Amtrak has one -- ONE! -- Auto Train in its system, which allows vacationers from the DC area to go to Disneyworld and take their car with them. Like so much of the Amtrak system, the Auto Train uses outdated 1970's equipment, and can't be expanded in its current form.
What's the one thing everyone needs at the other end of a trip? A car. Unless you're going to DC, NYC, or Chicago, you're going to go straight from the airport gate to the car rental counter.
The one thing that would turn Amtrak from an inconvenient lark into a viable transportation alternative would be nationwide expansion of the Auto Train system. Let me go from Dallas to LA and take my car, and it doesn't take long before the cost of airplane + rental car is greater than the cost of taking my own car.
Or, to save half, disallow installing software that sits there and uses 100% of your available CPU time.
Fair enough... except that they've also decided that micromanaging developers' workstations (beyond the mandatory virus/worm/trojan scanner) doesn't do much to help productivity, either.
99% of the time, if I'm not sitting in front of it reading Slashdot, my work PC is merrily chugging along folding proteins and using up company electricity.
But that other 1% of the time, I'm using it from home, because I've gotten called up to fix some urgent client problem.
To save that $75 worth of electricity, my company would have to require that I drive in to the office every time a client has a hiccup that I can diagnose and fix in five minutes. I don't get paid by the hour, but I'm fortunate enough to work someplace that values my time -- including my non-work time. They would consider that $75 to be money well spent to keep me able, and most importantly *willing*, to take time out on a Saturday to fix a simple problem.
I tend to think using Recaptcha just earns somebody money, it is not really doing any particular good for the world.
Would it be asking too much to suggest you check the FAQ or About Us links? Is it enough that "reCAPTCHA channels this human effort into helping to digitize books from the Internet Archive", or does it help that "reCAPTCHA is a project of the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University"?
Or perhaps you'll take the word of Science magazine. Of course, the link is to a.pdf reprint hosted at recaptcha.net, so YMMV (depending on the tightness of your tinfoil hat). It could all be an evil spammer plot. Yes. Yes it could.
They may be trivial to bypass (for some definition of 'trivial'), buy many applications only need a tiny speed-bump to make a huge difference in undesirable traffic.
Plus, if you're using ReCaptcha, you're making the spammers do a little bit of good for the world. If they can develop software that reliably cracks ReCaptcha, then they've solved a lot tougher problem than just pushing v1@g@r@.
Seriously. Long URL's as wasters of bandwidth? There's a flash animation ad running at the moment (unless you're an ad-blocking anti-capitalist), and I would expect it uses as much bandwidth when I move my mouse past it as a hundred long URL's.
I'm not apologizing for bandwidth hogs... back in the dialup days (which are still in effect in many situations), I was a proud "member" of the Bandwidth Conservation Society, dutifully reducing my.jpgs instead of just changing the Height/Width tags. My "Wallpaper Heaven" website (RIP) pushed small tiling backgrounds over massive multi-megabyte images. But even then, I don't think a 150-character URL would have appeared on their threat radar.
It's a drop in the bucket. There are plenty of things wrong with 150-character URLs, but bandwidth usage isn't one of them.
I was going to reply with my own tales of Capital One woe, the $500 credit line with the $50 overlimit fees, the annual fee they charged after I cancelled, the continuing flood of "offers" (with worse and worse fine print). But I can't, because I'm laughing too hard at the banner ad at the top of the page.
Capital One® Credit Cards Competitive Rates. More Rewards. Apply Now for No Hassle Cards. www.CapitalOne.com
I've run-not-walked from Capital One ever since my one and only experience with them, and if this situation (and their bannermania) is any indication, everyone else should too.
Seriously, there's a bank on every corner. Unless you have some compelling reason to stay with Capital One, open an account elsewhere. You don't even have to close your Capital One account -- save it as a backup.
That's what I did when Bank of Texas (aka Bank of Oklahoma) added so-called "security questions". The first time I failed at answering "What was your first pet's favorite food?" (or something similarly stupid), I changed my direct deposit to put $1 a paycheck there, and move the rest to an account at a financial institution with a better understanding of Internet security.
Speaking of financial institutions, why are you still banking at a for-profit (ha!) institution, anyway? I've got one credit union that doesn't charge an overlimit fee on my credit card, and another that's paying over 4% interest on my checking account. Why can they do that? Because they didn't take stupid risks 10 years ago. I should know -- they wouldn't give me a home loan. The bank that did was first in line for a taxpayer bailout.
I think I would have asked for a finger that looks like a finger instead of something you get from a halloween store. Or went the other route and got something that doesn't look at all like a finger but has some utility. Would be nice to have both, but what he ended up with doesn't really seem worth the bother in either case.
Haven't you read The Moon is a Harsh Mistress? You don't want one arm (finger), or even two. You want a whole closet full, from the "social" one that looks normal, to the one with the manipulators for microscopic-level repairs, to the hydraulic one that you can use to work on your car.
If I ever lose a limb, I'll be sad... then I'll start working on cool hacks.
The guy is brilliant. We need only follow his example to rid us of another pesky problem -- one that has afflicted our country several times since 9/11. Corrupt politicians.
It is a proven fact that politicians are corrupted by money. Absolutely proven!
Therefore, we should immediately ban all political contributions. Not just by fat cats, but ALL political contributions. Oh, and none of this "I'll use my own money" -- we must also ban all political expenditures as well. No campaign ads, no flyers, no paid push pollers.
Actually, that sounds like a great idea... I'm starting to believe my own sarcasm. How sad is that?
When I read the summary, for some reason I immediately thought of the dearly departed Roland Piquepaille. It's a cool-sounding idea, easy to convert from "science" to "media", and utterly impractical for the putative use. The research was done with a military antenna array so massive that people were afraid it would destroy the ionosphere, so there's no chance of seeing a new band on your car radio (and an excellent chance that it will never be more than a scientific curiosity). But "Twisted Radio Beams" -- that's a headline that the public can sink their teeth into.
So I immediately thought of Roland, and realized just how much I miss his gee-whiz almost-scientific submissions. I'm going to tag this article "ohnoitsroland" (and my own invention, "pigpile") in his honor.
I preferred pigpile (possibly because, as far as I can tell, I came up with it). But I don't think it caught on. The link comes up with a bunch of articles, but I think that's just my own list (I haven't quite figured out this Slashdot Tag thing).
Ok, I'm not from New Mexico myself, but what is it about the southeastern part of the state that attracts these crazy theories? Roswell, Area 51, aliens, and now you say a killer comet is going to take out Clovis. Geez, can't the state get a break? Sure, it's rugged and arid, but can't people just drive through there without making up some sort of crazy story? Or is there something about those hundred-mile drives with nothing on either side of the road but yucca and cactus that messes with peoples' heads?
Killer comet in Clovis. Next, you'll be telling me you've got a bottle of White Sand from Alamogordo on your shelf, and it's grown by an eighth of an inch just since you came back.
I'll admit, I'm a bit more morbid than the average bear. But the report is heavily sugar-coated, with the obvious goal of making sure nobody thinks anyone "suffered". That's the biggest thing in American culture, it seems; "At least they didn't suffer". When my grandfather died of a heart attack, someone told my uncle something about massive "blood clots in the heart" indicating that he "didn't suffer".
Sorry, I don't buy it. At least, not the Disney-fied public-consumption version.
The Spaceflight Now summary notes five "lethal events", and implies that the *first* one caused immediate unconciousness:
* Depressurization * Buffeting without being fully buckled in * "Separation of the crew from the crew module and the seat" * Exposure to near-vacuum * Impact
The claim that the initial "depressurization" would make the crew "incapacitated within seconds" relies on the common perception that exposure to the vacuum of space makes your face explode. That's not the case, as has been explained over and over -- you can't breathe (" respiration ceased after the depressurization" in the report), but not breathing hasn't been the criteria for "death" since the Middle Ages.
It's the second one that probably did most of the crew in. The crew compartment started spinning and tumbling, and "As a result, the unconscious or deceased crew was exposed to cyclical rotational motion while restrained only at the lower body." I would say that "unconscious or deceased" is window dressing, like hoping that the girl from "Dead Like Me" would grab you just before your car runs off a cliff.
But even that assumes that "the seat inertial reel mechanisms on the crews' shoulder harnesses did not lock". I kinda thought that's what seat belts were *supposed* to do. So I can only assume that at least some of the unfortunate crew made it to phase three, which is awfully hard to make sound pretty. "Separation of the crew from the crew module and the seat" sounds almost gentle, but what it means is that the forces were eventually so great that their bodies were ripped apart by the very straps designed to hold them in place.
Unfortunately for those who want their dead to enter the next world peacefully, I think it's pretty likely that the crew's last experience was anything but a peaceful passing from lack of oxygen.
Now, is that so awful? I don't think so. I don't even like to ride a roller coaster, myself, but these were a bunch of adrenaline junkies strapped to a freakin' ROCKET. These weren't people who planned to die in their sleep. I would imagine that all of them -- and especially the pilots, who were almost certainly strapped in and helmets on -- would want to go out kicking, screaming, and pushing every possible button to try to turn the damned thing around.
They died with their boots on. Give them that, at least.
Collin Street Bakery, Corsicana, TX
on
Thieves Take the Cake
·
· Score: 1, Redundant
For what it's worth, the "classic" fruitcake is one from the Collin Street Bakery in Corsicana, Texas, between Dallas and Houston. Selling points include:
* Hand-picked Golden sweet pineapple and lush papaya, from our farms in Costa Rica. * Ripe, red cherries from Oregon and Washington State. * Pure clover honey, plump golden raisins. * Refrigerated, the DeLuxe stays moist and delicious for months.
Put it in the fridge, you'll get around to eating it... someday.
But the most important thing about a Collin Street Bakery fruitcake is the tin. You've seen it at your grandma's house -- the one with the cowboy on it. Anything else is just a bunch of dried-out fruit.
Re:Chiropractic treatment worked for me
on
Trick or Treatment
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Not all "alternatives" are created equal. I think it is reasonable to surmise that manipulation of joints and stretch and massage of muscles can help alleviate muscular and joint pain. It is less reasonable to assume that massaging a particular spot on my foot will help kidney function.
I was hoping that the reviewer would go into more detail on what parts of Chiropractic treatments are "snake oil". I know "common sense" and "baseless anecdote" are close buddies, but if your vertebra is pinching a nerve, something somewhere is going to hurt! If rubbing it and popping it works, it's a heck of a lot better than addictive painkillers or dangerous surgery.
But yeah, claiming that a chiropractic adjustment will prevent asthma or allergies is just silly. My chiropractor has a standard chart on the wall that includes some of those claims -- but when I mentioned it in passing, he seemed very uncomfortable with the idea.
If doctors and chiropractors would mutually respect each other's actual accomplishments and abilities, patients would be much better off. But as long as you have chiros saying they can cure *everything*, and MDs saying *they* are the only valid practitioners of the healing arts, we're stuck in the middle.
Cell phones in prisons have been big news in Texas, after a Death Row inmate was stupid enough to make threatening calls to the chairman of the state Senate's Criminal Justice Committee. They're still being found, weeks after a supposed crackdown that turned up dozens of in-cell cell phones systemwide, along with an inordinate amount of drugs and weapons.
The Grits For Breakfast criminal justice blog has been following the issue closely, asking questions like "Will we see prosecutions of staff who smuggle cell phones in addition to inmates and family members paying for their minutes?" Answer: probably not. Sen. Whitmire, whose family was the target of phoned-in threats from Death Row, summed it up pretty nicely at an emergency Senate hearing on the issue. TDCJ officials promised to implement a plan they'd been working on, to prevent guards from smuggling contraband to prisoners, to which Whitmire responded with a question: Why the hell weren't you doing that already?
One story mentioned a phone that was only found by an abdominal X-ray. I wonder if it was this little bugger? Oh, sorry, bad choice of words.
You jest, but in some countries like China or Mexico, the excrement-ridden toilet paper isn't flushed. It's simply tossed into the wastebasket. It's one of those foreign things that's hard to take at first sight, much like public sale of dogs for human-food.
I invite you to take a tour of the public facilities in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana. In the smaller c-stores, you'll often find a wastebasket next to the toilet, even if the plumbing is otherwise up to first-world standards. I can only assume it's because, if they didn't have a waste bin, the visitors would simply toss the wads on the floor.
And before anyone mentions the proximity of these states to the Rio Grande... I know for a fact that this habit is also indigenous to Americans who can trace their heritage back to the lily-whitest Europeans. Don't ask me how I found out... I just know, k? *shudder*
Oh yeah, funny, astronaut pee. But for crying out loud (and losing valuable water in the process), what is so hard to understand about a closed system?
"Going too far" is spending millions of dollars to send precious DHMO to the space station, when there are perfectly good pre-assembled dihydrogen monoxide molecules being blown out into the vacuum.
You seriously thought it was local, and honestly didn't expect that they were simply working out where you were and putting that name in?
One of the other posters pointed out that it's not just city names, it's neighborhood names too. Like "LasColinasSingles", "LakeHighlandsSingles", and "OakCliffSingles". Those wouldn't show up in many city name databases -- you need eyes on the ground to know those names, and more importantly, where to stick the signs.
My only disappointment in the article is that he didn't figure out where the army of locally-knowledgeable sign-planters is coming from.
Okay, I understand the need for new and fresh content to keep the customers coming back, but an article about a dating site that uses town names from across America?
Let's think this through:
1. Anyone who wants to get more Obama can go to news.google.com and read through several dozen international news sources, as well as the Huffington Post and Fox "News", and get more than enough of the regular headlines.
2. Slashdot, as a news aggregator, is finding slim pickins on the tech side, as Obamamania sucks the oxygen out of every other news story. Cool for us political wonks, not so cool for CowboyNeal & co.
3. This really is a nationwide conspiracy. Every tiny suburb and exurb of Dallas is frequently spammed by these guys. I thought they were a local outfit, so it's very interesting to see the extent of their reach.
4. The way the guy investigated is cool, and I'm sorely tempted to upgrade my own DomainTools.com account to "paid" status, now that I know that it really works.
5. Last, but CERTAINLY not least, it's about a DATING SITE. Dating, as you may have heard, is part of the mating ritual of Homo Sapiens Solaris, aka "those of us who have emerged from our parents' basements". It involves meeting FEMALES, which is kind of an awesome concept when you think about it. Opportunities for +5 Funny moderations abound (deserved or not).
I think the "Together Dating" guerrilla marketing behemoth, with its sign spam, is reaching the same shallow end of the gene pool that buys enough v1@g@ra to keep our inboxes full of e-spam. Pretty sad. Especially when there's a free dating site that almost certainly generates better results. But I guess some folks think, if you don't pay for it, it's not worth anything. Hopefully, those folks won't be asking me for a date.
Slashdot Mirror
Amtrak has one -- ONE! -- Auto Train in its system, which allows vacationers from the DC area to go to Disneyworld and take their car with them. Like so much of the Amtrak system, the Auto Train uses outdated 1970's equipment, and can't be expanded in its current form.
What's the one thing everyone needs at the other end of a trip? A car. Unless you're going to DC, NYC, or Chicago, you're going to go straight from the airport gate to the car rental counter.
The one thing that would turn Amtrak from an inconvenient lark into a viable transportation alternative would be nationwide expansion of the Auto Train system. Let me go from Dallas to LA and take my car, and it doesn't take long before the cost of airplane + rental car is greater than the cost of taking my own car.
Fair enough... except that they've also decided that micromanaging developers' workstations (beyond the mandatory virus/worm/trojan scanner) doesn't do much to help productivity, either.
99% of the time, if I'm not sitting in front of it reading Slashdot, my work PC is merrily chugging along folding proteins and using up company electricity.
But that other 1% of the time, I'm using it from home, because I've gotten called up to fix some urgent client problem.
To save that $75 worth of electricity, my company would have to require that I drive in to the office every time a client has a hiccup that I can diagnose and fix in five minutes. I don't get paid by the hour, but I'm fortunate enough to work someplace that values my time -- including my non-work time. They would consider that $75 to be money well spent to keep me able, and most importantly *willing*, to take time out on a Saturday to fix a simple problem.
I tend to think using Recaptcha just earns somebody money, it is not really doing any particular good for the world.
Would it be asking too much to suggest you check the FAQ or About Us links? Is it enough that "reCAPTCHA channels this human effort into helping to digitize books from the Internet Archive", or does it help that "reCAPTCHA is a project of the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University"?
Or perhaps you'll take the word of Science magazine. Of course, the link is to a .pdf reprint hosted at recaptcha.net, so YMMV (depending on the tightness of your tinfoil hat). It could all be an evil spammer plot. Yes. Yes it could.
They may be trivial to bypass (for some definition of 'trivial'), buy many applications only need a tiny speed-bump to make a huge difference in undesirable traffic.
Plus, if you're using ReCaptcha, you're making the spammers do a little bit of good for the world. If they can develop software that reliably cracks ReCaptcha, then they've solved a lot tougher problem than just pushing v1@g@r@.
Seriously. Long URL's as wasters of bandwidth? There's a flash animation ad running at the moment (unless you're an ad-blocking anti-capitalist), and I would expect it uses as much bandwidth when I move my mouse past it as a hundred long URL's.
I'm not apologizing for bandwidth hogs... back in the dialup days (which are still in effect in many situations), I was a proud "member" of the Bandwidth Conservation Society, dutifully reducing my .jpgs instead of just changing the Height/Width tags. My "Wallpaper Heaven" website (RIP) pushed small tiling backgrounds over massive multi-megabyte images. But even then, I don't think a 150-character URL would have appeared on their threat radar.
It's a drop in the bucket. There are plenty of things wrong with 150-character URLs, but bandwidth usage isn't one of them.
Like I tell the kids... the big rocks go in the bucket first.
I was going to reply with my own tales of Capital One woe, the $500 credit line with the $50 overlimit fees, the annual fee they charged after I cancelled, the continuing flood of "offers" (with worse and worse fine print). But I can't, because I'm laughing too hard at the banner ad at the top of the page.
I've run-not-walked from Capital One ever since my one and only experience with them, and if this situation (and their bannermania) is any indication, everyone else should too.
Seriously, there's a bank on every corner. Unless you have some compelling reason to stay with Capital One, open an account elsewhere. You don't even have to close your Capital One account -- save it as a backup.
That's what I did when Bank of Texas (aka Bank of Oklahoma) added so-called "security questions". The first time I failed at answering "What was your first pet's favorite food?" (or something similarly stupid), I changed my direct deposit to put $1 a paycheck there, and move the rest to an account at a financial institution with a better understanding of Internet security.
Speaking of financial institutions, why are you still banking at a for-profit (ha!) institution, anyway? I've got one credit union that doesn't charge an overlimit fee on my credit card, and another that's paying over 4% interest on my checking account. Why can they do that? Because they didn't take stupid risks 10 years ago. I should know -- they wouldn't give me a home loan. The bank that did was first in line for a taxpayer bailout.
I think I would have asked for a finger that looks like a finger instead of something you get from a halloween store. Or went the other route and got something that doesn't look at all like a finger but has some utility. Would be nice to have both, but what he ended up with doesn't really seem worth the bother in either case.
Haven't you read The Moon is a Harsh Mistress? You don't want one arm (finger), or even two. You want a whole closet full, from the "social" one that looks normal, to the one with the manipulators for microscopic-level repairs, to the hydraulic one that you can use to work on your car.
If I ever lose a limb, I'll be sad... then I'll start working on cool hacks.
The guy is brilliant. We need only follow his example to rid us of another pesky problem -- one that has afflicted our country several times since 9/11. Corrupt politicians.
It is a proven fact that politicians are corrupted by money. Absolutely proven!
Therefore, we should immediately ban all political contributions. Not just by fat cats, but ALL political contributions. Oh, and none of this "I'll use my own money" -- we must also ban all political expenditures as well. No campaign ads, no flyers, no paid push pollers.
Actually, that sounds like a great idea... I'm starting to believe my own sarcasm. How sad is that?
When I read the summary, for some reason I immediately thought of the dearly departed Roland Piquepaille. It's a cool-sounding idea, easy to convert from "science" to "media", and utterly impractical for the putative use. The research was done with a military antenna array so massive that people were afraid it would destroy the ionosphere, so there's no chance of seeing a new band on your car radio (and an excellent chance that it will never be more than a scientific curiosity). But "Twisted Radio Beams" -- that's a headline that the public can sink their teeth into.
So I immediately thought of Roland, and realized just how much I miss his gee-whiz almost-scientific submissions. I'm going to tag this article "ohnoitsroland" (and my own invention, "pigpile") in his honor.
I preferred pigpile (possibly because, as far as I can tell, I came up with it). But I don't think it caught on. The link comes up with a bunch of articles, but I think that's just my own list (I haven't quite figured out this Slashdot Tag thing).
Ok, I'm not from New Mexico myself, but what is it about the southeastern part of the state that attracts these crazy theories? Roswell, Area 51, aliens, and now you say a killer comet is going to take out Clovis. Geez, can't the state get a break? Sure, it's rugged and arid, but can't people just drive through there without making up some sort of crazy story? Or is there something about those hundred-mile drives with nothing on either side of the road but yucca and cactus that messes with peoples' heads?
Killer comet in Clovis. Next, you'll be telling me you've got a bottle of White Sand from Alamogordo on your shelf, and it's grown by an eighth of an inch just since you came back.
I'll admit, I'm a bit more morbid than the average bear. But the report is heavily sugar-coated, with the obvious goal of making sure nobody thinks anyone "suffered". That's the biggest thing in American culture, it seems; "At least they didn't suffer". When my grandfather died of a heart attack, someone told my uncle something about massive "blood clots in the heart" indicating that he "didn't suffer".
Sorry, I don't buy it. At least, not the Disney-fied public-consumption version.
The Spaceflight Now summary notes five "lethal events", and implies that the *first* one caused immediate unconciousness:
* Depressurization
* Buffeting without being fully buckled in
* "Separation of the crew from the crew module and the seat"
* Exposure to near-vacuum
* Impact
The claim that the initial "depressurization" would make the crew "incapacitated within seconds" relies on the common perception that exposure to the vacuum of space makes your face explode. That's not the case, as has been explained over and over -- you can't breathe (" respiration ceased after the depressurization" in the report), but not breathing hasn't been the criteria for "death" since the Middle Ages.
It's the second one that probably did most of the crew in. The crew compartment started spinning and tumbling, and "As a result, the unconscious or deceased crew was exposed to cyclical rotational motion while restrained only at the lower body." I would say that "unconscious or deceased" is window dressing, like hoping that the girl from "Dead Like Me" would grab you just before your car runs off a cliff.
But even that assumes that "the seat inertial reel mechanisms on the crews' shoulder harnesses did not lock". I kinda thought that's what seat belts were *supposed* to do. So I can only assume that at least some of the unfortunate crew made it to phase three, which is awfully hard to make sound pretty. "Separation of the crew from the crew module and the seat" sounds almost gentle, but what it means is that the forces were eventually so great that their bodies were ripped apart by the very straps designed to hold them in place.
Unfortunately for those who want their dead to enter the next world peacefully, I think it's pretty likely that the crew's last experience was anything but a peaceful passing from lack of oxygen.
Now, is that so awful? I don't think so. I don't even like to ride a roller coaster, myself, but these were a bunch of adrenaline junkies strapped to a freakin' ROCKET. These weren't people who planned to die in their sleep. I would imagine that all of them -- and especially the pilots, who were almost certainly strapped in and helmets on -- would want to go out kicking, screaming, and pushing every possible button to try to turn the damned thing around.
They died with their boots on. Give them that, at least.
For what it's worth, the "classic" fruitcake is one from the Collin Street Bakery in Corsicana, Texas, between Dallas and Houston. Selling points include:
* Hand-picked Golden sweet pineapple and lush papaya, from our farms in Costa Rica.
* Ripe, red cherries from Oregon and Washington State.
* Pure clover honey, plump golden raisins.
* Refrigerated, the DeLuxe stays moist and delicious for months.
Put it in the fridge, you'll get around to eating it... someday.
But the most important thing about a Collin Street Bakery fruitcake is the tin. You've seen it at your grandma's house -- the one with the cowboy on it. Anything else is just a bunch of dried-out fruit.
Not all "alternatives" are created equal. I think it is reasonable to surmise that manipulation of joints and stretch and massage of muscles can help alleviate muscular and joint pain. It is less reasonable to assume that massaging a particular spot on my foot will help kidney function.
I was hoping that the reviewer would go into more detail on what parts of Chiropractic treatments are "snake oil". I know "common sense" and "baseless anecdote" are close buddies, but if your vertebra is pinching a nerve, something somewhere is going to hurt! If rubbing it and popping it works, it's a heck of a lot better than addictive painkillers or dangerous surgery.
But yeah, claiming that a chiropractic adjustment will prevent asthma or allergies is just silly. My chiropractor has a standard chart on the wall that includes some of those claims -- but when I mentioned it in passing, he seemed very uncomfortable with the idea.
If doctors and chiropractors would mutually respect each other's actual accomplishments and abilities, patients would be much better off. But as long as you have chiros saying they can cure *everything*, and MDs saying *they* are the only valid practitioners of the healing arts, we're stuck in the middle.
If only. Oh, if only.
Cell phones in prisons have been big news in Texas, after a Death Row inmate was stupid enough to make threatening calls to the chairman of the state Senate's Criminal Justice Committee. They're still being found, weeks after a supposed crackdown that turned up dozens of in-cell cell phones systemwide, along with an inordinate amount of drugs and weapons.
The Grits For Breakfast criminal justice blog has been following the issue closely, asking questions like "Will we see prosecutions of staff who smuggle cell phones in addition to inmates and family members paying for their minutes?" Answer: probably not. Sen. Whitmire, whose family was the target of phoned-in threats from Death Row, summed it up pretty nicely at an emergency Senate hearing on the issue. TDCJ officials promised to implement a plan they'd been working on, to prevent guards from smuggling contraband to prisoners, to which Whitmire responded with a question: Why the hell weren't you doing that already?
One story mentioned a phone that was only found by an abdominal X-ray. I wonder if it was this little bugger? Oh, sorry, bad choice of words.
You jest, but in some countries like China or Mexico, the excrement-ridden toilet paper isn't flushed. It's simply tossed into the wastebasket. It's one of those foreign things that's hard to take at first sight, much like public sale of dogs for human-food.
I invite you to take a tour of the public facilities in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana. In the smaller c-stores, you'll often find a wastebasket next to the toilet, even if the plumbing is otherwise up to first-world standards. I can only assume it's because, if they didn't have a waste bin, the visitors would simply toss the wads on the floor.
And before anyone mentions the proximity of these states to the Rio Grande... I know for a fact that this habit is also indigenous to Americans who can trace their heritage back to the lily-whitest Europeans. Don't ask me how I found out... I just know, k? *shudder*
Oh yeah, funny, astronaut pee. But for crying out loud (and losing valuable water in the process), what is so hard to understand about a closed system?
"Going too far" is spending millions of dollars to send precious DHMO to the space station, when there are perfectly good pre-assembled dihydrogen monoxide molecules being blown out into the vacuum.
And it all goes from there. I gotta write me a prayer book.
With one hand...
You seriously thought it was local, and honestly didn't expect that they were simply working out where you were and putting that name in?
One of the other posters pointed out that it's not just city names, it's neighborhood names too. Like "LasColinasSingles", "LakeHighlandsSingles", and "OakCliffSingles". Those wouldn't show up in many city name databases -- you need eyes on the ground to know those names, and more importantly, where to stick the signs.
My only disappointment in the article is that he didn't figure out where the army of locally-knowledgeable sign-planters is coming from.
...or figuring out how to make the pelvic actuators on your girl robot work properly...
Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Let's think this through:
1. Anyone who wants to get more Obama can go to news.google.com and read through several dozen international news sources, as well as the Huffington Post and Fox "News", and get more than enough of the regular headlines.
2. Slashdot, as a news aggregator, is finding slim pickins on the tech side, as Obamamania sucks the oxygen out of every other news story. Cool for us political wonks, not so cool for CowboyNeal & co.
3. This really is a nationwide conspiracy. Every tiny suburb and exurb of Dallas is frequently spammed by these guys. I thought they were a local outfit, so it's very interesting to see the extent of their reach.
4. The way the guy investigated is cool, and I'm sorely tempted to upgrade my own DomainTools.com account to "paid" status, now that I know that it really works.
5. Last, but CERTAINLY not least, it's about a DATING SITE. Dating, as you may have heard, is part of the mating ritual of Homo Sapiens Solaris, aka "those of us who have emerged from our parents' basements". It involves meeting FEMALES, which is kind of an awesome concept when you think about it. Opportunities for +5 Funny moderations abound (deserved or not).
I think the "Together Dating" guerrilla marketing behemoth, with its sign spam, is reaching the same shallow end of the gene pool that buys enough v1@g@ra to keep our inboxes full of e-spam. Pretty sad. Especially when there's a free dating site that almost certainly generates better results. But I guess some folks think, if you don't pay for it, it's not worth anything. Hopefully, those folks won't be asking me for a date.