You are not a prude because it doesn't make you happy to think about someone else's rather pedestrian sexuality.

You are a prude because of your need to deny to demonize other people because of their sexual desires and actions.

You are perhaps a bit of a misandrist for your support of physical violence to literally neuter (mostly male) politicians

in order for them to perform better for you.

Those who argue it is not a sport are just plain wrong.

The ones who argue it is not a sport because it is not physical enough are just plain ignorant (really - you are just a dumb ass, go research the subject and STFU until then).

The ones who argue that no sport may includes a subjective component to the judging seem deeply misguided.

To a huge extent the multiple judges in the events with subjective judging (diving, synchronized swimming, figure skating, etc) come up with scores that are well within a single standard deviation of each other.

Now and then there is some controversy over the judging, but the element of arbitrary and capricious judging is far greater in, say, Football, than in Synchronized Swimming.

Representing emotional states (or other indicators) in an n-bit structure (as opposed to just 2^n) is really helpful when you

want to compactly tag and manipulate the data.

knowing '512' is one thing, but having a unique 9 bit structure for each strip is really, the joke aside, a genius act of Aadisht Khanna.

'Givvup Only Are There' goes on my list :-)

In fact, it doesn't seem bad at all.

Here is a chart of the S&P 500 over history:

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=%5EGSPC&t=my

And look at that on a linear scale:

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=%5EGSPC&t=my&l=off&z=m&q=l&c=

If I connect a line from 1987 when Greenspan took office, to 2005, or to now, the upward path seems pretty clear.

Market performance from 1995-2000 was literally unprecedented, and it warps decade to decade statistics.

I am with al_loomis here.

It is easy to simply disregard any research which is funded by your political opponents, but doing so basically destroys the whole basis of science.

It is the same thing that our anti-science administration does.

I disagree with your assumptions. While our stocks of natural resources may possibly (but not definitively) be lower than before the Great Depression, we are unequivocally more wealthy now than we were then.

Ignoring our increases in intellectual and human capital is to ignore vital parts of the equation.

We generate much more GDP now with each barrel of oil or ton of steel than we did even 20 years ago.

This doesn't mean that we have no risk of a new depression, but I note that Leonard has long shown himself to be a far from objective observer of the economic pot he tries to stir.

With respect, I disagree. It appears that the mothers in this

case conspired with the men in perpetuating a nasty set of crimes.

They may have defenses, like they were abused into the action, or acted in fear, or something else, but the policy of the state is to separate the children from the parents in abuse cases until something approaching the facts can be determined.

Having mothers able to coach the kids while the investigation continues, mothers who appear to be remaining loyal to what seems like a nasty bit of ideology and criminality, does not seem like it is in the best interests of the children or of justice.

I am strongly opposed to McCain on the issues, but on a personal level I greatly admire him. I believe that he would make a very good, but not great, president. Sadly, he would be a very good president advocating an agenda which I don't agree with.

He has made mistakes, the Keating thing being one of them, but I respect him. I'd rather focus the debate on the very real choices we get to make right now, rather than on what amounts to continuing of the Whispering Campaign.

I am disgusted when the other side does it to our candidates, and I can't support it when our side does it to the opposition.

If biofuels mandates are a 'crime against humanity' than basically any action which doesn't minimize food prices is a crime against humanity.

Unless you are willing to make the totally supportable, but in my mind deeply morally wrong, argument that 'property is theft,' or an argument that we have an obligation to not value a commodity more than a poorer person, than this is an awful argument.

Past awful. It is awful the way the idiots who talk about 'post carbon' are awful.

If you want to argue that wealthy nations and wealthy people have a moral obligation to not let poorer people starve than have at it. But growing crops for fuel is no more a crime against humanity than growing, say, coffee rather than maize is a crime.

I am having trouble parsing this quote from the article:

"That's right: Far from driving this crisis, shorts were net buyers of financial stocks this summer, as they must buy stocks back to close their positions and realize their gains (or losses)."

A short seller who closes their position by buying stocks can't be a 'net buyer' for the transaction.

I _think_ what they are saying is that the shorts sold their stock short before the summer, (and maintained a short position by continuing to sell short) and then closed their positions during the summer. So during the spring they were net sellers and during the summer net buyers.