I have a Honda CR-Z. It's a hybrid, though I couldn't really care less. I bought it because I thought it was a pretty cool little car. The gas mileage was pretty sweet, but I bought it for the looks; I think it kinda looks like a spaceship escape pod. Yep.

If the teachers get to have a computer grade the paper, I should be able to have a computer write the paper. Actually, I did that once for a poem. We were supposed to write a poem in the style of Pablo Neruda. So I wrote a program to parse Pablo Neruda's poems and spit out the most Neruda-like poem possible using an algorithm I developed. As part of the larger paper surrounding our poem, I included my source code, so it was all on the up and up. I got an A, no big deal.

Those people have relatives too, ya know.

Seriously. I don't care what the critics say, it had cowboys, aliens, Olivia Wilde, Daniel Craig, and Harrison Ford. If you don't like it, then you, my friend, just don't know art.

You know what? I hear this argument all the time, and I'm sick of it. I don't know what terribly useless degree you got, but I got a degree in chemistry. And tell you what, I learned the skills necessary to be a useful contributer to a lab. I know, because I was a useful contributer to a lab during my internship, and there I also met other dudes with a BS in chemistry who were doing the actual, hands-on chemistry that I thought was cool in the first place. So bah; if your college isn't teaching you anything useful, go to a better damn college.

This Einstein fella - I keep on hearing about how he's been proven wrong or might be proven wrong or how people are picking his ideas apart. It's like he hasn't even SEEN a modern physics paper in like, the last 50 years.

They still do this stuff. It's called denatured. You're not supposed to drink industrial solvents. That's why they're industrial. No one complains that we poison antifreeze with ethylene glycol - BECAUSE YOU'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO DRINK ANTIFREEZE. Stuff meant for consumption is taxed at a higher rate and undergoes a lot of inspections to make sure it's fit for human consumption. If it's not meant for human consumption, they don't get taxed as heavily and don't undergo inspections. How do you prove your stuff isn't meant for humans? You poison it and LABEL IT AS SUCH. Industrial solvents are labeled poisonous because they are. We're not poisoning the masses, we are providing them solvents at cheaper rates.

I think these guys have a point that different technologies affect the way we interact with people. I will fully agree that it is far easier to keep in touch with your grandmother when you can call her at night and fly cross-country to see her than it was back in the "day" when you had to send a letter in order to communicate with anyone at a distance and you had to take a stage coach cross-country. However, I always think such researchers begin to sound old and crotchety when they start making predictions that "the kids of tomorrow will have no attention span!" and whatnot. Tech changes, people change, but it's not always BAD.

Maybe it sounded like it was a dock for amphibious transports.

Maybe auto mechanics just complain about stupid things like that in places other than the internet?

This is kinda funny, because Godzilla was at first a warning against big ole' American things like nukes. So now we need a monster movie warning against big ole' American things like oppressive IP law.

...secretly, I still use USB drives. Don't tell anyone. It's easier than emailing myself everything.

When will the day come when science is encouraged, and not looked at with suspicious eyes and squashed through lack of funding, crazy regulations, and policies set to defend the one guy who shouldn't need defending, God (Intelligent Design in schools, I'm lookin' at you).

Erm, I may be wrong, but don't most distilled liqueurs come as 80 proof here in the States?