dwar0123

Main point? Well I don't speak for cthulhu, BUT, if I were making this point, it certainly wouldn't be my main point. Curious, do you disagree that poverty has a negative impact on educational success?

I don't think he needs to reread his post to know that.

Good way of putting it, except for one thing. Redouble

So lets say the first round finesse works. How is your line safer in each of these conditions? 0-4: Diamond to king, second trump finesse, 2 top diamonds, pulling last two trumps if diamonds split or ruffing a diamond if they don't. 1-3: Ace of trump, to be sure the split was in fact 1-3, then test diamomd split as above. 2-2: As above but instantly claim. I see losing lie of the cards with your method, unlikely perhaps, but I don't yet see anything that your method protects against over testing diamonds.

Actually, lho only needs the 5 of clubs, but still what is the fear in ruffing the diamond?

How do you transfer the club threat if lho has the ace or king?

Finesse doesnt require a 3-3 break, it only requires rho has at least 3 diamonds which is a near sure thing as he would have pitched his diamonds on the hearts with two or fewer. If finesse works, play two more top diamomds, if they split 3-3, pull trump, if they split 4-2, it is almost a sure thing rho has the 4 and you're still good to go to ruff the loser.

He is implying that jlall is trying build demand on intrade for Obama so that jlall can profit by betting on Romney. This being a very common tactic on the internet when cash is involved. Do not believe that is the case here at all, more likely just pointing out how jlall statements mirror's the statements of people who actually do such things. Skrilla means money.

Are you implying that the now-cast and the forecast for nov 6 are mathematically equivalent? If so, this could be interesting, I can see several reasons why I believe they are not.

One of you two has issues and right now it isn't looking like its Bill.

There is a limited amount of available shares before that gap closes.

Playing Devil's Advocate to Win http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/global_warming.png Alt Text "There are so many well-meaning conservatives around here who just assume global warming is only presented as a moral issue for political reasons." Source: http://xkcd.com/164/

I think their method is inherently biased. You slice away our poorest schools and then make comparisons to an entire countries school system when the specific poverty rate for those schools matches the poverty rate of the comparison country as a whole. That smacks of comparing our cream to another countries butter. Or to put another way, I am not sure I accept that lowering the poverty rate by x always translates into a y increase in education, which is an assumption that has to be made for their article to be useful. I do agree that lowering poverty tends to increase education levels, but I don't think it as simple as this article would require it to be for their comparisons to make sense.

Perhaps I should have been more clear on what statement of yours I find absurd and beyond the pail. The reason you can't understand this sentiment is because it doesn't exist, no sane person wants to hold children back. If you think education is a zero sum business then naturally you will presume that improving the education of the poor means the education of the rich must suffer. Being progressive isn't about making everyone equal, it is about using limited resources efficiently and fairly. The rich have earned their money and they can spend it however they choose, if they want to spend it on their children to give them a leg up in the world with a first class education, great. Not really a charity though is it, providing your own child with a first class education? I am not familiar with this person, but in this limited quote he isn't actually advocating the abolishment of private schools. I certainty don't favor the abolishment of private schools but I can still state for the arguments sake, to further a related point, that abolishing private schools would certainty result in better public schools. On a personal note, I am more in favor of supporting the gifted, no matter their background, with a great education. Spending massive resources on the least performing students isn't to efficient, or so my gut tells me.

As a left leaning progressive, that comes off as the mad ramblings of the fear mongering right. Look at the insane things the left believe in, obviously they are totally nuts. Of course it is far less true of the intellectual left then how many of the comments from Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh represents the intellectual right. It is very easy to feel superior about ones own argument when you can take the most absurd things ever said from the opposing side and convince yourself that it is fairly widespread among their intellectuals. And that is giving you the benefit of doubt, because the only person I have ever heard state such an absurd thing is you.

I see nothing but playing east for the kx, kxx or JT all of which are picked up by playing small to the queen.

When ever west holds kjx or more, nothing works. So best bet is to play east for an honor. We need to start low to the queen to catch any stiff honor by east. Second round of spades should be playing the 10 from dummy, finessing east for the jack(unless it dropped first round). This is losing line when west has stiff king or kj tight, should be good otherwise.

I disagree, how often is a new idiom put into a show and then spreads like wildfire. I would actually argue that it has accelerated language evolution. While the broadcasts are themselves a permanent record, the speed and mass consumption that a single source can achieve can truly warp language far faster then ever before.

Three additional points I think are worth making. Writing is now so cheap and easy that it is far closer to speaking in the amount of effort people put into it. When paper was expensive and what you wrote would take weeks if not years to reach the intended audience, it would be natural to take a lot more care in writing it. We may not see the forest for the trees, I wouldn't be surprised if there are new rules being written into our language that we are oblivious to because they operate on a level we are not conscious of. Seeing a rule being violated is much more obvious then seeing a new rule being obeyed. Woman's suffrage is a good example of the previous, many rules are being discarded to make language gender neutral, but it is also creating new rules.

There are probably lots of reason why Latin has so many rules, some dealing with it originally being developed by an insular group of people who eventually came to rule most of the known world and used their language as a form of control. You will write/speak Latin and you will do it properly or you will not get far in the Roman world. This is compounded by the fact that most(all) of our record of Latin is written and from leading authors. I would wager that much of the common folk spoke with far less rigor then Cicero wrote with. The language was then distilled for a thousand years through the Catholic church, an organization that loves rules, while the descendent languages spoken by the common people went in all kinds of different directions. Take into consideration modern globalization, where numerous dialect differences become so intermixed that maintaining any one set of rules becomes impossible, compounded by the irreverent nature of the modern entertainment and you get the steady breakdown of rules.

The people writing the texts understand their market and base their texts on the clique people are trying to join. So while the linguist will defer to how people actually speak, the texts still often have it correct. Of course, over time, speakers and the texts they learned from become dated :)

I think I would have preferred that the paragon levels were staged a little more like normal leveling. Where the first segment goes by very fast and then it slows down a lot. I am ok with the total amount of exp required for 100, I just think they may have messed up not making the first 30 or so levels a lot cheaper. Each level requires a little more exp then the last level, rather I think each level should have required a substantial more exp then the last level and start out much cheaper so in the end it is the same but its faster at the start. I am only at paragon level 6 and it already feels like a horrendous grind.

The first card played to the 13th trick or the last card played to the 13th trick or the card that wins the 13th trick?

I could use a partner for either sat and/or sunday 640MP looking for A/x

What too play at trick 5 [hv=d=s&v=n&b=15&a=1n2sdppp=pc=n&s=saq2hak76dt764ck5&w=sht5dajc&n=sh42dk8c&e=s4hq93dq953ct9862&p=H4H3HKH5D6DJDKD3D8D5D4DAHTH2H9HA]399|300[/hv] I lead a small club which was apparently very wrong(got me booted)