I don't think you have to be childless to be eligible, do you? I thought you just had to be capable of making *more* babies?

I knew about water intoxication only because of an episode of ER a few years back. The radio station is very much at fault here - it's gross negligence on their part. A large lawsuit would likely sink most radio stations, depending on whether or not they have a large corporate owner. I can see multiple lawsuits here, the first from the family of the deceased. Other participants would also do well to sue because their well-being was also put at risk through this misrepresented promotion.

If the promotion had been wrestling a wild bear, then I'm sure participants would be rightfully wary. But in this case, as Tony pointed out, who knew drinking a lot of water could easily lead to death?

Stupid radio personalities (and 99% of the people on the radio are barely smart enough to tie their own shoes) are the primary driving force behind my decision not to listen to radio. Next comes of course crappy music selection and non-stop commercials.

I wonder if English people get (or got) mad that our founding fathers kept stealing all the good city names.

Jack is still very a very commercial format, so while you're hearing a variety of genres, it's still top 40 hits from those genres, and usually a limited variety of non-threatening genres.

College radio (that is, radio stations run by colleges with their students as staff) is probably much closer to UK radio than anything Clear Channel is likely to promote.

Edit: I guess Jack is actually Rogers Communications, not Clear Channel, but the devil goes by many names.

Re-edit: You can take a look to see what a Jack playlist looks like. I'm sure you will be unimpressed.

Jack started in Toronto in 2002 and has since been licensed to a number of US stations. Their basic concept is that they play what THEY want, not what YOU want. The format is somewhat loose where each station can add their own flavor to the recipe. There are recommended playlists and promo clips. On the original Toronto station you are absolutely guaranteed to hear at least one Bon Jovi song every morning.

This whole reverse psychology bullshit appeals to the dumb-asses out there who suck it all in. They fail to realize that the "play what we want" is in fact the creedo of pretty much every station out there. They just don't advertise it.

For the majority of last year they pushed the fact they had absolutely no DJ's - in fact Jack and most other stations don't have DJ's but "personalities" anyway. But any talk time and nonesense from these personalities was replaced by commercials, not more music. They promoted this concept constantly - it, along with their primary "play what we want" was their edge over the competition.

In the past month or so they have brought back morning and evening personalities and are now advertising their morning show and drive home show. The personalities are, of course, obnoxious twats. Without them you have semi-decent musical selection of mostly older cuts, but very annoying commercials and promos.

My girlfriend keeps the alarm clock set to Jack, so depsite my no radio stance, I do catch a bit in the morning as I'm waking up. Once I pick up some powered speakers that can turn themselves on/off with a line-level signal, I'll be putting a Squeezebox in place as our alarm. Then I'll play what I want.

Depends if you meant it as an interjection ("Seriously!": semicolon) or as an adverb ("Have you ever seriously heard ...": comma).

No one really uses semicolons any more, but they're interchangeable with periods. (Sorry: "full stops".) It just implies a closer relationship between the two sentences than a period might.

For example: "Bob was happy. The rain had stopped." vs. "Bob was happy; the rain had stopped." The latter implies that Bob was happy because the rain stopped. The former just expresses two separate ideas. A comma would be inappropriate and would turn the quote into a run-on sentence.

You could drop the punctuation completely in the form "Bob was happy that the rain had stopped." Then I'd read it was because of the rain stopping that Bob was happy. Not simply that both were true but one not the cause of the other.

Bruno was happy; the wine was pouring. Bruno was happy because that wine was pouriung from his glass into his mouth. Sorry, that wasn't an example, just an awkward narrative.

Ok, 3 minutes left on the 2 inch thick steak under the broiler. MMMmmmm...

This is why terrestrial radio is dead. I can't comprehend how any human with ears can listen to popular radio or the metal-garden-rake-on-chalkboard morning/evening talk "personalities". There is some good radio out there, ah, college radio.

I am convinced that as advertising finds new ways to invade our lives, the older, easily ignorable or digitally disarmable methods, only experienced by those out-of-the-know enough to be victimized, are hawked to whichever hacks can cough up the necessary $0.99. I forget how that relates to how media sucks, but it does.

Oh, and Lizard Lick is a monstropolis compared to Dering Harbor, New York (on Shelter Island, between the forks of Long Island). I've seen it first hand.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16652323/

Radio station that pulled the stunt is off the air.

Supposedly a local nurse called in and told them the stunt would be dangerous, but they went on with it anyway.

No, the show is off the air, not the whole station.

Hah. They updated the headline and the article after I posted it. I guess they'd gotten their facts wrong and were corrected.

I gotta wonder. Why is the show pulled? I mean, it was an accident, right?

It was not an accident, it was gross negligence.

Ok, I've finished Zelda... And though it had some nice sequences during the credits through till the final frames, I was a little underwhelmed. I knew it would finish right after a final battle, but to me that's not the right way to do things. You don't put the climax of a story in its final page.

So I loved the game, but I still stand by my comment from last week, that the second half seemed much more like going through the motions than anything else. Maybe it was just the sense that the end was coming. But I truly think they could have worked out the pacing of the story a little differently.

Soooo... Now that I'm done, what do I do? I tried a little Ray Man last night and... I suck. Well, at some events anyway. I don't like the one where you have to tilt the remote to guide a ball through a maze. Zelda has a similar mini-game in it so I knew I'd be terrible at this one. I could try it a few times and hopefully get better, but each time I do I feel like I'm going to scream because of the frustration. The other mini-games don't do that to me, so I generally don't have a problem trying them over and over.

I discovered the pig racing was pretty difficult as well, though I only did it twice. Difficulty steering was my primary weakness there. The navigation controls in the game's menus are a bit annoying - not really well thought out at all. I can see this being an issue in the future if games don't standardize on some button actions.

Anyone have any insight into the Score mode? I successfully completed a number of games but didn't see any new ones open up (for instance the dancing bunny-zapping one... Did the two available to me but no others became available...)

Going to try a bit of Wii Sports now...

I'm feeling exactly the same about Zelda.

As for Rayman score mode, you have to unlock them all in Story mode. Just keep playing story mode and you'll see a few unlock. Sort of annoying... but there are some really fun ones that are worth the effort. Compared to Monkey Ball, the mini games in Rayman are light years ahead. GOD the Monkey Ball mini games SUCK. They should have made 10 good ones instead of 50 horrible ones. The controls are atrocious.

Thanks for the info. I've been playing story mode and am on the third or fourth set of games. I didn't know you were supposed to do that before trying out score mode. The instructions weren't clear when I read them. Maybe it was the sleepiness.

I haven't gotten very far in Zelda still (I just haven't had time for Wiiing!), but I can see that being the case. They've had some real issues with pacing in their recent games. One of the things I loved about Link to the Past was that it had a three-part first act, but then surprised you with a whole other enormous seven-part world for the rest of the game. I thought it worked really well. Wind Waker had a similar design, but the second part seemed terribly rushed and lacking in dungeons (you'd find parts of the Triforce on random small islands). Still, I don't think it could ruin my enjoyment of the game.

Last night I picked up Wario Ware and the DBZ game (because I'm a dork). I'm pretty upset at Nintendo for making Wario Ware 4:3 after they said that nearly all first-party games would be widescreen. I'll let everyone know how these games are when I've had a little time with them.

Has anyone tried Super Swing Golf? Golf is my second favorite Wii Sports game, so a full golf game might be a lot of fun, but I think it's a third party game, so I'm not sure how well the motion sensing is implemented.