I don't think Pollan's argument is that people with serious health concerns shouldn't look out for tainting in their food - many of us are perfectly fine with peanuts or shellfish, but for those whom these are life-threatening, it's a serious concern.

I wouldn't call your attention to copper contamination "nutritionism".

@#2: No, it's a 4x4 PIXEL grid.

Kind of puts 1024x768 into perspective.

@3 "Instead of being "deeply concerned", couldn't it just be that somebody made a bone-headed move, correct it and move on."

Someone in the government machine is so incredibly thick that they want the fingerprints of a woman with no hands, and didn't have the brains to escalate it to someone with the power to override the requirement.

That's deeply worrying, because if they're so thick they can't figure out that THIS is an exceptional situation, they're probably not catching a lot of less obvious stuff.

"Does this happen a lot? Are there so many people with no hands that you need to have a policy manual on it."

Yep. Especially in South Africa, compared to America, but even in the "Developed world" there are still a LOT of adults with thalidomide-inflicted birth defects, not to mention the usual run of occasional genetic defect or accidental dismemberment.

This kind of thick reasoning leads to cities installing curbs with no access ramps, because "There can't be THAT many people in wheelchairs" or companies completely forgetting that blind customers can't read normal bills.

Margarine is high in trans fats, and tastes funny. It also has different cooking properties which can make it annoying to work with.

I don't agree that the students should have got away scot free or rewarded. Some kind of response is definitely necessary - most highschools forbid running in the hallways, no matter what your state of dress at the time, and I can't imagine running in a banana suit is any easier to do than jeans and a t-shirt.

And you know what? Disrupting the classes? Inconsiderate, stupid, pointless.

So yeah, doing it during class hours, in the hallways, instead of doing it at lunch, in the calf? Wworthy of detentions for a couple of days, or possibly a one day suspension (depending on what the schools code states and how big the disruption was).

But 5-7 days of suspension is downright ridiculous.

Yes, it was gottdam hillarious and just as another student I'd give them gold stars. I'm sure the teachers would make a big public show of disapproving, while meanwhile making encouraging remarks behind their hands, too.

Graduation pranks are fine, but so is giving the kids a little bit of trouble for it afterward. If you let grad pranks go unpunished, they WILL continue to escalate. The students were doing this with the expectation of getting caught and getting in shit. If they don't, they'll keep pushing the boundaries to see when they DO get in shit. It's teenaged nature.

I'm firmly on the shoe side. Walking barefoot hurts my feet, my ankles, my calves, and my knees, to say nothing of my back.

That's not because the human foot in general is defective, that's because MY feet are defective. I'd probably do just fine if you could strap some kind of arch support to my foot without affecting the ball or heel...

Although with all the joint damage I'd suffered I'd probably still need ankle straps and knee straps - cumulative scar tissue in joints really screws up the mechanics of the things and they don't work as intended any more.

All I can think is that treating a monkey like a human child can't be good for the monkey's mental health, or the surrogate "parents".

If they get monkeys from social species, the relative isolation of living with just two humans, and being sent to its room at night can't be good for it.

If they get monkeys form relatively antisocial species (living in pairs or small family groups) they're going to have a surrogate "child" that once it reaches sexual maturity isn't going to be nearly as friendly.

Either way, it IS going to reach sexual maturity before it's 10 years old, and that's going to really change its behaviour.

Not to mention being burdened with a creature with the problem solving skills of a 3 year old, the emotional stability and communication skills of a 1 or 2 year old, the nimbleness and reach of a small climbing animal, and the life experiences of a 10+ year old...

It's going to have all the stupid short sightedness of a toddler, the ability to reach all your stuff on high shelves, a fairly good ability to plan how to get from point A to point B in order to wreck havoc, and it'll learn how to get around everything you put in its way almost as fast as you find things to put in its way.

It will NEVER learn any better. And once it's an adult, you can add "feeling sexually frustrated" to the list of things that will put it in a bad mood fit for a Terrible Two-year-old.

It seems like a terrible idea to me.

What's hard to believe? that the areas each person is assigned don't overlap? Or the 10,000 people? Or that they're all working on unique sections?

The number of people who could work on a project like this is only really limited by the resolution of the original you use to create the segments.

If the original is 1,000,000 pixels high and 7 or 8,000,000 pixels wide, that gives you sections 100x700 or 800 pixels with no overlap - probably even a bit large for this kind of project.

There's no doubt there are people who obsess over activities on the internet, and compulsively pursue them to the detriment of their own health and well being. I wouldn't call this "Internet addiction" any more than I'd call compulsive cat hoarding "Cat addiction", and give it a separate diagnosis.

What these people have is an obsessive-compulsive disorder. That's all. It's no different from the cat hoarder who lives with thirty semi-feral cats, cat poop on the floor, and cat pee on the walls.

Some people have very simple rituals (must touch every drawer in a certain order before leaving the room, must flick the light switch exactly eight times, etc).

Some people have superficially complex rituals (play Everquest/Warcraft, lurk on forums), but anyone who's played an MMO or hung out on a discussion group can tell you that they're both basically "same shit, different day".

OCD people usually feel a tremendous emotional discomfort (anxiety, rage, whatever) that needs to be released through their rituals. If playing an MMORPG is your ritual, the ability to perform your ritual for 16+ hours a day has to be very comforting.

#8: So, algae can "employ" saline water? What, exactly, does this mean? Obviously, algae can grow in ocean water. Is that all that "employ" means, in this context? If so, this is meaningless, as far as the ultimate impact on the environment goes.

Talking about saline water almost never is discussing grand environmental impact. It almost ALWAYS is discussing impact on human agriculture, and the rather pressing business of providing enough water and food for human beings.

Although diverting fresh water sources to agriculture is usually bad for whatever part of the ecosystem was originally using that water...

#8: Just how much fresh water would an algae-based biofuel factory need to consume? I seriously doubt they would use salt water in production.

Why? If the algae is a salt-water species, then it needs salt water. If they situate near the ocean, the producers won't need to pay the (much higher) rates for fresh water and refined sodium chloride if they can use pre-salinated ocean water.

#8: The current biofuel industry darling, ethanol, consumes an ungodly amount of fresh water in production, potentially depleting local aquifers where these plants are built (usually low-income rural areas where people are more likely to rely on wells for their water needs)

I'm not sure about what stage of the production you're discussing, and I have no idea what would be required after the plants are harvested and are being processed.

But just growing the corn/soya takes a lot of water that could be used to slake the thirst of humans, or at least to water crops to feed the bellies of humans.

If the algae-based biofuel needs freshwater in the processing stage, then that's unfortunate, but at least being able to eliminate the requirement for fresh water at the agricultural stage is enormously helpful.

While the environment in the fresh-water-poor area won't appreciate having huge algae pools built on it, there's the ethical bonus of not building it on farmland that could support people.

@30:
@21: _Fallen Angels_ was explicitly written as fan service (or "tribute to SF fandom", if you will). It wasn't intended to be taken very seriously.

The "Geek shall inherit the Earth" part is transparently fanservice with a dash of wish-fulfilment. What's interesting is the recurring theme about SCIENCE! vs The Environmentalists, and how Larry's protagonists all seem to come down on the side of SCIENCE! (in the guise of Nuclear Power, usually).

Environmentalists seem to be
1) recurring themes in Niven's near future stories
2) non-existent in the far future stories (where, like many other distasteful nonsense things Niven doesn't want to think about, they presumably don't exist), and
3) the nutty extremist type who are out to destroy civilization and send us all back to eating bark and sitting naked under trees.

It's pretty blatant.

If this comment hasn't been taken way out of context, and he seriously suggested this as an actual course of action he would endorse, then that's really kind of sad and Niven gets major humanity demerit points.

I can't say this would make me stop enjoying most of his writing, anymore than H.P.Lovecraft being a blatant xenophobe ruins his writing.

I also can't say I'm 100% surprised at the news - I've read Lucifer's Hammer and Falling Angels, and I've read his essays on the glory Regan years when the government (gasp) listened to him and his peers. Just like H.P.Lovecraft's screaming xenophobia shows through in his writing, Niven's crazed viewpoints on some subjects are pretty clear in his own writing.

I would like to see a video of this thing, though. It sounds a little crazy-funny in a car-crash sort of way.

Wow. I was introduced to the idea in Snow Crash.

This was a better idea than flying cars, IMO - but as a non-driver I don't have a good opinion of regular motorists. The idea of an SUV "driving" yahoo moving at 300 mph in a light aircraft gives me the horrors.

Hi Guin!

First off I'd like to say THANK YOU for taking the time to comment on this thread and read responses. It's really cool to know that someone from inside the CBC is paying attention!

Secondly, I'd LOVE to see The World At 6:00 torrented. I listen to CBC Radio podcasts and live broadcasts via the web, but I don't own a TV and don't particularly want to. Hearing someone pitch a segment on an interesting news item on the radio that I'll have to follow up on TV is frustrating. It's 10x as frustrating when it's part of a news series that's playing out on morning radio, afternoon radio, and on TV (the day-long or week-long special in-depth coverage of a news issue, such as health care, for instance).

Alternately, rebroadcasting the 6:00 news as an audio-only podcast would be acceptable - the TV news usually doesn't actually require much in the way of an eye on the TV to follow.

@ #28 - I'm 100% with you.

I worked in internal tech support, so I didn't get as many screaming irates as you do dealing with commercial customers, but I did deal with highly strung, hysterical employees on tight deadlines.
And once, memorably, with an executive who'd lost all faith in all tech support - he wanted to tell us about his problem, but he didn't want us to touch his computer. It needed to be fixed, but we "couldn't" touch his computer because he'd had so many problems with techs before.

Most people respond very well to a confident, sympathetic, no-nonsense voice on the other end of the line. But it helps to back up your "aura of competence" with actually knowing how to do the job!

The frazzled executive turned out to be a fairly simple call to handle - "Well sir, if we aren't allowed to fix your problem, what can I do for you?" We eventually negotiated that I'd fix his computer while he was far far far away so he wouldn't have to hover over me stressing out over the possibility of everything being broken.

Sometimes there's absolutely nothing you can do to help the situation - but if you're internal to the company, you might be able to find the person who can help and get the issue to them. Or at least give the customer some numbers to call, and explain to them what kind of information the other guy will want.

Clarice,

Boingboing blogs about all kinds of commercial enterprises. Why is this any more "free advertising" than a post about someone selling arty chairs or bizarre stuffed animals?

Just because you don't care about one post doesn't magically make the entire blog Eeeebil.

For reference, I'm a girl, and a world of warcraft player. I have no intention of going out and downloading this mans product (I have suspicions my boyfriend may have already done that, actually) but I still find the article interesting and amusing.

I find myself wondering where the crows are finding spare change from, and how long before they learn to raid tip jars...

Re: #2, That story made me cry when I read it as a child, and just thinking about it makes me cry today. It had a huge impact on me.

@3:

I've spoken to my doctor about the same kind of experience. It's apparently quite normal, it happens in the wake-sleep transition as your body is getting ready to shut down your ability to move, so you don't punch yourself in the head while you sleep (or whatever).

I've also experienced it while commuting to college, I was basically dozing off on the bus.

Danegeld - that's a ridiculous inferance. If I have ketchup on my face and I'm out and wandering around, I've probably eaten my french fries.

More importantly, if I get stuck on the bus with some asshole who's smoking on the bus (illegally) and he has the bad taste to be smoking pot, I'm gonna smell like pot, as is everyone else on the bus. None of us are going to have pot on us, with the POSSIBLE exception of the smoker, assuming he doesn't finish his blunt before getting chased off the bus by irritated co-passengers.

Honestly, the day I can tag all my stuff so I can figure out if I left the house with something and THEN lost it, or just lost it inside my house? The day I'm a very happy camper.

I've got (very) mild brain damage that gives me a bit of a short term memory problem, AND also "debuffs" my ability to perform basic visual closure.

In laymans terms, I rarely know where I put something down, and when I look at it sitting on the counter/desk/shelf at a funny angle, I don't get that moment of recognition that tells you you've found it.

Being able to wand-over my counter-top and know that stupid book/keyring/mug/whatever is on it SOMEWHERE would make my day.

I suspect the ispods have finally started their attack on the feeble surface dwellers.

Another issue:

5) While eating food is often social activity, the way drinking is often a social activity, we don't have the same stigma about eating alone that we have about drinking alone. If someone isn't going to be allowed to eat out, they're just going to eat at home and eat too much there, too.

Not giving someone alcohol at a bar doesn't have the same kind of social stigma against drinking alone to back it up, and stopping liquor stores from selling to drunks is NOT the equivalent of stopping restaurants from selling to fat people.

Stopping ALL STORES EVERYWHERE from selling to fat people is the same thing. Of course, that's a death sentence - they're going to die of malnutrition before they slim down. There's a reason why you need to be on medical supervision for a basically-zero-calorie starvation diet.

@#1 long-orange-arms: Yes, several major differences pop out to me.

1) It's easier to tell if someone is drunk than it is to tell if they qualify as obese. Body image and body standards are highly subjective. Compare, in the extreme cases, the standards of a teenaged girl aggressively pursuing the extremely thin ideal vs that of a polynesian woman (where so many polynesian cultures value obesity). For less extreme examples, compare the standards of an average American vs a French or Australian tourist.

2) Alcohol is not required for a body to function. Food is. I don't care if I'm fat, if I'm traveling through this state I don't have a kitchen. I have nowhere to get prepared food. Yes, I can pack sandwiches, but this leads me to point 3...

3) The problem is not restaurant food. The problem is restaurant PORTION SIZES (which impact everyone, not just fat people) and JUNK FAST FOOD (which again, isn't good for anyone).

4) Alcohol is intoxicating and very quickly negatively impacts your judgement of how drunk you are and how much more you can drink. Food does not have this kind of positive feedback loop - the worst you can say is that some obese people have a depressed awareness of being full (not all, either, it's one hell of a generalization).

Having eaten a donut 2 hours ago doesn't have much of an impact on whether I want lunch NOW despite not needing it - there's weeks, months, or years of food abuse leading to my going and eating a big lunch after eating snacks all morning.

Yes. However the government is in a bit of a wobbly position, and I'm not sure how much they want to risk actually contradicting the House - if it's a very close vote they could probably get away with it, but if the vote comes out firmly against the DMCA I think it would be a very bad move.

That said, I also think firing the head of nuclear safety for doing her job was a very bad move.

@ERROR404:

Read the article, or if you want the short form, read comment #1.

I'm dragged into this whole mess by my ISP (Rogers, and sadly the only source of bandwidth in my region) cementing an unholy alliance with Yahoo! that leaves all my email, web services, and basically everything except the cable to my house under Yahoo!'s tender loving care (not!).

Combine this bit of news with the last report about Rogers modifying http streams and traffic shaping, and I may be reduced to getting my internet access by carrier pigeon or something.

For a while we didn't have this in my city here in Canada, and then about five or six years ago the local no-frills chain introduced the trolly-deposit system, and a more upmarket chain introduced the magnetic locking system at all its locations in-city.

I prefer the trolly deposit system because if you're stuck paring at the far end of the lot, especially in a big shopping center, the stupid magnetic system invariably traps you and your groceries in the middle of traffic despite being still in the shopping mall parking lot and 10 to 20 feet short of the sign saying "THOU SHALL NOT PASS (with a trolly)" and 5-10 feet short of your car.

The store closest to us is attached to a full mall, and some bright spark decided to stop people from taking carts through the mall - of course, the store has exits into one side of the parking lot, but not the other, and the magnetic barriers stop all possible routes into the other lot.

No signs warn you of this, and the other lot is of course the only one that regularly has open spaces.

Incredibly frustrating for those of us willing to walk an extra couple hundred feet to return the cart, deposit or not.

#15: And for those of you who've never had a really really ...I mean REALLY bad headache, you might not understand that the idea of somehow carving into one's own skull can sound like a good idea.

I suffer from severe migraine and chronic sinusitis. I have, at times, considered at great length drilling holes in my head in the vague hope that it would help.

I wouldn't say I was entirely serious with my plans, but they always remind me of the way a seriously suicidal person often goes through a long planning period and possibly "dry runs" before going through with the act.

If I hadn't got my sinusitis and my migraines under control, I would not be surprised if I had eventually ended up with a hole in my head out of desperation. Kill or cure...

I don't think there's anything magical about sea-water specifically. Sea salt is still sodium chloride, unless the manufacturer has left all the dirt in it, at which point it's polluted sodium chloride. I'm sure there's all sorts of trace minerals, but there's also trace fertilizers and trace pesticides and probably other nasty stuff.

I'll keep my saline flushing.

Incidentally, saline flushing does not moisturize the sinuses - it dries them out, just as soaking your hands in salt water doesn't moisturize them it dries them out. If you're getting nose bleeds from dry winter air, saline is just going to aggravate it.

However, it does generally help with sinusitis, if only through mechanical action (I suspect the salt just acts as a mild bacterial and fungal inhibitor - chlorine would probably work too but it smells funny).

Considering that when my sinusitis is really bad, I consider the crude mechanical action of stuffing a power drill up my nose to clear things out, the salt water is probably a better solution :D

#5 and #11: Yeah, it's usually pointless to walk to the next stop, and the walk generally isn't very enjoyable because you spend the entire time looking over your shoulder to see if your bus has shown up and whether you should sprint back to the old stop, or try to sprint to the new stop.

The only time I've ever had any point (time wise) in just giving up and walking was when I was particularly close as the pedestrian walks, my bus was hourly, and the route the bus is on was particularly squiggly. I was admittedly a little lost and my feet hurt like blazes, but I arrived ... two whole minutes before the bus showed up. :P

At least I got exercise, and had vowed to buy new shoes :P

#42: you know it's called "Buckshot" for a reason, right?

I had a friend who was bringing a bokken and multiple shinai to school regularly even in the post-Columbine panic. (kendo classes after school)

She also periodically had some kind of broadsword in her locker (highland dancing classes and competitions)

And brought in a display katana for a school presentation once...

At the time the school administration was quite blasé about it because she told them about the swords, wasn't considered a particular risk for using them on other students, and other students weren't very likely to try and snatch one from her to use on each other. (I don't know anyone who's brave enough to steal from a known sword wielding maniac, especially when she brings in enough swords to make you suspect that no matter how many you nicked, she could just go home and fetch something MORE lethal to hunt down your idiot self with...)

File me under another person confused by the "revolting" comments.

Yes, the white mug has coffee on it. It is for storing spoons that have been used to store coffee, not clean spoons ready for customers. It could be a bucket or a box or a hole in the ground, it really doesn't matter as far as being sanitary is concerned, as long as it keeps the dirty spoons separate from the clean ones.

I'm wondering if people are reacting to the counter top without actually looking closely at it?

The countertop is clean - the paint needs touching up IMO, but I understand the distressed, vintage look is "in".

I agree about handles-up rather than handles-down, though.

... because he's a human being, was 13 years old when he did anything interesting, and he's being tortured?

Since when has it become OK to torture people as long as RedMonkey doesn't like them?

Great for stripping oil paint. My mother uses one every time the garage door needs painting. You have to be careful not to set the driveway ashfault(sp?) on fire with it tho - it doesn't spread but you can't just stamp the fire out or you get bits of driveway melted to the bottom of your shoe which is no good.

Also good for killing dandelions, or any weeds that grow up through a brick patio. Cooks them, and it leaves the taproot of a dandelion more vulnerable than just beheading it. I think rot in the cooked leaves must work its way down the root or something.

#28 This week's issue of Time has an amusing article by Joel Stein criticizing the whole "eat local" fad, btw.

Living in Canada, I find the "eat local" thing terribly annoying. If I eat only local in this region, I will be spending my winter eating pretty much nothing but potatoes and partially rotten shrivelled up apples, and only if I can find someone locally who actually grows potatoes in enough volume to get an six-to-eight months supply at once.

Oh. And cedar, probably boiled into tea. Buckets and buckets and buckets of cedar tea. Good for vitamin C, not so good for anything else.

Admittedly this is one of the less smart places to try and keep an industrialized society and be ecologically conscious at the same time.

@24
but to actually have contradictory quotes in the same article yet still believe it to be gospel-esque is just... i don't know what word is appropriate.

you have "the science behind nutritionism is, at best, "promising" but not ready for primetime" followed directly with an insinuation that the same science the FDA uses is correct with "nutritionism has captured politics, so that the FDA isn't allowed to say, 'Eat less red meat,' but is backed into saying, 'Make eating choices that are lower in saturated fats,'."

You fail reading comprehension. Try again.

Nutritionism is why the FDA is not allowed to say "eat less red meat".

Because Nutritionism is at best promising (which suggests generally NOT promising - it's sort of an understatement/dry sarcasm) the advice provided by Nutritionism is "Make eating choices that are lower in saturated fats" which is the wrong message.

There is no contradiction here. The statement is internally consistent.

#8: tort law doesn't require an explicit contract.

From Wikipedia:
Tort is the law of civil wrongs. Tort law usually provides people with the rights to compensation when another person harms their legally protected interests. For instance, if somebody throws a ball and it accidentally hits another person in the eye, any costs of medical treatment and compensation for lost income during time off work could be paid by the person who threw the ball to the person who was hurt.

I presume OJ was sued successfully under tort law, not contract law, as an example.

IANAL but it seems to me to be almost a modern equivelent of wergeld.

@#1: Warren, I don't think you read the same article I did... there wasn't any discussion of thought police or Orwell or 1984 or ranting about bar codes.

You also seem to have confused what RFID is vs what a magnetic stripe is. They're separate technology.

I'm sure your Oyster card is convenient. However, my plastic bus pass is also convenient, and doesn't leave a little record at the bus company office of every single bus trip I take, where, when, where I get on and off...

Ah, you may find broader comprehension with something like "Ditto" or "Me too".

#12: In ballet, dancers have overcome such problems by practicing strength, balance, and alignment to remove stress from their knees and back, so it's obviously possible to escape the long-term effects of high heels.

Ballet dancers are generally heavily affected by arthritis. They suffer permanent damage to the feet, ankles, knees, and hips because of what they do to their body. Like a hockey player or a football player, they exchange 5-10 years of peak physical performance for extreme wear and tear on their bodies, and early-onset of physical ailments more typically associated with people in their 60s or 70s.

#5: The carbon's got to go somewhere...if not through flatulence, then through excretion or decomposition, or digestion further up the food chain.

If it ends up in the manure instead of in the farts, its available to environmental bacteria who will probably digest it back into methane, true...

But it's also available to put in a methane digester, be trapped, and burned for power instead of just released into the atmosphere where it's a greenhouse gas and not doing anything to help with power generation, to boot.

It also depends on what exactly the kangaroo bacteria are producing. They may be producing carbon dioxide or another gas, instead of a solid product. If it is a gas, and the kangaroo gas is less of a greenhouse contributor than methane, we're still ahead in this equation.

Can I open this in my Foxit Reader or other non-Adobe reader or is this restricted to Adobe licenced products only?

Can someone make me an ad-block plugin for Foxit please? :P

It has a sort of pattern, in my experience, like the cheap flashlights, and probably for much the same reason - the shape of the "bulb". I don't know why that shape is standard, but I would guess that it has something to do with durability or something...

Visible is not a "print" equivelent, it's a variable declaration :D

@#51 - I guess you don't like chess then. After all, chess is a simulation of warfare. Actually, I suppose that makes Football (American or European), Hockey, Rugby, and other territorial-control sports verboten, because they're ALSO simulations of warfare. And why play a simulation when you could do the real thing?

Nobody, nobody mistakes playing Guitar Hero for playing the guitar - as you said, it's pressing multicoloured buttons. But it's not substituting for playing the guitar - it's a GAME. A GAME that happens to have the theme of playing a guitar, but you could make a guitar-playing themed board game too, and you wouldn't mistake that for guitar playing either.

People explore and ride bikes and drive cars for fun. They also play GAMES for fun. Sometimes these games have exploring, bike riding and car driving themes, but that doesn't make them a substitute for the real action.

Amazingly, the people that play these games are aware that World of Warcraft isn't like actually exploring. They're playing WoW because they DON'T WANT to actually go explore - they want to play a GAME.

What this whole thing makes me wonder about is "Are Comcast World of Warcraft players having trouble patching WoW?"

WoW uses a torrent to send out patches.

I'm sure they're not the only company that likes to issue updates or even whole new programs over a torrent file, but as has been previously noted in BoingBoing, there are more WoW players in the US then there are farmers - and they ALL use BitTorrent for vital updates.

"Our hand made mohawks are designed to look perfectly realistic and stay that way all day and all night, using techniques from special FX film make up to bond to your head!"

My guess is that this is "spirit gum". If so, it's pretty secure on your head, but I wouldn't want to have to glue my hair on every day. It stinks to high heaven, and you'll need a supply of the spirit gum remover to go with the spirit gum, which they don't mention.

It's not hypoallergenic and the solvent fumes are probably not terribly good for you in the long term.

I evicted a bat from a clients basement, when I was over helping her sort out her computer. A wee little thing, about the size of my palm. I just popped a thick towel over his head, bundled him up, and carried him outside. I unwrapped him and he clung to the towel for a second while he got his bearings, and then flew off.

I suppose it helps that I've handled gerbils, hamsters and rats before, and think they're all adorable. If you're nervous of them, or aren't familiar with handling small fragile rodent creatures that want to escape, then the box/newspaper or box/cardboard technique is probably best.

I'm not sure that I recommend tossing them out the second floor window... You could just put them down with the cardboard on top, box underneath, and then poke the cardboard off with a broom (or let the bat knock the cardboard off itself if as you flee inside, if it seems active enough).

I think a useful piece of companion data for this would be how many crimes are being reported.

Are the CCTV cameras resulting in detection of more crimes, out of proportion of population growth? Because if the cops are finding out about more crimes, and solving more crimes, but the rate of crime detection thanks to CCTV is higher than the rate of crime solution thanks to CCTV, you'd see results like that.