@ Ali S.
hey - many thanks for answering my question!

Can you imagine? A black marble twin would have put even the original to shame.

BTW - here's a Photoshopped version of the Taj in an ad I made for a construction company:
http://adville.com/NottTM.html

A world-traveling friend of mine visited the TaJ Mahal and said it was the most beautiful building he'd ever seen. Didn't the emperor also have plans to build a twin Taj Majal for his own tomb - but made instead with black marble? Or is that a myth? Would have been incredible.

Hutz: And so, ladies and gentleman of the jury I rest my case.
Judge: Hmmm. Mr. Hutz, do you know that you're not wearing any pants?
Hutz: DAAAA!! I move for a bad court thingy.
Judge: You mean a mistrial?
Hutz: Right!! That's why you're the judge and I'm the law-talking guy.
Judge: You mean the lawyer?
Hutz: Right.

substitute Stanhope for Hutz

You must have slaughtered the opposition in debating class Adam.

So the military can set goals so low that they can meet them whatever the number. Does that mean you believe we should be setting them higher, and the military should be larger? We're not meeting our necessary recruitment levels so that's a problem?

I don't know, but I suspect you believe that the recruitment levels are too high and that our military should be much smaller. Not only that, but the military is also incompetent and that perhaps we shouldn't really have armed forces at all. Or something vague and woolly like that. War. What is it good for? Absolutely nothing...

I don't swallow everything the military says hook line and sinker, but I don't go out of my way looking to contribute to the sort of ankle-biting that the original article and your sentiments seem to relish in.

Such a sophisticated debater.

Such nice polite people, the British.

It always strikes me as odd that Napoleon has a reputation as a great general. Genius, he may have been, but as a charismatic leader, not as a general. His defeats were embarrassing.

You don't have to read the Instapundit piece if it hurts your sensibilities or spoils your perception that the military is silly or incompetent or whatever. The defenselink link is plain data: recruitment levels at 100 percent or better.

And besides, the Instapundit piece just relates an email from a guy with experience in signing up for military service and how the standards aren't being relaxed.

It is in fact a myth that the U.S. military is having more trouble than ever finding new recruits.
Look at the percentages on the right in the first table:
http://www.defenselink.mil/releases/release.aspx?releaseid=11311

Commentary on the issue at Instapundit:
http://instapundit.com/archives2/009194.php

Dearie me. It's so easy to push the leftie's buttons. :)
For what it's worth we have a range of political opinions at our agency and the left-leaning people had no problem with the political ads. Maybe because they're center-, not far-left.

The glass cabinets with the motion-activated butterflies seems odd to me. They seem to be stuck down in place with pins - like the normal dead specimen - but they flap their wings. I think it would work if those pins weren't so prominent.

Also, if you are lucky enough to observe butterflies as the sun is going down, when they land they shift themselves around and position their wings in the direction of the sun so as to retain as much heat as possible. If I was going to animate these things I'd have tried to mimic that natural behavior.

Thanks Alex. I always suspected the "Sig" didn't stand for "Signal" or "Significant" which is the usual guess.

As for "houses light enough to move: perhaps you're confusing the east coast with the west. We don't get hurricanes here, we get earthquakes. If you build your house out of brick it'll not only cost a lot more in the first place but it won't have that flexibility that wooden houses do here that are able to sway and shake in small quakes and not incur damage.

I've lived in LA for years and I still don't know what SigAlert means. No guesses please; I've heard many other Angelenos wonder the same thing, guess and not know the real answer. It would be nice to know the real meaning from the police dept or whoever it is that issues these things.

Sid - I could probably do an occasional interesting post myself. The thing is that I suspect you comment here on topics where they seem to have lost sight of the Neato part of Neatorama and stir up contentious issues. I wouldn't post anything like that myself and would only want to write entries about actual neat stuff.