From the sound of things, you'd have a tendancy to ripple off the back end of the carpet if you were in a hurry.

I don't know about you, but I'd like my magic carpet to have a comfie chair, pillows, a good reading lamp, a ceiling, a non-rippling floor, walls, a bathroom, maybe an inflight movie, some books or magazines to read, a bed, a well-equipped kitchen, and somebody do to the actual flying, cooking, cleaning, etc.

Tell Al-Ad'n Air that I want a flying palace. But I really love nice thick Persian rugs, so they can keep that bit, just without the rippling effect (unless it helps with the vacuuming when I'm not using the floor).

Any sufficiently advanced technology may look like magic, but the smart money is on comfort and convenience. Even a flying horse would be better than a flimsy carpet that you have to hang onto for dear life.

Here's a suggestion: the carpet should only ripple on the bottom, moving air along at a fair clip like millipede legs peddling for all they're worth. The top should be plush, firm but flattish like a really good rug. It might help to have a really deep pile because it would help you to stay on when you get up to stretch your legs. A tent wouldn't hurt to keep off the rain, the bugs, etc. Aladdin didn't have to worry about the weather much unless night-flying.

thelunatick: Welcome to last week

Thank you.

I was not paying attention last week.

Did I miss much?

Isn't repetition the whole point of "fark" as non-news filler and a dot com business? Where would we be if we couldn't count on the news repeating itself with minor humourous variations on a theme like Dave Barry articles?

"And now for something completely different" is no way to run a news outlet. It scares the advertisers, who don't know what to sell from day to day. Or on the web, from view to view.

Today's news: conservative republicans admit that they know global warming is happening as well as anybody, that is caused by burning fossil fuels and deforestation among other things, and that they just don't care how many fecking Bangladeshi drown as long as it doesn't drive the price of oil over $100 a barrel.

They also pointed out that they're only peddling junk science and conspiracy theories to keep the tort lawyers off of their tails long enough for somebody to figure out how profitably to make poor people assume the totality of the damages without inconveniencing the rich people who are fleecing them for all they're worth. Since 1999 no conservative republican has purchased beach front property. They're buying and building as much as three miles back from the shore depending on the lay of the land.

You can run that story once.

Then you have a Revolution and the presses get smashed and the gas stations looted. Or then you fail to have a Revolution, and the tort lawyers descend upon the billfold, their cohorts gleaming in purple and gold ties, like they did on Big Tobacco when the lies, propaganda and "studies" failed utterly.

If they didn't persistently deny what everybody already knows, the poor boy who cried wolf could get trampled to death by thundering herds of wolves in suits. Worse yet, it could be them. It makes no difference to lawyers who destroyed the Earth as long as their fees are paid.

They're as ruthlessly logical as actuaries. Our insurance policy losses are skyrocketing. They are skyrocketing right where the boys crying wolf say wolves should appear. Therefore we must refuse to insure you if you don't reduce set wolf traps. We don't care if they huff and puff and blow your house of straw down so long as they don't do it on our dime. Use bricks or get into some other line of business. And that is what the corporations are planning to do. As soon as somebody levels the playing field by telling them what kind of bricks to use.

Sadly, actuarial tables and higher insurance rates for smokers didn't stop people from killing themselves and their neighbours through sheer stupidity and force of habit, and it won't the next time, because everybody is individually immortal, but a trillion dollars will change hands--entirely in the real news columns, which is to say, the business pages. It won't be funny (except to Schadenfreude-lovers) and it won't be fark.\

Until the actuaries convince a Republican President and Congress to admit otherwise, the Rand Corporation, under the supervision of the reverse vampires, are forcing our parents to go to bed early in order to eliminate the meal of dinner, and thus force Texan SUV drivers to drive Volkswagen Hobbits, the car for hippie girls with hairy feet and big pointy ears.

(Samwise Gamgee is gay for Bilbo Baggins Under-the-Hill.)