What  a great idea.

Gotta love Australians.

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We like wood. Wood is good.

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In case you can’t think of anything better to do while waiting for breakfast.

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Just in case you were wondering. I know I was.

Warmly glowing gold,
What gives it that autumn hue?
Relativity.

Check it out.

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For people with nothing better to do with their time.

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Why Brits just can say ’49 pounds’ escapes me. But that’s a huge fargin rabbit.

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Because I want you all to get arteriosclerosis and die. But happy.

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Just in case you were wondering. I know I was.

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As is true in most times of structural change, those who figure it out (or stumble on the right answer due to a happy accident, which happens far more often – go, Darwin) will make money and survive, and the rest will fall off the cliff yelling on the way down, ‘But he doesn’t know the territory!’

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But it’s off-Broadway, so nobody cares.

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If you think about it for a moment, you’ll figure out the source of this seeming paradox (although this simple insight did not occur to anyone before Feld published his paper in 1991).  You are more likely to be friends with someone who has more friends than with someone who has fewer friends. There are 12 people who have a friend who has 12 friends, but there is only one person who has a friend who has only one friend.  And, of course, there is no one who has a friend who doesn’t have any friend.  Yet there is actually only one person who has 12 friends.  So “12” gets counted only once when you compute the average number of friends that people have, but it gets counted 12 times when you compute the average number of friends that their friends have.  Hence the seeming paradox that your friends have more friends than you do.

Happy to be here, dragging down the average for everybody.

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Just sayin’.

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Just in case you were wondering. I know I was.

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The pineberry is white and covered in red pips and has the same genetic make-up as the common strawberry but with a flavour and ”extraordinary” smell closer to that of the pineapple, Waitrose said.

The pineberry originated in South America as a wild variety of strawberry but was threatened with extinction until seven years ago when Dutch farmers began growing it commercially, according to the retailer.

This would make a great heraldic charge.

I sense a new liqueur on the horizon.

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I hate it when that happens.

Virtual tour

WARNING: Lots of data. LOTS of data. For fast connections or Very Patient People only.

But it’s certainly gorgeous.

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Validation! What would we do without scientists?

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Well, duh. The scandal is that it took this long to find a judge with some common sense.

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Just in case you were wondering. I know I was.

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Don’t say we never have useful stuff here.

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Hey, life is what happens while you’re busy crafting theories….

Some Informative Charts.

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We have the technology.

Gotta love Australians.

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And there was much rejoicing.

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Sorry, two wheels do not a stable firing platform make.

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By ‘jobs’ of course they mean ‘non-government jobs’.

Unionized workers receive considerably more generous retirement benefits, averaging $2.42 an hour, than nonunion workers, who get just 75 cents an hour. State and local government workers receive $3.19 an hour toward retirement benefits.

As John Derbyshire never ceases to say, ‘Get a government job!’

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First, it alleges that Congress, in passing the bill, overstepped its authority; that the Commerce Clause of the Constitution does not grant Congress the power to pass so sweeping a law;

Second, the plaintiffs allege something we, frankly, didn’t see coming — that the bill deprives the states a “Republican Form of Government,” in violation of Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution;

Third, it asserts that in passing the law, the feds have encroached on state sovereignty, in violation of the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution;

Fourth, it alleges that the provision of the bill mandating that all Americans purchase health care or be fined constitutes an unconstitutional tax that violates Article I, Sections 2 and 9.

Well, that didn’t take long. Of course, under the old system, whereby the Senators were chosen by the state legislatures rather than the rabble, this health care takeover would have been laughed out of the Senate. (As, indeed, much of the stupider Federal legislation of the past 80 years would have been.)

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The researchers said lung cancer in non-smokers was an increasing problem but the causes were not well understood.

Not according to the second-hand-smoke nanny-staters.

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And it doesn’t even require you to eat cheese and surrender.

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Well. Better late than never, I suppose. Still, these days, it’s a victory.

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Wouldn’t it be nice to have a grownup to vote for?

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Hey, don’t say we never have useful stuff here.

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Just in case you were wondering. I know I was.

Hey, tenure doesn’t grow on trees.

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Lose a limb? Walk it off.

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Most of them once members of the Soviet Politburo….

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Just in case you were wondering. I know I was.

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Quite a lot, according to rabid right-wing Tea-Party activist Larry Summers — oh, wait….

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“Moringa oleifera is a vegetable tree which is grown in Africa, Central and South America, the Indian subcontinent, and South East Asia. It could be considered to be one of the world’s most useful trees,” says Michael Lea, a Canadian water-purification researcher. “Perhaps most importantly, its seeds can be used to purify drinking water at virtually no cost.”

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Gotta love Australians.

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Well. There it is.

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The fundamental difference between the sexes.

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Well, I thought it was interesting.

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And about fargin time, too. One of the things I’ve been waiting for is the development of sophisticated simulation environments that will allow people to practice useful skills in a realistic environment to give them a leg up when they get into the Real Thing. Aircraft flight simulators have made huge strides in this regard, and some would say that high-end computer games have given us a reserve pool of potential tank gunners and fighter pilots the way life on the prairie gave us a huge pool of potential infantry riflemen during the 20th century. (We still have a long way to go — how many people were not surprised when, in THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING, the party in Moria, surrounded by orcs, stood around and waited for whatever it was that had scared off the orcs. I was bouncing up and down in my seat: GUYS, IF THE ORCS ARE RUNNING THEN YOU OUGHT TO BE RUNNING TOO. DON’T JUST STAND THERE WITH YOUR THUMBS UP YOUR BUTTS. But nobody listens to me….)

So this is a welcome development.