Orkish technology. It works because everyone involved believes it works. Or doesn't let on otherwise.

I hear the red polygraphs work best.

The main reason for the proposed rule change are the problems caused by fraudulent 911 calls made through NSI phones.

This is why we can't have nice things.

I wonder if the FCC will start a crusade against fraudulent 911 calls made through anonymous VOIP services? Maybe all 911 services? 'Cuz they're clearly getting abused.

Whew! I'm glad we're rid of that dirty bathwater. Too bad about the baby, though.

How flammable is this foamed magnesium alloy?

A warship full of foamed magnesium would go up like a flare. It even incorporates its own oxidizer in the foam, in the air spaces. Unless they're forming the voids with inert gas.

Unless they've paid some special attention to the flammability issue, a combat vessel made with this stuff would make the Forrestal look like a birthday candle.

By all means offer them a choice, but at their expense.

And while we're at it, make sure the externalities of bottling are fully priced in. As a race, we already use and throw away too many plastic bottles.

And if you want to have some good troll-face fun, make sure you're just bottling toilet-to-tap water.

I'm sorry, which candidate do you recommend? Kang, or Kodos?

Non-trolls recognize that ineffective cheating is cheating nonetheless and fully punishable.

If there's any irony, it's that the Pats cheat so hard when, frankly, they don't have to. They really are that good. But then they cheapen their reputation by being dirty and underhanded.

It's a huge and deep-seated inferiority complex, masked with bravado, but completely unjustified.... they'd be every bit as successful if they chose to really be the nice guys.

I just don't get it.

An audit by Equifax found that hospital bills totaling more than $10,000 contained an average undocumented "because STFU" surcharge of $1,300.

That's a concern of dictators and managers.

Free Software is free of those, too. If I'm doing what I'm doing because I want to do it, I don't give a metric ratfuck about your ideas of efficiency.

Thanks. I work in a bondage-and-domination efficiency-driven profit-based business culture for my meager pay. Don't try to "improve" my free time that way too.

That's nice. Now you have a head attached to a dying body stuck in an iron lung.

Not to mention that it does nothing for every other organ failing for lack of functional innervation. Which is all of them.

Hell, if you're going to this much trouble, just attach the head directly to artificial life support. More effective, far simpler, and less limited than your preferred solution.

"paralyzed from the neck down" == "suffocating in minutes", since all respiratory impulses are carried on the somatic spinal nerves controlling the diaphragm and the intercostal muscles. Never mind the fact that severed autonomic nerves means no information from or control of any organs: digestive system shuts down, heart never responds to physiologic need and could spontaneously fibrillate... most organ systems shut down.

Sorry, it's absolutely required to effectively re-fuse the entire spinal cord plus the independent segments of the parasympathetic nervous system (such as the vagus nerve) through the dissection plane. Otherwise, you're just attaching a head to a dying body.

Above anything, I would like people to say, 'Okay, she's human.

I'd insist on a genetic test before believing even that, from her.

A genetic test would probably reveal that she is, in fact, a cancer. A walking, talking, lying, murdering, moneymaking malignant tumor.

I think that qualifies as irony. "I don't have cancer, I AM cancer."

"If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.

-- Every fascist, ever

In the second scenario, there's really no need to care about people buying things, or really whether or not they starve en masse for that matter.

Well, mostly true, but the Robot Overlords will probably have disagreements with each other, and the peasants make damn fine cannon fodder.