>> ^xxovercastxx:

What people don't seem to realize is that Atkins is starvation with a full belly. Yes, if you reduce your useable energy intake to zero, you'll quickly start dropping fat... and muscle... and whatever else your body can break down to fill the gap.
When you go back to eating normally, you'll probably pack it right back on. That's how our bodies generally respond to starvation.
The real kicker is how many people think carbs are unhealthy as a result of this stupid diet.
Back around 2000 when I was sick with an ulcer, acid reflux, and a generally uncooperative GI tract, I was telling someone about how I ate a lot of plain pasta because it never irritated my gut, it was reasonably healthy, and at least I was eating something. I was about 40lbs underweight at this point, so I had to take what I could get. Someone overheard me and said, "Oh, all those carbs are really unhealthy."


It's not starvation - fat has twice as much 'usable energy' as carbohydrates have per gram. Your mind will tell you it's starving for the first few days, because it takes time to build up enough enzymes to efficiently process the different form of energy than it usually gets, but it all ends up as ATP eventually. You're probably right about some people thinking carbs are bad because of this diet, but that's assuming they treat the diet like a religion and don't look at any other information, which is not going to be the case for everyone - and heck, quite a few of the sources of easily available carbs these days are pretty horribawful.

Also, if you look at the research, those participants in low carb/high fat/adequate protein diets usually fair just as good, or better than, high carb participants in terms of keeping the weight off after the diet is over.

What people don't seem to realize is that Atkins is starvation with a full belly. Yes, if you reduce your useable energy intake to zero, you'll quickly start dropping fat... and muscle... and whatever else your body can break down to fill the gap.

When you go back to eating normally, you'll probably pack it right back on. That's how our bodies generally respond to starvation.

The real kicker is how many people think carbs are unhealthy as a result of this stupid diet.

Back around 2000 when I was sick with an ulcer, acid reflux, and a generally uncooperative GI tract, I was telling someone about how I ate a lot of plain pasta because it never irritated my gut, it was reasonably healthy, and at least I was eating something. I was about 40lbs underweight at this point, so I had to take what I could get. Someone overheard me and said, "Oh, all those carbs are really unhealthy."

The question with global warming to me is, are we even capable of reducing emissions and would we still be able to afford to feed ourselves if we did to the level it would require to reverse it.

Can't stand to read much on it because it's usually non-quantified changes they tell everyone to make, and you have to wade through all the nuts discussing it on both sides. There's almost no "practicality-tempered view" in everything that comes out.

IE
If we all are expected to take public transport, are they going to build public transport, is it going to be so restrictive as to be worthless? Or so costly as to be useless?

If we all are expected to get electric cars, how will we pay for them? How long do current one's last? If it's less than 10 years, how is it cost effective in both the monetary and environmental sense to replace a car that often?

Why do we have manufacturing laws that allow companies to pump out stuff that breaks and is too costly to repair creating a system of replacing whatever every 1-3 years? I've had these microwaves, the POSes don't even last 5 years, where my grandmother had one from the 80s that still works today. Granted it takes forever to nuke something, but good lord, not even getting a 5 year average out of microwaves is piss. And then we have cell phones, those things get replaced more than underwear by some people. Computers have mostly slowed down, where you don't need a new computer every 3-5 years to do simple things.....but you know we got a load of tube monitors and old computers just sitting wherever or shipped wherever because there is nothing to be done with them in the US...charities won't even take OLD machines most the time.

And is the environment impact greater importing things from China or manufacturing them here so they travel less distance and hopefully have better environment protections and more efficiency in place? It's certainly more economically sound, in the short term at least, to ship everything from China. But if we're going to do global warming fixes and this is one.......it would be a huge boon to the US population to actually have an abundance of jobs return. PLUS they can hopefully be told they have to make no planned obsolete cheap-shit products to fill the junkyards and landfills and require a new one to be made like is currently going on.

Got a fridge a few years back, it is craptacular compared to the fridge it replaced that was like 10-15 years old. Sure it keeps food cold, but it's ice maker sucks, it's been "repaired" at least twice and it still sucks. And again, the grandmother's fridge...no ice maker, but it still works to this day and it's an 80s model.

None of this can be productive. Like cash for clunkers......was it really productive destroying that many cars when you'd just have to make new ones to fill that gap? And the people who have old cars and couldn't afford to get new ones?....they still have old cars, perhaps worse than if they had bought one of those clunkers. They were purposefully destroying the motors in those cash for clunker cars by running the motors without oil until they froze, that is not good for the environment and has no productive worth.

When they start to explain things in terms you can look at your own house and property and say, you know...that does need replaced and it'll be so much better because it's guaranteed to perform better and not need replacing for 5-10 years with regular maintenance due the new standards.

>> ^blackoreb:

You are out of date with your stereotypes - it has been a while since American cars have sucked. Quality has improved dramatically of late. And improved quality is a contributing factor in the slow-down of the industry. Americans replace their cars less frequently than in the past (a trend that predates 2008).
GM consistently outsells Ford, so your vote-with-our-wallets argument does not work.
Ford would have gone bankrupt in 2006 if it hadn't gotten a $23.5 billion government loan. Since it was a loan Ford now has more debt than its peers. Ford was not in a position financially to "grow to fill the gap".
The domestic automotive business accounts for nearly a million jobs, concentrated in just 3 states. Losing those jobs, even for a year or two while the economy adapted, would have sucked so so bad.

They may not be at their lowest point but I'm not convinced American cars are all that great yet. My mother bought a brand new 2012 Ford Edge in November and I've driven it a few times. It's typical poorly designed, shoddy American craftsmanship.

I don't understand your point about GM outselling Ford and how that invalidates anything I said. Please explain.

I'm under the impression that the 2006 Ford deal was a bank mortgage. Please explain if I'm wrong.

To add anecdotal evidence. Chinese love american cars. You can see them all over Beijing being driven by the well-to-do. Some women lose their minds over them (in the end of the vid, you can hear the guy give in ("I'll buy it!!") and hand the guy his credit card to stop his girlfriend's tantrum): >> ^blackoreb:

You are out of date with your stereotypes - it has been a while since American cars have sucked. Quality has improved dramatically of late. And improved quality is a contributing factor in the slow-down of the industry. Americans replace their cars less frequently than in the past (a trend that predates 2008).
GM consistently outsells Ford, so your vote-with-our-wallets argument does not work.
Ford would have gone bankrupt in 2006 if it hadn't gotten a $23.5 billion government loan. Since it was a loan Ford now has more debt than its peers. Ford was not in a position financially to "grow to fill the gap".
The domestic automotive business accounts for nearly a million jobs, concentrated in just 3 states. Losing those jobs, even for a year or two while the economy adapted, would have sucked so so bad.

>> ^xxovercastxx:
...But I still would have preferred we let these companies fail, or they pick themselves up and turn things around like Ford did.
American cars have sucked for 20+ years now. They couldn't compete on a level playing field so we put tariffs on foreign cars to artificially raise their prices. On a slanted playing field, American cars still can't compete. Why? Because, overall, they're garbage; that's why.
We already voted to let them go out of business by not buying their cars...

You are out of date with your stereotypes - it has been a while since American cars have sucked. Quality has improved dramatically of late. And improved quality is a contributing factor in the slow-down of the industry. Americans replace their cars less frequently than in the past (a trend that predates 2008).

GM consistently outsells Ford, so your vote-with-our-wallets argument does not work.

Ford would have gone bankrupt in 2006 if it hadn't gotten a $23.5 billion government loan. Since it was a loan Ford now has more debt than its peers. Ford was not in a position financially to "grow to fill the gap".

The domestic automotive business accounts for nearly a million jobs, concentrated in just 3 states. Losing those jobs, even for a year or two while the economy adapted, would have sucked so so bad.


>> ^xxovercastxx:

...But I still would have preferred we let these companies fail, or they pick themselves up and turn things around like Ford did.
American cars have sucked for 20+ years now. They couldn't compete on a level playing field so we put tariffs on foreign cars to artificially raise their prices. On a slanted playing field, American cars still can't compete. Why? Because, overall, they're garbage; that's why.
We already voted to let them go out of business by not buying their cars...

Since the bailouts did happen, I'm glad they worked, because the worst case scenario obviously would have been that we dumped millions of dollars into these companies and they still tanked.

But I still would have preferred we let these companies fail, or they pick themselves up and turn things around like Ford did.

American cars have sucked for 20+ years now. They couldn't compete on a level playing field so we put tariffs on foreign cars to artificially raise their prices. On a slanted playing field, American cars still can't compete. Why? Because, overall, they're garbage; that's why.

We already voted to let them go out of business by not buying their cars. Anyone who steps in and says, "No, I'm sure you all really want the exact opposite of what you said, so we're going to loan them your money." is totally out of line. No means no.

Would it have hurt the job market to let them die? Yes, unquestionably. But the demand for cars does not decrease because companies go out of business. If GM and Chrysler sank, it would have been a huge opportunity for Ford to grow to fill the gap. Toyota, Honda, Kia, Mazda, Hyundai, Mitsubishi, and Nissan all have American plants as well, so jobs lost to foreign manufacturers aren't necessarily lost to foreign workers.

Even when I was in high school in the late 80's there was a definite attitude of 'those aren't cut out for college do the menial work.' We have a real campaign for college educations in this country (and of course all the big business that goes along with that) and have shoved all other necessary professions to the way side, suggesting them only to the kids in remedial classes, etc. It's a major issue. Some say the illegals are filling that gap but it's not true. They simply don't have the training for the real work that needs to be done.

As others have said as well, it's not like these are low paying jobs either. A skill welder can live very comfortably, as can a plumber, or a mason, or any skilled laborer. And for those that say we cant afford to spend the money, to add to the deficit, the money that would be required for this would be miniscule compared to the trillions we've given the banks, etc.

>> ^ChaosEngine:

>> ^ridesallyridenc:
Am I the only one here that thinks these people are useless? See a problem, sit around and do nothing. Ask for more stuff. Play the victim and "raise awareness." Right.
How about going out and starting a company and affecting change in a tangible way? How about creating jobs for your friends and giving back to society?

How will starting a company and creating, let's be generous here, ~20 jobs affect the situation?
The problem is that the big banks have been allowed do whatever the fuck they want (with the collusion of the government). Creating a company won't change that.


Small businesses are job creators. Office of Advocacy funded data and research shows that small businesses represent 99.7 percent of all firms, they create more than half of the private non-farm gross domestic product, and they create 60 to 80 percent of the net new jobs.

People don't want to do business with these large companies anymore. There is demand for small, responsible companies to fill the gap. Picketing them does nothing. Government regulation does little long-term. Stealing money out of their pockets by providing competition drives them to compete on your terms and operate in a more ethical manner.

If you desire for the previous company or the Government to pick up insurance during a period of time after getting laid off or fired is one thing. That would be a kind thing to do.
To be able to fill the gap for 6 months or a year then may be I would be OK with that. Even though its wrong, I could go along with that.

But if you can't find a job in a year than you are lazy bastard who is not willing to do what ever to takes to find employment. I moved 4 times for 4 new jobs. There is only a few of us per state. So When I need another job it means moving. It sucks but that life. If you do not want to pack up and move for a job why should we the people carry you? There are Millions of jobs available and you only need 1. Just one and only 1

>> ^Hybrid:

Breaking News: The News of the World newspaper is being shut down. Last issue this weekend. The UK's biggest newspaper, having run for 168 years, being shut down over this scandal.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14070733


The Murdochs are worried by how far this one is backfiring on them. So they'll 'close' the paper mostly staffed by people who weren't there when all this hacking happened. They'll reassign the writers (not journalists) which they want to keep elsewhere, and probably expand another of their titles to fill the gap.

Complete PR exercise.

The gaps are fundemental..here are some more quotes:

"Given the fact of evolution, one would expect the fossils to document a gradual steady change from ancestral forms to the descendants. But this is not what the paleontologist finds. Instead, he or she finds gaps in just about every phyletic series." (Ernst Mayr-Professor Emeritus, Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University, What Evolution Is, 2001, p.14.)

"All paleontologists know that the fossil record contains precious little in the way of intermediate forms; transitions between major groups are characteristically abrupt. Gradualists usually extract themselves from this dilemma by invoking the extreme imperfection of the fossil record." (Gould, Stephen J. The Panda’s Thumb, 1980, p. 189.)

"What is missing are the many intermediate forms hypothesized by Darwin, and the continual divergence of major lineages into the morphospace between distinct adaptive types." (Carroll, Robert L., "Towards a new evolutionary synthesis," in Trends in Evolution and Ecology 15(1):27-32, 2000, p. 27.)

"Given that evolution, according to Darwin, was in a continual state of motion ...it followed logically that the fossil record should be rife with examples of transitional forms leading from the less to more evolved. ...Instead of filling the gaps in the fossil record with so-called missing links, most paleontologists found themselves facing a situation in which there were only gaps in the fossil record, with no evidence of transformational evolutionary intermediates between documented fossil species." (Schwartz, Jeffrey H., Sudden Origins, 1999, p. 89.)

"He [Darwin] prophesied that future generations of paleontologists would fill in these gaps by diligent search....It has become abundantly clear that the fossil record will not confirm this part of Darwin's predictions. Nor is the problem a miserably poor record. The fossil record simply shows that this prediction was wrong." (Eldridge, Niles, The Myths of Human Evolution, 1984, pp.45-46.)

"There is no need to apologize any longer for the poverty of the fossil record. In some ways it has become almost unmanageably rich, and discovery is out-pacing integration...The fossil record nevertheless continues to be composed mainly of gaps." (George, T. Neville, "Fossils in Evolutionary Perspective," Science Progress, vol. 48 January 1960, pp. 1-3.)

"Despite the bright promise - that paleontology provides a means of ‘seeing’ evolution, it has presented some nasty difficulties for evolutionists the most notorious of which is the presence of 'gaps' in the fossil record. Evolution requires intermediate forms between species and paleontology does not provide them. The gaps must therefore be a contingent feature of the record." (Kitts, David B., "Paleontology and Evolutionary Theory," Evolution, vol. 28, 1974, p. 467.)

"It is interesting that all the cases of gradual evolution that we know about from the fossil record seem to involve smooth changes without the appearance of novel structures and functions." (Wills, C., Genetic Variability, 1989, p. 94-96.)

"So the creationist prediction of systematic gaps in the fossil record has no value in validating the creationist model, since the evolution theory makes precisely the same prediction." (Weinberg, S., Reviews of Thirty-one Creationist Books, 1984, p.

"We seem to have no choice but to invoke the rapid divergence of populations too small to leave legible fossil records." (Stanley, S.M., The New Evolutionary Timetable: Fossils, Genes, and the Origin of Species, 1981, p. 99.)

"For over a hundred years paleontologists have recognized the large number of gaps in the fossil record. Creationists make it seem like gaps are a deep, dark secret of paleontology..." (Cracraft, in Awbrey & Thwaites, Evolutionists Confront Creationists", 1984.)

"Instead of finding the gradual unfolding of life, what geologists of Darwin’s time, and geologists of the present day actually find is a highly uneven or jerky record; that is, species appear in the sequence very suddenly, show little or no change during their existence in the record, then abruptly go out of the record. and it is not always clear, in fact it’s rarely clear, that the descendants were actually better adapted than their predecessors. In other words, biological improvement is hard to find." (Raup, David M., "Conflicts Between Darwin and Paleontology," Bulletin, Field Museum of Natural History, vol. 50, 1979, p. 23.)

Chicago Field Museum, Prof. of Geology, Univ. of Chicago, "A large number of well-trained scientists outside of evolutionary biology and paleontology have unfortunately gotten the idea that the fossil record is far more Darwinian than it is. This probably comes from the oversimplification inevitable in secondary sources: low-level textbooks, semi-popular articles, and so on. Also, there is probably some wishful thinking involved. In the years after Darwin, his advocates hoped to find predictable progressions. In general, these have not been found yet the optimism has died hard, and some pure fantasy has crept into textbooks...One of the ironies of the creation evolution debate is that the creationists have accepted the mistaken notion that the fossil record shows a detailed and orderly progression and they have gone to great lengths to accommodate this 'fact' in their Flood (Raup, David, "Geology" New Scientist, Vol. 90, p.832, 1981.)

"As we shall see when we take up the creationist position, there are all sorts of gaps: absence of graduationally intermediate ‘transitional’ forms between species, but also between larger groups -- between say, families of carnivores, or the orders of mammals. In fact, the higher up the Linnaean hierarchy you look, the fewer transitional forms there seem to be." (Eldredge, Niles, The Monkey Business: A Scientist Looks at Creationism, 1982, p. 65-66.)

"Transitions between major groups of organisms . . . are difficult to establish in the fossil record." (Padian, K., The Origin of Turtles: One Fewer Problem for Creationists, 1991, p. 18.)

"A persistent problem in evolutionary biology has been the absence of intermediate forms in the fossil record. Long term gradual transformations of single lineages are rare and generally involve simple size increase or trivial phenotypic effects. Typically, the record consists of successive ancestor-descendant lineages, morphologically invariant through time and unconnected by intermediates." (Williamson, P.G., Palaeontological Documentation of Speciation in Cenozoic Molluscs from Turkana Basin, 1982, p. 163.)

"What one actually found was nothing but discontinuities: All species are separated from each other by bridgeless gaps; intermediates between species are not observed . . . The problem was even more serious at the level of the higher categories." (Mayr, E., Animal Species and Evolution, 1982, p. 524.)

"The known fossil record is not, and never has been, in accord with gradualism. What is remarkable is that, through a variety of historical circumstances, even the history of opposition has been obscured . . . ‘The majority of paleontologists felt their evidence simply contradicted Darwin’s stress on minute, slow, and cumulative changes leading to species transformation.’ . . . their story has been suppressed." (Stanley, S.M., The New Evolutionary Timetable, 1981, p. 71.)

"One must acknowledge that there are many, many gaps in the fossil record . . . There is no reason to think that all or most of these gaps will be bridged." (Ruse, "Is There a Limit to Our Knowledge of Evolution," 1984, p.101.)

"We are faced more with a great leap of faith . . . that gradual progressive adaptive change underlies the general pattern of evolutionary change we see in the rocks . . . than any hard evidence." (Eldredge, N. and Tattersall, I., The Myths of Human Evolution, 1982, p. 57.)

"Gaps between families and taxa of even higher rank could not be so easily explained as the mere artifacts of a poor fossil record." (Eldredge, Niles, Macro-Evolutionary Dynamics: Species, Niches, and Adaptive Peaks, 1989, p.22.)

"To explain discontinuities, Simpson relied, in part, upon the classical argument of an imperfect fossil record, but concluded that such an outstanding regularity could not be entirely artificial." (Gould, Stephen J., "The Hardening of the Modern Synthesis," 1983, p. 81.)

"The record jumps, and all the evidence shows that the record is real: the gaps we see reflect real events in life’s history - not the artifact of a poor fossil record." (Eldredge, N. and Tattersall, I., The Myths of Human Evolution, 1982, p. 59.)

"The fossil record flatly fails to substantiate this expectation of finely graded change." (Eldredge, N. and Tattersall, I., The Myths of Human Evolution, 1982, p. 163.)

"Gaps in the fossil record - particularly those parts of it that are most needed for interpreting the course of evolution - are not surprising." (Stebbins, G. L., Darwin to DNA, Molecules to Humanity, 1982, p. 107.)

"The fossil record itself provided no documentation of continuity - of gradual transition from one animal or plant to another of quite different form." (Stanley, S.M., The New Evolutionary Timetable: Fossils, Genes and the Origin of Species, 1981, p. 40.)

"The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major transitions in organic design, indeed our inability, even in our imagination, to construct functional intermediates in many cases, has been a persistent and nagging problem for gradualistic accounts of evolution." (Gould, Stephen J., "Is a New and General Theory of Evolution Emerging?," 1982, p. 140.)

"The lack of ancestral or intermediate forms between fossil species is not a bizarre peculiarity of early metazoan history. Gaps are general and prevalent throughout the fossil record." (Raff R.A, and Kaufman, T.C., Embryos, Genes, and Evolution: The Developmental-Genetic Basis of Evolutionary Change, 1991, p. 34.)

"Gaps between higher taxonomic levels are general and large." (Raff R.A, and Kaufman, T.C., Embryos, Genes, and Evolution: The Developmental-Genetic Basis of Evolutionary Change, 1991, p. 35.)

"We have so many gaps in the evolutionary history of life, gaps in such key areas as the origin of the multicellular organisms, the origin of the vertebrates, not to mention the origins of most invertebrate groups." (McGowan, C., In the Beginning . . . A Scientist Shows Why Creationists are Wrong, 1984, p. 95.)

"If life had evolved into its wondrous profusion of creatures little by little, Dr. Eldredge argues, then one would expect to find fossils of transitional creatures which were a bit like what went before them and a bit like what came after. But no one has yet found any evidence of such transitional creatures. This oddity has been attributed to gaps in the fossil record which gradualists expected to fill when rock strata of the proper age had been found. In the last decade, however, geologists have found rock layers of all divisions of the last 500 million years and no transitional forms were contained in them. If it is not the fossil record which is incomplete then it must be the theory." (The Guardian Weekly, 26 Nov 1978, vol. 119, no 22, p. 1.)

“People and advertising copywriters tend to see human evolution as a line stretching from apes to man, into which one can fit new-found fossils as easily as links in a chain. Even modern anthropologists fall into this trap . . .[W]e tend to look at those few tips of the bush we know about, connect them with lines, and make them into a linear sequence of ancestors and descendants that never was. But it should now be quite plain that the very idea of the missing link, always shaky, is now completely untenable.” (Gee, Henry, "Face of Yesterday,” The Guardian, Thursday July 11, 2002.)

>> ^Drax:
Shiny, it's kind of like you're saying,
Ok, we have: . -> O
And you say, ah! But there's no transitional species that spans the gap of . and O
Then we find . -> o -> O
And you say, ah! But there's no transitional species that spans the gap of . and o
or o and O
Basically, the more evidence we find.. the stronger your argument gets! <IMG class=smiley src="http://cdn.videosift.com/cdm/emoticon/oh.gif">
ok, that last part's just a joke.. but seriously.. the other parts ARE your stance.
It's either that, or you're looking at o and e and expecting to find æ, which just doesn't happen.

"Lettuce" was Lonely Island's first ever SNL Digital Short. Here is an excerpt of a magazine interview with Andy Samberg talking about how it came about:

from Wired Magazine interview May 2011: "The producers... told us they were always looking for pretape material to change over the sets and costumes. We went out with Will Forte and did the first digital short, which was "Lettuce", basically a very dramatic conversation conducted while really vigorously eating giant heads of lettuce. We brought it in, showed it to them, and they said, "Yeah, maybe." They put it in dress, it got laughs. Then they put if on air. For them, it was incredibly cost-effective, and it filled that gap." And a legend is born....

>> ^Yogi:

It's amazing how perceptive, funny, and intelligent Brian Williams can be...and yet still I couldn't watch his program without stabbing forks in my eyes. How can you be this way and not see that your own network...your own show is soo full of shit?


I think he's like this because of the people that surround him; how could you not be. I would also try to make many a joke that they don't understand unless they look up a turn of phrase--on their iPad (a glorified non-cellphone/unless you really need/want to spend that much money on one-"buggy and slow"-device).

Yes, I've used my Dad's. It certainly has some nifty features (which have all been invented or used already), but since it's Apple and it has the name i"x", it must be a game changing, revolutionary, cutting edge, never crashes, solves: world hunger, bi-polar, cancer, Fox News, heralds baby Jesus's return to Earth in North Western Missouri; and it has a shelf/I'm mean battery life of 30.62 days--or so I've heard.

It was semi-slow (that wasn't very surprising); slow in two departments: switching and starting between and new apps or processes. Second, the Wi-Fi connection was flaky (either not downloading or when downloading, even including the occasional burst speeds, it averaged 22 KBps (as I say below it should at least be going 100-200 KBps [this is still incredibly slow], as his connection has a download rate of 1.2-1.5 MBps). I'll play with that a bit more (as I think it may have been the wireless router as he has a 14-Megabit connection).

The games were fun and a few of the apps were great. But, I'd rather have a lightweight fully functional notebook PC with a 16:9 screen, atleast 720p, and a fully customizable network adapter. ...And to be blunt, I'd much rather have Windows 7 or even Vista (fully patched), as both have great functionality and support plus their 64-Bit support is great. Plus I can put in a full Blu-Ray drive that comes with PowerDVD.

Better applications, better games and support. Yes, this is an anti-apple rant as I think all of their once "highly revered" features: functionality, non-crashing, no hacking (hah!), graphical editing applications (which is a "contract" feature), sound editing applications (same as the last), and it's "ease-of-use" (which is now a completely moot point). Apple is still successful, because they find niche products that do well; like the Nintendo DS. The iPod (although the screens break a bit to early, my only complaint) and the iPhone are great products and fill a gap in a niche market. The iPad does the same thing, but from what I've tried it needed another year (plus some spec changes like a 16:9 screen going up to 720p (which is HD not this stupid licensing agreement so they can use the logo on a nice, but NOT HD screen (I think it's XGA or 1024x768), a connection port that could handle a multitude of devices: usb, 1394, ethernet, gamepads, speakers, etc I know it does some of this already, especially in the bluetooth department.

But, I feel that it should have come with the large flash/ssd drive, cell phone features (which they do have, it just costs an arm and a leg), more functionality for the "touch pen" (some mouse-like buttons etc...), FLASH & FULL browser SUPPORT (not having flash, plus other regular features "kills it" in a lot of ways)--Apple has to have their money/way though; I don't think they've got any clue when they shoot themselves in the foot), and a slightly faster (or duo-core) processor to help the experience feel more smooth; they have a: "1GHz Apple A4 custom-designed chip" were as a Intel Atom that has an nVidia extension may have been a better choice (I'm not to sure about battery usage for these guys, but from the devices it was used in it wasn't too bad).

So in the end (damn this was WAY longer than expected) I think they should have refined it for another year. Got some REAL user feedback; give it to people that don't work for the ass-kissing mainstream Apple press-core (yes, I'm talking about the likes of Engadget). Then, actually work on their gripes! People already seem willing to pay an arm and a leg for their stuff, so if the price goes up one-hundred, don't worry all your loyal'ii will still buy it. Anyway...this didn't happen, so I was left feeling underwhelmed by it and would instead by a nice laptop.

BTW, Brian Williams is the shit!

/This post may seem anti=Apple and in a lot of ways it is, but I would like them to make a good tablet (or awesome tablet--if they'd pull their collective heads out of their asses). It seems to me that any company, right now, that takes some time and makes a fast, reliable, easy-to-use, with 720p (and lots of video/codecs support)...will destroy Apple's iPad longterm (right now I just see Android tablets, but the ones I've seen are underwhelming).

//If someone has seen a good tablet coming out that has some of the features that I'm talking about, please throw in a reply.

For those are unknowing in the ways of the pan:

"Food that sticks is caused by chemical bonds that form between the food and the material of the pan - almost always a metal. These bonds may be relatively weak van der Waals forces or covalent bonds. Protein-rich foods are particularly prone to sticking because the proteins can form complexes with metal atoms, such as iron, in the pan.

The oil, being liquid, fills in the valleys and caves of the pan surface. Although the pan may look smooth at a microscopic level the surface of even the smoothest metal pan looks rough with hills, valleys and even caves. Hot oil is more viscous than cold oil and will immediately flow filling the gaps.

When oil in the pan gets hot enough a steam effect begins to occur ---

"A small amount of oil added to a very hot pan almost instantly becomes very hot oil. The oil quickly sears the outside of the food and causes water to be released from the food. This layer of water vapor ("steam") lifts the food atop the oil film and keeps it from touching the hot pan surface. If the oil is not hot enough, the steam effect will not occur and the food will fuse to the (too) cool pan surface." Source: Ask a Scientist, Newton BBC" Source