riddler

Whacked the wrong mole I guess. But Hell, it sure feels good to get one of those guys that has a similar name to the bad guy. That's kinda like after 9/11, then we went in and beat up their neighbors in Iraq. Damn, that felt good. Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

The real beauty of the plan, of course, is that they can tax it again as income next year Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

But SOMEBODY's got to move here so they can fill up all the condos they're building downtown. I have no idea who they think are going to move into them all Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

IMO, this is what Obama can do: 1. Get us out of Iraq (he would be the Commander-In-Chief, after all). 2. Reduce the deficit, and put a hold on printing new money to improve the economy (again, President). There's no way you can recover 9 trillion in four years, but if you reduce the deficit by half, that's a tremendous boost for the economy. 3. Make environmental initiatives that drive eco-industry. In my mind, this is what he can not do: 1. Improve health care significantly - this takes an act of congress, and all the legislators are deep in the pockets of the pharmaceutical and health care industries. 2. Improve race relations - having a president that isn't white isn't going to make people rethink their own prejudices any more than Oprah being "arguably the world's most powerful woman" (CNN, Time) or Charles Wang owning the New York Islanders. 3. Pretty much anything that involves an act of Congress. Again, these are some of the most corrupt people in the country. With big companies writing checks all over Washington, you can't hope to do anything that benefits the people. That being said, if Obama does even the top half, or even the top fourth, it will be a significant improvement (again, IMO). Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

Great Tits don't hold up to the cold nearly as well as Masked Boobies. Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

To date, she has lent herself more than 10 million dollars. How does a presidential candidate loan themselves money, and where do they expect to get it back? I doubt she is going to make another $10 million from more sales of "It takes a Village". Think the President doesn't cash in? Think there's not money involved? How much do you think Bush has made in the last eight years? Follow the money. Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

Less popular than Nixon, less popular than Truman: http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/05/01/bush.poll/index.html?iref=mpstoryview And these are just the US ratings - how unpopular is he in other countries? Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

I posted this originally a few years ago, and the only reason I'm bumping it is because there's an interesting article about a friend of mine that died a few years ago, the day after my daughter was born. His original injuries were skydiving related, but he was well on his way to a full recovery. Then a bacteria he acquired from the hospital killed him. Iatrogenic. http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/05/01/ep.avoiding.infection/index.html Blue Skies, Josh. Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

Nobody's talking about depleting the reserves. Clinton came under sharp criticism (mostly from oil companies and their legislative cronies) for what he did in 2000. And he only released 30 million barrels. We have 700 million barrels in reserve. I personally think what Clinton did was very effective in telling oil companies that we don't have to stand for their greed and corruption, at the cost of less than 5% of the reserve. I think Americans should do it more often. Of course, we'd have to keep buying it again to keep the stock up, and it's pretty expensive these days Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

Depends on what you want to accomplish. In 2000, Clinton released oil from the reserve as a way to send a strong message to OPEC. At that time, oil was running at $35 / Barrel. Today, less than 8 years later, oil is about $115 / Barrel. For a mainstay commodity to triple it's cost in eight years is a very big indicator of inflation. Release the reserves, decrease inflation. OTOH, significantly higher fuel prices lead consumers to drive less, and pollute less. Keep oil prices shored up, somewhat better for the environment. Unfortunately, not much better, because $3.50 a gallon for gas is still affordable to most Americans. Personally, I think the inflation issue is much more important than the small environmental benefit. Sadly, I don't think Dubya will release the reserves - he is and has always been in the pocket of the Big Oil companies. Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

I once had a co-worker that was LDS - I don't know if he wore the underwear, I never asked. His interpretation of the polygamy thing was that back in "the day" when Mormons were running to the west to escape persecution, the men were being killed for their beliefs, and they were trying to repopulate, so the original tenants allowed for polygamy. I have no idea if that's true or not. I'm trying to summarize someone's opinion based on my memory from several years ago. I don't know if he was a level 42 cleric or what, so this is probably far from the official position of the church. Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

Got this idea from the mechanics that have worked on my cars in the past. Take two large garbage bags and put one over the backrest and one on the seat - they slide to cover pretty well. You can use a paper grocery bag to put on the floor rest. Don't wear the seatbelt if it's really bad Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

And then HH comes along with advice on how to remove the sidebar, so everyone is happy, and the world is a better place. (must be angels I hear singing in the background). Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

Sporks: stab like a spoon and hold liquid like a fork. They're like anti-matter for utensils. Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

You've obviously never had any experience with the Baptist church. I grew up listening to how I was going to Hell in eternal damnation for three hours every Sunday. Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

Yet another example of the stupid US Porpoise Association's ratings program. Sharky didn't need a water rating. She had 30 YEARS of water jumps - she could've written the book on water jumps. It's those inexperienced coaches you have to watch out for. What are they doing coaching, anyway? I'll bet the humans that "coached" her on this jump had less than 100 jumps themselves. Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

You are a God. I bow to you. Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

Just because Sharky was a girl, everyone is sad about her death. Well, I never met Sharky, but I read about her on the Internet, and she seemed like a real blow-hard to me. One of those mammals that never cared about the show - only about the sardines. She was always splashing the spectators on porpoise, just to look cool. I just feel bad that she had to injure another jumper before she learned her lesson the hard way. With all that said, I think the tank operator bears NO responsibility for her death. Sure, they took her from the ocean and gave her bad training and cheap props, and there were even rumors that the tank was not well maintained. But she waived (with her tail) her rights, dammit! The operators even said "nothing like this has ever happened before" - well, you have to believe the tank operators, because they stand nothing to gain from lying about something like that. I'm absolutely sure that they will take this opportunity to review their safety procedures, tank maintenance and training methods, and then probably do nothing about them, because of course they are all perfect and need no improvements. Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

I don't like the additional ads much either, but every other site seems to have 5 ads per page Given a choice, I can live with all the ads, but I really would like to have the space back on the left column. Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

The billboard stories on both CNN and MSNBC both have to do with food. One is about the rising price of food affecting consumers' willingness to pay for organics, and the other is about a series of events that have led the world food supply to fall short(er). The latter story is a bit more interesting to me, and can be summarized a bit - more droughts, countries halting exports to feed their own people, Wall Street investors pulling out of mortgages and investing into agriculture, foreign markets buying up all the available US grain, rising oil prices contributing, etc. When I was a young lad, there was a gas crisis in the U.S. Several years ago, it was an energy crisis. Will a food crisis be next in the U.S.? People can live without gas and electricity, but not without food. Normally, Americans don't pay much attention to all the people in the world that are starving, but what happens when it comes home, like it did in the 30s? The difference between a recession and a depression is when people start starving. Edit - fixing my clickys. Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

You weren't specific - were the other kids physically abusing your nephew? Or was it verbal banter? For physical stuff, I'm all about teaching kids martial arts at a young age. Kids learn that it's for self defense (not offense), they get used to other people attacking them, and feel perfectly comfortable hitting the other kids back. Verbal stuff is harder to deal with. I'm not opposed to dancing around the other kids and sing-songing "potty-mouth, potty-mouth, potty-mouth" Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

As one of my bosses in the space sector said "there's a lot of space in space". Yes, you're right - if you're coming to or leaving Earth, there's currently minimal chance of hitting something. If you are a satellite in orbit for years, you can and will hit several things, usually micro-meteorites. LEO satellites tend to hit the most stuff. But things are only going to get worse, and at some point, it is going to be a problem. About those images - the debris tracked is amplified in size greatly in the pics. Each "dot" in the pics is probably the size of a large mountain, when in reality they are about the size of a basketball or a piece of furniture. NASA has computers that track the shit 24-hours a day. Speaking of shit - the Russian cosmonauts used to dump their human waste overboard - they were called "honey-buckets" in the Russian translation At least that's the way it was told to me ... Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

This is probably the reason the aliens don't come visit more - would you drive a shiny new spaceship into a junkfest like that? Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

I thought every day was Fuck The Earth day Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

It can be done, but probably not in the way you think. The only way a PDF file can be used like a form is if it is created that way using Adobe software (an example is the electronic federal IRS 1040 forms). But most PDFs are saved as a 2-D vector graphics from another application (like MS Word), so you can't treat them like a form - you have to think of them more like a picture, and editing them is more like photoshop, where you need to paint over a given area. I've had some success with Foxit, but it's a squirrely application, often rewriting text with nonsense or leaving parts of the page blank. It is free, though, so give it a shot. But you need to annotate ad-hoc, which means you need to point to the exact area you want to add text (it doesn't highlight the textbox like a web form). Another option is use a bit-manipulation program, like Gimp (also free, but requires Ghostscript to work with PDFs), or Adobe Illustrator (not free). These tools are more for people that like to tinker a lot with software - if that's not you, then don't bother. Don't know enough about Skype to comment on the faxing. Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD