We called similar items (bulky herbal debris) square grouper, back in the day. Never found any, though.

retnull @ 13 does the heavy lifting and reminds us to read a more detailed writeup. I saw that same piece and haven't read the Guardian piece. How anyone could see that as an illustration of religious devotion or the dedication of a missionary is interesting, to say the least.

If it doesn't signify anything about the incumbent's self-perception, it does offer some insight into his interest in the world around him. His entire administration is built around some notion of ideological purity, so the fact that no one had the curiosity to perform a cursory look into that painting and it's provenance is telling. Imputing religious motives to a secular image is what people do when they see the Virgin Mary in a mold stain but at least that has an uncontroversial origin.

Come to Detroit and see the post-apocalypse!!

I went there on business a couple of times 20 years ago and was amazed at how dead the downtown seemed. Since then, all this stuff about farms downtown and the majestic ruins has come out. It's dissonant in so many ways to think of a city that embodied technology becoming a ruin.

I should have known someone would get to this: capturing heat seems easier than capturing sunlight, especially here in the soggy northwest. Wonder when I can tuck one of these in my attic?

Ya know,f if he put up a website with ad support to display all this crud, the prize money might re-appear, as if by magic ;-)

seriously, I think putting that stuff up for review could provide hours of entertainment, maybe put out a book that details the common threads that run through all these ideas.

I have this quite often on my circa 2003 iBook and a new iMac G5. Best I have been able to tell, it's an authentication glitch between the 'book and the AP (a LinkSys running DD-WRT).

Look in your system.log if you're curious and see if there are any message to that effect. I don't see any recent ones in my log to share as examples.

Possible workarounds:
shutting down and restarting the card sometimes clears it up
removing the AP from your list and re-associating with it
if it's your AP, reboot it or see if there is newer firmware (I have high hopes for dd-wrt .24RC6).

But it's really inconsistent and frustrating, I'll grant you that. So enjoy the enforced work stoppage while you can ;-)

Jason does have a point, even it's not germane to the issue.

But setting that aside, I'm glad there is an alternative to the DRM-encumbered offerings from Apple. The whole "Apple is teh 3vil SUXXORS" chant was silly in the first place -- as if Apple really wants to spend engineering resources to protect the RIAA's crummy business model -- and I hope this gets them out of the DRM arms race.

I don't know that I buy the idea of Apple controlling the labels, like Wal-Mart controls it's suppliers -- as we have seen, Amazon is happy to offer an alternative and nothing prevents the labels from opening up their own storefront. If DRM is what keeps them bound to Apple, they're even dumber than I imagined. Never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity, as the old saw goes.

As crunchbird @ 10 explained it, these rules are to protect the government from liability as well as the person changing the bulb: if there aren't cases of someone smashing the bulbs and huffing the mercury, I'd be surprised. It's hard to tell from the original post if it's a slap at the excessive detail of the warning(s) or the fact that they're necessary. And the fact that there is a risk to human health, beyond broken glass, isn't mentioned until the commenters chime in.

It was never free as in speech, but for personal use was always free as in beer. I hope maybe now someone can fix its performance issues. Not sure how BB gets around them but there are plenty of former MT users (almost all on WordPress) who dropped it for that very reason. CGI is so last century.

is that really a parody? Or just someone copping the art without making reference to the original? If it said "Worst Buy" or in some way made a connection to Best Buy, I could see it as parody.

The ever-reliable WikiPedia defines it as "In contemporary usage, a Parody (or Lampoon) is a work that imitates another work in order to ridicule, ironically comment on, or poke some affectionate fun at the work itself, the subject of the work, the author or fictional voice of the parody, or another subject." Maybe my interpretation of that is off.

But I agree 100% with the original point: hassling someone who mentioned it is Grade A dumb.

I think the Chevron cars and trucks are direct descendants of this little thing. I'm with Joel: I'd love to see more like this on the roads.

I'm having a hard time with the idea of this going on for most of the 23 years they owned the land, especially if it was just down the street (as the comment above notes, 200 yards -- no great distance). They didn't notice the signs of use, even if they made regular visits to kill weeds and repair fences?

Call me skeptical. Having read through the comments and the original posting, I think the grabbers are faking it. I don't believe they can prove consistent, long-term use of the property.

It would a good idea for them to watch their own boundaries though. Maybe Colorado has some interesting case law on other aspects of property law.