If you have a vibrator in your luggage you'll have a better-than-average chance of being asked to turn that on, too. If you pack the biggest one you can find in your carry-on right next to your cell phone, they might not even notice your cell phone.

It turns out that self-awareness is an illusion of a couple of smallish blobs in your brain, without which you would be no smarter than the average computer? Seems like it ought not to be terribly difficult to make a computer think it's self aware too, then.

A problem for who, meatbags?

Glad we didn't have this in the 70's. I don't think my sister or I would have survived the beating.

Captain America Statistics Song

I suppose. He's rather melodramatic at times, but I suppose it's fitting for that genre.

It seems to me that it's awfully close to breaking the terms of the license under which Linux is published. Perhaps the copyright holder should demand that Qualcomm cease and desist using Linux.

I know a couple of people who can't stand quiet. There has to be a TV, radio or conversation going on constantly. I wonder what terrible thoughts must creep in the moment silence descends. I figure it must be like what Eric Cartman sees when he closes his eyes.

Yeah one of the pilots I talked to told me that, too. I've watched a couple of shows from ridge-lines around here and that works out pretty well, but they're still kind of against the sky from there. Still seems like something I'd like to try once, even if it doesn't work out that well. I've always liked the city lights from altitude at night, anyway.

I used to very much enjoy setting off amateur fireworks. Now I think the damn kids are going to burn down the neighborhood.

The last few years I've thought it would be awesome if I could watch the fireworks from a small private plane. This year I found a company that will rent me a plane, but couldn't find a pilot on short notice. Next year I'm going to try to get a smaller plane and recruit a pilot well in advance.

What's eating you?

What are you cooking? Aluminum? "Welcome home honey! Dinner's almost ready! Tonight we're having melted aluminum!"

I haven't seen one of those old arcades in ages. You could walk into any mall in the 80's and hear the centipede game from halfway across the mall. The one I spent a lot of time in had a very distinctive smell of electronics and carpet cleaner. I could play Spy Hunter as long as I wanted to on one quarter, and my sister could do the same thing with Galaga. I remember being horrified the first time I wandered into a mall in Florida and realized they didn't have an arcade. That situation became more and more common as time went on. I think the demise of the American mall is in some way linked with the demise of the American video game arcade.

When it comes to measuring magnetic field strength, I only understand the numbers of bones it can crush in an average youtube video. Given that this unit of measure has not yet been named, I propose the "Tesla," just to provide a maximum amount of confusion.

In this educational video.