BTW, the fact that your beau so readily discounts the value of something so obviously dear to him is a pretty good indication that he's smitten.

I wouldn't worry about the environment too much. These kinds of things tend to resolve themselves. You'll either break off the relationship, or move in together. In either case, I doubt the environment will have much to do with it.

Now I have to get back to my environmental wasteland to eat a dead pig and some navy beans simmered in olive oil w/ fresh sage, thyme, and garlic.

All true. I was working on the assumption that Tracy's characterization was an accurate portrait of his character. Only he would know for sure. Or would he?

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200811/multiple-personalities

Of course, assumptions are cheap and easy, which is all I could really afford, as I was attending to my dead pig. I'd still wager against your other conjectures in Vegas, though. Remember, in addition to the alleged conflict of interest, we have additional information. Like, airfare ain't cheap. If he were only smitten by Tracy's kitten, as it were, he's an awfully extravagant John.

I agree with your third hypothesis. The man's mind is muddled. But he be muddled because he be smote.

Exercising an urban planning vision? For some reason your fourth conjecture reminds me of Fritz Lang's wonderful dystopian Metropolis. Those damn urban planners, always plotting to keep the workers down!

Yes, could be a lot of things, but I'd still bet a beer and a pretzel he's smitten.

Nazdagg may be right, in fact, I believe he has to be right. In the long run, supply and demand must set prices. However, we spend an awful lot of time in the interim short duration where prices have little or nothing to do with supply and demand at all, but are instead driven by speculative greed.

There are two markets - the real market and the make-believe market, and the make-believe market has taken over. Instead of money flowing from consumer to producer in virtuous cycles, it flows to third parties completely outside of the loop; and we end up with titanic credit imbalances like we're experiencing today. And no, when prices return to appropriate real market levels, capital does not slosh around back to where it should be.

Part of me thinks Wall Street should just be shut down altogether. However, in theory, when things work right, the free flow of capital lubricates the economy, and that's a good thing. But there has to be a better way. Perhaps we need to stop rewarding people for short term thinking. If you take possession of a stock, you have to hold it for at least sixty days, say. Maybe longer. Really. Just as with mark to market accounting - why should the value of a publicly traded company or commodity rise and fall according to the speculative whim of short term market manipulators?

The problem is, nobody wants to address the real issues, because everybody these days is an investor. A speculator contributing to the problem.

The notion that the blogosphere consists of myriad independent thinkers all subjecting their subjects to independent review is ludicrous. Blogs primarily (not exclusively, but primarily) merely regurgitate and amplify the talking points of the day. It's the behavior of a swarm of bees, who all watch a single intrepid adventurer dance, and then follow them wherever they might lead.

I'm a big fan of blogs and the conversations that they provoke, but comparing blogs - or even drawing parallels - to peer reviewed science, to me, is quite ludicrous.

And calling economics science, well, that's a rant for another day.

Like everyone else but that emotionally stillborn twat Tomreedtoon (FBI, take notice), I too will miss Opus greatly. Of course.

But on a more personal level, I'll miss you, BB. I'll miss my weekly romp with your sane sage wit. Besides Dilbert, I have no comic heroes to look up to anymore.

On the bright side, my kids are just the right age for your books! So I'll still be seeing you around the house. I'd selfishly like to ask, though: please don't retire completely. Even Goodnight Moon, after a few thousand readings, can put you in a coma. You are a real hero. An agent of change. A bellwether of sanity. The children of the world certainly need some sweetness, goodness knows. But nothing puts a smile on the face of tired old jaded salt miners like a well crafted poke in the eye; and you are the best eye poker I know.

Either stand on your feet or be dragged by them

Dragged by your feet? If you're not already standing on them, you must already be either sitting or lying down, no? And then somehow your feet drag you? Or they are a drag on you? I'm having trouble visualizing this as anything but an ungainly case of elephantiasis, or maybe some kind of demon possession - can anyone help here?

Do penguins stand on their feet? It always looked to me like they sat on them; and when they want to move, they just waddle back and forth. Are there legs in the middle there somewhere? Maybe this "dragged by your feet" monition pertains to penguins somehow?

I'm just too stupid to understand this kind of high minded rhetoric.