What type of motorcycle racing? Can you elaborate? (I don’t know much about it but I’ve been getting curious. Is it like the increasingly arcane F1 restrictions expressly designed to keep speeds down on tracks designed for slower cars?)

Coastal towns which tend to be more liberal start conserving (except San Francisco, since they legally yet immorally own a water shed a hundred miles away)

Where are you getting that calumny from? I mean the part about not conserving, not owning Hetch Hetchy. San Francisco has reduced its water usage around 10% in the current drought (although the goal is 20%.)

The Los Angeles area has actually increased its usage by 8%. Go talk to them about morals.

External staff is an umbrella term for individuals performing services for Microsoft on a non-permanent basis. Examples include consultants, temporary contract workers, vendor workers, freelancers, independent professionals and contractors, staff augmentation, and business guests.

Nothing in that language excludes cafeteria workers, janitors, HVAC repairmen, etc. Does MS really mean to restrict blue-collar workers to 18-month stints too? Their employers won’t necessarily have another gig available for them, and they’re far less likely than coders and managers to have a financial cushion.

Now that you mention it, I do want an intelligent melon baller.

+1 Informative if I had any mod points, but it's your last paragraph that's really the most salient.

Music listening is not measured only by fidelity to the original recording, there's a whole gestalt that makes taking an LP out of its sleeve, placing it on the turntable, putting the needle down, looking at the glowing bottles of outer space and the sleeve art, and actively paying attention a much different experience than having iTunes on shuffle while you code or do laundry or drive to work, even if your digital setup is instrument-measurably better-sounding.

Car analogy (SORRY): It's the difference between driving a beautiful but cranky old car that needs ignition points replaced every few months, and a brand-new, in-warranty, utterly reliable, utterly forgettable midrange sedan. If you just need to get to work and the grocery store you want the latter, but an overall interactive aesthetic experience is enhanced by the more intimate involvement with the former.

How does being at the end of a line make it inconvenient?

Promissory Estoppel
In the law of contracts, the doctrine that provides that if a party changes his or her position substantially either by acting or forbearing from acting in reliance upon a gratuitous promise, then that party can enforce the promise although the essential elements of a contract are not present.

Certain elements must be established to invoke promissory estoppel. A promisor—one who makes a promise—makes a gratuitous promise that he should reasonably have expected to induce action or forbearance of a definite and substantial character on the part of the promisee—one to whom a promise has been made. The promisee justifiably relies on the promise. A substantial detriment—that is, an economic loss—ensues to the promisee from action or forbearance. Injustice can be avoided only by enforcing the promise.

Look how many papers are giving space to eternal Peanuts reruns. They're not even selected from the whole opus; I don't know if that's because Schulz didn't want older strips rerun or the syndicate doesn't want to introduce discontinuity by printing strips from when the characters looked different (Snoopy walking on all fours and not suffering macrocephaly, for instance.)

Pound for pound, horse crap is maybe the least offensive crap in the animal kingdom. Horse piss, on the other hand...

Introducing new options mid-year is unusual, but changing (usually small) parts mid-year is not. Mechanics are well accustomed to checking VINs to determine which wiper motor mount (or whatever) to order for your '91 Homermobile, because Powell changed it halfway through production.

Yes. Back in the 70s you'd occasionally see them whimsically painted as robots or construction workers or whatever, but that was done by local residents. They put a stop to that for whatever reason and now they're all dark grey and silver. I don't know why. Hydrants in San Francisco are all white (except for this one.) The ones connected to cisterns instead of a water main used to have a different cap color but no longer.

Reminds me of this Florida town, which annexed a tiny sliver of land connecting it to a quarter-mile stretch of highway so they could write speeding tickets.

at one point, the city's police force had grown from one officer up to 17, some of who were volunteers, some driving uninsured cars, and some who may not even been trained on using a radar detector

Ah, Florida.

I've always wondered why don't they make the hydrants taller than cars, so firefighters could run hose across the roof/hood/trunk?

Don't know about the others, but mutt has an option to compile with OpenSSL instead.

Why didn't the citizens narc out this illegal behavior? It may depend on the state, but afaik working without overtime isn't something you can legally "volunteer" (read: be voluntold) to do as an employee.

Failing that, gang up and "educate" them. The labor movement didn't buy us a 40-hour workweek and basic safety standards by letting desperate scabs undercut it.