aerius

Since you already have a sub you can grab the GedLee Nathan 10 or stretch the budget a bit and buy the Abbey 12. I've had a brief listening session with the former and I was quite impressed. Think Grado HP-2 and you won't be too far off.

Yes, but I don't know how far down their product line you can go while still retaining the family sound. I've only sampled their products from the Space 294 and up.

No, that's Antwerp.

My one problem with Benchmades is they don't grind the edge thin enough, and I need to spend a good hour or so working it down to where it cuts well. They've gotten better with some of their more recent models but it's still not up to Kershaw or Spyderco standards. Otherwise they're great, I have a half dozen Benchmades and I'm happy with them all, except for the time I need to spend regrinding the edges.

I see some vague similarities and that's about it. The layout isn't the same, the parts aren't the same, and the boards sure as hell ain't either. I remain unconvinced of any cloning between the two. Tell you what, trace out the circuit on both amps and we'll talk. Until then I'm going to file this in the tinfoil loony bin.

Which one is your kit, which one's the commercial product? I can't tell a damn thing from the pictures and I doubt anyone else can either. I need good quality pictures of the circuit boards, and label them so I know what I'm supposed to be looking at.

I'm a big fan of the Kershaw Vapor series in that price range. I own a Vapor and it's tough solid knife, the only issue I have is it's not really a one-handed open as the thumbstud is too small & pointy & not in the best location for leverage. It's also nice & slim and the handle is nicely rounded so there's no sharp edges to dig into your hand.

You should start a Rent a Kid business. You get a bunch of orphans or whatever and rent them out to people for set terms. You could do weekend rentals, 1 week rentals, 1 month rentals, and 1 year rentals, with options for renewals and stuff.

You're a guy. Regardless of your relationship or marital status, if you didn't have the hots for other women every now and then, you need to get your testosterone levels checked.

I call dibs on his liver.

I've heard the version made by Stirling Broadcast, though I don't recall if it was the V1 using the original LS3/5A drivers or the V2 which uses modern drivers modified to sound like the original. In anycase, I didn't like it that much overall, yes the midrange is remarkably smooth & clear but there's just too many limitations. It's very inefficient, the dynamics are limited, there ain't much bass, and it can't play loud. If you start to push it, and especially if the music has decent bass, the whole thing goes quacky, literally. Honest to god, it quacks like a duck. If I was going to put up with the limited dynamics & volume I'd much rather get a set of Quad ESL-57's and get way more midrange detail & clarity.

I'd argue that the Free Republic site is a less biased source of news & current events commentary than this piece of shit site. Rarely have I seen more fellating of zombie Reagan.

It's called shoddy sensationalistic journalism, and you were sucked right in. There's exactly one nuclear facilities complex that's 12 miles from Baghdad, and that is Tuwaitha. It's a known storage depot, and has been since the first Gulf War in '91. Or maybe you can just read the Global Security article. It was sealed and inspected every year. 500 tons of yellowcake is not going to magically materialize there.

All cognacs are brandys, but not all brandys are cognacs.

I was leafing through some mags at the central library a few days ago when I saw a headphone review in one of the British mags. I had my camera with me so I snapped pictures of the more interesting reviews; these being the Ultrasone 750, Denon D5000, and Grado RS-2. Download, enjoy, have fun.

One option is using transformers to do the balanced to single-ended conversion, this keeps the full output voltage of the balanced outputs on the CD player and you have noise rejection all the way up to the transformer. Meaning if you stuck the tranformer right before in the inputs on the amp, you'd have almost all the benefits of a conventional balanced connection.

Fine. Prove it. I want cited statements that every single congressman & senator believed the intelligence. You said everyone, so you better come up with 535 on the record statements of "yes, Iraq had WMD's according to the intelligence we received".

Though to be honest I bought them because I could and I didn't find a use for them for quite some time.

I use them to support the hanging hooks for my bikes so I don't have to drill the hooks into the wall. The magnets stick to the steel support beams behind the drywall of my apartment, and the hooks are welded onto a piece of steel that's stuck onto the magnet. Then the bikes just hang off the hooks.

I have a couple that are about the size of a hockey puck. The magnets were wrapped with foam then stuck to the inside of a steel box, which is wrapped with more foam & bubblewrap and put into yet another steel box. Which then gets stuffed into cardboard box for shipping. The cardboard box was around an 8" to 10" cube.

Actually it isn't black until it's dunked in a tank of ferric chloride to bring out the contrast in the layers. Which is why stainless Damascus only goes to grey and not fully black. You just need to find the right steel alloy and dunk it into the right type of etchant and it'll go black.

Answer me a question then. If they aren't fighting in the mountains, then what the fuck is the 10th Mountain Division doing there? Sightseeing? Oh yeah, you mean those rusty 10 year old barrels which had traces of some indeterminant substance on them? Bzzt. Wrong. Try Eisenhower and the joint US/UK operation which deposed the Prime Minister of Iran and installed the Shah in his place. Which by the way was because of oil, Iran nationalized its oil shortly before this which majorly pissed off all the western oil companies. They lost their prime access, refused to negotiate with Iran, and made it into a security issue which forced the hands of the UK & US governments.

9/11!!! Do you hate America? It's all the Democrats' fault anyway since they got in the way of everything, and it's not like they could do any better. If it wasn't for Bush the whole world would be overrun with Arab terrorists and illegal immigrants. And socialists! And they'll take all our guns away and tax us to death! Yes, I've actually seen the above being written already on various right-leaning message boards. It would be hilarious if the country and the world hadn't been so fucked up by the party they support.

The problems are no longer confined to the US, unfortunately, Canada has also been infected with the crap that's going on south of the border. Arguably, most of the G20 has the same problems, though to varying degrees. No single country can fix this crap by itself, we, like it or not, all have to work together for a solution.

Exactly. The damage which has been done to America goes all the way back to the 1960's, though it's only been in the last 30 years or so, and particularly the last 10-15 that we've really begun to notice it. There is no way to fix that in one term, or even two. We can make a start and lay the groundwork, but that's about it. Funding programs is going to be nearly impossible as the current administration has rammed through around $3 trillion of new debt via the banking bailout programs and the projected deficit for next year is in the $2-3 trillion range, which is roughly equal to the entire federal budget. Undoing the bailout damage alone is going to take up an entire term of office. And everyone will be screaming for his head as he attempts to fix the mess, the bankers will hate it since he's clawing back the bailouts, and the people will hate him for making their investments and home prices fall back to historical norms. Everyone will be poorer, some will be a hell of a lot poorer. There are no easy fixes because every past administration has chosen to kick the can down the street and let the next sucker deal with it, except at some point that can hits a wall and you can't kick it down the street any further. If we haven't hit the wall yet, and I'd argue that we have, it will most certainly hit in the next 4 years. Hard choices will have to be made, as the America's problems can't be put off any longer.