You care about orange spoke reflectors? Really? Where do you ride? 'Cause I'm going to follow you, and when I get the chance I'll gun my car right past you through the biggest puddle I can find.

No joke here. I have lots of pages with lots of pictures. I can click and drag them one by one, or generate a list, then plug in all the HTML boilerplate. Way faster. Except, how do you generate the list? Because Windows' recipe, I kid you not, is take a screen shot of your directory, then past the image into your…

Here's another reason. This is a specimen of an earth rock called olivine gabbro. The olivine (magnesium-iron silicate) is light green and stands out in relief. The criss-crossing darker green cracks and the light green material on the right are a hydrous version of the same mineral, created by weathering.

Here's my solution: It applies to any illegally trafficked natural material: ivory, rhino horn, precious coral, furs, artifacts, fossils. Abolish all legal distinctions between genuine and reproduction articles. That looted precious coral is pink synthetic? Your rhino horn is plastic? That Navajo pot was made last…

The spectrum of earthquake safety has been known for many years. Safest are wood and steel-frame buildings. Wood because it's light and flexible, Steel because it's strong. Next is reinforced masonry, then non-reinforced, then adobe. Underdeveloped countries are hit so hard because they have so many of the last two…

I read some of Sajak's blog posts a few years ago and it was conservative but rational. George Will used to be rational too. What is it with once rational conservatives going nuts? Must be the chemtrails.

The medals are already way overdone. My father came back from three years in WWII with three service ribbons and a Purple Heart. Today I see junior enlisted decked out like Soviet field marshals. Military members - all of them - should be limited to four rows of ribbons, merit awards first and then service ribbons at…

Running out of gold? Impossible! The price will simply rise, more mining will be encouraged, and the market will set the price.

The mantra for the last quarter century has been shareholder satisfaction uber alles. Fine. the obvious cure for corporate irresponsibility is to make the shareholders very unhappy. Give the SEC power to suspend trade in a company's stock for a while if the company causes harm to anyone, directly or indirectly. I…

Well, I'm glad somebody took this on. I wanted to post to the article itself but I didn't feel like creating yet another crap user account for the privilege.

"A hopefully possible intergalactic travel scenario"

Nobody liked the term to begin with. Back when they first began having flight attendants, nobody knew what to call them. "Flight attendant" would have been meaningless in the 1930's. Terms from train travel, like "porter" weren't really adequate. Initially they had to be nurses, and so they needed a term that conveyed…

"Rooves?" Well, hoof, hooves, though I've seldom if ever seen "rooves." They cover the tops of the hice, right? I mean, mouse, mice, louse, lice, spouse, spice, blouse, blice....

The Embarcadero was a remnant of a former plan to run a freeway from the Bay Bridge to the Golden Gate. There would be a freeway down the coast and one split on either side of Golden Gate Park. San Franciscans revolted and the plan was scrapped, leaving the Embarcadero as a pretty much useless stump. You can bypass…

Fascinating how a lot of graphic conventions are already evident, for example text coming out of a character's mouth.

Idiocracy threw soft punches at squishy targets. No mention of dumbed down religion, lack of accountability, or any of the other things making society stupid.

Remember back when everyone sneered at dot-matrix because it wasn't cool? You could use the same ribbon forever as long as the print quality held up, which for mere drafts and backups didn't need to be all that good. And the printer didn't stop when the ribbon got faint. And it was easy to re-ink the ribbon.

Whenever I see a discussion of "moral" questions, my first response is "define morality." If you believe there are moral absolutes, tell us what they are and how we can know they're absolutes. If you don't, then what makes you arrogant enough to think you get to decide how MY car will be programmed? Nobody cares what…

My sentiments also. What if they have a humane, just culture but never, ever, had the concept of a god? What if they're militantly religious and their dogmas mesh with those of one of our less open-minded sects? What if they view all our beliefs as heresies? What if they have rigid sex roles like Larry Niven's Kzin,…

Without the confining lid, the jar probably feels like a nice safe den.