v for frequency?

Not everyone is a happy camper. It did do wonders for the economy, chiefly tourism, when planes started servicing the islands. It's one of the more isolated places in the world without air transit. With restrictions removed and an improving economy Japan also boosted tourism.

Would it have done as well as a sovereign nation? I don't know. Historically the islands would have been scooped up by someone if not the US, but by the time of statehood Britain, Spain, Russia and so forth weren't grabbing pieces of real estate anymore.

Puerto Rico is another problem. The government is completely dysfunctional so it's hard to imagine it succeeding on its own. otoh, it would be stupid to make it a state and inherit all its baggage.

If only he'd told Starbucks how to make decent coffee

"Nothing succeeds like excess" or, in the words of Meat Loaf, "Anything worth doing is worth over-doing."

There's a book about that. When a few guys split out of Peets and set up Starbucks, the first thing they did was switch to cheap robusta coffee beans.

More likely that was when Baldwin sold Starbucks to Schultz to concentrate on the Peets brand. I've only been to Starbucks once when my brother shuffled through his deck of gift cards and decided to use the Starbucks one. I lived.

I'm not interested in the milkshakes that seem to be Starbuck's real draw and there are several local shops and roasters that I prefer to support. If I get really ambitious I've got some green beans from Sweet Maria's.

One would have thought that the Scottish wanker would be aware of the highland clearances that sent a lot of the more intelligent highland Scots to Canada and New Zealand. The smarter Irish went to Australia.

One of my customers is Irish. They make the best scientific CCD and ICCD cameras in the world.

The Irish are practical and make good engineers and, occasionally, scientists.

They add a half chip, if needed, to meet the target weight.

Sadly, there's no mechanism that allows you to choose which DNA sequence you put into action, and while evolution has equipped modern humans with a medical profession to give them advice about which set of DNA might have worked best if they had had a choice, it hasn't yet come up with infallible medical professionals.

The advice that the Scottish wanker would get would probably be along the lines of "junk the lot you have got - there's no way to get it work well".

He's what evolution would have selected out, if it worked better.

I've never seen anyone with a covered toilet roll holder. It would be harder to get hold of the end.

Eh? Sink, bath, toilet, that's three. On the floor. In front of each one.

Those stinky Muslims wash their arses with a spray, splattering shit everywhere. Amusingly they call them a shataff, which is Scottish for "shit off."

I've never seen a set with mats for the bath /and/ the sink. I just move mine across. And I've never seen a pedestal mat sold on its own. They may exist, of course.

Now try 183 pounds.

Calibrated isn't the right word.

Shake. The. Bag.

Learn?! What, did you go on a course or something? Most people don't have to learn such basic things.

Same to me, just had the option of less or no salt, which I didn't take.

Take them up Everest and see if they explode.

I always open crisp packets by bursting one end. Makes it less likely to rip down the side, but scares the shit out of the person next to you.

If you're used to simply tearing the greaseproof paper bag open, you have to work out how to open the plastic ones; either pull apart or compress and pop. All new experiences have to be learnt, either by watching what other people do or experiment.

For example, it took me some time to work out how to open kitchen tongs of this sort:

If "everybody knows" how something is done, no-one will tell you.

Then wrote 14.