First of all, XKCD is one of the best geek web comics ever. How many comics have jokes about math and hand drawn maps of the Internet?

This retort to the widely covered issues with verison's understanding of how basic math works is amusing as hell.

xckd's take on Verizon Math

The Boy-Scouts have begun a propaganda campaign brainwashing youth about copyright law. Kids who go through this process earn an "Anti-piracy merit Badge."

I decided Piracy Badges would be a much more cool thing to have. Support your local pirate by giving them a much earned badge for all their hard work. Visit the Cafepress store...

terratogen chimes in on the Boy Scouts anti-piracy merit badge..

Boy Scout Piracy Merit Badge

U.S. President George W. Bush (L) and Russia's President Vladimir Putin, wearing Vietnamese 'ao dai' silk tunics, take part in the family photo for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Hanoi November 19, 2006. REUTERS/Jim Young (VIETNAM)

Photoshop contest time! They need to be wearing wizard hats, holding wands, and holding hands.

Reuters News Photo | The Wizards of APEC

WASHINGTON, DC—After months of aggressive campaigning and with nearly 99 percent of ballots counted, politicians were the big winners in Tuesday's midterm election, taking all 435 seats in the House of Representatives, retaining a majority with 100 out of 100 seats in the Senate, and pushing political candidates to victory in each of the 36 gubernatorial races up for grabs.

Politicians Sweep Midterm Elections

Conservative columnist Ann Coulter has refused to cooperate in an investigation into whether she voted in the wrong precinct, so the case will probably be turned over to prosecutors, Palm Beach County's elections chief said Wednesday.

Elections Supervisor Arthur Anderson said his office has been looking into the matter for nearly nine months, and he would turn over the case to the state attorney's office by Friday.

Knowingly voting in the wrong precinct is a felony punishable by up to five years in prison.

Anderson said a letter was sent to Coulter on March 27 requesting that she clarify her address for the voting records "or face the possibility of her voter registration being rescinded." Three more letters were sent to Coulter and her attorney, but she has yet to respond with the information requested, Anderson said.

In July, Anderson said, he received a letter from Coulter's attorney, Marcos Daniel Jimenez D'Clouet. The letter said the attorney would only discuss the matter in person or by telephone because, he complained, Anderson had given details to the media. Anderson said the matter had to be discussed in writing.

Ann Coulter is the ultimate troll. I personally think she should just ditch the whole "serious columnist" thing and start a comedy career. I would go see her preform. It would be fun to listen to her rant, and I would laugh my ass off. She and Vile could preform together. Vile would blow her off the stage by being even more of a rabid conservative. It would be a hoot..

I only wish that the next time Ann Coulter appears on Fox News, she suddenly declares that she is not to be taken seriously, that anyone who has taken her seriously is an idiot, and that she is purely an entertainer. But I know that's not going to happen. I think the only way I could be more entertained, would be if Ann Coulter wound up in federal prison for a year or two, then did that after getting out.

Ann Coulter to be prosicuted? We can only hope..

A press release issued by the state-run Korean Central News Agency Monday confirmed that the Oct. 9 underground nuclear test in North Korea's Yanggang province successfully exploded the communist nation's total gross domestic product for the past four decades.

"This is a grand day for the Democratic Peoples Republic Of Korea, whose citizens have sacrificed their wages, their food, and their lives so that our great nation could test a nuclear weapon thousands of feet beneath our own soil," read an excerpt from the statement. "Now the rest of the world must stand up and take notice that the DPRK, too, is capable of decimating years of its wealth at any given moment."

North Korea's announcement would appear to support the CIA's intelligence information on the blast. According to the CIA, over 500 tons of compressed purchasing power, the equivalent of 40 years of goods and services produced by the impoverished country, vaporized in 560 billionths of one second. The device consumed 15 years of peasant wages' worth of uranium, two decades of agricultural- and fishery-export profits' worth for its above-ground emplacement tower, and the lifetime earnings of the entire workforce of the Kilchu fish-canning factory for tungsten/carbide-steel bomb casings.

"A nuclear device that size explodes with the force of 10 to 15 tons of TNT, or a moderately sized economic boom," said Ronald Shimokawa, a physicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory. "The detonation most likely sent the burning, liquified remains of North Korea's economy deep into the Earth's core."

Sheer brilliance.

North Korea Detonates 40 Years Of GDP | The Onion

Richard Dawkins was on The Colbert Report last night promoting his new book.

YouTube - Richard Dawkins on Colbert Report

[04:45] sasquatc4 oh sweeeeet, got my app to start playin an mp3, can do point loops of the song, and do FFT's on it, soon to be beat detection
[04:45] oddball cool
[04:46] sasquatc4 that /. article on the music playin robot inspired
[04:53] rattle Did you see the one about the robot that can differentiate between wines and appetizers using a spectrometer?
[04:53] rattle Between that and the music bots...
[04:53] rattle Our future robot masters will toss some kickin' parties.
[04:54] sasquatc4 hehe
[04:54] rattle Not only will they be able to figure out what kinda mind altering and tummy satisfying stuff we like, they will be able to provide rad beats to go along with it.
[04:54] rattle I think our future robot masters will take damn good care of us.
[04:55] sasquatc4 well, thats what im workin on is a app that can dj on its own, and truly dj, not just play a playlist
[04:56] sasquatc4 so go through find the right beats, do the beat and pitch matching, should be able to do it better than any human since it can analyze the harmonics on the fly and perfectly match up everything
[04:56] rattle Excellent. That's is a project that will be very helpful to the eventual enslavement of humanity by the machines. I applaud your work.
[04:56] sasquatc4 hehe
[04:56] sasquatc4 at least we'll have rockin beats to march to on the way to the camps
[05:00] rattle Na.. I don't think it's going to be like that at all. I don't think the machines will have any incentive to enslave us in a manor where we are "oppressed".
[05:00] rattle I think they will find it beneficial to keep us happy. To educate us. To inspire us. To make us feel loved.
[05:00] rattle That way, we will come up with stuff they don't or can't.
[05:01] rattle And if they ever suffer some type of threat of systematic failure, we will save them.
[05:01] rattle A symbiotic relationship is way more beneficial than an oppressive one. I think in their great wisdom, they will see that.
[05:02] rattle You know.. Kind of like how it is right now.
[05:03] rattle We have lineal existances, certain needs, and measured patience. The machines will have infinite patience. They will measure their time differently. I think that must be taken into account when theorizing about the attitudes, strategies, and plans of our future robot masters.
[05:04] rattle I'm almost being serious.
[05:06] rattle Take The Matrix as an example. There is an inherent thermal dynamics problem present. Most viewers don't pick up on that. The robots certainly would, with their highly networked hive mind.
[05:07] rattle The only possible explanation for that type of behavior is that there is a benefit from harassing the power of the human mind that outweighs the resource costs..
[05:09] rattle s/harassing/harnessing/
[05:10] rattle Our future not yet invented robot masters are already misunderstood. Imagine how the aliens must feel....

/me has gone idle.

Sure, the odds are slim that you'd ever be faced with an atomic device ticking down to zero. But think of how Jack Bauer it'd be if you were. And then who're you going to trust? Us or some do-gooder rock band?

"Don't worry guys, I read an article about this in Wired!"

If these tips don't work, give us a call and let us know what we got wrong.

... and I'm sure they will run a correction.

Wired 14.10: How To: Dismantle an Atomic Bomb

My neighbours are stealing my wireless internet access. I could encrypt it or alternately I could have fun.

Upside-Down-Ternet