It turns out that banking cord blood is really expensive, and you'll almost certainly never need it. We decided it wasn't worth it and donated the blood.

Not to pick specifically on the parent, but more generally on all the posts that are suggesting that the solution to the problem of employers demanding our FB passwords is to come up with a smart ass way to refuse. The fact of the matter is that unless Congress passes a law prohibiting this practice, your choices are going to be 1) provide the password, or 2) not get hired. There is no snappy answer in the world that's going to get some company to say, "oh, gee, I was going to force you to do the same thing that all of my other 50 million applicants have done, but because of the power of your pure logic, I guess I'll back down".

If you are hiring for a job that requires a clearance, you can ask if the person is a US citizen. Otherwise, you can only ask if the person is legally entitled to work in the US (i.e, is either a citizen or green-card holder). The example you put out regarding hiring foreign nationals is sort of right, sort of wrong. To get someone here on an H-1B work visa, you have to show that you haven't been able to find someone who is a citizen... or green-card holder.

But the bottom line is that for 90+% of all jobs, you can't ask if someone is a citizen.

Good luck with that. The company will argue that you gave up that information "voluntarily". After all, they didn't ask you how old you were, etc. So I'm not sure how fertile that ground really is.

... if it's made illegal to get into people's FB accounts, most companies are going to go with the flow. I'm a hiring manager where I work, and subject to all sorts of laws regarding what you can and can't do in terms of hiring. For most of these things, sure, you could get around them. But we are really averse to getting sued over this kind of thing, so we stick to the letter of the law, as do most companies. Yes, there are exceptions. But the fact is that making employer Facebook snooping illegal would cause an immediate and very sharp drop in the amount of employer Facebook snooping. Which is a good thing.

Me too except left hand at noon. Now cue up 6000 comments to the effect of "but but but... putting your hand on the shifter wears out your gearbox/fork/etc". To which I reply, bollocks. Unless you're doing something that actually puts some pressure on the the shifting system, you're not doing anything that will produce any noticeable wear. I put over 190,000 miles on each of two stick-shift pickups, had my hand on the shifter absolutely every mile of that, and did not notice even the slightest of ill effects.

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.