Actually, modern Lavalier mics don't tick... they vibrate.

Can you move your car to a shady spot? If the weather cooperates, a 20-minute car nap can be a real refresher. But you know your workplace and we don't, so YMMV.

No mention of Castle Wulfenbach?

Sadly, I glanced at this and thought for a moment you were talking about Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding.

My biggest struggles in the war against verbosity are the desire to (1) be unambiguous and (2) seem amiable.

Nails have points.

I liked Keller/McKay. Keller had the right personality to patiently and gently guide McKay into being a better person without even realizing she was doing it, or that she was slowly falling for him. It was like medical bedside manner playing itself out in her love life. And it was great for McKay's self-image that…

Seriously, I would have put Worf/Troi on my Top 10 list. But I don't think the writers of the show took a long time to even begin to figure out what to do with Troi.

Agreed. The human mind has a great desire to assemble cause and effect, rhyme and reason. (It's similar to why we have dreams; a whole bunch of images flash into our visual cortex and our brain tries to make a story out of it.)

Hear hear.

And even when people *do* take to them, some government agency steps in and smacks them down.

So, it's easier to learn to speak English, but harder to learn to read and write?

Uffda is the Polish word for lip. At least that's what Larry the Cucumber said. Although his lisp might have been interfering with his pronunciation...

It's not a fail - it's an opportunity for improvement. (Hint hint!)

You mean like this?

This is an excellent question. We don't act based on reality, but rather on what we perceive reality to be; and we don't feel remorse over an act because it's wrong, but because we perceive it to be wrong.

Tomayto, tomahto.

s/will be/are

The number of people who've read Poe is probably not as great as you'd hope.

Also, most URL shortener sites provide a way to "preview" the destination, either through setting a browser cookie or by adding a character (usually "-" or "+") to the end of the URL. Alas, they don't all do it the same way.