Why do you think those of us posting from the midwest are plants?

And to whomever said Missouri considers "Hoosier" synonymous with "ignorant redneck" - why thanks, Missouri, we love you too.

Indiana does have extremely racist pockets - mostly smallish towns in very rural areas - but Indiana has evolved a great deal since the Reagan era. Indianapolis is actually a fairly diverse city and is becoming more so each year. We'd likely be more diverse if our job market wasn't circling the drain, or if we were able to keep our best and brightest college students here. Our state's biggest employer is Wal*Mart, there are few high paying jobs anywhere and even fewer tech jobs of any paygrade.

Hopefully this election will prove to the rest of the country that Indiana is more than cornfields, racecars and klan rallies.

Providing the fact checkers at the NYT ate their Wheaties, it looks to indeed be from O.W. Holmes.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/08/opinion/08friedman.html?ref=opinion

Joe the Hypothetical Plumber could easily recoup the whopping $5 a week tax hike by being smart about where he incorporates. I don't know of a large midwestern city not speckled with tax abatement areas meant to lure other Hypothetical Joes to open a small business.

Pity, though, all those Joes have a 95% chance of failing, due in no small part to the gigantic corporations these same republicans entitle to gobble up small companies like Pac Man dots.

The Jonas Brothers. No, not for their current assault on our tween daughter's wallets, not even for the bizarre leather pants and puffy shirts. In 2038, when Hannah Montana runs for President on the "Best of Both Worlds" campaign, you know she'll stock her cabinet full of Jonases and underwear models. We may not be able to stop her rapid ascent to world domination, but there's still hope to stop the JBs......

... I'm not flying anymore. Air travel is ALREADY the most dehumanizing way to spend a couple hundred of my hard earned dollars. Throwing in a peepshow for the TSA is not going to be a part of any of my future travel plans. If I can't drive there, I guess I just won't go.

Hoosier Obama supporter here, chewing my nails to the quick. My polling place was busy, and the poll worker I spoke with said they had a record turnout. For an Indianapolis 'burb, my neighborhood is pretty diverse and from the yard signs, we tend to lean slightly left. (23 Obama - 18 McCain)

Having friends over to watch things unfold this evening. We're a bi-partisan group, so we're going to be drinking a lot of wine.

Great blogging, and I love the collective approach, it saves me a lot of clicking.

Yes We Can!!!!

I'm so proud of Indiana right now, I want to hug it.

Yay Hoosiers!

Some of my best friends are game programmers....

Small gaming companies are fascinating places. They do tend to be male dominated, but I don't see a lot of girls going into hardcore programming. Call me crazy, but I'm pretty sure you can't get any job you don't apply or prepare for.

As for the porn in the cubes, most game programmers work ridiculously long hours staring at a monitor. If looking at boobies makes them happy on the rare occasion they can look up, more power to 'em.

Game programmers aren't ev0l misogynists, they're the boys most girls never talked to in high school. Much like high school, girls who don't choose to be a part of their geeky world are missing out.

I agree with an above poster - we don't need "girl games" - we need good games that are engaging, re-playable and appealing to everyone. One thing we can all agree every gender wants is quality.

As a former special education teacher who taught kids with autism exclusively, I think he may have a point. His point isn't as cut and dry as he implies, but I believe there are parents who seek a diagnosis of autism aggressively when autism may not be the most precise choice. I've known parents to do it, but none as a cover up for crappy parenting.

Autism is word we use to collectively describe a spectrum of disorders, ranging from high-functioning Asperger's Syndrome to classic autism (sometimes referred to as Tanner's autism, it's the most severe and pervasive mutation of the disorder.) If your child happens to fall somewhere in the middle, exhibiting some characteristics of autism or Asperger's like behavior but not enough to qualify for an official diagnosis of either, your child is likely still going to need some help. No diagnosis, no services - at least not at school or any outside services that would normally be covered by insurance or Medicaid. I can understand why a parent of a child on the borderline of a diagnosis might push it over the line to get help for his or her kid.

I think most parents act in the best interests of their kids, but I can't write off Leary's theory of some parents using a special education services qualifying dx to shift the blame from themselves. Not all parents are great. In fact, some are pretty bad. Like I said, I've had the good fortune of working with wonderful parents, but I've heard enough stories from my colleagues to know that nothing should shock me. Clearly it's not as the epidemic he's making it out to be, but he's a comedian, not a statistician. I can understand not being a fan of Leary, but he deserves credit for his ability to make people talk and think about difficult things.