Aaron Traister has pretty much nailed it.

I'm afraid to read others' comments about this article, lest they distract me from my pure enjoyment of it.

Because I'm at work, I couldn't laugh out loud while reading this, but I had to work to hard not to do so. My stomach muscles hurt. My eyes are teary.

Were the details a little different (I think I'm a small cut about Wallace Shawn as a physical specimen), I could have sworn that this guy was talking about my marriage (including the laughing hard during sex part- seriously).

Thank you, Aaron!!!

Have another kid. One that doesn't sleep through the night from two months on. Maybe one that has colic.

Then you'll understand why your other friends with kids hate your guts. You won the frickin' lottery with an easy kid.

Don't get cocky.

In the meantime, enjoy!

1. A spotloss set of seats

2. Quiet kids

As the father of four who flies with his kids ~1x per year, I can offer you one, but not both.

(If there's ever an article about nightmare kid flying experiences- for parents, flight staff, and other passengers- ping me for a good one- thank god I'll never see our fellow passengers again)

Thank you for differentiating between month-over-month and year-over-year numbers. This is not done enough.

But re: the YoY numbers- yes, of course they are down from a year ago. We went off a cliff last year; each month, the YoY figures will reflect that, until the cliff itself is over 12 months old.

So, bad YoY numbers are not news, and don't tell us much right now. What is news is how things are trending now, so month-over-month numbers (adjusted for seasonality) are the most interesting.

I track auto sales data b/c I know the most about it; things were looking good until a wobbly June (but it's unclear how much wobbliness was due to GM/Chryster issues). Let's see how July goes...

And I like the list of add-ons. I found a couple that I hadn't seen or had forgotten about.

I also nominate:

GTDInbox: Makes Gmail work as an organizer for Getting Things Done (I'm not a GTD freak, but I do like this add-in)

DownThemAll: Useful batch downloader (useful when you want to e.g. download a report that's stored in ~20 PDFs)

Stealther: Predates Google Chrome privacy mode (or whatever it's called); does the same thing.

I had to stop reading your comment after the 5th false statement.

Not bad for a paragraph.

But what do I know, I hail from that "failed" state of Massachusetts. I do wonder what the criteria for failing is, though- our low divorce rate? Our high median household income? Being home to several world-class academic and medical institutions?

Did you know (see sig URL- p6 of the .ppt):

Steel production in the U.S. peaked in the early 1970's?

The lowest production since 1950 occurred ~1982; we actually produce more now?

Current steel production (~91 million tons in 2008 per Wikipedia), though a bit low, isn't all that different from what it's been for the past 50 years?

There are a lot fewer steel companies and jobs, and steel production uses a lot less energy, but both are due more to efficiency and competition than a huge decline in steel production, per se.

It's not like we're all just cutting each others' hair.

But the TARP and the bailouts are all Democrat legislation. That’s just a fact. Proposed by Democrats and voted for by Democrats. The TARP, bailouts, stimulus, etc. is all Democrat.

Impressive revisionist history- when did Paulson switch parties?

Paulson Announces `Troubled Asset Relief Program'

Sept. 19 (Bloomberg) -- The following is a statement by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson released today in Washington.

Last night, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, SEC Chairman Chris Cox and I had a lengthy and productive working session with Congressional leaders. We began a substantive discussion on the need for a comprehensive approach to relieving the stresses on our financial institutions and markets.

We have acted on a case-by-case basis in recent weeks, addressing problems at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, working with market participants to prepare for the failure of Lehman Brothers, and lending to AIG so it can sell some of its assets in an orderly manner. And this morning we've taken a number of powerful tactical steps to increase confidence in the system, including the establishment of a temporary guaranty program for the U.S. money market mutual fund industry.

Despite these steps, more is needed. We must now take further, decisive action to fundamentally and comprehensively address the root cause of our financial system's stresses.

...

The federal government must implement a program to remove these illiquid assets that are weighing down our financial institutions and threatening our economy. This troubled asset relief program must be properly designed and sufficiently large to have maximum impact, while including features that protect the taxpayer to the maximum extent possible.

So let's at least get our facts straight. The stimulus- yes, that was 99% Democrat (3 R senators voted for it), thanks to the party of no. TARP and bailouts? Let's see, TARP (HR1424) went:

Ayes: 74 (Democrat: 40; Republican: 33; Other: 1)

Nays: 25 (Democrat: 9; Republican: 15; Other: 1)

So republicans voted for it in the Senate 2-1 under a Republican administration. R's voted 91-108 against it in the house, and the R votes were needed for a majority.

Several of his posts indicate that in addition to his lack of a filter on his own mouth, the critical thinking filter on his brain is pretty shoddy.

A recent post spoke approvingly of Ann Coulter: "Ann Coulter might be extreme, but damn the woman is intelligent in ways that piss so many people off." (see my sig for the full post)

Yeah, that'll fly well in my state.

It's even more enertaining to watch Europeans rap about bikes:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9ZHLAQzZ_4&feature=player_embedded

Global culture, baby!