That seems okay to me. I mean, ebooks are all the rage these days, but the fact that they're a shiny, digital version of the books we've had on shelves for hundreds of years doesn't make them a bad idea, right? It's simply the evolution of a good idea to adapt to the changing opportunities and limitations of the world.

It doesn't need to replace government funding though, does it? I like the idea of this type of funding being a bridge to bigger grants via the startup model. We give them a little money, enough to do the preliminary legwork and get data to show larger investors that they're on to something.

Sadly, my main problem with this film: dude is dirty, dressed like an extra from Prince of Persia, has stubbly facial hair... and yet a perfectly layered and feathered hairstyle. It's like they were trying too hard to appeal to everyone with just his head - he'll be dirty and stubbly for the dudes, but have silky hair…

Dave Grossman, a military psychologist, talked about the use of firearms in his book "On Killing." It's worth a read if only to ponder the connection to the above article. In it, he talks about how the purpose of military training - among other things - is to override the aversion of killing one's fellow man, even an…

This is also, perhaps interestingly, the point of Steven Pinker's talk (which you can find on TED from 2007), pointing out the steady decline in violence for as far back as data is available.

I've never seen a community that made upvoting work to actually increase the exposure of diverse opinions. Reddit is huge, but 90% of everything on their front page is the same - rage/troll comics, pictures of funny/irritating things, liberal politics, etc. Now, I happen to like all of those things (which is why I…

Yeah, Xerox handles all of our printers... although over the years I've gotten pretty good at field stripping and cleaning them. I think I should be made an honorary Xerox technician.

I like how "airport security" as come to mean (for some screeners) not, "is it dangerous?" but, "does it remind me of something dangerous?" I don't even know what to say. It's like something out of Catch 22.

That's the (not un)healthy bit! If you take off the lettuce you're just eating mystery meat, cheese-like food product, petroleum-based sour cream substitute, and a giant Dorito. And that can't be good for you.

I don't really know what they do on a day-to-day basis, but it's got to be a more fun project than walking around fixing terminals that users have borked by installing shit from the internet, right?

That's silly. You don't have to be a politician in order to be political. I'm political because I take an active interest in politics. He actively promotes conservative politics, Republican candidates, and trashes Democrats. He's political, through and through. He might also talk about other things - I'd rather peel…

Haha, I'd be a pretty dumbass IT guy, don't you think? I'm just a tech-oriented science nerd who thought he had a good idea this one time.

It is crap. I'm in my twenties, and when me and my friends were in college "movie night" meant going to the house of whoever had the biggest TV and watching downloaded movies on burned discs. Then Netflix launched, we eventually graduated and got jobs, and none of those guys pirates anymore. It's faster, and worth the…

It sounds like if the administration had half a brain to ask someone in the IT department if my idea was feasible they could be saving thousands in printing and fax costs. Big organizations. They make me crazy... and I have to deal with a hospital and a university.

Yeah, at the university we scan to PDF from the copier (which is great for journal articles that aren't online, so I don't have to check out the whole journal), but that wouldn't work in the hospital because the lists need to be seen by lots of people. The cath lab schedule, for instance, would have to go to the…

Well, to be totally fair your penis is actually several inches longer, but much of that is inside of you. Naturally, the only important part is the, err, functional bit - how far it goes into your partner, not how far it goes into you. I have no idea how guys typically measure themselves, though, so I can't really…

Depends how you measure them! When they asked men how long their penises were they found the average was 6-8". When they brought out the measuring tape they found it was 4-6". Apparently we have a 2" buffer for the peen, just like they say men add 2 inches to their height in online dating profiles.

I work in a hospital and, because of the size of the facility, we literally fax things between departments dozens of times per day. OR and cath lab schedules, call lists, nurse staffing reports, all sorts of stuff. Probably thousands of sheets of paper per year that all ultimately get recycled within 8 hours. I…

I work with a cardiology group, one of whom has a PhD (in addition to his MD) in the etiology of cardiovascular disease. Unless your credentials are at least as impressive, I'll take my advice from an actual expert. You can claim that it can't be linked to heart disease, but the medical community disagrees with you,…

This also fits the naming convention for their laptops. You don't buy the MacBook Pro HD. You just buy the MBP, and presumably tell them apart by model number, year they were released, or specs.