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Comment Re:Why? (Score 1) 202

I was just browsing pictures on NASA's site the other day that showed workers on lifts wearing harnesses. In an environment where dropping a wrench could cause millions of dollars in damage, these have got to be some of the most careful workers around, which leads me to believe that something really unusual must have happened, like several things going wrong at once. TFA is quite short on details. It goes without saying that damage to expensive equipment can not be compared to the loss of a human life, but I'm saying it anyway.

Comment Children's rights and guardianship at school (Score 1) 669

Children do not have the same rights as adults under most legal systems. Additionally, while they are in school, the school is usually given some form of guardianship-by-proxy over the children, so that some adult is always in control of, and has responsibility for, those children. This probably explains why the school administrator felt justified in coercing the child to log in to her facebook account from school, even though the postings in question were probably not made from school grounds. Regardless from where the postings were made, the fact that these children felt entitled to make slanderous statements in response to perceived slights shows a profound lack of judgement and an obvious failure of their parents, and the educational system, to instill in them a sense of propriety, decency and common sense. As usual, I weep for the future.

Comment Re:Allegedly on its way in NYC area (Score 1) 349

Like I really want the security of my city depending on someone who's been huffing exhaust fumes and performing a mundane, repetitive task all day. Also, having humans touch currency that is then going to be shuffled in with other currency and redistributed to countless other humans passing over the bridge seems to me an ideal vector for any number of terrorist chemical or biological attacks. Other than that, the Homeland Security angle sounds like a great argument.

Comment I still think (Score 0, Offtopic) 157

Time Pilot 1984 was a kick-ass 2D scroller. But then I am a dinosaur whose FPS skills peaked with Quake and UT (where you could always set your FOV to whatever you wanted, IIRC). Whatever. I'll still kick your schoolboy ass at paintball or conkers or petanque or tennis or nine ball. "Never give a sword to a man who can't dance." - Confucius. Oh, and you can stay on my lawn, I don't give a shit about it.

Comment Re:Still Overpriced? (Score 1) 411

As someone who has unboxed, set up and distributed literally thousands of Macs over the years, I can safely say that the vast majority of users do not need, want or care about most of the cables, adapters and other stuff that comes in the box. If selling some of those things separately can lower the cost of the base machine for those who don't need them, not to mention keeping millions of unwanted dongles out of landfills, I'm all for it.

Comment Re:Vaccines aren't as simple as people think (Score 1) 416

I see many other ways that public safety is compromised over money and the bottom lines of many big industries besides just Big Medicine. What if, just to idly speculate, the root cause(s) of Autistic Spectrum Disorders turned out to have something to do with one or more of the Persistent Organic Pollutants that pregnant women and developing babies in this and other "developed" nations are pretty much marinating in for most of their lives? You think Big Petroleum or any of its marvelous industries (electronics, personal care and fragrance, cleaning products, plastics, processed food, etc.) are going to like being implicated in that? The army of lawyers they unleash will make a horde of Uruk-hai look like Tribbles.

Science

Why Time Flies By As You Get Older 252

Ant notes a piece up on WBUR Boston addressing theories to explain the universal human experience that time seems to pass faster as you get older. Here's the 9-minute audio (MP3). Several explanations are tried out: that brains lay down more information for novel experiences; that the "clock" for nerve impulses in aging brains runs slower; and that each interval of time represents a diminishing fraction of life as we age.
Image

Zombie Pigs First, Hibernating Soldiers Next 193

ColdWetDog writes "Wired is running a story on DARPA's effort to stave off battlefield casualties by turning injured soldiers into zombies by injecting them with a cocktail of one chemical or another (details to be announced). From the article, 'Dr. Fossum predicts that each soldier will carry a syringe into combat zones or remote areas, and medic teams will be equipped with several. A single injection will minimize metabolic needs, de-animating injured troops by shutting down brain and heart function. Once treatment can be carried out, they'll be "re-animated" and — hopefully — as good as new.' If it doesn't pan out we can at least get zombie bacon and spam."

Comment Re:Eau de Janeway drives me crazy (Score 2, Insightful) 169

Bringing this back on-topic, I feel exactly the same way about perfume. All I want is to breathe clean air, but every time I go out in public some asshole has to ruin it for me. What the fuck makes people think they have the right to pollute my personal airspace with that obnoxious garbage? Every time some Axe-boy walks past and fills my nostrils with the reek of synthetic male puberty pheromones I have to stifle a very strong primal urge to snap their scrawny neck like a toothpick. When I finally do crack and go off on my rampage, my defense will be chemically-induced temporary insanity. The first one to go will be the one who calls me a "whiner" or some such; then I will give them something to whine about for the last few seconds of their life.

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