Sure, he saved some lives. But more importantly, he validated the existence of thousands of people involved in the design, maintenance, and instructions for use of aircraft features that people ignored while mentally completing the sentence "In the event of a water landing" with "you will already be dead."

People complain about Tolkien's orcs being reductive bad guys, which they intentionally were. They're still more human than the Francoists in Pan's Labyrinth.

It's about damned time! That guy over there sold me pavilion tickets. Where's the sofa?

Thanks, I thought we were past that already. Are you expressing your surprise that the initially much less rich spouse walked away from a divorce settlement with a little bit larger fraction of the overall wealth than she started with? Or are you expressing your opinion that a gain of very roughly 3% of the overall…

If you are suggesting that he bought her off with an amount of money, that that amount ended up being zero dollars is relevant.

It's relevant to this case. No, it doesn't address the entire issue.

She got a divorce settlement in the neighborhood of but maybe a little bit lower than what people initially projected given how rich he was and how long they were married. A much higher figure could have been called a buyout, but that isn't one. Props for donating the proceeds, though.

Speaking as one of the Grays who walk among you, I appreciate your awareness of gender ambiguity as an expression of the success we have had in emplacing neurolinguistic pathways to counteract your natural abhorrence of the Gray sexual quadrinity. I am confident you will not experience unpleasant and counterproductive…

This program posts news to thousands of machines throughout the entire civilized world. Your message will cost the net hundreds if not thousands of dollars to send everywhere. Please be sure you know what you are doing. Are you absolutely sure that you want to do this? [y / n]

Yeah, that's about what people would do if they didn't want to make things terrible. I get the impression that a lot of the community bulletin board aspect is of the "Hey, here's somebody we can take a stand against!" variety, so people can help save the world with nitpicking takedowns of mild throwaway jokes by Neil…

Can anybody suggest an even worse idea than talking about politics with a 140 character limit? I want serious suggestions on how to make bad discussions even worse, ideally in a way that people can't resist trying anyway.

Wasn't expecting to need another shower today this early, but here we are.

That's not true if you're comparing the same amount of coffee. At 175 mg for an 8 oz. coffee, Starbucks is towards the higher end of the 95-200mg range for 8 oz. listed at

Scientific fact: a new Pokemon only visible in smartphones and mirrors marks the creation of a vampire, thus fulfilling the physical law of conservation of virtual image when the formerly human bite victim loses theirs.

Stallone gave them just two alternatives for the filming of this movie: "Stop, or my mom will shoot."

Good point — a web search suggests it was sometimes, not always, used that way. I don't know if that use has been retired now that circumlocutions aren't needed to stay out of jail.

That would make you "confirmed" single/bachelor/whatever. But that nobody has said so yet makes me wonder if the meaning is as widely understood as I thought.

We got the hint that it probably wasn't Melisandre, even though minus the necklace he's not far off. So who isn't Melisandre? That's right, Sansa Stark. Cox could have made a splash in that role.

Good for you, Zod, you have Superman powers. Do you know which guy never has to remind us that he has Zod powers?

The basic verdict was OK, it's the $115 million that was nuts.