I've got good news for you from Air Canada, then! Some time in the next year, they'll be adding a "Sealed in Carbonite" option for riding their planes. I imagine they'll start phasing out the old plane travel models soon as well, as this is apparently very space efficient and nearly 100% terrorist-proof!

As a Canadian, I feel there's only one rational response to the Russians taking our magnetic north pole (which is sort of owned by the whole of humanity and indeed the planet itself, but has been held in our trust for some time).

All out nuclear war.

And the only downside is nuclear winter! Winter! We can handle a few more months of that each year, easy. It's win-win, really!

Not .kml, no. Prior to 2000 the information was stored on .elf files, which are proprietary to the North Pole. They've been in use for centuries, but a .elf generally causes problems on newer computers, so .kml is more widely used now.

Indeed. The scientific value of alien life is immense, rivalled only by its potential for deliciousness.

Case in point, I just realized that "Her teacher back in 70-something told her the the test was total bunk and to ignore it, because he intended to." should come before "Her most recent attempt at an IQ test landed her somewhere in the 130 range, I think." Because with the current wording, it makes him sound like he was calling her stupid, which he was not. Now perhaps I should bring up Hitler, to really stick my foot in my mouth.

Keep in mind that tests from other eras (let's say the 80s and backwards, just for simplicity) were significantly skewed towards male-oriented views of intelligence. I'm not saying they were sexist: Just that in some cases the men writing the tests couldn't conceive how the correct answer could be other than the one they intended. We have a lot more studies now showing different methods of thinking, and a lot more respect for intelligence in social situations as well as academic ones. My mother, for example, scored 78 on an IQ test back in the 1970s, despite a grade average of A's and B's. Her most recent attempt at an IQ test landed her somewhere in the 130 range, I think. Her teacher back in 70-something told her the the test was total bunk and to ignore it, because he intended to.

It's not just limited to IQ tests, but essentially, generations of women have grown up thinking they're less "intelligent" than men... but with a very academic definition of intelligence.

If someone wants to launch a counter-study, try replacing the term "intelligence" in this study with "common sense". I'd be willing to bet the results would be sharply reversed, even among men reporting their own levels of "common sense". Just a hunch.

Of course. Slashdot runs on an elemental system of four key elements, after all: Interesting, Insightful, Informative, and Funny! These four basic qualities are the very building blocks of truly great Slashdot comment sections.

The Four Slashdot Elements of Negativity will get no mention from me in this place, however. /spits

LOL! (metaphorically i mean)

I have to say, that looks like the sort of thing scientists might find deep, deep in the ocean. The sort of thing where its researchers start inexplicably disappearing, one by one.

You can't own a Canadian because we're an extremely well-bred population here in Canada. We can't just sell ourselves to any dirty foreigner who offers us money! Especially Americans.

Unfortunately, most nations these days are hardly civil enough to own Canadians. It's really quite disgusting. We had high hopes for our ownership by the United Kingdom at one time, you know, but then they had to go and declare us an independent country... such a disaster. The politicians were really quite depressed about that one.

Personally, I'm holding out for an advanced alien race to arrive for all our purchasing needs. I just hope they aren't the human-eating kind, as most Canadians would prefer to be part of a long term investment, not a short meal.

I checked my firefox addons list and sure enough, Shockwave was in there. The plugins were Disabled. Well, I might as well get rid of it if I never use it, no? And so the hunt began. I checked my add/remove list. Nope, not there. I tried searching for its files, but still couldn't find it. I googled how to uninstall it, fretted over the invisible and uninstallable evil program with security holes hiding on my computer as I navigated some links, checked the firefox plugin page, and after ten or so minutes I discovered... ... that I don't actually have Shockwave. Just the firefox plugins, which came along for the ride when I copied firefox over from my old computer.

D'oh.

Except here in Canada, where most governments lean "liberal" socially, and... well, at the moment economic policy can only be described as "house on fire". To be perfectly honest, parliamentary debates might be improved a bit if firefighters would smash down the doors and haul everyone outside once in a while.

You may want to turn signatures back on for a second. I think you may be missing something. :)

This has actually been somewhat true (if you replace Google with Searching, that is) for a lot longer than the internet has existed. One of the most important things to learn at medical university/college, for example, is how to look stuff up. Ever wonder why doctors have giant libraries sitting around in their offices? That's all knowledge they gained in university, then promptly forgot, like any sane person would. They learned the reference system available to them at the time, and know how to use it - where one person gets hopelessly lost, they can find something useful. My mother collected a ridiculous number of books over the years for her practice - and she says her laptop and the internet almost invalidated nearly half of them.

Some basic training will always be required to understand certain things without a reference, though. Very simple example: nowhere in the wikipedia article on "clouds" does it say they're too diffuse to stand on. :) Don't go skydiving with intent to land on one, folks!

In Deus Ex, I occasionally rearranged the furniture in rooms for no particular reason. I can only imagine the reactions later: "Oh my god, my ammo and credit chits are all gone! And... someone has swapped my desk chair with the sofa from the break room. And my microscope is now on the corner table..."

I gave myself bonus points for the one time I did it while a guard was patrolling the room. I wonder if there's some sort of term for this in psychology.

I also have a riot occasionally setting up Team Fortress 2 engineer-buildings in ridiculous places, such as completely submerged in a lake.

And don't even get me started on Dwarf Fortress. How long do you want to bet a dwarven settlement, constructed entirely of soap, can survive on a diet consisting solely of horse meat and beer?