huge_ market. They'll sell tens or hundreds of thousands of them. How many potential customers are there for a new neurosurg drill?

A 90,000 RPM pneumatic drilling system, with tons of special controls and attachments and other dohickeys, capable of being sterilized and reliable enough to use on brains is not the same thing as your average dewalt...

Equipment costs are not the big problem with healthcare. FWIW, they're not using a vastly different array of tools in european countries (where, if anything, they're MORE highly regulated) and yet their costs are lower. The problem is personnel: legal, administrative overhead, salary for doctors, etc. Your coronary bypass surgery didn't cost $100K just because the machine that goes PING! was expensive.

$300? Good god.

5 gallon cornelius kegs: $25
Mini-fridge large enough for said kegs: $100 or so used.
C02 cylinder+regulator? $50 maybe?
Faucet, hoses, couplings: $50
Pretty plywood to house faucet: $20

5 gallons of whatever you want to drink on tap (soda, beer, etc)? Maybe not priceless, but better than sucking on a Heiney.

How can a book written in separate sections, decades or centuries after events transpired, be considered accurate? That'd be like me recording stories my grandparents tell that their grandparents told them about their grandparents. Sure, they might get the gist of it (crazy dude got crucified) but any detail is going to be iffy at best. Not to mention the sheer number of conflicting stories in all the different books.

The most accurate stuff seems to come from non-biblical sources..ie, first person accounts by whomever was literate enough to write and was there at the time. Most of that stuff didn't make the final cut. At least, that's how it seems to this not-a-biblical-scholar.

The Philippine-American war is remarkable for a lot of reasons, not least of which is that practically no one in this country has ever heard of it.

The article on wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippine-American_War is full of horrific detail:

"...buried alive, or worse, up to their necks in anthills to be slowly devoured"

"...deliberately infected with leprosy before being released..."

"...510,000 civilian deaths..."

Beautiful ad. It has a vaguely Apple-like quality to it, especially with the music. Very "Here is our shiny, gorgeous gadget. Look how easy it is to use. And pretty. Always pretty."

Sad to see 'em go, but if people were buying the film they'd keep producing it. I'm sure some niche company will start producing the film for the large-but-still-niche market.

#22: A raccoon doesn't just wake up in the wild to a bulldozer one day and decide he has to go into the city in order to make a living. :)

I don't think habitat destruction has anything to do with it. The density of raccoons in a nice suburban environment is probably (I'm sure google knows for sure) higher than it is in the few remaining "natural" habitats. Raccoons just really, really thrive on the habitat we create for them. Same for coyotes, rats, mice, sparrows, pigeons, etc. Co-evolution, symbiosis, etc...

And yeah, they're total pests and dangerous to your pets and poultry, but....they're SOOOO cute.

I posted some inane shit on Usenet back in the day (early 90's, when I was maybe 13 or 14)...anyone who knew my email address at the time could look it up now on Deja News (hahah!). Thank god I've gone through about 5 email addresses since then and my past can remain my past.

I just thank god YouTube didn't exist back then. I feel so bad for this girl. If her name gets linked to this, every potential employer for the rest of her life is going to find it on their first google of her name.

Ugh.

It's great that this info is available, but as the author says, people have been doing this for years and years and years. It's also a _total_ pain in the ass when you get tangled up and fall on your face. :)

Flying is not a right, huh? Funny, I thought that the freedom to travel without being harassed by the authorities was one of the rights the constitution gave us.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_movement

Or maybe you take the view that all organisms shape their physical environment and that 'art' and 'industry' are both just as natural as a termite mounds.

I think the important distinction here is the difference between justice and the law. I think only a minority of americans honestly believe marijuana use should be punished with prison time. The (non-government sponsored) medical and social science research on the subject overwhelmingly indicates that it's relatively harmless, at least as compared to say, coca cola or beekeeping. I don't even think pot's safety is arguable anymore.

Still, it's illegal and will probably be so for quite some time. Obviously there are authoritarians here (and that's what they are) who believe that breaking the law is wrong and deserves to be punished, regardless of whether or not the law is just. Those same people may very well agree that pot is harmless, but that breaking the law for whatever reason is not.

All the criticisms of authoritarianism hold true for these people. IMO, they're weak people who can't deal with a world that isn't black or white, need strong boundaries to feel secure, and who feel that the abuse of individuals is fine and dandy as long as it keeps the world nice and organized.

That's a lot of reciprocating mass. It doesn't seem like it's going to lend itself well to tiny 9,000 rpm engines. It also looks like it might be pricier to manufacture. Totally elegant, though.

Grandma isn't going to do so well on those stairs.

Building codes _barely_ limit your freedom in design choices. I can't believe how bitchy people get about mandating a baseline of product safety. Remember, a house isn't just for you. It's going to be used long after you're dead, and burdening the next owners with unsafe features ain't cool.

In this case the innovative/defective staircase is obvious and so I'd have a choice not to buy the house. More often though, really stupid code violations are hidden away behind walls and under floors and a potential buyer isn't going to be making a fully informed purchase.

more good shots of it:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/johnbaird/tags/dpsbookdepository

I've got quite a few pictures of the DPS depository on flickr. It was indeed a Kahn design (as were most of the best industrial buildings in Detroit)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/paanta/tags/dpsbookdepository

When is a self-righteous vegan going to chime in?

Given how far in debt most American farmers are, this is great. It'll help keep them working on paying off those loans well into their 80's. Yay, technology!

I think it'd be easier to make the case to move the house than to move the proposed route. It would probably be cheaper.

Depending on the status of the project, the cost of rerouting the freeway could be shockingly high (new surveys, legal work, probably more overall length, environmental impact analysis, etc) and taxpayers would be footing the bill. The bureaucracies and politics involved in planning roads confuse the hell out of me, and I used to work for for the people responsible for much of the planning of our state's roads.

I'm not saying the proposed freeway is a good idea. My urban planner brain is 99% opposed to building new roads. I'm not saying it isn't tragic that people are forced off their land so that new subdivisions and strip malls can be built on green fields. I'm not saying that the cultural losses associated with destroying established communities aren't huge. I'm just saying that the cost/benefit analysis of this probably doesn't work out in Aaron's favor.

"If you've ever socialize with a pig, you may never eat bacon again. They're intelligent, expressive animals."

I'm guessing you didn't grow up around farm animals.

Pigs are intelligent because we bred them to have big brains. Why? Because their brains are _delicious_.

My kid is allowed to drill holes in wood without safety goggles, in case I forget to sign that waiver.

Step 1: Make an essentially harmless product that nevertheless offends the sensibilities of super serious greenies, thereby getting limitless publicity on the internets as A Symbol of Everything That is Wrong With The World.

Step 2: ????

Step 3: Profit!

If one more person whines about how lazy/selfish/stupid you'd need to be to buy this, I'm going to go out and buy a case of these instant pancakes. Then I'm going to throw the empty cans into the river along with some Otter Be Gone.

This gives me an awesome idea for a novelty gift. Imagine getting a gigantic bag of non-recyclable foam that serves no purpose but its own disposal. That's right: it goes directly into the trash. And it's huge and non-biodegradable. The negative publicity will draw enough traffic to my site make a mint on the Google ads I'll have there. That's the secret Step 2: ???? up there.

Stay tuned.

The amount of mercury contained in a CFL is significantly less than the amount of mercury that would be released into the atmosphere by the coal burned to create the additional energy required by an incandescent bulb. Using CFLs creates a net environmental mercury reduction.

That seems reasonable, really.

Let's say that infographic represents like, a half million bucks per day in personnel and a half million bucks per day in hardware and fuel. Why not. So a three day international trip is $3M give or take a few million.

For that low, low price you get to A) keep the executive branch running about as smoothly as it does when the president is home (worth the cost all by itself), B) feed the president like the king he is and C) keep the president alive. It's a given that there are plenty of people around the world that would love to kill a US president. Imagine the financial cost associated with that event. Market instability, down time in the government, having some n00b VP in office making even bigger mistakes than are being made right now, etc.

Even if it worked out to $100M/yr in travel expenses, it seems relatively OK compared to say, a pointless war in some far-off desert nation with a cost running well into the hundreds of billions of dollars.

Sigh.

I don't feel like I know much more about the situation now than I did just reading about it. Obviously the guy was completely out of his mind, confused, scared and violent. In an airport, which we _all_ know is not a good place to let yourself get crazy.

Was he a mortal threat to anyone? Obviously not.

Are tasers a deadly weapon? We all take notice when someone gets killed by one. It gets lots of media attention and people get all up in arms about how deadly tasers are, but as a percent of total taserings, no they are not what I'd call a lethal weapon. Potential torture device, yes, but not usually deadly.

Cops are normal humans who deal with people like this all the time. Stop and think about what it'd be like if your job were to wrestle with angry drunks a couple times a week. They really, really don't want to knock some dude to the ground and get punched/kicked in the face. The most dangerous person you'll deal with is the person fighting/flailing with all their will to get away from you. Ever tried to get an angry house cat into a crate? And they weigh about 12lbs.

Honestly, I don't have a problem with cops doing what it takes to avoid getting their asses kicked by an out of control person, as long as it doesn't involve a high probability of killing them. Tasers seem ok for this. So I can see how a Taser might have been used here as a last resort, BUT...

Even more important than knowing how to restrain a crazed individual, is knowing how to subdue that person by talking them down. It sure doesn't look like they made much of an attempt at that. It looks like they used the taser because the taser takes less time and is less effort than doing the right thing. That seems to be a common thread in a lot of these stories (ie, the don't tase me bro). Hey, there's a language barrier. How about we pull out a pad of paper and draw pictures of what's going on?

I don't think Tasers need to be banned, but in a lot of places there's an institutional problem that can _only_ be solved by a stringent review of every tasering, preferably by some neutral 3rd party and not by the cops' boss. Police who use Tasers as a go-to method for calming people down need to be fired. Period.

Damn, I was _so_ looking forward to congress passing legislation dictating minimum sentencing guidelines for people who fail to flush their toilets. 10 year minimum sentence. 20 years if the crime occurs within 1/4 mile of a school.

At least "New Urbanism" seems to be taking hold, which has all sorts of benefits. If we can make it affordable, we might even make it out of the 20th century architectural dark age.

New Urbanist architecture? OH PULEEEZE. "Put some more gingerbread on it and make sure the kitchen is out of sight so we don't have to interact with the women-folk"

I think the new plant looks good. Sure, I'm not going to reuse it and convert it to lofts, but at least it doesn't pretend to be something it's not. 200 years from now, people will look back on that and think it's pretty snazzy.

Not saying it's necessarily so, but I wouldn't be _surprised_ to find out this story is a result of a combination of schizophrenia and wonky DMV records in NY. That'd certainly be keeping with Occam's razor.

WRT to the submachine gun vs. a handgun being more dangerous to bystanders: That gun is more accurate than a 9mm handgun, which translates to _fewer_ dead bystanders not more. And they don't use these things on full-auto like you see in the movies.

And yes, of course, most of it is just to make us feel less afraid and more afraid at the same time.

I'm trying to imagine Michael Chertoff sitting down for a similar exchange. Silly responsive Canadian government! You don't owe the people NOTHIN!

"All of the homes are built by a handful of companies, either from stock plans or high-price custom designs. I wonder if there will be any poor people allowed there or if that is "old urbanism.""

How do you think traditional homes in older traditional neighborhoods got there? Have you ever walked through a turn of the century neighborhood and noticed the same house in multiple locations? People have been buying off-the-shelf designs for a long, long time.

As an urban planner myself (oddly enough, I also like beer) I'm glad to see one of these utopias doing something worthwhile by getting folks sloshed. Otherwise, I don't have much love for New Urbanism. You don't have to search too hard to find plenty of valid criticism of New Urbanist communities. Most residents of these places still drive everywhere, they don't know their neighbors, the architecture tends towards the weirdly cutesy, they're not diverse socially or economically, they're still separated from the surrounding area, etc.