Also, any helium that's naturally generated tends to just float off into space. I feel like I should be worried that Earth is gradually shedding matter into space, although this is probably one of those "but the sun will burn out first" problems.

Oh, the humanity!!!

Good journalists never reveal their sources, but lucky for you, I'm neither good nor a journalist, so I can mention that a great source of odd Wikipedia links (including the Pirate Joe's one in the introduction) is Cool Freaks Wikipedia Club. They started out as a Facebook group, but they also have a Twitter feed…

Yes, I didn't want to get too political, but that's exactly what I was thinking. I think you could say that capitalism works, but what we have now — a system where the corner store on my block pays more in taxes every year than GE and Boeing combined — isn't capitalism.

My take on the Cold War was that it wasn't won by nukes or lack thereof, it was won because the West had a much higher standard of living, and people under the Iron Curtain knew it. It was clear that we had a better system — no one was breaching the Berlin Wall to go live in East Germany — which meant their system was…

As always, The Onion said it best: "Our long national nightmare of peace and prosperity is finally over."

So did the pilot, the last time I flew there.

I can tell you this: Salmon P. Chase would agree with you wholeheartedly.

Holy crap, I just had a sinking feeling that the Republicans will agree to put a woman on the money, but it'll be Ayn Rand.

People have suggested this, but naturally the Republicans started calling that rounded-down cent a "tax" and plenty of yahoos were up in arms.

You can't make change with just a dime and a quarter. How do you deal with a price that ends in .05? Or .15? Or .40? etc.

Personally, I'd replace him with MLK. Is there another non-President who's as important a figure in American history? The only person I think you could make an argument for is Ben Franklin, who already got his bill.

Apparently, the only ones who used those big bills were banks and mobsters. (not that there isn't a fine line there)

Exactly. Putting Jackson on money after he shut down the second national bank would be like naming an airport after Ronald Reagan after he fired all the air traff… oh, right.

I meant the Wikipedia article, not mine. But to answer your question, yes.

The article mentions two classes of jester — one who were mentally unbalanced or otherwise eccentric, and one who were simply given license to both act silly and speak truth to power.

I was actually wondering if you'd show up when I wrote this. This is your moment!!!

Lawry's Satanic Seasoning Salt?

I can't remember where I read this — I can't find it on the Talk page or the article proper — but the problem with uniform gravity is that the shell has to be perfectly balanced. If it goes even slightly off-center, one side starts getting pulled towards the sun. So to avoid that, you're talking about building a shell…

Assuming you could build a complete sphere, you'd have to live either on the outer surface or, more likely, inside the material of the shell. Anything on the inside is just going to fall towards the sun, because the thin shell would have very little gravity.