The Pennsylvania devices sound like the gizmos we had when I worked in France. They were called PTIs ("Protection de Travailleur Isolé" - 'Protection for Isolated Workers'), and clipped to your belt. If the box detected that you'd fallen down and you didn't move for a certain time, it would trigger a warning through…

If I remember correctly, 4 is an unlucky number - the equivalent of 13 - in some Asian cultures. (8 is lucky, hence all the Chinese businesses that work '8' into their name somehow).

Now I want to rewrite "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" ... but this time, the killer will leave fingerprint evidence behind ...

"The authors of the paper say that scientists should refrain from classifying any organism as lesbian unless inspection of its CD collection reveals that it owns one or more albums by the Indigo Girls."

I always wondered what Hamunaptra looked like from the air.

2024AD: American graduates now lead the world in the prestigious field of LOLcat Studies ...

I still haven't watched the last half season of the reboot. Should I call it quits now, and just pretend that it all ended with the episode called "Revelations"? It might actually make a decent stopping point.

Apparently, he believes that's a selling point ...

If the stories are to be believed, the face of the Statue is that of the sculptor's mother, but the body is based on a local hooker who side-lined as an artist's model (or vice-versa).

As a bonus, we provide this artist's impression of Emma later in life.

"No reason whatsoever"? It's pretty clear that you're not in New York City today. Granted, the temperature is only in the low eighties, but the Real Feel [tm] is "Oh God, I'm melting".

Ray Kurzweil is the poster child for the Maes-Garreau Law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maes-Garreau_Law

Which part of "Don't get it wet" and "Don't feed it after midnight" did you people not understand?

You write: "Our descendants will likely embark on a series of ... engineering projects ... such as stellar husbandry ... or somehow tap into the power of black holes."

Noomi Rapace travels to the Engineers' home planet to perform in the Galactic Games, where she takes gold in both the Sprinting in a Space Suit Less Than Forty Minutes After Giving Yourself a C-Section and the Tentacle Wrestling events. The Engineers, intimidated by her prowess and the fact that she keeps waving…

Jackson said that he will also find time to throw in Bilbo's quirky romance with an endearingly manic elf maiden who works as a clerk in an indie bookstore in the Emyn Muil, a lengthy chariot-racing sequence, an attempted invasion of Middle Earth by aliens, and a section in which Bilbo, Thorin and Gandalf get drunk on…

So, uh, next Saturday's writing prompt?

Every time I read a list of upcoming remakes and 'reboots', my inner Samuel L. Jackson surfaces:

The brilliant but terrifying "Steve, Don't Eat It" blog has a post on the subject of making your own prison wine (aka pruno): http://www.thesneeze.com/2005/steve-dont-eat-it-vol-8.php

The year Joe unlocked the Mall, I was about eight. My sister Marla was nearly sixteen. Joe was probably nineteen or twenty, and even at eight I sensed that there was something vaguely creepy about the amount of time he spent hanging around my teenage sister. In hindsight, I realize that Marla knew all along what Joe…