taks

i don't think it's that the regular season is out of whack, it's that teams that peak early and play strong tire by the end of the season and do poorly in the playoffs. the cardinals, perhaps, just had a late season "gel" and are putting together better football than they were consistently capable of all season (they played very well in many games, but very poorly in others, particularly on defense). it may be only 16 games before playoffs begin, but that's a loooong time and a lot of things can happen in the mean time. injuries, drama queen action, etc. taks

hehe, whiskey flask at the office. ahhh, that would be a good idea. guess you get a free vacation, eh GD? my boss and i have been butting heads lately, to the point where i was about to find other work. we seem to have come to an understanding, however, and he has made a few gestures indicating he wants to keep me around. i didn't get worried because the job market for me is the same as it has been for the last 3 or 4 years. there are probably 4 jobs in town that i am a good fit for, but only 1 or 2 other guys that could compete for them, too. it is dangerous being in the niche i'm in, however. taks

i remember now, i watched 28 weeks later the other night. while there were some interesting moments, the film is marred by the standard assumption that everyone is sooooo stupid they couldn't manage to work a belt or shoelaces, let alone living. this is, of course, after all these stupid people were somehow clever enough to avoid all the rampaging zombies in the first place and re-colonize the UK. yup, we're smart enough to survive, but then took stupid pills once our survival was all but guaranteed... nope, no chance we'll booger that one up. the first one was orders of magnitude better in nearly every respect. taks

i don't know if it is available, but the PPP (purchasing power parity) is a better GDP indicator than the nominal, which is what these values are. china ranks differently, in particular (they're the biggest difference of the top economies). taks

hmmm, most that i knew before moving to CO were from the bar crowd (nightclub entertainers in particular), which tends toward the bi designation. we had a male stripper troupe that used to do our ladies night (st. louis) that consisted mostly of bi men (i hired them to work for my bar in rolla, too). my friday night pool league, however, has a few teams in it from a lesbian bar and most of them are strictly gay. there was one gal that had a sex change (from a man) and she goes both ways. she was on my team, actually, and i learned more about sex changes than i ever thought i would know after a year shooting pool with her (she's 70, btw, and had the conversion when she was 61)! taks

well, trinity brewing is definitely hippy central, and since most everyone in here thinks i'm some hard-core right-wing religious conservative eating weekly dinners with rush limbaugh... ahem. taks

no **** sherlock. and the peace corps has nothing to do with "national security" no matter how you want to spin them. no, he's talking about a national police force. drop the strawman enoch. you're more intelligent than that. i can't help but wonder why you keep using such arguments... i have no idea why he said this nor why he thinks we need something like this. he knows that "security" is an issue with the american populace so maybe he thinks he can ease our fears by implementing some sort of police force. i don' t know. you're the only one talking conspiracy. taks

i had a beer lunch today. trinity brewing company again. this time i did the awaken stout (nitrated) and the soul horkey. gouda cheese bread bowl with some belgian fries and chipotle ketchup for my meal. mmmm... you guys would really, really be surprised that someone like me would feel at home in a place like trinity. taks

hmmm... neither my master's degree nor did i know what to say to anyone, nor did i know what i wanted to do specifically. for the MS, i simply went around to all the professors i knew (got my MS at the same school as my BS, MST-MSM-UMR-Esquire) and asked about the different projects they were doing and/or the types of things they liked. i ended up settling on either the computer engineering dude or one of the comm dudes (actually a "chick") and the comm professor had an opening for a paid internship, so i went with her. for my phd, my eventual adviser was consulting with my company and he told me he'd advise me and i should get a phd, so i did. what was i thinking??? taks

exactly what purpose does a civilian national security force serve, enoch? it's got nothing to do with paranoia. it is a civilian police force. certainly the term "spying" is pushing what its intended job would be, but ultimately their purpose would be to root out internal threats to TheAmericanWay which devolves into spying on each other no matter how you want to look at it. there's a reason police forces are all state and local. the part you bolded is exactly how i was reading this, so i'm not sure what your point is. that i didn't actually include the military line when i quoted it actually made my argument less persuasive than i wanted, but i left it off because everybody (well, not everybody) would have said the paragraph break meant a clear distinction. by doing this, you actually enhance my argument. taks

they get paid, is what i mean. at least, some of them do. it is like being a reserve in the military. i actually applied to be a pilot (and had gotten a recommendation from the base commander) in the air national guard when i graduated in 1990. it would have been a full-time job for a year or so then one weekend a month and two weeks in the summer after that. taks

Congratulations. You addressed the first point (if that can be called addressing it) but missed the second point. um, no, you missed the point. calax was responding to what i said which was very specifically in referece to kaftan's quote. i never said inheritance drives anything w.r.t. getting married, only that it is easily solved via wills. in other words, any argument about inheritance is moot because of wills. the remaining point he made is also a will issue (living will), so moot, too. follow the argument, please. it is not difficult to do. i would also suggest you read, then re-read, your own comment as well as those you are replying to before hitting "add reply" to avoid making irrelevant claims. taks

they are not volunteer, nor are they as well funded as the military (well, they aren't full-time nor as large), but they do not need to be, either. taks

um, i'm not sure where you get that the civilian national security force has anything to do with america's relations abroad. he's pretty clear here that he's talking about something internal that is just as strong as the military: sorry, but he's pushing to make us spy on ourselves. we don't need an internal volunteer national security force. i don't understand why anyone would think we do. taks

yes, WND is an extremely biased website, but i believe they are right on this one... he wants a national security force. yah, a liberal democrat wants yet another police agency to stick their noses into our lives. his plans, in general, are starting to sound more an more like indoctrinations. and here everyone was worried about bush... hehe. taks

not if they don't help the economy. the bailouts won't help, at least, not like they think. immaterial to my point. again, not unless he can actually improve the economy, and even he has acknowledged that it might take longer than 4 years (uh, spin anyone: "it'll take more than my first term to solve this problem, so don't judge me till after i get reelected!"). btw, not that i think polls mean anything substantial, but polls like this are relevant since obama is looking at them... http://people-press.org/report/485/economy...policy-priority taks

i think it goes over all of our heads, at least, just about everyone looks on at politics with incredulity. my political views are almost to the tee summed up with one word: capitalism. study and understand that, and you'll understand nearly every viewpoint i have on just about every issue (except the socially liberal opinions i have that nobody ever recognizes, but they are connected, sort of, though my deep seated beliefs in individual rights). all in all, i don't think we'll ever get to see if obama is "good" or "bad." he's stuck between a rock and a hard place and he wants to get reelected. that means a lot of the stuff he was talking about last spring during the primaries simply can't happen. he put the right people in place, for his vision that is, but they'll be powerless in the end because most of the stuff they all want to do will cost big dollars, dollars that the public won't tolerate him spending. he'll simply have to ride things out. people on the right will be happy that he hasn't pushed big socialist ideals down our throats, and people on the left will be mad that he didn't. taks

hardly a surprise, and at the same time, nothing to do with what i said. i merely said that it takes courage to do what truman did (not specifying truman). he agonized over the decision and did what he thought was right in the end (agonized the rest of his life from what i've read). half truth or not whether it saved lives, it was thought to be the best course of action at the time. not surprisingly, He actually agreed with me while at the same time telling me i didn't know what i was talking about. what a joker! then he dreams up this strawman argument about intentionally targeting civilians. true or not, it is absolutely immaterial to what he accused me of not understanding in the first place! taks

um, i was directly referencing kaftan's quote, which included inheritance. yes, that is a big deal but not the only deal. tax breaks yadda, yadda we all realize are key given the current circumstances. as i have commented in general, if they leveled the playing field for everyone (no one is more equal than another), i.e., if they simply got rid of all of the tax stuff, the only thing that would matter would be inheritance, and that is easy to do with wills. this requires acknowledging individual rights over group rights, however, and few, if any, politicians seem to understand the distinction. taks

not a hole... i'm doing work in a very non-mainstream embedded framework which makes it more of an exception. how many people in the world write code for radar applicatons? i'd be willing to bet it's in the 5-figure range. the guy that wrote all of my peripheral control software is a C++/java programmer. made it tough for me when i had to make changes, hehe. taks

regular C dominates the embedded signal processing world simply because it is simpler and a lot of the things that C++ brings to the table are unnecessary. i've never buckled down to learn C++, btw. quite frankly, i often need to get down to the assembly language anyway since gcc doesn't optimize for vector (SIMD) operations very well anyway. taks

uh, what's so different about the base classes now vs. regular nwn2? i'm not seeing the distinction in his post... taks

never had a cavity myself... heard they suck. so sorry. nothing wrong with deriving pleasure from the suffering of an evil ex-wife, GD. be glad you didn't have children, however, because then you'd feel morally obligated to help. taks

bronson movies are all a bit weird, and they got weirder as his career deteriorated. it seems i've seen the mechanic and thought it was weird, too. i have a few movies i watched lately that i can't recall at the moment (on my first cup of coffee, still slow). obviously they must not have been that great otherwise i'd be waxing poetic. if i think of them i'll post. taks

btw, this part is actually correct, but you simply assume that pushing the button, or whatever it happens to be, is the "wrong" thing. you also apparently did not read what i said: in other words, i said exactly the same thing as you did right here, yet i'm commenting on things i don't understand. you really take the cake for a lack of ability to understand an argument. taks