Part of the problem with the John F. Can-opener (so nicknamed for her collision with a destroyer years ago) was that for years she was a reserve ship. Which meant in practice that she had to do all the stuff a regular ship had to do, but with about 70% of the manning and budget. So of course she fell apart.

What's driving the ship's retirement now is that the nuclear fuel that she received at her last refueling is now running out. A second refueling would not be economically feasible.

How stupid would one have to be not combine the two? Ask the "tsunami or earthquake, but not tsunami and earthquake" power plant.

It's all becoming clear to me now - the Fukushima disaster was part of the conspiracy too!!!1!!!one!

Being assigned to the crew of Constitution is still a very much sought after posting due to the prestige of the posting. Only the very best and brightest ever get such duty.

Not so much. Constitution duty is very much sought after, as it makes you a semi-celebrity. And it's really easy duty. Best and the brightest? I think those guys go to nuke school. Good looking and reasonably articulate? Go to Old Ironsides. It's basically PR duty, and the Navy just doesn't put all that high a priority on it.

Disclosure: retired Navy officer here, neither a nuke nor a Constitution veteran.

Not taking any position on the bit about slackers, but... aside from those who have to work Sunday mornings, is there anyone, anywhere in the US who actually loses an hour of sleep as a result of the DST switchover? Everyone I know just sleeps the same number of hours, therefore getting up an hour "later". That's why they do the switch on Saturday night. No doubt there's then some small amount of pseudo-jet lag on Monday, but how bad can that be, really?

You're right! Then again, EVERY year is the year of failed prediction and prophecies, so there's that.

... yes, I'd say that a "year of the Android tablet" would be a fantastic thing for all concerned. Apple needs competition to stay sharp, and many customers need a more inexpensive and more open choice than iPad. I probably won't be buying an Ice Cream Sandwich based device, but I'll be cheering them on.

If you just need to type a few repeated letters ("oh noooo"), you can just tap the key repeatedly a few times. If you really need to type long strings of repeated letters (can't think of an application for this, but that's not to say there isn't one), you can turn off the alternate character thing discussed above.

There really are some annoying aspects to Lion, but I've found that I can turn them all off. And some of the features are quite nice.

... for the vital "I use six monitors with my computer" market segment. Seriously, dude:

• Oy. Wrong in so many ways. I have six monitors on my Mac Pro. The menu for any one app probably isn't even on the same monitor. It is a HUGE pain in the neck to navigate back to the display that (currently) contains the menu.

  For the 99.9999% of the population that doesn't use six monitors with one PC... not such a pain in the neck. With two or even three monitors, the top of the main screen is never very far away.

• And then there's OS X's inability to send keystrokes to any application other than the one in front. What a huge UI fumble. Got the ability to remotely control an app by sending it keystrokes? Too bad.

  Again, how many people actually need to do this? Evidently it can't be that big a problem even for you, as it hasn't been enough to drive you away from the platform.

• And then there's the whole one button mouse thing, although there are so many ways around that today you don't really get screwed solidly by it unless you buy an Apple mouse / trackpad.

  Dude, 2001 called - they want their argument back. Even Apple-branded mice and trackpads have right-click capabilities built in now, and if you don't want to buy one of those, just plug in your cheesy old MS mouse - it'll work just fine.

I could go on, but why bother? Your complaints are mostly unique to you, and they don't even bother you enough to switch to another platform - so I'm having trouble taking them seriously.

It seems to me that tablets are inherently going to be kind of sucky at content creation. Of course, "content creation" is a pretty nebulous term, but you're probably not ever going to, for example, want to do web development on a tablet (you really want a keyboard). Same deal for composing music (seems like you'd need a MIDI keyboard). Same deal for simulated painting. Sure you can do it, but the capability is kinda limited without multiple levels of pressure sensitivity.

I'm a little confused by the reference to OneNote - doesn't it already run on tablets (at least, Windows tablets)? And OneNote is not really what I think of when I think "content creation". I thought it was mostly a note-taking application, although honestly I haven't used it all that much.

The "insanity that is getting music onto an ipod"? This is the process: 1) plug it in 2) wait 3) there is no step 3. If your music isn't already in iTunes, then you have the additional step of 0) telling iTunes to import you music. Either way this is a pretty far-out definition of "insane".

That'll be cost effective, given that rockets to the sun hardly cost anything.

Look, I realize that it was just a throwaway line, but the problem is that some people will actually take this seriously.

You can't on one hand decry the old reactors as being unsafe but then demand no new reactor be built to replace it.

I'm not radically anti-nuclear by any means*, but why exactly can't the GP do this? Is there some rule that states there's a certain minimum number of nuclear reactors in the world? You might think that getting rid of nuclear plants is bad policy, and that's a reasonable position to take. But there's certainly nothing inconsistent about insisting that old reactors be decommissioned (because you believe they're unsafe) and insist that they be replaced by non-nuclear sources of power.

*I do have cost-effectiveness concerns with respect to nuclear energy - specifically, the fact that the nuclear industry in the US has been, in effect "pre-bailed out" by having their liability in the event of an accident strictly limited by law. If the nuclear industry had to obtain insurance at market rates... they'd be out of business. The existing law is in effect a huge subsidy to nuclear power.

I used to work in a low-temperature physics lab, where we used a lot of helium. We spent half our lives chasing helium leaking from the recovery apparatus that piped boiled off helium back to our machine shop for re-liquifying.

Then there's the fact that helium is really, really expensive - the reason that we were going to so much trouble to recover it in the first place was that it cost so much. I don't see how this could ever be cost-effective as a working fluid for a turbine.

And if you were to do it yourself, at a minimum you'd require 1) a web domain ($20/year), 2) web hosting (price varies, but certainly $30/year), 3) advertising of some sort (price?). The point is that you're actually getting something in exchange for what you pay Apple. It's not like in the absence of the App Store, you'd be able to market and distribute software for nothing.