Blaming lack of employment on immigrants is just about the oldest and most pernicious trick in the book. What you're not mentioning is that someone willing to survive a tougher education system than the US's, learn a new language, and fly half way around the world to a land of people utterly hostile towards them--just to find work--is probably also going to be a more productive and better-motivated employee than someone who just breezes through the US education system and expects to be fellated by a harem of employers at the end. This is still a country where you can get a job based on merit, believe it or not, and to tell your kids or anyone else that it's the immigrants' fault is not doing them a service at all.

I actually find it hilarious that the three-letter agencies regard sending encrypted email as 'suspicious', and then wonder why how security breaches happen...

I know! Opening the passage means easier oil transportation, which means cheaper gas. Which means accelerated global warming, which implies faster melting of the ice cap, which implies the passage will open even more, which means even cheaper gas!

This statement makes no sense:

Either the transformation is reversible, and the two pictures contain the same information; or it is not, and they don't. If you don't believe me, I've posted a completely out-of-focus picture of a white object in the margin directly to the left of this post. I dare you to tell me what it is.

From the NYTimes article:

“For those of us lucky enough to get to work with Steve, it’s been an insanely great honor,” said Bill Gates, the Microsoft co-founder. “I will miss Steve immensely.”

Copying S. J. to the bitter end... how appropriate.

Share your gift with the world by taking a photograph with an ultraviolet-sensitive camera of whatever looks cool to you.

Co0Ps, Jim here. Look, we've been on a hiring spree recently, and you know as well as I that unemployment rates have been at an all-time high for years. Therefore, I'm afraid we're going to have to let you go. I know, employing you probably resulted in some net good in some abstract sense, but the fact remains that employing you has basically had zero effect on unemployment overall. I men, it's not like you can just hire people and make unemployment magically disappear. I'm sure you'll therefore understand why this company just doesn't believe in employment anymore. Sorry!

No stock-selloff. Less important than Steve Jobs's resignation. Lame.

I believe the correct comparison is to one of the old MIT leg lab's robots. 3D Biped wasn't restricted to a 1D track and could run and do somersaults--in 1992. And it didn't need no stinkin' knees either!

Please submit your entry for the design of this historic coin, containing obverse and reverse sides, below. Winner will win this thread.

Nobel laureate V. S. Naipaul recently caused an uproar when he claimed, among other things, that he could identify the gender of an author from their work:

I guess this means he was right? Although, for the record, he still seems like an arrogant, sexist SOB--just not for this particular reason.

Remember the video of the death of the Reuters journalist, which the US repeatedly withheld against the wishes of said news agency? Care to guess how it eventually came to light?

Decibel figures are meaningless without knowing the distance of the observer to the bug's penis. For all we know, the scientist jammed the bug's willy into his/her ear, in which case the sound could obviously be perceived much louder than an orchestra from the front row!