We will use ours (married, filing jointly) to increase our holdings of gold. By May, the $1200 should increase our net by slightly more than 1oz.

Beware the siren call of Fiat Currency.

@exdred, I'd keep that list of Hillary's accomplishments somewhere safe if I were you.

The naming of courthouses and post offices, commemoration of sports teams, and other plauditory effluvia the esteemed senator from New York trails in her wake are not exactly the kinds of things at the top of the list of issues on which the Americans crave leadership.

Chris Matthews is the public airwaves' embarrassing Uncle Ernie. I get the creeps everytime he opens his mouth.

An informative article with some good information, ideas, and resources for dealing with the byproducts of technological innovation:

http://www.voip-news.com/feature/50-ways-leave-cellphone-011608/

I always thought the Anonymous option was an invitation to cowardice. Anecdotally, it seemed Anonymous was always too well-represented among the inflammatory and unreasonable commentary as well.

Besides, without change there is no progression.

Name recognition aside, the difference in public and media reaction to the Farrakhans and the Hagees of this world is the difference between black and white.

Anyone who believes the US is in any respect a post-racial society is in for an eye-opening experience this summer.

Heck, everyone I know still calls the place the SF Giants play Pac Bell and it was only named that for about a minute. What is it, on its third name now?

Yo, G:

Right on, bro. Don't sweat the stefan nonsense dis. You copped the City vibe f'reals, dawg.

Next time tho, Lower Haight, Outer Mission, Glen Park. Get out some.

Peace.

The villain of this story is the cop. More hassles and injustice befall otherwise law-abiding and completely harmless individuals at the hands of poorly vetted persons in authority than from perhaps any other source. If we are going to give people badges and guns and invest them with the power to handcuff people and take them away, we need to ensure they appreciate the value of their discretionary authority and do not merely view their jobs as platforms from which to exercise power in a chaotic world. The cop who arrested Treffly Coyne should be busted to a desk job or latrine duty for exercising poor judgment and wasting the time and money of everyone who got dragged into this pathetic kerfluffle.

Farhad, when the time comes for you to move on to something bigger and better than blogging for Salon, I would highly recommend not including in your portfolio the back-to-back (!) items you ran on the former Governor of New York's femme fatale.

Drawing attention to your having succumbed to the same prurient, train-wreck fascinations that imbue the viewing-habits and notions of 'newsworthiness' afflicting the masses of our celebrity-obsessed culture will not do good things for your market value.

Fortunately, for the purposes of propagating the species, God made many 22 year-old human females very sexually attractive to the vast preponderance of human males (of most any age). Unfortunately for her, the subject of your items in this case was not blessed with much talent in the way of either singing or making interesting music and in fact, probably has better near-term prospects sticking to blowjobs and other high-end sexual favors than she does in trying to make it in the music biz.

You would be well advised to focus on the geekystuff you're good at and leave the tabloid stuff to the tabloids.

If the tabloidy stuff is as popular as you say, why wouldn't my reveling in it increase my market value?

I guess it depends on where you set your sights. If you're looking to graduate from Salon to News of the World, have at it.

If I was a journalist busy building a portfolio of work to establish my credibility and expertise 'Inside Tech: Gizmos, people and big ideas' I wouldn't be too proud of having used my bully pulpit to pump Ashley Alexandra Dupre.

But then, you're the dude with the byline, so, what do I know?

As a child, if ever I would complain about rules or unfairness that, were they different, would make me happier or be otherwise better for me, my father would always say, "and if my bubbe had batzim she'd be my zadie."

If anything made sense about the way the people of the United States and our media understand and operate in our democracy, many, many things would be different. But here we are.

Under a winner-take-all primary system, it would only "make sense" to require the winner to get 50.1% of the vote and in those states where the "winner" got less than a majority, we'd need to have run-off elections to decide the primary winner.

Now, I'm all for voting and for operating as robust a democracy as we can, and an idea like Instant Run-off Voting would cure many of our electoral ills.

But we've got what we've got and under the system as it is, Obama looks like the winner. Progressive-minded people who are skeptical of the bellicose approach favored by Senator McCain would do well to get behind Obama and get busy wresting the reigns of power from the neocon blowhards who've taken us to the brink of economic and diplomatic oblivion.

Hard to reconcile Joey Dorsey getting called for "bumping Chalmers on the dribble about a mile from the basket," and Derrick Rose NOT getting called for "contact and Collins went down."

If the refs call the foul on Rose it's a different ball game.

It's also a different ball game if Memphis hits any of the four three throws they missed down the stretch.

It's also a different ball game if the refs don't take away a Memphis point after reviewing a Rose three pointer during a TV time out. Given your past criticism of instant replay in a variety of circumstances, King, it's surprising you didn't mention it here.

Great game, though.

...windows to the soul, baby; windows to the soul.