Who are the Americans who actually torture people? Do we have a Torture Battalion inside the CIA? Do they have a Patriotic Torture Training Command somewhere in South Carolina?

The officials and lawyers who talk about torture always speak in a distanced, abstract manner. But what about the guys and gals who actually do it? Are they enthusiastic volunteers? Gung ho patriots?

If my kids volunteered for the Army, or went to work for the CIA, could she be ordered to waterboard and extract fingernails? Would she be strong enough to refuse?

June 2, 2007 / WASHINGTON, D.C. White House Spokesman Tony Snow announced today that President George W. Bush will tell an elaborate yet simple-minded lie on Monday at noon Eastern Daylight Time. This lie will involve Iraq, the US economy, and climate change.

Mr. Snow told the assembled White House press corps that the President will support his lie with falsehoods and cliches. He said that the President also will grudgingly, combatively, belatedly admit a few scraps of obvious truth and/or reality, insofar as those items may be twisted to support his lie.

Is "He Hate Me" available for this new league?

Maybe regular Americans who now consider themselves Conservatives will come to resent the rich "Conservative" spokepeople.

As regular Americans continue to lose their jobs and to sink economically, they probably will start hating these rich fatcats, and will stop listening to them.

We are having little success in making regular American voters see how crazy and brutal these blowhards really are. We may need to wait until they destroy enough of their own people. It may take another whole generation.

These two get stars from me.

Clockwork Smurf wrote a wonderful scenario for a Whimper-Style ending. And Ringo had the profound idea that Dr. Elliot K. is the snitch who links the Brooklyn mob, the FBI, and the Joisy mob.

They took BABY dinosaurs, and baby elephants, and smallish young horses. That's how they fit them on the Ark.

300 Cubits Long X 50 Cubits wide X 30 Cubits Deep (keel to deck)

That is 450,000 Cubic Cubits. A Cubit was 18 or 20 inches. With 20-inch cubits, the Ark would have been about the size of the Edmund Fitzgerald. With 18-inch cubits, the Ark would have been the size of a smallish Great Lakes freighter.

...So this is okay...

But it's pompous to compare yourself to Dante, in writing, in public. And it is less than a revelation to agree with the conventional wisdom about Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen. Better just to distill this into a haiku or a joke.

A priest, a rabbi,

And a guy with bad knees walk

Into the sunset

That Cold Russian commando may come back. Maybe he is related to the dead Ukranians. He has a score to settle with Paulie.

Furio may come back. Did you not think maybe Furio would be one of the assassins from Italy? Maybe Furio will come back to rescue Carm.

If the new team played better than the Lions, Detroiters would follow it. And we have the vacant Pontiac Silverdome for the new team to play in.

Mary Matalin: A. Specific, Personal, Detailed, On Topic

Henry Kissinger: B. Concise, On Topic

Richard Pearle: C. Some Details, but No Development

Donald Rumsfeld: D. General, Possibly Plagiarized

In the first year of thirty years, there are thirty teams and thirty possible titles.

In the second year, you still have the same thirty teams in the running, but there are only 29 possible titles left, because there are only 29 years left.

Third year, only 28 possible titles, and so on.

The Ukrainian dead woman was Phil's goomar, and the dead Ukranian man was her father. So the assassins were at the "right" address. (Am I wrong? Everything was fast and vague.)

At the start of the the first year, there are 15 titles to be won during the next 15 years. And there are 30 teams, so the probability of winning a title is 15/30 = 50%.

But at the start of the tenth year, 10 titles remain, with the same 30 teams, so the probability of winning a title is 10/30 = 33.33333%.

By the fifteenth year, only one title remains, and the probability of winning that title is 1 title divided by 30 teams = 3.3333 percent.

If you manipulate this whole string of numbers (year one through year fifteenn), you come up with exactly the same overall result that Poster Anonymous came up with.

My problem was that I did not know what his symbol ^ meant. I now believe it means "to the power of." And, my other problem is that I have learned all my probabilities at the track, rather than at school.

I am not sure which approach is more relevant to the question.

They have trash all over the place, foundering houses, and fatalistic attitudes. As a rule, they need lots of help. Maybe cut the grass, and follow the great advice here, and then, I have a specific suggestion based on my own experience:

That collection may or may not be valuable. Appraisers will be delighted to charge thousands of dollars to catalogue and value it. (Tell your nieces and nephews to be appraisers when they grow up. Appraisers make tons of money.)

You say money is not a big problem. If that really is true, go ahead and hire appraisers. Make sure you get a total appraisal price up front. And make sure your dad pays, not you.

The appraisers will measure and photograph, and report in great detail, and then they will charge you a bundle. And you probably will learn that the collection is worth much less than you imagined.

Whatever the result, though, you will have a starting point for further work on your father's estate. And, you will have an excuse to get him to make a will. You will have an actual dollar figure for him to focus on.

He is a troop I support!