Castle Black is depicted as a single blocky monolithic building on the map, but it isn't a castle in the traditional sense. In the book it is described as a pretty random collection of a variety of buildings that sprawl out around the gate through the Wall.

They had this when I was in Iraq, but we the ROE prohibited us from automatically returning fire that comes from populated areas (to prevent collateral damage). The enemy knew this, so they would just pull up in the middle of a busy street, pop open the trunk of the car, aim a mortar tube at our FOB, pop off a few…

And the sniffing, for the love of $DEITY, don't forget the endless sniffing!!

What would be great would be if Amazon would extend this school/business motif to the concept of a family, where a handful of Amazon accounts could be linked and the books and other content could be pooled. Also, how about kid's Amazon accounts where we could buy books and add them to the kid's queue, which then turn…

There's several former and current Army soldiers armchairing this video when it was posted here yesterday, so I'll just add my 2 cents again. I was an Infantry sergeant in the Army and fought in Iraq.

If they showed a sense of unity, how would they scare people into voting for them instead of the "other guys"?? It's always the "other guys" fault. "We" have the best ideas, the "other guys" are to blame for everything.

To Pat's credit, he spends a lot of time on his Worldbuilders charity and all of the proceeds go to Heifer International, providing livestock to poor families (mostly goats and chickens, so they can sell the milk or the eggs and earn a living off of the livestock). Helping women and children get themselves out of…

I switched away from T-Mobile to Sprint earlier this year in the wake of the AT&T/T-Mobile merger fiasco, and I regretted the switch immediately. Sprint's coverage is horrible, their 3G is way slower than T-Mobile's 3G and WiMAX sucks battery life like no one's business. I actually have 4G disabled on my phone since…

What about the Lefties out there? Seems like most manufacturers stopped making left-handed versions of their ergonomic mice years ago.

Producing the birth certificate isn't something normally done and isn't even really a requirement anyway (until the candidate is half-black and has a scary muslim name), but the state of Hawaii eventually produced it with permission.

I like the Penny Arcade 404 page, with Hipster Gabe: http://penny-arcade.com/404

Wait, what??? I didn't even know that the iPhone had universal local search.

The Army used to be able to roll their sleeves in the summer BDU's but the cuff had to fold outward to cover the "rolled up part". Sometime around 2002-2003 we stopped being able to roll up the sleeves. The current ACU uniforms don't lend themselves to rolling up the sleeves anyway.

I feel ya. I switched to Sprint away from a grandfathered month-by-month unlimited T-Mobile plan (how dumb was that) a few months ago. 4G on Sprint feels like 3G on T-Mobile and you can actually see the battery meter shrinking (thanks to Sprint betting on WiMax instead of LTE!). 3G on Sprint is pretty much useless.…

I am pretty bummed about the World War Z movie. They seem to have totally changed the premise of the movie from "narrator interviews survivors and the audience relives the zombie apocalypse in flashback from dozens of viewpoints so you see how real people would react" to "Brad Pitt races around the world trying to…

It's not just left-leaning people who don't understand that The Onion is satire. There have been many instances where right-wing fundie types get all in a public snit at Onion stories.

There are actual bath salts (Epsom salts, available at your local drugstore for $.50), but this kind of drug is called "bath salts" because that's kind of what they look like.

"scoped"?? They can't be more than 100-150 meters away. Easy as pie with iron sights.

I heard a sermon one time about the proper interpretation of "Thou shalt not take the Lord's name in vain". Taking his name in vain is not just about going to hell if you say "god damn", it's about saying "I'm so special that I know exactly what my God wants so I will put words in his mouth". It's one thing to say…