Wait, so I can literally blame anything on the NSA?

I ran out of ideas and motivation for my next book because of the NSA!

I'm late for work today because of the NSA!

Sorry, I can't afford child support this month because of the NSA!

This really sounds like a steaming pile of bullshit to me. Not that I'm in any way supportive of the actions of the NSA, but stating that you're not going to finish a series because it has become too much like real life just smacks of someone taking an easy way out.

Who will make the "life-like" driver busts that can banter with eleven different sorts of inane chatter? JohnnyCab it is not!

Yep, I rode that storm out in Houston. It was a Cat 2 but HSI 45 while in the Gulf and low 30s at landfall. Katrina was mid-30s at landfall. Most of those points were, of course, for size.

The Saffir-Simpson scale is pretty antiquated for the exact reasons mentioned. Just measuring wind speed gives a very poor idea of how dangerous or destructive a storm will by, and gives no indication of relative size.

The better scale that the AMS is starting to lean toward is the Hebert-Weinzapfel scale, which has a much easier to spell name as the Hurricane Severity Index, or HSI.

With the HSI model, the speed of wind and the size of the wind field are taken in to account so a storm that is moderate intensity but very large in footprint, like Katrina, has a similar rating to a hurricane with a high intensity and very small footprint like Andrew. Both were similar in the amount of destruction they caused but Katrina was only SS Cat 3 at landfall, where Andrew was SS Cat 5.

But hey, lets just make jokes about Al Gore instead, cause Al Gore. Am I right here people?

Ok, first off it's the Miranda Warning, not the Miranda Rights. You have them at all times, read to you or not. The warning is there to remind you that you have the option not to incriminate yourself.

Or, at least it was until this decision. Ahh, The Roberts Court, whittling our rights down one 5-4 at a time.

A network of stations where fresh mounts/batteries can be picked up for a courier going over rugged and perhaps dangerous terrain.

So... this would be the Droney Express?

I don't think I've ever heard "Wow, you can really taste the snail in this!" so I think you'd be fine.

I wish I could remember the name of the dish, but if you're feeling adventurous, head down to your local asian supermarket/shopping mall, find the food court and start asking if they have snails. Alternately, just look in the warming trays. If you see a bunch of pointy shells stewing away in a greenish-white broth, you've found it!

A grasshopper can only get so big due to the way they breathe and some of the problems with being a large creature with an exoskeleton.

Snails are a staple in some Vietnamese communities. Its even to the point now where you can get them at some of the more authentic restaurants here in the U.S.

They are boiled in the shell in a creamy sauce after being marinated with some native herbs and my god are they delicious.

Funny enough, staunch vegetarians also unknowingly consume insects.

Agreed about it all being in people's heads though. I'd be all for some delicious grasshopper crunchies, or even a Bacon, Lettuce, and Termite sandwich.

Damnnation, I meant Bayer, not Monsanto.

Monsanto.

Friends, isn't it time you started using neocotinids on your crops? Why waste the summer dealing with the dangers of bees when you can use Genuine Monsanto(tm) Pesticides! Yes friends, be free from the worries of work-a-day bee invasions, slug infestations, and all of those annoying back yard guests with Monsanto! Spray it on your crops, on your meat, in your milk, even on your kids. Monsanto brands are formulated by actual scientists and checked for quality and killing power by our own crack team of former EPA regulators.

Monsanto: The Best Regulatory Capture Money Can Buy!

In my cynical moments, and in a comment lower down, I suggested that the move to Salesforce and Workday was prompted because of the donations given to Whitman by the CEOs of both organizations. Of course, that could be stretching it, but it just seems like such an odd announcement for her to make. I could easily see Salesforce being the ones excited to advertise that size of company switching their CRM, but HP?

I just hope that these miracle savings will go in to restructuring in a good way, and not in to more corporate jets and executive bonuses.

Its been said, but I'll reiterate.

Salesforce is not an IT tool, it is a Customer Management tool. The whole point of using Salesforce is to make your sales and customer service people more efficient so you can do more with what you have or do the same with fewer people.

Workday is the same thing, only it replaces any internal HR databases with its own SaaS solution in order to allow your HR people to manage more people, or in order to manage the same number of people with fewer HR people.

At the end of the day, both of these projects are about outsourcing internal functions, possibly to save money, possibly because Dave Duffield and Marc Benioff the CEOs of Workday and Salesforce respectively were big contributors to Meg's failed gubernatorial campaign.

I'm cynical, especially when it comes to the continued flushing of HP down the toilet.