I'd only use encrypted Gmail if it handled PGP/MIME properly; the signature block is really ugly. Until then, I'll stick with Enigmail (I sign all outgoing emails).

#3, #5: I agree, the burgers are awesome, though their fries are sub-par. They also have really good shakes. The best part, though, is the wackiness of their menu; though the printed menu only lists a burger, double-double (2x meat and cheese), and shake, the "secret menu" includes arbitrary drink mixes and arbitrarily large burgers (well, they've now capped it at a four-by-four, but that's still a decently-sized burger). Anyway, if you're ever in the SoCal area, you really ought to stop by In-n-out.

@#123:

I too have not seen the movie, but from what I've read in reviews, it consists of two things: old rehashed arguments about how if we don't at this moment know exactly how everything evolved, God Did It™; and claims that evolution led directly to the Holocaust. Yes, that's right, apparently no one thought to kill the Jews until Darwin suggested it. At least, that's what Stein (himself a Jew) would have you believe. This is why everyone is so upset with the movie.

@#84: "I have a FOAF who is blacklisted by the arrogant asses in the scientific community, a blacklist that is not based on fact but on the beliefs of those in that community."

Do you now? Was this friend blacklisted because of his/her beliefs, or because (s)he wasn't doing his/her job? (E.g., teaching creationism in a science classroom.) There are plenty of religious scientists; perhaps the best example is Ken Miller, coauthor of the canonical high school biology textbook and a devout Catholic. You can believe whatever you want, but if those beliefs prevent you from doing your job, then yes, you should be fired. If you refuse to handle meat, I'm not sure you should work at McDonald's.

Also, I'm reminded of another name for FOAF stories: urban legends. Do you know that this even actually happened?

Having done this, yea, there are some details missing (like wanting to probably use three or four transparencies to make sure no light gets through, and having to press very uniformly to get the image to not have streaks in places), but it's a lot of fun; you can't get shirts like this from a commercial retailer.

@#11:

I'd expect that when she converted, all of her treyf genes converted as well, so you've got nothing to worry about.

What interests me more is the case of low concentrations of treyf; apparently if less than 1/160th of a product is treyf AND you don't know about it, it's OK. This observer effect implies there is a whole field of quantum kashrudynamics to study.

@#2:

The only kosher insect are some species of locusts, and authorities debate over which species (some going so far as to say "We're not sure which ones so you're safest eating none.") So, not really generalizable to aliens.

Devi's advocate here, providing a justification for elective cosmetic surgery:

Let's say a woman feels unhappy about how she looks. It isn't a weight thing, where she could just diet (and where lipo is just a temporary solution); she wants bigger breasts. There's nothing that she can do to change this; it's not her fault for having small breasts. Now, she could go to a psychologist for a year, build up her self-esteem, realize that she doesn't need big breasts to feel good about herself, etc. Or she could go to a plastic surgeon and get bigger breasts. If the latter makes her just as happy as the former, and costs less (psychologists aren't cheap), why is it not the better solution? Perhaps a focus on the physical over the mental is a problem with our society, but for an individual woman whose worldview is firmly entrenched in that society, maybe it's better for her in the long run to just get cosmetic surgery than to change her entire concept of "beauty."

But can you pass basketballs while wearing it?

Sure, five times seems unlikely, but there are over 6 billion people on the planet. One in a million chances happen 6 thousand times.

This reminded me of Scott Blake's art, in particular this collection.

@8:

Probably because the others are fairly recognizable when kana-ized, but Kirugisu-tan (or anything else) isn't.

@7:

Yea, I could swear I saw this at a different URL through StumbleUpon a few weeks/months back; I think MotionPortrait was involved then too.

Actual scientific instruments don't necessarily make science; for example, the Pons and Fleischmann fusion experiment.

Also, I'll grant that meditation and putting oneself into a peaceful state of mind probably has the potential to relieve psychological issues such as PTSD. However, any claim which evokes metaphysics that oppose known science (distance healing, claims of a non-metaphorical "chi/ki", etc.) will receive derision from me.

I went to this place as a kid when it was not yet rundown; it was fun taking photos which appeared to be of the actual landmarks, not replicas thereof. I was too young to consider the propaganda ramifications, though.

Hey, Army! Pay me $$$ and I'll use my remote healing abilities to cure your soldiers of PTSD! Sure, you can't test my abilities scientifically, but science is so 20th-century. BS FTW!

Am I the only one recalling that even without magical pig powder, fingertips grow back? Seriously, if you cut off your fingertip (no more than part of the distal phalanx), it will grow back, nail and all. This is a well-known scientific fact, and unless this guy removed part of his intermediate phalanx (or if his finger grew back significantly faster than is normal), there's no story here.

I've got to agree with those who oppose this; yes, Pastafarianism is a satire religion, but it's still (in some sense) a religion, so putting a statue of its deity in front of a courthouse is no different from the Ten Commandments thing in Alabama. There's parody, and then there's sinking to their level; this smacks of the latter.

Also, I'm a devout believer in Russell's Teapot, so all you newfangled FSM-worshiping upstarts sicken me.

Maybe it's just my bitterness, but this reminded me of that Japanese firm with the polar opposite policy: lovelorn workers get heartache leave after a bad breakup.

Could be worse, I guess. In France, you need a special dispensation to not get a day off.

(I kid, I kid.)

I actually am in the process of switching my domain away from GoDaddy; after they were brought up in a Slashdot article on the WikiLeaks thing (someone was talking about other hosting companies one should boycott), I decided I could no longer support them.

Seconded, Franko: I don't know what's to blame. This is fairly well done technically; it just isn't interesting musically.

Because it has to be said, and with that I'd like to be the one to say it:

Airstrip One.

It seems like the anti-hugging rule is an (admittedly, overzealous) response to PDA:

After many students began expressing concern about public hugging and kissing in the hallways, the school began reinforcing the guideline by punishing huggers, which led to Friday's protest.

There's probably a better solution, but at the moment I can't think of one.

I'm actually rather strongly anti-PDA (public displays of affection), so I almost understand this. I mean, yea, obviously there's no legal way they can enforce these things (private schools can violate search and seizure with their lockers, but this appears to be a public school, so even that argument fails). And yea, trying to ban something obvious like this will only make it happen more. But seriously folks, get a room. Not all of us want to see you making out in the halls. It's just common courtesy.

Screw all these paper and plastic bags you guys are recommending, clearly the ideal laptop case is an interoffice mail envelope!

#1: Nix the word "Liquid," and you've got yourself a haiku.

Ah, good ol' cryptozoology. "Some sort of creature chewed her car. It could be an extant creature which might be acting somewhat strangely, or a creature for which there is no evidence whatsoever. Let's go with the second hypothesis."

I just added a new skill, one which a quick read of their list will demonstrate is obviously obsolete: Deletion of obviously non-obsolete skills.

I tried to include only the most blatant examples (such as "cursive handwriting," "handling cash," and "sharpening a pencil"), but there are plenty of other stupid entries.

Also, don't forget the people who insist that such skills as "tinning copper cookware" and "pulse dialing" are not obsolete. (The latter includes a lovely example wherein pulse dialing might be relevant "in those hostage situations where you only have your nose free and the buttons have all been removed from the touch-tone phone." A condition which clearly comes up often enough to render the skill non-obsolete.)

Not that this isn't awesome (it is), but by using the origami to replicate pixel art, it ceases to be an actual tessellation. If all of the pixels here were "pushed" rather than "popped," it would be a tessellation of squares; as it is, it's just a work of art.

Actually, in a related case, I carved up a map of the Caltech campus into a game board appropriate for Diplomacy, a board game similar to Risk. Colored spaces are the starting territories for the various factions, dots represent supply depots, white spaces are unaligned provinces, and light blue is water.

I haven't yet played Diplomacy on this map, and frankly arranged the provinces primarily on guesswork, but I think it came out pretty well.

I'm honestly impressed by the dearth of anti-biology screed in this thread. Good job, guys.

Also, while hybridization of GMO and normal crops is really shitty from a intellectual property point of view (the fact that you can grow your own crops, hybridize with your neighbor's GMO unintentionally, and get sued for patent violations is a major problem with our patent system), I've yet to see any evidence that these hybrid crops are bad health-wise. I suppose there could possibly be some risks, but if the normal plant is fine, and the GMO plant is fine, why should one halfway in-between kill you? (I don't think GMO crops often do the "gene A has nutrients but kills you, gene B keeps gene A from killing you" thing; evidence for this would invalidate my claim.)

@#15: I think he means "how an ownership sharing and innovation framework needs to be developed that moves beyond patent-based intellectual property and recognizes that the information defining the genetic material's going to be more important than the stuff itself and so you might transition away from patents to copyright and so on and so forth." Like I said, IP stuff. And the biosecurity things he's saying are basically an extension of the RepRap movement that everyone here loves: give people the power to create stuff. Note that he's still not giving them the power to make gray goo, or even viruses; did you look at that list of genes? If you really want to cultivate your very own bacteria which glow green in the presence of high concentrations of caffeine, go knock yourself out.

A response to all the "OMG, 'let's go do it' means 'fuck the consequences'": He isn't saying "let's take this stuff out of the lab and screw up as much of the environment as we can, to ensure future scientists a job;" he's saying "let's actually do this stuff in the lab." Many of the people working with his system only do the design aspect, drawing up complex plans on computers without actually pipetting anything. "Let's go do it" probably means "Sure, your design might not be perfect, but we'll never know that if you don't try to actually build it." It means "Let's go into the lab and do the research, and worry about the IP consequences later (after gene patents have been ruled unconstitutional, hopefully)." It means "Let's ignore the fundies screaming 'stop playing God' and just build whatever we want in the lab, with proper protocols to ensure it doesn't escape." Seriously, if you guys actually read what he's proposing, you'd be on his side.

Note, IAAB (I Am A Biologist):

I'm actually pretty familiar with Endy's work, too. He's not yet to the level of building gray goo; right now, the goal is to be able to combine a few carefully-designed genes in arbitrary ways. These genes do things like "turn green," "produce signaling molecule," or "activate flagellum." I don't think control of the cell's reproductive cycle has been worked on yet, and has been pointed out in the past, if bio-gray goo could take over the world, it would have already. (Insert "what do you think humanity is?" comment.) Anyway, you guys should love Endy's work, he's all about open source. Remember those carefully-designed parts I mentioned earlier? They're all speced out in a wiki: http://parts.mit.edu/ Go ahead, take a look and see if anything there actually scares you.

Mmm...meat. These paintings are making me hungry.

Also, apparently she got high-quality meat to paint; this stuff is really well-marbled.

I visited this exhibit a few months ago, and it was fairly interesting; for those concerned, the various types of scares (random shocks, poisonous animals, falls) were found in separate cubical-like rooms with big signs over the entrances describing what lay inside, so no real risk of doing something you didn't want to do. And the "fall machine" was basically a table-like thing which rotated upwards; you were strapped in while standing up, and the table fell backwards until you were on your back. There was a huge line for that, so apparently everyone else seemed to like the idea.

@#13:

That probably was Mission: Earth. I think I stopped reading it around book 3 or 4, when one character decided to be a prostitute instead of a psychiatrist because she viewed the former as a more respectable occupation. Also, it was apparent that every single bad guy was a homosexual pedophile. Hubbard made no effort to hide his agenda in his books, and with an agenda as wrong as his, that made them basically unreadable.

@Takuan:

I have read a few of them, and yes, they're utter tripe. That said, there's a whole lot of bad science fiction, and I wouldn't be surprised if some of that ends up in the public libraries as well. I'd be more concerned about Dianetics appearing in the self-help section than I would about Battlefield Earth (or worse, Mission: Earth) in the science fiction section.

OK, a list; this is from the comments to this entry, because I'm too lazy to look elsewhere:

#5, #6, #9 ("I would, however, hope that civilians who were shot by soldiers would get equal billing with the ones who were blown up. It's terrorism either way."), #17

I'll grant that the anti-anti-Israel response in this particular entry has perhaps been a bit excessive.

Israelis: Bulldoze houses
Palestinians: Kill civilians

BoingBoing readers: "Both Israelis and Palestinians are equally morally reprehensible"

To be fair, there are a few people in the "anti-anti-Israel" camp too; it just seems that the pattern is to usually see things in an anti-Israeli light.

...4,000 rocket launchers and 7,000 antiaircraft guns...

Why do you need rocket launchers and antiaircraft guns to attack clouds? I kinda figured you'd want to drop bomb-like devices which dispersed high in the atmosphere; neither rocket launchers nor AA seem to have the range or ability to disperse at the right time. Maybe there's more going on here than we're being told...

I don't understand, why would McDonald's want or need the UK government's certification on their "shift management" course? If it's only by and for McDonald's employees, they can do whatever they want; all McDonald's globally will recognize a program that the head office says is good. If it's supposed to be applicable to the fast-food industry in general, it would seem they should have set up some sort of consortium with Burger King or whatever to decide on the qualifications. I really don't understand why the government needed to be involved.

"Cat crap in foil pouches," eh? One could say the same of many "energy bars" nowadays. Aside from the space angle, this is basically the same marketing campaign thereas. I'd be curious to know if these actually had any nutritional value.

Having played Fluxx, I've got to agree with those who aren't as big fans of it. It's fun for the first half-hour of play, maybe, but by then the random nature makes the whole thing worthless. Loony Labs has other really good games, though; I highly recommend Chrononauts, a game where you travel through time and change history.

Also, I've always thought of the Stoner Fluxx variation as being "Like Fluxx, but...well...it's not really 'moreso' either." Loony Labs makes no secret of their political leanings on the legalization question.1

@#9:

I completely agree with you. When I saw this in my RSS feed, I'd hoped that some additional etching had been done, at the minimum. These guns do look cooler than their unmodded counterparts, but I don't think they're worthy of the label "steampunk."

@#9:

If you want an "alternative medicine" treatment proven to be perfectly safe, go with homeopathy: Guaranteed to have no adverse (or other) effect whatsoever!

@#2:

Since there's no actual evidence that acupuncture works (or at least that any points are better than any other points), saying "this thing may work because there are liver acupuncture points on the foot" is like saying "this thing may work because the Invisible Pink Unicorn told me it does in a dream."

Besides, reflexologists claim that there are acupuncture points for *everything* in the foot, so even if it were true it would be irrelevant.