Spy satellites don't observe every part of the earth's surface at every moment, they're moving around in orbit and need to be told to take photos of certain regions at certain points in their orbit. It seems very unlikely to me that any spy agency would have had their satellites targeted at an empty stretch of ocean.

Furthermore, spy satellites cameras are limited by the same things as any cameras: clouds and darkness. I suppose it's possible that they would have some sort of infrared or UV instruments that might work better, but all in all, I doubt a spy satellite could spot a moving aircraft, at night, in the middle of a cloudy storm.

The poster who noted that a GPS device only calculates its own position is correct. However, it does seem strange to me that aircraft do not routinely relay their own GPS-determined position to air traffic controller by radio. It seems like this would be a simple thing to have happen automatically on a separate channel from voice traffic.

Patrick, any comment?

Haha, did you really just lecture us about all the careful foresight and data-based analysis that goes into ADVERTISING? Was your post supposed to be sarcastic and I missed it?

Also, a website does not cost anywhere near 100,000 to develop. Especially not when all the back-end e-commerce stuff is already in place from their other site. You could make a similar-looking frontend to Dell's "for women" site in a week or so, for no more than a couple thousand dollars.

I find it hilarious that there are commenters on here claiming to be offended by Dell's soft-focus condescension, and then in the next breath suggesting that everyone should buy a Mac.

Apple PIONEERED the computer-as-fashion accessory market. Who cares what the specs are, it's an Apple, dear. No, you don't understand, it's silver. It will change your life. It will make you a cooler person.

The very fact that the Mac zealots are on here prosthelytizing proves my point. Everyone here should by the computer with the best specs they can find for the cheapest price they can find. A computer is a tool. Do you care what color your stapler is?

Shhhh, don't mention that those things are expensive. If some Americans aren't eating the right vegan, glutton-free, no-starch, whole-wheat food grown by hardworking indigenous peoples (or even better, grown yourself in your super-convenient garden in your expansive backyard!), it's because those Americans are terrible moral failures.

There are no people who can only afford the cheap foods. There are no people who work 3 jobs and don't have time to do easy, quick healthy natural recipes. Nothing to see here, move along.

Steele The First also suffers from the "responding in the wrong thread and being too eager to pound the publish button" fallacy.

Also, if you're eating too damn much high fructose corn syrup, that's your problem, not society's, or the food industry's, or the corn syrup's problem. There's no great unexplained mystery about chemicals as basic as sugars. If you were spending all day, every day, running marathons, or tracking herds of game across wilderness, you'd burn those calories off, whatever form they came in.

Nor does it mean that "natural" things are necessarily better.

There are myriad examples of situations where human ingenuity has improved upon the natural condition of our species. Since this a feminist blog, I might mention the use of analgesics to relieve the pain of childbirth, prophylactics to give women greater control of their own reproduction.

Somebody earlier made reference to the fact that our bodies didn't evolve to ingest high fructose corn syrup, aspartame and xanthum gum, to which I say "So?"

High fructose corn syrup is composed of a mixture of the monosaccharides fructose and glucose. Regular "natural" cane sugar is primarily sucrose--a disaccharide--which, during digestion gets broken down into its component parts of...you guessed it, fructose and glucose!

High fructose corn syrup is a cheap, locally-available, high energy sweetner that includes the same "natural" sugars as other sweeteners. Aspartame is an artificial sweetener that stimulates taste receptors at much lower concentrations than natural sugars, without much in the way of energy (caloric) value. I'm personally not a huge fan of the taste, but it has undergone extensive testing for more than 30 years, and the overwhelming preponderance of reputable science suggests it's completely safe at the levels found in food.

I dont really know enough about xanthum gum to say anything on that subject.

Look, the point is that there's plenty of incredibly nasty, poisonous things in nature (try chowing down on some all-natural, unprocessed hemlock!), and there's plenty of healthy things that humans have made or extracted from nature.

Almost everyone on this comment thread seems to be operating under this completely false dichotomy of natural/safe/healthy/good vs. chemical/dangerous/unhealthy/bad. Relax. Have a diet coke or something.