REtro computers, including an Altair 8800, PocketTerm, and others

As one study found, for every time a gun is used legally in self-defense at home, there are “four unintentional shootings, seven criminal assaults or homicides, and 11 attempted or completed suicides.”

Soft and fluffy white bread with subtle onion flavor.  Perfect for sandwiches.

The Coat-of-Arms. A symbol of a nation. A mark of a people, their pride in who they are and what they stand for. Today, Sufferlandrians can stand tall. Not only because we like to feel the full impact of a headwind so we can destroy it with our power, but because our new Sufferlandrian Coat-of-Arms is now being revealed.

For more than 40 years, standard black pens have cluttered the desks of thousands of federal employees, hung on a chain at post offices across the country and slipped into the pockets of countless military personnel. Yet few have realized that this government-issue pen has a history to rival that of any monument.

So here’s our shot at 80-plus of the best one-hit wonders of the decade of Ronald Reagan and John Hughes. We define “one” and “hit” loosely — and yes, we could probably do another 80 with some of the ones we left out. Leave your suggestions in the comments.

An early Emacs manual cover from 1981.

Courtesy of GNU Emacs

In a world where both software and hardware frequently become obsolete right on release, two rival programs can stake a claim to being among the longest-lived applications of all time. Both programs are about to enter their fifth decades. Both programs are text editors, for inputting and editing code, data files, raw HTML Web pages, and anything else. And they are mortal enemies.

Their names are Emacs and Vi (styled by programmers as “vi”).

A new study—conducted by Mueller and Oppenheimer—finds that people remember lectures better when they’ve taken handwritten notes, rather than typed ones.