One of the very, very few times I've ever seen on /. where I wouldn't call this off-topic. I'm mystified as to why anyone decided soccer/footballs should be compared to molecules in the first place.

"that bloke's sodding knackered"

That you're complaining about a single comic strip doing this seems at least as odd. (Female characters in xkcd don't have breasts either but you don't see me complaining.)

*what the truth is and purposely
*Mistakenly conveying the wrong

Blargh.

This sounds very dubious.

A) A computer can only lie if it has a sense of truth, can't it? Lying implies that you know what the truth is an purposely state the opposite. Mistakenly convening the wrong information is not lying.

B) Regurgitating responses that were pre-programmed to be incorrect does not fit my definition of "lying." Programming a computer to give an incorrect response is ordering it to do so, so you're telling it to lie, which it obediently does. What would be far more philosophically interesting was if you told it to lie and it *didn't.* Now THAT would be a good indication of intelligence (although it's a bit hairsplitting).

After using a thousand towels, the radioactivity in each one would be pretty damn low even if that were the case.

Which incident was this? The guy in the article lived another 11 years and died of other causes.

I'm aware of some WWII accidents but none spring to mind with that teeth description.

Sounds like a good way to go out to me.

Can you die from being foul odored?

Jargon would require it to be technical and, y'know, correct.

I think the word we're looking for is "slang."

If the amount of radiation didn't even kill the guy, it sounds like razing the building and securely storing all the towels that touched him is a bit overkill.

...And by "a bit" I mean the other thing.

If they blew off the rules of the Geneva Conventions and then still expected to be treated according to them when captured, that would be undeniably two-faced (although the U.S. in general flouts a lot of the international treaties it has--or has refused to--signed so can't say it's surprising). Isn't a lot of the controversy that many of those held at Gitmo are not demonstrably guilty?

I didn't mean in an existing civilian prison per se; they could have a separate facility. Although naturally nobody would want that in their back yard.

To say that they voted in Hitler is grossly oversimplifying the issue. He was appointed--not elected--prime minister first.

So after Hitler had twisted Hindenburg's arm into making the Reichstag Fire Decree, they physically barred the opposing voters from entering the voting chamber and voting down the last barrier. But yeah, it was all democratic.

I'm interested to hear what you think the U.S. voters should have done if none of Bush, Gore, Kerry, Obama, McCain, or Romney were worth our votes (not that I really disagree with you on that point).

Inside the U.S. in a prison system or something that actually obeys the laws we've made for keeping prisoners. The whole point of Gitmo is that it's not inside the U.S. so we don't have to follow our own rules, right?

FTFY