If you're good, you can win most of the time, even with only a few starting circles darkened. The trick is not to try and guide the cat but to cut off its escape routes, which is completely contrary to what our instincts tell us.

This means you have to block the edge that the cat is heading toward. Another trick that will help is to realize that the cat always takes the shortest path available to any edge, even if that is not the smartest path to take. So you can sometimes deliberately leave one space open so that the cat will head towards it while you work on sealing up other exits. Then, when the cat is about to escape, close it off.

of post counts :)

artificial inflation

Hopefully this doesn't lead to

It takes some careful, careful brewing, but you can coax high alcohol % by keeping the yeast on the brink of starvation, adding your fermentable sugars gradually.

Plus, professional brewers like Sam Adams can get their hands on pretty damn good yeast to start with.

some discussion here: http://ratebeer.com/Forums/Topic-36553.htm

Is this list for the convenience of those who like Christmas music, or for those who don't?

Some of these remind me of Monty Python animations.

Bah! They couldn't have picked a worse game to capture! Unless you're a no-good Packers fan or something...

I made it to level 11. My strategy was to click as fast as possible in the general area of the location... I didn't really pay attention to the scores to see whether time spent pinpointing the spot was worth it in terms of points. My guess is no.

There's a 2-player game that's almost identical and has been around for a while: Geosense

Yeah, the fallacy here is neglecting to account for the probabilities of these outcomes happening. Risk = odds of outcome*cost of outcome.

So let's assign an arbitrary large cost to the end of the world as we know it scenario, say 1 sextillion dollars. And lets say that the worldwide cost of heading off that scenario is 1 quadrillion dollars. We need to evaluate whether the cost of action is greater than the risk of inaction.

So let's assume in this scenario that it's a wash. That means that the odds of the disaster are 1 quadrillion/1 sextillion, which equals 1 in a million. Now we drop the assumption and look at the actual odds -- if they are smaller than 1 in a million, then prevention is wasted money, but if they are greater then it is money well spent.

(Please don't quote the numbers here. They are for illustrative purposes only.)

You can do the analysis for multiple levels of consequence and come up with a composite risk that takes into account the probabilities of each level of disaster times their estimated cost. However, the problem comes back to estimating the odds of catastrophe occurring -- they will be very different depending on who you ask.

I find it ironic that many people who live in these restrictive housing subdivisions think that they are "living the American dream" -- a phrase that conjures up words like "liberty" and "individualism" and "freedom".

I have to say I was a bit underwhelmed by the animation. Not by the graphics themselves, but the movement. It seemed awkward and lagging.

VeggieTales gone bad?

"Why not just shut up and eat?"

I think you'd be surprised at the number of people who are doing just this.

As for the word itself, locavore seems more like a trendy buzzword than one that is going to permanently join the lexicon. I think most of the runners-up would have been better choices.

Neoncat: That seems logical to me. The train ride is only a big long chance for the produce to become bruised or rotten. As a result, produce is picked before it has ripened -- hard fruit doesn't bruise as easily, and underripe fruit won't rot as quickly. But the overall quality is diminished by not letting the produce come to full maturity on the plant. Plus it takes fossil fuels to run the trains and any boxcar climate that may be needed to preserve freshness.

And I'm not sure what you mean by the organic foods movement being BS. Yeah, there are some companies who put forth a minimum effort to get their food certified just so they can sell it at a premium price, but farmers who sell locally are likely to have different motivations for growing organically, such as... oh, I don't know... good environmental stewardship.