I feel coffee snobbery coming on ...

To #1: those little blade coffee grinders stink. They produce really inconsistent grinds and usually result in something that cannot reasonably be called espresso. I don't think it would work terribly well with tea leaves, either.

To #2: Ah, but proper espresso machines do not rely on high temperatures, but moderately hot temperature and high pressure. It's a very delicate process, and one that Mark's Rancilio Silvia is more than capable of. Silvias are very loverly machines.

I have tried red espresso. I find it delicious. But rooibos is generally the only tea I drink anymore. Earl Grey is dead to me.

I'm just hoping the smelling and licking bit comes before the taut, purpling appendage.

On another note, I can't help but wonder if this superannuated machine was at one time used--one way or another--by Arthur Miller.

The carnivore's death at the paws of an herbivore--Nature's poetic justice.

#2,

It's called resistentialism. It's in full force here.

#22 & #23,

They did indeed do that. They were meant to defend their profits at a congressional hearing.

Basically, they whinged on about the expense of opening new drilling operations and argued petulantly that their $18+ billion in subsidies should continue despite raking in so much money that one of the executives, when asked directly, couldn't recall how much.

I guess the next logical step is for TelCos to start having crazy sex parties with government regulators. Make sure to invite the hookers.

@Deviant and @Bender,

If I may be so bold--I certainly would be averse to the gross generalizations that Bender has made, but as anyone who tuned in to Day 4 of the RNC can attest, the way the delegates howled their epithets, "Drill, Drill," "USA, USA," and (loathingly) "NBC, NBC" struck me as slimy and proto-human.

That's sort of the name of the game, though--pander to the lowest common denominator because it delivers proven results. Thanks, Karl, for cultivating this system of fear-mongering, schoolyard politics.

As an aside, I think Obama's intricate financial ties to Wall Street have just as much potential as "100 more years" to further erode our country.

#56, CMPalmer: I love your essay contest idea. But I always had a strange fetish for blue books in college, so maybe I'm biased.

In regards to the gaffe-baiting "scandal du jour" questions, I'm not sure that would pan out for "hard-hitting" journalism either. The current media fixation with completely nonsensical scandals surrounding Palin's family are completely irrelevant and only serve as political sleight of hand. So yes, that question will definitely get asked, but it will only further rally "the base" and distract from the real issues. Also, Palin gets to act indignant, which really ignites her core demographic.

Palin on Colbert would be epic. Also, not a chance. The conservative machine has pretty much wised up to the Report and knows that it can't be reliably scripted.

#15, Alfred Nobel is, of course, on this list because he invented dynamite and a number of other armaments.

Clearly, not in any way similar to the LHC, but rather the possibility for dispassionate science to do unforeseen harm.

#30, Neener,

She's not going to survive the news interview process and McCain will bring in Ridge or Lieberman.

PUH-lease. Fat chance of that happening when the corporate-owned "Liberal Media" mollycoddles her by asking innocuous questions and not pausing for even a second to scrutinize her answers.

The affably benign Charlie Gibson will be interviewing her, with a warm embrace, no doubt.

Greenwald knows what's up.

Heard about this on Talk of the Nation Science Friday a week or so ago. Not only has a poster already correctly pointed out that Google has no exclusive rights to the images, but for a fee, anyone can order a high-res satellite image of anywhere on the planet. They will also offer archived free imagery for various students and researchers with agreeable scientific studies.

Since the satellite is in a polar orbit (a single orbit takes 98 minutes), it can photograph any given location on the planet, but depending on weather and day/night conditions, any given spot can only be photographed roughly every three days.

However, due to US government restrictions, they have to resample the images at a slightly lower resolution. The official value, I believe, is half a meter.

#1- Woe is me! Mitchell & Webb do the Mac ads in the UK?! That's a must-see ... Guess I'll be hard-charging YouTube on my lunch hour.

#5- You're not the only one. I believe it was a Mac Classic that featured prominently for many years, by his window.

#59, I think the point was to post pictures of people adorned in 10 gallon cowboy hats (and paradoxically, a Lincoln lookie-likie). Apparently, mortgage bankers don't favor that fashion choice.

#54, maybe they didn't cheer because they were intensely confused. A quick google search revealed to them that she worked long and hard to get an oil pipeline installed in the valley around Wasilla, then later as governor decided it was in her political interests to make them fork over some of those profits. Kind of like the Bridge to Nowhere, that she quite clearly and falsely claimed she turned down in her "fantastic" speech.

Not to tear ya down, Brownlee, but up until, I dunno, page 30 or so, I was following most of the "meaningless technobabble" and I'm perpetually perplexed by that sort of thing. I didn't have a comprehensive grasp on what it meant for the web or Joe User, but I was pretty enthralled with the possibilities of "multi-threaded processes," Incognito mode, et cetera. (Incognito from everyone except Google, who would very much like to make recommendations based on one's incorrigibly debauched and degenerate porno browsing.)

And oh yeah, that 4chan parody is hilarious. "What do you think about this sweet goatee?" Beardos indeed!

#16, I don't think they will miss us at all. They've forsaken us for the iPhone crowd. Unless, of course, you meant, "Vous nous manquerez," in which case, I'm with you. La solidarité!

/end french grammar pedantry

On-topic, I think they will make a grand show of corralling their Psystar captives, then draw, quarter and gibbet the lot of them.

#18, I'm just waiting for the inverse of this product--a slowly dimming light that indicates the end of siesta so I can crawl out from under my urban sombrero.

Also, I'm not sure I would dream of comparing Brownlee's "a simulacrum of rising dawn" with "the spirit of Old Mexico with a little big-city panache." Though if ol' John tried his hand at something like, say, Bengalese Galoshes, maybe the comparison would be more readily acceptable to me.

Finally, reppin' my favorite road trip activity as a youth. That LED football game was so passé!

But it was impossible to be disappointed by a Tiger game, because they were mostly the exact same game, except sometimes you could shoot. Low expectations guarantees happiness!

Too true! I think I had about half a dozen of these at one point, but that wasn't so bad--they were quite prone to glitching and/or breaking. Not from high-impact falls, however--a testament to the case design--rather, from any sort of liquid. No problem--just salvage the batteries and play a different one!

#1: I guess we just have to wait patiently for Apple and Microsoft to co-opt our one-or-the-other political parties.

Ah, the vague semblance of choice.

Oh man. That's ridiculous. greaterthan blockquote lessthan.

how do you do those cool quote tags? [quote]text[/quote] doesn't work and the pointy-bracket version just gets stripped out. I'm stumped.

You use

.

Also, I'm fairly certain my friend with a PSP doesn't even use his to play games. He treats it like a clunky iPod with a D-pad. And a controller for his entertainment system. I'm unfamiliar with the system, but it seems like the PSP has more functions than Gaming, so the marketing model (razors and blades, as Zuzu puts it) doesn't seem to make much sense--if your revenue is generated by games, but the machine can do much more, consumers will slip through the cracks.

Au contraire, Om. It's definitely the same machine. The cabinet in Soylent Green has a white finish, but it's otherwise identical. (I'm not entirely sure what you mean by 'corners,' because the image at #8 has a definite rounded-corner design.)

You had me doubting myself, so I busted out the ol' bargain bin DVD.

I think the comely model, Cylon or no, helped me make the connection.

Regarding the image linked at #8,

Is it just me or does that photo bear a striking resemblance to the "furniture" and her "cutting edge" game in Soylent Green?

#29, Wot? Your penis is still in shrink wrap?

I predict a second edition of GWoT that implements an additional game phase satirizing this entire episode.

Damn, Brownlee, don't be so culturally insensitive. It's a German-language news site.

Also, this Austrian fellow's explosive-bacon-planting ex-wife is proof positive that you're better off with lager and a lone SIM card.

There's also something tactile about repeatedly removing the cartridge and emptying my enfeebled lungs into them to ameliorate the frequent glitching.

I wouldn't mind seeing a Heckendorn creation, though.

Hah, I suspected all along that the boozing was a direct response to the stress of moving.

Last time I moved, I did not have the luxury of a paid cleaning service (regardless of any sort of extortion involved). Rather, I think I conscripted friends and plied them with booze. The power of drink: it's really multi-functional when it comes to high stress situations.

My grout wasn't opalescent, but it passed muster.

/end thread hijacking.

Aside from being envious of your freedom to "booze" in the afternoon, I'm mostly overcome with a disgusting curiosity--what could you possibly do in a bathroom that would necessitate five hours of professional cleaning?

Perhaps rage is the wrong reaction. Shame?

I am loathe to correct typographical errors, John, but you mispelled "digitally."

Trivial nitpicking aside, let out that WTF monster. Just let it out.

A lot of those Bittorrent mega packs also include MAME, SNES and myriad other platforms, nostalgic and otherwise. Why go for meta collectibility when you can achieve comprehensive, sybaritic collectibility?

#9,

I went into this series (who would have thought that BBG would get me hooked on a television show?) having thoroughly studied Curtis' "Century of the Self" and I thought it most interesting that Bernay's notion of advertising via psychoanalysis is pretty much thrown out in favor of Draper's pragmatism in the pilot episode.
Or, at least, preference is given to, say, sexual drive over Freud's "death wish."
In any case, I find "Mad Men" very intriguing, but I won't dissemble: it's swaggering, chain-smoking machismo appeals to my sensibilities. In that regard, I'm with Joel.

Uh-oh,

Looks like someone is CATFOTFIC.

my first thought was have it play tic-tac-toe until it becomes sentient.

To the contrary, Zuzu: in my experience, tic-tac-toe makes one less sentient.

Has someone coded up a program mimicking the infine monkey theorem? That might make it eventually sentient. Or at least, perhaps, eloquent.

Permanent BOINC box for SETI@Home et al.

See how long before the poor thing implodes.

@3:

That's particularly true for the OED, which these days is more of a self-styled "comprehensive history of the English language" rather than any kind of pragmatic reference tool.

The prescriptive vs. descriptive scuffle never tires, though, and I'm not immune: I still get riled up when I hear "impact" used as a verb.

@72, Pyros:

Don't worry-- the "W: Still the President!" stickers are still around. After a measured observational study, I've taken to labeling a number of cars on the road as "BMW:Ws" - BMWs with the "W" sticker in the window.

By the way, I have nothing to add to the discussion on torture and the logical fallacies utilized; they've already been busted with gusto. Cheers, Pyros and others.

Yes, this is far from a wonderful thing.

I love gaming, and I particularly love the lexicon associated with it. This is the most superficial mention of the subculture's rich emoticon vocabulary that I can fathom. Not to mention, the bigoted discussion of "gay elves" from the linked blog is pure stereotype and not something I care to peruse.

As if that weren't enough, C.D. jumped in after 8 minutes flat to defend this lackluster post of a lackluster write-up on "lessthanthree."