Now I get it: The business model is to get bought by the company without a business model before the VC-funded pyramid collapses. Genius!

Anyway, has anybody considered the idea there might be a forced migration. Facebook will migrate users from unofficial fan pages to official ones -- a force migration of Scrabulous users could be the carrot they use to avoid getting sued by Hasbro.

It's a long shot, but possible.

If that bottle came to my store, I would have pulled it off the shelf and made the dairy guy give me a credit on the next order. Period. And he would have given it to me, because he (and every other sales rep I dealt with) knew I was hard-ass about those things. I was working in my neighborhood grocery store, damn it -- I'm not selling half-filled bottles to my neighbors.

Have things changed that much in 10 years?

Really, has South Dakota thought this through? Can fetuses get Social Security cards now?

Besides, the press release (indirectly) shows that UC Irvine did look at mitigating factors, in so much as it says higher-educated women have lower rates of dementia than lower-educated ones. Any sample of 900+ is going to be fairly diverse, and correcting for differences in education, income, race, and other basic demographic traits is de rigeur in such studies; you can't expect the press release to list every comparison made.

@braak: Nah, The Question and Blue Beetle spent too much time at "the docks" for Hub City to be Detroit. Nobody cares about the docks in Detroit. Hell, I live 20 miles from Detroit, and I don't even know where the docks are. Besides, a high-tech outfit like Kord Industries in Detroit? Nobody would buy that.

(My brother has a lot of Ditko-era Blue Beetle in his collection. I should ask him if Hub City had elevated trains.)

You know what nobody mentioned? Hub City almost disappeared post-Crisis. Pre-Crisis, the Question and Blue Beetle were both Hub City heroes, but in Beetle's first DC series, they were suddenly acting like they had been in Chicago their entire lives. It wasn't until the Question's first DC series that he was back in Hub City, with no reference to his Chicago appearances in Blue Beetle. One of the many dumb continuity glitches resulting from DC having no real plan after the Crisis on Infinite Earths.

(By the way, I'm thinking Fawcett City has moved. Didn't it used to be California for a while post-Crisis? I'm guessing DC wanted to put as much distance between Captain Marvel and Superman as possible.)

@JohnnyZito: I almost forgot -- The Martian Manhunter lived in Middleton, Colorado, although a lot of writers just give up and put him in Denver.

@JohnnyZito: Opal City is in Maryland.

Star City is one that seems to get moved around a lot. Over the years, it's been associated with Boston, Chicago, Seattle, etc. Probably because Green Arrow had so many different writers over the years.

The assignment of Midway City to Michigan has always struck me as the most arbitrary assignment. The Michigan thumb is pretty much midway to nowhere. I think Midway City was farther west pre-Crisis, but I'd have to dig up some old comics to check that.

The "Metropolis, DE & Gotham, NJ" assignment goes back to at least the 1970s. It was included in an official DC fanzine. Since then, DC has often dodged the issue of where those 2 cities are, because they insist pinning them down too precisely would somehow interfere with stories. (Yeah, right.) The assignments did reappear in a roleplaying game supplement that the web Atlas is based on.

Other cities:

The Question's original home is Hub City, not Fawcett City. (Fawcett City is the Fawcett/DC Captain Marvel's home town.) Hub City was probably based on Chicago, Illinois.

Central City has moved, also. The editors and writers of the "Barry Allen" Flash always said it was based on Columbus, Ohio. (Bob "The Answer Man" Rosakis said Central City was in Ohio, too.) After the Crisis on Infinite Earths, DC moved it to Missouri.

@MercuryPDX: You're correct. Keystone City was the home of the Golden Age Flash and the "Wally West" Flash. (Golden Age expert Roy Thomas agrees with you that it was originally based on Philadelphia, but it moved to Kansas post-Crisis so it could be next to Central City.

@JohnnyZito: Dude, Detroit and Cleveland are over 100 miles apart. There's a great lake between them.@braak:

I would want to be paid extra for that. A lot extra.

That guy didn't just exploit the woman, he took advantage of her lack of financial education. Jerk.

Because clearly, just knowing that there's a group of children and overprotective mothers meeting for a play-date somewhere in a major metropolitan area is sure to bring out hordes of perverts and rapists. It's totally logical.

I noticed those options missing from the menu back in October, mentioned it on allfacebook, and got ignored because the prepubescent morons over there insisted it was just a bug in my account. (Never trust an "expert" who looks like Howdy Doody, I guess.)

So, I e-mailed Facebook "customer support," and "Stella" replied:

Facebook recently changed these settings to provide non-college users with a more mature set of options.

Of course, I resented being called mature, so I asked for a clarification:

Now you've got me curious: How does Facebook define a "non-college" user? (I'm actually in two college networks, but not as a student, and neither is my primary network).... Frankly, this seems like a weird (and judgemental) bit of nitpicking about Facebook users' social lives. What's with the sudden prudishness?

Stella explained some more:

I apologize for the confusion, we meant to suggest non-college age users. These changes were implemented to effect users over the age of 35.

So there you have it. I'm officially too old for "random play." I MUST BE HIDEOUS! (Also too old for "whatever I can get," which suggests Facebook doesn't understand much about middle-aged men.)

Truth is, I wasn't actually using any of the "Interested in" options (Dating Internet people? Ewww!), but I'm annoyed that they're gone. It's the principle of the thing. I may not be an Internet slut, but I think I deserve the right to be one if I want.

disabiltytravel.com goes into some detail about the ACA. Some relevant notes:

First, "Disabled passengers' items stored in the cabin must conform to FAA rules on the stowage of carry-on baggage." Point for the flight attendant.

On the other hand, "Carriers must provide passage to an individual who has a disability that may affect his or her appearance or involuntary behavior, even if this disability may offend, annoy, or be an inconvenience to crew-members or other passengers." Point for mom.

On the other other hand, "The carrier may refuse transportation if the individual with a disability would endanger the health or safety of other passengers, or transporting the person would be a violation of FAA safety rules."

So the tie-breaker questions would seem to be: Is a screaming autistic kid a threat to flight safety? I'm inclined to think not, but I'm not a judge. This one may have to be settled in court.

I mean, the price of gas is skyrocketing, and all the feds can do is increase a tax break that (as howie_in_az points out) that doesn't apply to most people? I don't need the help as much as the minimum-wagers do, but they get nothing, except maybe a lecture about carpooling and mass transit. It offends my sense of social justice.

I could try my employee ID badge, I suppose. A public university is sort of a state-issued ID....

@mizmoose: Their thinking there is probably that it's easier to steal an expired ID than a valid one, so it's more likely to be altered or used for impersonation. After all, who panics or reports it to the state when they lose an old license?

(That's why bars & liquor stores don't want to take expired licenses -- they're worried about teenagers getting expired licenses from older siblings.)

Still, it's weak logic for airport security. I doubt the number of stolen expired licenses is so much greater than the number of stolen unexpired licenses that it warrants a different approach to security. As others have pointed out, real terrorists will spend the money for valid documents, or at least better forgeries.

@CaptZ: My name is "Michael Bauser" (duh) and I live in Trenton, Michigan. Please tell me who I voted for in 2006 -- senate, governor, congress, state attorney general, and mayor. Three out of five, at least.

For bonus points: Wayne State Board of Governors, 1990. I would have voted for 2 of them that year.

Still, the whole "weekly sex show" story is almost too crazy to be believable. It sounds like the kind of accusations found in a 1980s satanic cult trial -- a lot of those depended on "recovered memories" and other stuff that had no forensic backup, and a lot of them turned out to be basically mass paranoid delusions. I really hope the authorities have evidence beyond the testimony of a child stuck in a custody dispute.

(And now, looking at the second page of comments, it doesn't sound like there is much forensic evidence. That's never good.)

My car has a 12½ gallon tank. The 50¢ I would have saved filling it up wasn't worth the aggravation of watching all of Trenton's senior citizens slowly fill up their SUVs, then shuffle over to the cash register, stand in line, and shuffle back to their vehicles. So I went to the giant Marathon down the street, which was dead empty.

I have not real point to this story, do I? Oh yeah -- people go crazy over 5¢ when they're driving vehicles that are two damn big. And Trenton has too many old people.

The station still has dual pricing, but the crowds aren't so bad now. Maybe the locals have finally realized that it's not the last nickel that's really killing them, it's all the nickels in front of that one.

Wholesale gas pricing is strange. Oil companies group stations into "zones" which don't necessarily match geographic boundaries, and give the zones different wholesale rates. In fact, zone boundaries can be in the middle of the street, which means there can literally be two franchisees across the street from each other, but paying different wholesale rates.

Back in 2000, The Phoenix New Times suggested that oil companies were manipulating zone pricing to squeeze out franchisees and replace them all with corporate-owned-and-operated stations. They're presumably regretting that plan now.

More importantly, if you let stations advertise pre-surcharge prices, it's harder for consumers to compare the prices of two stations. (Very few people are going to drive into every station at an intersection to compare surcharges.) A dishonest station can make itself look less expensive than the honest competition by lowering the base price and raising the surcharge, and profit off customer naiveté.

So, yeah, it sounds like semantics, but there really is some sound thinking about consumer-protection. A pre-discount price is harder to manipulate than a pre-surcharge price, especially in a market where the competitors often have gigantic signs across the street from each other.

Hulk had sex with one of The Maestro's slave girls in Future Imperfect. Or rather, she had sex with him while was paralyzed with a broken neck. This was back during the "Bruce Banner in control of the Hulk" years.

And Robotman got an anatomically correct robot body in one issue of Doom Patrol. (Probably the Rachel Pollack years, but don't quote me on that.) He ditched it after a malfunction and went back to the classic copper body.

I know too much about this stuff. What's wrong with me?

Also, Spiderman's killer radioactive sperm is one of the single dumbest things Marvel ever published. Editors should have been fired over that. Morons.

Anyway, the emphasis on lower shelves in funny. Does Wal-Mart have a big problem with customers who won't buy stuff because they can't reach it on the shelf?

A dead Desmond would have really bummed me out, actually. Desmond in a coffin would just be "Oh crap, Ben got him and Penny." Locke in a coffin feels like something bigger and more interesting.

Fortunately, I had most of my important info backed up in Motorola Phone Tools, and the most dangerous thing saved on the phone is the password for an AIM account I haven't used since discovering Twitter. Still, losing a phone seriously sucks.

I had plenty of contact information in the phone (my e-mail address is the start-up message, even), but that doesn't help if the phone is broken or out of power when/if someone finds it. I bought a TrackItBack sticker for my replacement. I'm hoping that will increased the odds of somebody contacting me next time I lose a phone.

@RenRen: When I called T-Mobile, they verified my identity and had me put a "security PIN" on the account so nobody else could change the account details. So at least there's that. I can't help you with securing the phone data, though.

Traffic seemed a little lighter than normal on Saturday. Sunday, I-75 seemed almost deserted. I think people in Detroit are running out of gas money.

Seriously, Dick Gaywood must have beat up every day in the sixth grade because of that name. He probably uses that as his gamertag just so he can troll sixth-graders into a game, and kick their asses in displaced vengeance/rage.

They had me take one of those personality tests designed to weed out people with personalities, then never called me back. (Same experience I had with Target, actually.) Those tests are another reason everyone at Kmart seems "off." Kmart selects for stupid.

Still, their employees at least pretend to try to help. Almost every time I shop at Meijers, I end up violently angry about the laziness of their employees.

Which reminds me, io9 really should do a post about the Smithee Awards one of these days.

It's possible we both have boundary issues. I blame Mom.

Anyway, he'll probably re-de-friend me if he ever sees this post.

My oldest (and saddest) piece of everyday technology is a Norelco shaver I got in college, so it's at least 15 years old. I'm just too practical to replace it before it dies. I thought it was finally dead a few weeks ago when I couldn't recharge it, but I had just worn out the charging cord. Bought the $5 part, and I'm probably stuck with the thing for another 15 years.

It really is a GOP town, by the way, and boring as anything. The Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum is located there, even. (The Gerald R. Ford Library, on the other hand, is in Ann Arbor, because people in Grand Rapids don't read too good.)

I forced myself to go to the Museum, but I'm glad I went, though, because the place is hilarious. An entire building dedicated to convincing people that Ford was one of America's greatest presidents? That's genius! They have two pens (in two separate rooms) labeled as the pen used to sign Nixon's pardon. Mannequins in disco outfits (dancing to "What's Going On")! A weird sculpture of President Ford as a football player that looks like a robot! A replica Oval Office dedicated to Bob Hope! Betty Ford's AA coin! It just goes on and on.

It even has a sign that says Ford "remains a sought after campaigner for his beloved Republican Party." I assumed the sign was just old, but now that I think about it, a dead Ford probably is more popular than either live Bush.

Anyway, I ordered a book and an CD from Amazon last week, and they arrived with coupons for chicken biscuit sandwiches. (Which is slightly more useful to me than the brochures for furniture and women's shoes that Amazon used to include.) Another sign that McDonald's is going to push this sandwich pretty hard, I guess.

And then the weapon got dissolved by transexual superhero named Coagula.

Anyway, I once worked with a guy who insisted "Walter" was a "black name." I share this factoid only to point that white people can be kind of weird.

@Skinny Bone Jones: I went to college with a woman named "Condessa." Her parents heard the word during their honeymoon in Spain and thought it "sounded pretty."