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no one will ever go up MY urinary tract. no sir.

Well, just make sure you stay out of the Amazon, and you should be ok.

The straight dope on the Fed.

See Cecil Adams at the straightdope http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_392.html

Good plan, except the "embassy is foreign soil" thing is a misconception.

http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/membassy.htm

But then again, AFAIC, at this point ramen is still the perfect geek food.

1.) It's hugely high tech. That little fifty cent packet depends on freeze-drying, foil packaging (thank you NASA), fifth or later gen styrofoam if it's in a cup (only recent gens are low in leached plasticizers), chances are you're cooking it in a microwave oven, and on and on. An awful lot of geek skull sweat went into every little pack of noodly goodness.

2.) It's truly imternational. Go for it, tell me again about the evil American cultural hegemony. Ramen is a Chinese food reworked by a Japanese inventor, and increasingly done in south Asian flavors, all sold through American-style distibution.

3.) It's a triumph of free-market capitalism. A better product that succeeded because it is better and getting constantly revised due to low barriers to entry and fierce competition.

4.) It's hackable. Don't want the palm oil? Drain off the water before you eat it and rinse in fresh hot water. Want to add stuff? Folks have been customizing their ramen for thousands of years. Add peanut butter and veggies and it's damn healthy.

5.) It's still cheap. State of the art product for sale so cheap you can buy a case of it for the cost of one meal at, say, Dennys, let alone real food.

Hell, yeah. Ramen. Gimme some more.

I like how the only thing that's even remotely relevant today is that Nethack is still around and still entertaining.

• This Just In. Every week, Randy Cassingham rounds up the strangest news events he can find...

• alt.fan.cecil-adams. Cecil Adams is an acerbic and funny know-it-all, and author of The Straight Dope....

Of course, I also still use pine (listed somewhere under Best workarounds for non-SLIP users) so what do I know?

One of the main criticisms (by consumers) of the CF bulbs is that they're funny-looking, which leads people to prefer the more familiar-looking incandescent bulbs. Why couldn't CF bulbs be made with a frosted outer bulb-shaped shell, to hide the funny-looking part? Sure, it's functionally pointless, but that's hasn't stopped marketers from adding nonfunctional door-close buttons to elevators, or super-saturated gaudy dyes to breakfast cereals, or breast implants to perfectly ordinary women (you'll have to google that one yourself).

Oh wait a minute...it already exists. Why don't they just sell those then?

Here here! So why the hell is Slashdot participating with these dorks and posting their announcements? "Don't feed the trolls."

You are a prime example of someone who should not be allowed to post comments on slashdot.

1) Hear, Hear

2) troll (n) [Usenet]: Any newsgroup poster who posts deliberately inflammatory material in order to irritate other posters and, hopefully, trick them into making foolish spectacles of themselves. It is advised to avoid responding to an obvious troll at all costs, no matter how tempting a target they make themselves. (http://www.urbangeek.net/geek/dictionary/geekspea kt-z.htm)

Banning trans-fats in New York, banning smoking in Seattle.

Smoking, at the very least, is a public nuisance. There is no law against public smoking that isn't justified. People should not be allowed to smoke within 500 yards of any other person.

I was with you about Trans-Fats, until I read this article about the issue on The Straight Dope. I figured it was more idiocy from the Health Nazis who want to ban anything that tastes good, but this is really about a cheaper substitute that has a big effect on health. This is the sort of thing that government ought to care about, in the same category as clean restaurants.

The valuation of the American currancy is dropping so fast that even the cheap metals used in our coinage has a higher value. As painfully illustrated by the Straight Dope article written in 1998. Then the value of the metal in a Penny is pegged at about 0.8 of a cent. Now it is being referenced as 1.7??? That's a 50% drop in value of our currency against these metals in just 8 years.

Personally I don't see this getting better anytime soon, and I have to wonder... If we get a new administration into office, and they were to turn over Bush, Cheney, et all... to an International Tribunal for crimes against humanity, would that help us turn around all of the problems we've gotten ourselves into?

It might just be more feasible to get rid of pennies altogether.

here is an article i have found to be particularly illuminating.

http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a981009a.html

Whoa, sorry -- should'a looked it up first. The smallest U.S. coin ever minted was 5 mills. So says Cecil Adams. But the smallest unit of accounting is officially the mill -- so the fueling stations are actually not allowed to advertise $1.4999/gal -- they'd have to advertise $1.500/gal if they did that.

One of my favorite pages on the subject, a mere eleven years old.

In general, if you're going to question any of the documents our founding fathers put together, get constitutional scholars and historians, not people who don't realize that words change their meanings over the centuries. ("Militia" == "The National Guard" now, so therefore the constitution was talking about the national guard! Er...) And remember: the founders weren't idiots. They had debates over these things for years. They didn't just whip them up in an afternoon.

A couple things to note:
1) Washington has some of the strongest gun laws in the country, along with some of the highest rates of violent crime. Hmm, is it possible that strict(er) gun laws aren't the answer? Anytime someone in DC talks says "X" about gun violence, I instantly see merit in "not X." Physician, heal thyself before you throw stones in your glass house, or something.
2) Criminals are called criminals because they don't follow the law. Let that roll around in your head a little. Will making guns illegal(er) mean that criminals won't get them? People always say "If guns are outlawed, then you can arrest anyone with a gun! w00t!" Yeah... 'cause criminals are too dumb to ever think of HIDING them. Make guns illegal and you'll never see one--until you're woken up one night with one in your face.

Or they should just pull Cecil Adams into the mix. I always like reading answers which are witty and accompanied with drawings.

I know I should not feed the troll, but I hate seeing people use the incorrect plural of penis.

True, but if you want to record a cover version you only have to purchase a mechanical license - the price is fixed by law, so the copyright holder can't charge an unreasonable fee or prevent you from using the composition.

You want to blow their minds?

Tell them how the bible is actually a product of slection. That the current books of the bible were 'chosen' amoungst many from the New Testament Apocrypha (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Testament_apocry pha).

Tell them of the recent discoveries of the Gospels of Mary and Gospel of Judas.

Tell them of Gnosticism.

Its fine to use the Bible as a source of contradition, to show it is fallable. Its another thing for them to recognize the Bible *isnt the word of god*. There is nothing "holy or authoritative" about the book itself.

A good start to getting people to realize is this Straight Dope article "Who Wrote The Bible". That should get them thinking about the Bible's presumed "authority".

1/5? It's actually twice as worse as you think. 40% of Americans "flatly reject" evolution. Of 35 surveyed countries, only Turkey has a less enlightened populace.

What exactly is "the more important stuff"? Egyptians thought the Pharoahs were pretty important - big monuments and all of that - yet for many years no one could figure out what those hieroglyphs meant.

Indus script is another example, still undecipherable. You could also check out the Straight Dope for other examples, i.e., Linear A (Greece, 1800 B.C.), Zapotec (Mexico, 500 B.C.), Meroitic (Sudan, 300 B.C.), Isthmian (Central America, A.D. 200), and Rongorongo (Easter Island, A.D. 1800).

I guess the point I am trying to make is that what is most important may not be obvious. 500 years from now people might wonder what daily life was like today and find the gossip columns of our day a treasure trove of information, whereas if we had to consider it we might come to the conclusion its all dreck.

It's not a good idea to let the present decide what's important for subsequent generations. Because what their needs are and perspective will be quite different from ours.

Why? Ask The Straight Dope. (Text on page is NSFW)

Yes and the copyright owner needs the money!

1: Always vote. If nothing else, it gives you the right to complain.
2: Vote against the incumbent. Leaving someone in place for too long causes things to stagnate. Get someone new in there before the old one starts to fester and cause a stink.
3: If available, vote Third-party. Democrats and Republicans enjoy spreading the myth that you can only be a democrat or a republican; there being no other options. Prove them wrong.

As a side note, Cecil Adams wrote a column once on the term "idiot"; specifically that it originally meant a person who had the right to vote, but didn't.

1: Always vote. If nothing else, it gives you the right to complain.
2: Vote against the incumbent. Leaving someone in place for too long causes things to stagnate. Get someone new in there before the old one starts to fester and cause a stink.
3: If available, vote Third-party. Democrats and Republicans enjoy spreading the myth that you can only be a democrat or a republican; there being no other options. Prove them wrong.

As a side note, Cecil Adams wrote a column once on the term "idiot"; specifically that it originally meant a person who had the right to vote, but didn't.

vaulted (sic) hero, John Wayne

John Wayne was not a hero. He was an actor who played heroic roles.

He did not serve in the military during WWII; he got a draft deferment.

Great actor, yes. Inspiration to many, yes. Hero, no.

That may be, but deliberate errors are commonly used to prove an infringement of copyright. For example, map makers are known to do this.

I actually bumped into this first-hand back in my college days - I was flipping through an ADC map and noticed a road way in the middle of nowhere named "Pink Floyd Road". So, of course, my buddy and I decided to drive out there to see whether *ahem* one of the street signs might have fallen off the post. Alas, after 45 minutes of driving in circles around corn fields we conceded defeat and went home.

Nice try. Here's the Straight Dope article on it.

George Bush Jr's grandfather Prescott Bush was a eugenicist, consistent with his work funding Hitler's Nazis. Prescott's law partner Tighe was the Connecticut (Bush family home state) director of the eugenics "Birth Control League". Prescott's boss Averell Harriman was one of the main promoters of American eugenics.

Not this urban myth again. Read about it at The Straight Dope for the real story:

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/040716.html

Using polymers to close up wounds isn't exactly new. Run-of-the mill superglue was commonly used during the Vietnam War to seal life-threatening wounds on the battlefield, but it was never FDA approved. Because it can be a severe irritant, you shouldn't be using superglue you buy at Home Depot unless you're bleeding to death in the middle of nowhere. You can, however, buy special medical superglues. Some of them are even over-the-counter.

Not quite- Did the Reagan-era USDA really classify ketchup as a vegetable?

Time to get out of the basement and look at reality with your own eyes, instead of only through your mom's TV. Well, make sure it's when the sun is up and things aren't lit exclusively by flourescent light.

Say it with me:

There Has Never Been A Study Which Indicated Cubicles Improve Productivity.

The original claim came from the advertising material for the Action Office, designed by Robert Propst. It was a completely baseless claim when the Action Office was being marketed, and after the AO was bastardised and nickle-and-dimed into the cubicles we know and... well.. know today, it was even more untrue.

Now, you may be able to improve productivity over the normal levels experienced in a cubicle, but that's a bit like being able to jump higher than an elephant, isn't it?

We should be bringing everyone else UP to our standards rather than racing to the lowest level out there. But we are racing to the bottom. That is the problem.

Proper regulations would have entailed the use of tariffs to level the playing field, by raising the price of products made by cheap (or slave) labour to a level equivalent to the cost of domestic labour.

This way gives the incentive for the exporting countries to raise their wages, and the extra prosperity means that the "poor" countries will become rich enough to afford products made by "rich" countries, thus increasing their exports, and, most importantly, maintaining a healthy trade balance.

By exporting jobs to the third world, the US has seriously damaged it's manufacturing capability, and it's ballooning commercial deficit do not look well.

In fact, the US economic situation could very well copy the phenomenon that basically destroyed the spanish economy 400 years ago, turning the richest european country into one of the poorest.

http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a951117.html

http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_362.html

http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a951117.html

http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_362.html

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/000602.html

It is an abbreviation for "hear, all ye good people, hear what this brilliant and eloquent speaker has to say!" .

I don't normally nitpick, but "here here" doesn't even make sense. "Hear, hear" does.

From the article:

Australian Democrat MP Sandra Kanck said the Maralinga tests took an appalling toll on the local Maralinga people and poisoned a large chunk of Australian bush for the next 250,000 years.

This kind of ignorant political pandering to the cult of doomsday environmentalists is sickening. Hiroshima, a city hit directly by a nuclear weapon, has no residual radiation, "no genetic damage was detected in children conceived after the blasts", and "American scientists sweeping Hiroshima with Geiger counters a month after the explosion to see if the area was safe for occupation troops found a devastated city but little radioactivity". Within three months of the bomb the city was being rebuilt.

Even Chernobyl, a land-level disaster, killed fewer than 100 people, and despite the claimed massive amounts of radiation in the area and hundreds of thousands of years worth of radioactive pollution, wildlife there is thriving better than ever. Human population in a particular area does far more damage to the health of an ecosystem than ANY nuclear weaponry ever has.

Nuclear weapons and accidents are bad, no doubt about it, but the evidence in the wild completely contradicts the ignorant statements that areas are "poisoned for 250,000 years".

FTFA: ... I would save enough money to fill up my Accord with premium (instead of regular) ...

Ack. Why would you want to do that? According to Honda's specifications the Accord uses regular. Why would you want to put premium in a car that runs on regular?

The price difference between types of fuels (regular, premium, diesel) isn't something you should consider at the pump, only when buying a vehicle.

FTFA: ... I would save enough money to fill up my Accord with premium (instead of regular) ...

Ack. Why would you want to do that? According to Honda's specifications the Accord uses regular. Why would you want to put premium in a car that runs on regular?

The price difference between types of fuels (regular, premium, diesel) isn't something you should consider at the pump, only when buying a vehicle.

With U=21, b=2 means UB313 is 21 + 2 + 3+ 1 + 3. That's 23+3+1+3, or 30. 2003 UB313 is either 30 or 35, with the 2003, not 32. These add up to 3 or 8.

I guess you could say the difference is five, and that 30 and 35 are divisible by 5, but at this point, I'm thinking of an Ask Cecil quote, emphasis mine:
"I should point out, by way of amplification, that by using the digits 2 and 3 in appropriate combinations you can generate every integer (including 1, if you allow subtraction). Thus we learn that the very foundations of mathematics are mortally infected with Illuminism. Man, those guys are everywhere."

Aristocracies collapse when they lose touch with the people they are supposed to rule over. "Let them eat cake", "They hate us for our freedom".

Let's see now. First, it's pretty apparent that Marie Antoinette never actually said that. Not that she wasn't idlely rich and non-productive (other than as a celebrity - still a busy occupation today, in a different form), but she was probably more sheltered and ignorant of the average peasant's plight than actually contemptuous of them. Read up here.

And as for the "they hate us for our freedom" concept. Well, that's actually correct. In fact, the architects of events like 9/11 and their spokesmen frequently take to the air expressly to remind us that's true. They refer to democracy as "un-Islamic" and speak in terms of beheading any that show up at the polls, etc. Democracy is exactly the freedom we hold most dear, because it's through that structure that we create and defend the rest of them (um, like allowing women to work, or their daughters to read and write). Have you not ever watched any of the footage from Taliban-ruled Afghanistan? People (like mothers teaching their daughters to read) were shot in public at lunchtime exactly for pursuing those freedoms that we consider inviolate. The west is built upon those freedoms, and stands for them. People who hate the intrusion of annoying trends like the right to vote (or read) into the medieval theocracy they want to re-instate at the point of a gun do hate those freedoms and those that seek to establish and defend them elsewhere.

And you know what? It probably wouldn't matter so much, except the people who want the world to live in that mysoginistic, backwards way are also the ones that realize their neighborhood is full of oil they can sell in Europe, Asia, India, and the Americas, etc. That allows the people willing to kill to posses those fields to have the cash with which to further entrench their jihaddist/wahabbist ways. And when part of that activity includes running training camps for thousands of militants, some of which then kill thousands of people going to work in the morning in New York and Washington, then you get the conflict right up there on the surface where you have to call it what it is: a conflict between world views. One that, to stick with the same example, thinks your wife or daughter is property that should be kept illiterate, and one that does not.

...now I am a real sickie.

Er, well, no, actually.

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/021213.html

http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_344.html

so sayeth Cecil

Why not post one reputable source to back up your claim that the Bush family funded Hitler before and during early WWII? A link to a google search isn't quite enough, as I could use the same method to prove that the Apollo Moon Landing is a Hoax. I'd believe this is closer to the truth of the matter: http://www.straightdope.com/columns/030214.html

It always amazes me how quickly people will believe propaganda that supports their own viewpoint.

Through some process (which is irrelevant, because beyond the ken of us, mere mortals - but sometimes it involves the dark ritual of either "kickback" or "payola"), the imbecile has determined that it is a *GOOD* thing.

Since the imbecile has the letter "MBA" trailing his name, the morons in executive row have decided to implement the stupid decision.

(The difference between "moron" and "imbecile" - see last paragraph)

Here here. Just because linux isnt popular enough yet for any hackers to care, does not mean its any better than windows.

Look kiddo, it's "hear, hear" and if you want to be taken seriously there's two things you have to do:

1. Learn a little something about the language you're abusing
2. Stop parroting something that some MCSE you revere said

If you actually knew anything about the history of development of Windows NT and of Linux, you'd know precisely why Linux is more secure. Hint: Part of it is simply because it's not Windows NT. NT has always been secure, and will always be insecure, short of a complete, line-by-line security audit that would probably break backwards compatibility all to hell in microsoft-land, simply because they have never given a fuck about security and we're constantly finding exploits that have been in the code literally for years upon years, because they have been carried from version to version.

Your post has a myth that needs to be put to bed. Michael Jackson owns the publishing rights to up to 260 Beatles songs (the number is in dispute). This means that if you wanted to publish the lyrics to a Beatles tune in the paper, Michael Jackson (and Sony, since Michael Jackson's debts and legal mess started) would get paid. The tapes to the Beatles tunes are owned by Capitol/EMI/Apple Corps. As to your second point, yes Paul McCartney was upset. For more, see Snopes or Cecil.

I read an article about tire rubber that got me thinking about how much a good idea all these recycled rubber products really are:

"The rubber in car tires is typically about 40 percent natural--i.e., made from latex; there's even more latex rubber in truck tires. Putting a fine dust of latex into the air is a serious concern to those with latex allergies. Somewhere from 1 to 6 percent of the U.S. population has some sensitivity to latex, which can take the form of rashes, inflammation, asthma, and worse. (Health care workers who are constantly exposed to latex in the form of gloves and such have a higher rate of sensitivity, sometimes estimated at 15 percent or more.) While those values sound low and one can take steps to avoid latex exposure, if you live in an area with a lot of road traffic, airborne latex can make your life pretty miserable.

Those who aren't latex-sensitive don't get a break. Fine rubber particles, whether latex or synthetic, can lodge in your lungs and even enter your bloodstream. The Environmental Protection Agency has a whole category designated for such problematic particles: PM2.5, or particulate matter less than 2.5 microns in size. Excessive exposure can lead to reduced lung capacity, bronchitis, asthma, accelerated heart disease, and death. One study claims that nearly 60 percent of airborne tire particles are small enough to be easily inhaled. I've heard tell that radial tires produce a finer dust that's more hazardous than what's produced by older-style bias-ply tires; while that's plausible given tire construction differences, it's difficult to know for sure."

(An excerpt from Straight Dope)

Oh course, if it does not get recycled does it get disposed off in a way that is even worse? (Eternal tire fires, etc...)

>Where's the law that says I have to obey a direct order?

If there were no law that requires law enforcement orders to be followed, then law enforcement would have no authority.

>I think that's just in Hollywood movies, where a cop commandeers a car for a chase scene.

It does happen, and people have been prosecuted for refusing to cooperate. Not nearly as often as in the movies, of course, but then, the place turns out to be a lot more peaceful than the movies tend to depict.

http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mcommandeer.ht ml