Something like a drunk Swedish chef. "Vodka vodka, vodka vodka borscht."

For that matter, you could fill the last fourth of the tube with hardened concrete, and it *still* wouldn't make a calculable difference to the stresses on the cargo. We're talking about a lot of stress on that cargo.

Are you casting aspersions on our glorious, pre-ordained future full of bicycle-riding fish?

Not racism. If we were afraid of computers built in the US by people of Chinese descent, that would be racism. But we're afraid of computers built in China. That's nationalism. (And arguably xenophobia.)

Depends. Some of the things that the Kaiju do to the Jaegers are filthy, naughty, and involve tentacles. But it's hard to say that a giant robot has been 'raped'.

Well, see, you have a choice. If the cutting board is softer than your knife, you will create grooves in the surface that are hard to clean. If the cutting board is harder than your knife, then you will be dulling and ruining your blade with every cut.

Most people prefer to have softer cutting boards, because it is easier to clean them than it is to replace expensive knives.

If the board is made of wood, just rub it with a generous handful of salt and enough water to make a paste. You'll sand the indentations a bit smoother, scour away all the food residue, and kill all the microbes. Use a little soap also if it'll make you feel better. Never put a good wooden board (or rolling pin) in the dishwasher.

Giving the prize to Obama was wishful thinking. The Nobel committee specifically said that they were awarding the prize in hopes that Obama's election would further the cause of peace. It may seem odd to award speculative prizes, but they choose to do so.

Giving the peace prize to Henry Kissinger -- now THAT was just nuts.

I totally misread that headline as saying HTTP 2.0 would be a Brony Protocol. And I was okay with that. At last, a functioning <rainbow_dash> tag. Support for Alicorn transformations. Working CSS elements (of Harmony). Yes, this would be a useful advance.

You're right. Both unions and corporations tend to misuse their power.

These days we've pretty much gotten rid of unions, though. So how do we get rid of the corporations?

Oh, we can't? Maybe we better keep 'em both, to keep both in check?

Binary code? It looks to me like Jesus is mandating the use of 4-bit ALUs. He was just a man of his time, and I think they only had RISC architecture back then. (Either that, or He played Minecraft way too much.)

No, I'm the former holder of SI/TK/BYE clearance, similar to what Snowden had.

(I lost mine because after my marriage ended I slept with anything that could move. That sunk my chances during the lifestyle polygraph test.)

Everything about the Edward Snowden case looks as if he's in the pocket of some foreign agency -- most probably the Chinese. He probably doesn't realize he's being handled by a foreign power. There are any number of ways to manipulate a young newcomer in the intelligence biz; sex, money, or just the opportunity to be a media whore. I'm certain the NSA is investigating his girlfriend and how he got his job with only a high school diploma, in an attempt to uncover the foreign power that is handling him.

I don't think this young man is a hero or a villain. I think he's a pawn, a stooge who is in way over his head and can't see his own puppet strings. He's being used, and he'll end up tossed aside when the foreign agencies have gotten all the PR damage they can wring out of him.

Doesn't everybody remember last year, when multiple reports came out from sociologists saying that food prices cause riots, and that food prices worldwide were expected to peak in the summer of 2013? Headlines like 'We have until August 2013 before riots sweep the globe', and 'We have one year before everything explodes' -- that doesn't ring a bell for anyone else?

Social unrest is correlated to the price of necessary commodities. When the poor cannot afford basic necessities, they have no choice but to get violent. Because of crop failures last year, this year is primed for social unrest EVERYWHERE.

The Arxiv paper demonstrating the correlation, based on data from the 2008 food riots.
An article warning us from last year. And another. And another.

Sociologists have known this was coming. Governments should have known this was coming. It's going to be a brutal, bloody summer. Get ready.

I have a low ID, but PDP-11s were obsolete by the time I started my career. The only experience I have with a PDP-11 was in translating code from it to use on our newfangled VAX machines.

This entire article is making me feel very old. I wish I had my Atari-400 to cheer me up.

Fixed that for you. Where did you think most of C syntax came from?