To add insult to injury, whatever idiot had ordered them got us some new-fangled wide screen monitors. The problem was that while the actual resolution of the monitor was a 4:3 aspect ratio ... the actual pixels were flattened so that in its native resolution the screen drew circles as flattened ovals.

I... what?

I just sat and stared at my screen in utter shock after reading that. Can you say where you got that equipment from - who built it, sold it, etc?

...that the principal was actually a Star Trek fan.

Can't we all just get along?

Let me see if I'm understanding correctly. (Someone correct me if I'm not.)

The light we're seeing from this galaxy comes from roughly 700 million years after the Big Bang, so on the cosmic scale, it's quite young.

A quick Googling says the universe is 13.8 billion years old. Another quick Googling says the Milky Way is 13.2 billion years old. The galaxy in this article would be about 13.1 billion years old.

Since the summary says this is a "young" galaxy, does that mean most galaxies we see are older than 13.1 billion years?

That was intended to be a joke, but thank you. (Seriously.) I always figured the filet was a different area of muscle tissue, something softer than the regular steak areas. I didn't realize it was related to how the meat was cut.

I don't want to bite down on a piece of lead in a steak.

You, ah, you frequently hunt cattle? I guess it's easier to find them than deer.

I worked at an Army HQ between '00 and '04 (IT contractor), and at some point in that range we were all (soldiers, civilians, and contractors) getting CAC cards.

Were you trying to quote this comment, or are you both the same person?

Where a traditional brash American northerner gets angry, but never fights for honor, a traditionally polite American southerner stays polite until you go to far and then goes for blood.

Bless your heart.

When I used to work in a place with a fridge and microwave in our NOC, I would always hold the Hot Pockets in front of the cooling vents of the massive A/C units in our NOC. A good 45 seconds in front of those vents was usually sufficient. (Not to mention that it amused me greatly to use a NOC A/C to cool my lunch.)

Hi, I'm a tech geek and a gun fan. That Venn Diagram does overlap. The desire for this tech may still spread quickly, but not because this particular Venn doesn't overlap. (Because, obviously, it does.)

Clearly? Unfortunately, that's about as winnable as the war on drugs.

What makes you think that the "average slob with poor judgement" will even care about having tech like these printers? When I think of someone like that, I think of the lazy people who called me to fix their DSL and, oh, while I'm at it, to set up their wireless routers. If those people get printers like these, I'm willing to bet they won't be able to find the files needed - or be willing to shell out the money for the building materials - to make these things. On top of that, the important parts of firearms - the slide, the firing pin, the barrel, etc. - are still going to be metal for a long, long time, and even when it's possible to print metals at home, there's still the cost of the raw materials.

No, the "average slob with poor judgement" will not have easy access to unlimited firearms via 3D printers.

And don't forget that the salad - even a small bowl - is likely to be more expensive than the chocolate bar. That just one more problem in this whole situation.

Eh, Make Room! Make Room! didn't really do anything for me. I wanted to read it so I could read the book that Soylent Green was based off of, but I completely lost all suspension of disbelief at the beginning of the book when Harrison gave us a completely impossible premise, one even more impossible than most SF tech. (That is, that the Catholic Church managed to get enough clout worldwide that it was able to impose an international and permanent ban on all forms of contraception.)

On top of that, the ending fell flat on its face, too. All through the book, we're told that there are so many humans that most habitable places have people standing (or lethargically slouching) cheek to jowl, that's it's because of this massive overpopulation that food variety is almost nil, that overpopulation has used up almost all resources, and then the final line in the book tells us that the US population on 1 January 2000 is 344 million. (I seem to recall that he mentioned a global population, too, that also wasn't far off from what we have today. I don't have my copy of the book near me, or I'd verify this.)

Now don't get me wrong - I don't have a problem with the idea of resource management and all that. What I have a problem with is that he obviously didn't get anyone to help him with his math. He described how densely-populated the cities were, and he did so rather well. But the numbers that he gave us at the end of the book don't live up to that description, and that ruined it for me.

The nothing that can be defined (as a quantum vacuum) is not the true nothing.

Interesting. I had a similar situation in Ontario, California.

The TSA female told me it was a $25 fee for opting out. I told her, "That's fine. You can go ahead and collect it from the bag-check fee I had to pay to check my bag." She laughed again, "That'll be another $25 for being smart." I laughed back, "That's fine. I won't have to pay, since I'm not smart."

She let it drop after that, either because she was out-witted or because my frisker was ready. Not sure which.

I've never been good at the whole "saving" thing. I was fortunate enough to have a dad who was helpful:

As long as I was 1. Unemployed and looking for work, 2. Unemployed, looking for work, and going to school (thanks to grandparents' college fund they created when I was born), 3. Employed part-time and going to school, or 4. Employed (part- or full-time) and not going to school, then I wasn't charged for rent or food. It sucked having to move back home, but since it was only me, it wasn't too hard on my pride.

I still paid for my gasoline and car insurance once I got a job, but the remainder of my (crappy, PT retail) paychecks went to bills.

Calling my bank and asking for help also, er, helped. They closed the cards, for one thing, so I wouldn't spend anything more on them. (Not that I could, since they were practically maxed out as it was.) They also asked me how much I was making per paycheck, and we figured out some payment amounts that would work based upon how much I made and how much I owed. For 12 months, I was racking up no interest on my debt, and my payments were the same each month - provided I made each payment amount on time. Now that I've pretty much got my feet back under myself, I'm going to look into this curious "saving" concept I've heard so much about.