Here’s another survival tip for the teenagers out there:

If your father is monitoring the on-line activity you and your siblings do via parental controls and logging, do not try to circumvent them. Especially if you are using your sister’s log-in and password to circumvent them. And using said unauthorized access to go to adult web sites. On a weekend where your sister is not home.

Not smart. Not smart at all.

A British company is working on new seating designs that would cram even more people into an airliner. People on the outside would face in, people on the inside would face back to back, which means a good fraction of the passengers would be riding backwards. Air sickness bags, anyone?

Apparently RyanAir, the Irish equivalent of Southwest, is considering a new design that would put passengers into a standing position throughout the flight. Again, this would allow them to pack us in even tighter.

To me, passenger airlines are in a race to the bottom. Prices are usually high if you want to go anywhere even remotely interesting during a time that is right to travel. You don’t get fed, and they probably don’t offer a glass of water unless you pay through the nose for it. Direct flights are almost a distant memory, so you’re stopping at least twice for a flight of any measurable distance.

Other than it not taking days to get across the country, how is this different from taking the bus or the train?

The pig eyed sack of chicken waste that raped and murdered a teenage girl in Iraq after killing the rest of her family has been given several lifetime sentences to sit and think about what he did. Of course, he’s showing no real remorse and blames the Army on him leaving his post, killing a family, and raping a woman before he killed her.

He’s lucky he didn’t go before a military jury. Military juries, especially if an enlisted person requests that other enlisted personnel be on his jury, are very hard on people who desert their post in wartime to commit rape and murder. Interestingly enough, enlisted personnel tend to be harder on other enlisted’s than a panel purely of commissioned officers are.

This filth is an insult to every honorable person who ever wore the uniform. He got off light.

This idiot ought to have his Achilles tendons cut, then after he heals, he ought to be left alone and unguarded in the town he committed his crime in. Let the chips fall where they may after that.

Tam over at View From the Porch is talking about the scariness or lack thereof to be found in Stephen King novels.

I agree with her that Mr. King’s short stories were always better than his full length novels.

The exception to this was “Misery”. I read that book cover to cover over a snowy weekend when the base I was stationed at was shut down due to a blizzard and ice storm. So, a 20 year old man sits alone in a barracks room, while a howling ice storm rages outside, reading a scary novel about a man who’s locked in a cabin with a crazy woman.

Yeah, I didn’t sleep all weekend while I read that one.

Nike is making tinted contact lenses.

Apparently athletes wear these to either enhance colors they want to see, or to cut down on glare.

I’d love a pair of these for long drives or days at the range.

And the red ones would be good for those long adversarial meetings at work.

Here’s a survival tip for teenagers:

If your father is making you take a course in school that you don’t want to, it’s not a good idea to change your schedule to drop that course and take something else. Especially if said parent is going to open house and is told there about your little act of subterfuge.

Just a word to the wise that will keep a boot out of your ass.

OK, I come from a long line of large families. My grandfather had a whole bunch of kids. I’m the oldest of 5. I have 4.

But 19?

Double digit kids made sense when there was a really good chance they wouldn’t make it to adulthood and you needed help in the fields.

But how can this couple reasonably assume they can support, nurture, and properly raise that many kids?

Hey, it’s their life. But don’t expect me to think it’s a good freaking idea.

Now they’re mixing it with veterinarian anti-worm drugs to up the high. Apparently the stuff causes the immune system to suppress, making it easier to get infections and die. Not that cocaine wasn’t dangerous to use in the first place. Now they’re cutting it with something that just makes it even more deadly.

I’m not going to get into whether or not it’s any of the government’s business what an adult puts into their body, but stuff like this makes me lean towards legalization.

At least then it would be somewhat regulated and crap like that wouldn’t be in it.

One of the reasons that prohibition was repealed was to stop the flow of bad booze that was blinding and killing people.

If illicit drugs were legalized, at least they would have to go through the same purity laws and checks that currently legal drugs do.

John Scalzi over at AMC television has a good write-up of the more glaring technology and design problems in Star Trek.

Overall, it’s a fun read.

My favorite part of course was the comments:

Why do Star Trek captains have to say the log date themselves, instead of the computer auto-inserting it like any blog? Why does Picard have to keep saying “Tea, Earl Grey, Hot” ? Because they run Enterprise software.

OK, Favre looks pretty good so far. But he’s still playing the same way he did at Green Bay. Every now and then, just chunk it out 30 or 40 yards. Most times it’s incomplete. Sometimes a great catch is made. Sometimes you get picked off.

I’ll be impressed if he still plays well and looks good in late November. Right now he’s fresh and has adrenaline on his side. In a couple of months he’ll be beaten up and tired. Will he still have the ability and discipline to just chunk it out 30 yards?