Manhattan

Don't judge me, but it looks like I'm going to be drinking a lot of cheap wine in a parking lot and then stumbling into Buffalo Wild Wings and being the only one of my friends able to purchase alcohol. God I hate college students.

A bold prediction sort of has to have Texas winning...

The all-red I couldn't imagine liking too much, but from a branding point of view, the academic "N" is much better for the university's recognition (especially on television; it stands out) than the simplistic practice-squad N. The academic looking N is already the brand of all other aspects of the university. It makes perfect sense, but again, it is a matter of taste and tradition. Personally, I prefer the simple N, but I don't think the new one - if it is indeed the new one - is bad at all either.

It's really going to hurt Ohio State that Iowa, Wisconsin, Penn State, and M*ch*gan are not doing well. I know nobody expected the latter two to be contenders, but we had hoped that at least Iowa or Wisconsin would be undefeated when we faced them. We don't even play the next best team in the Big Ten this year.

Zing!

Auburn a better team now than Alabama?

Guys, don't mess with him, he's got a J.D. and his IQ is probably higher than yours. ...

At this point in the season, I think Nebraska is looking better than Ohio State...

I miss him in New York.

ShaggyBevo also has THujone.

Considering that the previous wage of a Chinese peasant was literally nothing for toiling his entire life on a farm, earning 10 cents an hour to work in a factory where all food and housing is provided for and even have time off is a huge improvement. It isn't optimal, but they have not reached that point in economic development yet. The factory jobs are very competitive. More than a million Chinese peasants still don't even have fresh drinking water so they are forced to drink their own urine. My problem with free trade these days is government interference in the market. Providing massive subsidies, for example, to US cotton growers makes it very difficult for developing countries to compete because the US growers are able to remove themselves from the competition of the open market, enabling them to turn out massive amounts of cheap cotton, which is below the cost of production in most countries.

3D Animation: 1) Toy Story 3 2) The Fantastic Mr. Fox 3) WALL-E 4) Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 5) Shrek 6) Finding Nemo

I heard this is called "Tuesday" at mmmtodd's house though. Well done.

I'm so happy for them. I went to a Chiefs game once a few years ago and their fans were the best I have ever seen. They certainly deserve this.

They decriminalized it, not legalized it. Like in Boulder.

no, my point being that the market is actually controlled by greed. People are not perfect and the market is actually fixed. You can support the idea of a free market but it doesn't mean the market is going to follow that ideology. I hope the market is controlled by "greed", as you call it. Person A wants something Person B has. Person B voluntarily agrees to an exchange of goods/services. Just as long as humans are capable of mutual comparison, there will be envy, which is good. It is the motivation that makes people want to improve their lives, and the free market provides the mechanism for which people can freely exchange things as they please. The problem - why the market is actually "fixed" - is because of government meddling in it. Messing with interest rates by the unregulated Federal Reserve. Debasing currencies. Rewarding poor business decisions that would otherwise weed out the poor businesses. Providing an atmosphere for businesses to believe that if they fail, they will be bailed out by the government, so there is no longer any restraint in engaging in fiscally irresponsible or risky business decisions. Then there is the social economic engineering. Or what about this scenario that played out in the late 70s and mid 90s? The greatest exploitation in recent American history was this sub-prime mortgage problem. Entirely created by the government: 1) Government wants votes, but more importantly, they want money, and more specifically, they want money for their business partners and federal reserve. Poor people who don't live in nice houses want nice houses. 2) Government tells banks that it is okay to lend to poor people who otherwise wouldn't be able to afford it. They got their back, and since interest rates were always [artificially] low and the real estate prices were rising, they didn't foresee it ever being a problem. They're too smart. They paint this as a great American ideal that everyone should own a house and the government will make sure the banks will make that possible - though they ordinarily would have not, obviously. 3) Millions of poor people buy houses. In order to facilitate this, new houses need to be constructed. Construction business flourishes. Many other housing related industries and banks start doing really, really well. 4) The gig goes on for awhile. All praise the Fed for making this brilliant situation whereby people who can't afford nice houses get to live in nice houses. 5) The economy takes a downturn and most of these people start defaulting on their mortgages because - surprise! - they don't and never did have the money to afford their houses. Most end up poorer than they were before, their money surrendered to housing related businesses and banks. 6) The government and media paint this problem as the problems of an "unregulated" free-market when this couldn't be further from the truth. It was that the government decided to interfere in the first place that created an artificial business situation that would have never existed in the free market. What really happened: Government just took billions of dollars from mostly working class people and redistributed to the banks and large housing businesses, and of course, back to the Federal Reserve. The brilliance of this plan of exploitation is that the victims are so eager to participate in it, and when the deed is done, they come back to the government even more willing to be "protected" when they really are just signing up for more exploitation. The government robs the voters of their economic independence to secure support, and at the same time, takes what little money they had to fund the expanding government needed to satisfy all of their crazy expanding powers that the people now crave after what the so-called evil businesses did to them. Quite the system.

For starters, a currency based on the gold standard. That would go a long way to prevent wanton corruption and social/economic engineering by the government.

Biggest political issue of our times and the politicians do a real good job of keeping us distracted with other things.

Anecdotal evidence for the win...

I'm going to use an LvM quote here: "The class of those who have the ability to think their own thoughts is separated by an unbridgeable gulf from the class of those who cannot." It's a sad truth of all thought (or lack thereof) in this world. It is just most easily identifiable in religious people. I used to not really care, but then I considered that if you couldn't use reason to come to some extraordinarily simple conclusions about religion, then I don't really know why I should take any other point of view you may have seriously.

FWIW, here is the BP poll for this week: 01. Alabama 692 (20) 02. Ohio State 673 (8) 03. Oregon 603 04. Nebraska 588 05. Florida 541 06. Boise State 533 07. Texas Christian 521 08. Oklahoma 505 09. Stanford 466 10. Wisconsin 459 11. Auburn 400 12. Arizona 353 13. Louisiana State 351 14. Miami 325 14. Utah 325 16. Arkansas 314 17. Iowa 271 18. Michigan State 188 19. South Carolina 151 20. Texas 135 21. Penn State 121 22. Michigan 115 23. North Carolina State 108 24. Southern Cal 95 25. Nevada 65

Oklahoma is the best team in the Big 12 right now, and with any luck, you won't see them until the conference championship.

Dude...

yo im cars a gain