Humor will not be tolerated!! -Portia

I'll never forget one particular interview trip. The hiring managers took me out to lunch, and after ordering and receiving our food, I was prepared to dig in (I find praying over food in public awkward). Right before I bit into my sandwich, I caught one of the managers silently praying out of the c...

I've seen the SW Holiday Special. YOU ARE NOT MISSING ANYTHING. Please, please don't try to see it.

Not really adding much to the discussion, but didn't Rand Paul, Ron Paul's son, say the same sort of thing last year? I recall people saying that these comments signaled the "end of [his] senatorial campaign."

Well, during my job search, I received an unsolicited call from Liberty Insurance in Fort Worth asking if I were interested in "working for them" (without telling me WHAT exactly I'd be doing). It was really kind of awkward; it sounds like they're desperate. It's not much, but maybe you co...

Not being a Mountain Dew/Rush fan, I would not use the button again for personal beverage selection.

I'm always walking that fine line between thoroughness and brevity. Looks like I may have lost people with this one.

I do appreciate your feedback, SMP, lest you think I lump you with the Haters.

I blame the disconnect between math and application. As Mr. Wilberg suggested, math isn't very interesting until you find out what you can use it for. I'll be honest, math in high school was really just another series of hoops for me to jump through until I hit calculus and physics simultaneously. T...

What did the ancient peoples do near Easter, anyways?

Just as a side note, I had written my answer in February, before the Libya revolts were really in full swing. Dr. Smeed sat on the question for some time... In any case, I'm interested to hear your take on the Egyptian revolt, Marduk. Do you think it will descend into another dictatorship, or do you...

Translations for "family history": Russian: Семейная история Ukrainian: Сімейна історія. The translations for "family" are already correct for both these languages. And I'm at least 90% sure that the Bulgarian is correct as is. Your friend will have a time of it correctly declini...

Avira has worked well for me, too. AVG has become pretty overloaded recently, but Avira keeps a nice small footprint.

I have to admit, I was a bit surprised to get a PM from him informing me of his departure. I'm still relatively new here, but I actually rather enjoyed watching some of his vigorous discussions. The picture I posted was completely tongue-in-cheek, so I hope that wasn't what pushed him over the edge....

Дорогая Катя (настоящая), I was originally sent undercover to Kiev at the peak of the Orange Revolution. Once events settled down, I was reassigned to regular missionary duty. Given the time since my activities have ended and that my assets there have since retired, I have been cleared to divulge th...

To quote Sir Alec Guinness: "What have I done?"

Also, there's an additional nuance to the Ukrainian -- the noun following 2-4 is actually in the nominative plural, not the genitive singular, but the accent falls where it would in the genitive singular instead of where it usually lands in the nominative plural. Slavic languages just trying to mes...

Je mi dvacet let ([It] is to me twenty summers) Similar to Russian except Czech uses 'to be' verbs, which shows the curiosity that any number above 4 becomes singular (there are 4 dogs, there is 5 of dogs). Czech also does the funky 1-4 years (nominative case), 5+ summers (genetive case) presumably...

Oh, I just thought of Plan 9 from Outer Space . The vampire in the movie was played by the classic Bela Lugosi...who died unexpectedly during filming. The vampire throughout the rest of the bizarrely edited film was portrayed by the director's wife's chiropractor, who walked around the set with a ca...

I am pretty excited for Thor. I'm...nervous about Green Lantern. I am ambivalent about the X-Men movie (I can't shake off the bad taste I got in my mouth after the Wolverine movie and that...third...X-Men movie). I'm cautiously optimistic about Captain America. And honestly, I'm very intrigued by Co...

I actually find all this rather fascinating (and I always love listening to Richard Feynman). I'm content to simply listen at this point to your discussion on the larger points that the author was making, but I just wanted briefly to latch on to this part here: I'm going to propose a lot of us are l...

I'm glad you found my answer interesting! :) Just to clarify, the stoichiometric ratio of air to gasoline in combustion is unaffected by pressure. The lower density of high altitude air, however, could result in insufficient air for complete combustion, since "naturally aspirated engines" ...