Lobowolf

He's getting closer to being timely! Bridge's peak popularity was at least 6 or 7 years ago.

I had the first 400 digits of pi memorized. It's been a few years, though. The top pi memorizers are in the tens of thousands. Fun software: http://www.lybrary.com/train-your-brain-entertain-p-379.html

"All babies are beautiful." "Oh, Phil, you know that's not true." -Margaret Gray, on The Phil Hendrie Show.

There is an easy solution, you know. http://img163.imageshack.us/img163/5848/baconcheeseburgerpizza.jpg "Bacon Cheese Pizza Burger Giant burger between two large meat pizzas, eggs, bacon, colby and pepper jack cheese. " My preference would be to have it cooked a little more in the middle, though I'm sure it's fine as it is. The eggs seem kind of out of place though lol Fatburger offers eggs on burgers. In my omnivorous days, I was a big fan of the Double Chili King with Egg on Top.

You posted that before the Oscars, where it was mentioned. Director John Hughes was given a fairly long appreciation, starting with Molly Ringwald (B'Club) and Mathew Broderick (Ferris Bueller's Day Off). Mathew said something along the lines of "every day someone taps me on the shoulder and asks, 'Ferris, is this your day off?'" And that's the one I watch quite often although there is no overlap between me and Ferris. I was surprisingly saddened by the news-for-me that Hughes had died; since first viewing it I have always said I could watch 20 hours of "The Making of Ferris Bueller". Not possible now. "When Cameron was in Egypt's land, Let my Cameron go." oren Great documentary about the making of another movie is "Hearts of Darkness," about the making of "Apocalypse Now." Speaking of untimely teen 80's movie deaths...there goes Corey Haim. Lost Boys, Dream a Little Dream, Lucas... What a last 12 months we've had for premature celebrity deaths.

Hot Fuzz is great, too, from the people who brought you Shaun of the Dead.

Zombieland is a great horror/comedy. Check out Slither, too.

I think you are very much mistaken on this. The majority of people strongly believe in things that are demonstrably wrong. Assuming that any single religion MIGHT be true (which is a huge stretch), demonstrably only one can be so...they all claim to be the sole possessors of revealed truth. Thus either ALL holders of religious beliefs are in error, or 'only' the vast majority of them. While many people holding mutually exclusive religious beliefs must be wrong*, that doesn't make any particular religion "demonstrably" wrong. *Presuming that one believes in "truth" and the law of the excluded middle, which is not really a given these days.

What, if any, is an reasonable percentage of the cost of their own higher education to expect students to pay?

Speaking of whom (Elizabeth Shue) and the Oscars (another thread), the year Leaving Las Vegas was up for awards, Nicholas Cage won Best Actor for his role in it, and Susan Sarandon won Best Actress for Dead Man Walking. I would have switched the awards and gone with Sean Penn and Elizabeth Shue.

Good Will Hunting should have won Best Picture ahead of Titanic.

As an aside, students in the CA state university system, despite the recent fee increases, still pay a pretty small percentage of the total costs of their education.

No, it really is crazier. Much crazier.

Does Argentina count?

That's so crazy that surely no more than 15-20% of Americans believe it. I fear the days when you could step into the WC and be confident about not seeing the word "nano-thermite" are drawing to a close.

American History X

To me, fiscal responsibility implies cutting it or controlling it as an actual figure, not just as a percentage of GDP. With GDP on the rise throughout the 70's, the national debt shouldn't have more than doubled. If I double my salary, I don't think I'm being responsible by increasing my debt, as long as I don't double it. I would certainly have preferred the WWII debt be eliminated completely, but that debt was huge and (in my opinion) unavoidable. Under the circumstances, I do consider it to have been responsible to chop away at it (as a percentage of the GDP) administration after administration, all the while handling the problems of the day. And I hold that view even though I did not approve of all the spending decisions that were made during those years (to say the least). I largely agree with you here; I do think, though, that the presidents of, say, the 70's could and should have done better than increase the debt by "only" 140% or so. The percentage reduction as compared to GDP is better than the alternative, and it's better than transpired in the 80's, granted. I think it's disappointing that Lloyd Bentsen was remembered for "You're no Jack Kennedy." His truly great line in those debates with Quayle was, "I could create the illusion of prosperity too, if I could write 200 billion dollars' worth of hot checks every year." (or whatever the exact quote was)

To me, fiscal responsibility implies cutting it or controlling it as an actual figure, not just as a percentage of GDP. With GDP on the rise throughout the 70's, the national debt shouldn't have more than doubled. If I double my salary, I don't think I'm being responsible by increasing my debt, as long as I don't double it. Hypothethical example In the year 2000, I was luck enough to be making $125K a year. I went out and purchased a house that cost $500K, with a $400K mortgage. By 2010, my salary had increased to $250 a year. I purchased a more expensive house (this one cost $750K with a $600K mortgage) I assume that you would argue that the second purchase is much less fiscally responsible than the first, since the absolute size of the debt has increased by 50%. No, that's a good counterexample. If most government spending were as practical as appreciable assets with built-in means to avoid liability (i.e. mortgage deduction), the effect of constant deficit spending would be mitigated. There's also a difference between big purchases a decade apart and constantly spending more than you make, year after year. All sorts of things require big upfront costs to realize long-term benefits, maybe most notably things like infrastructure. By and large, though, it's not responsible to constantly spend more than you make. We're at what, $12.5 trillion? I tend to think that's a number that should get smaller, not just get bigger more slowly as compared to GDP. But if you think that shrinking the debt as an actual number is not particuarly important, I'll defer to you on that issue; I'm not an economist. I do have experience in areas that strongly suggest to me that it could be done if it were deemed important. This is, of course, another area that is just about inextricable from questions of political capital. You get more of it by spending now than you lose by paying later.

To me, fiscal responsibility implies cutting it or controlling it as an actual figure, not just as a percentage of GDP. With GDP on the rise throughout the 70's, the national debt shouldn't have more than doubled. If I double my salary, I don't think I'm being responsible by increasing my debt, as long as I don't double it.

While Reagan took not much time to double the entire national debt, it was still around a trillion dollars when he got to office. The consensus has awlays been broad in theory and narrow in practice. You don't get to owing a trillion dollars with a commitment to paying off your debt. Clinton's timing (and I voted for him twice) was stellar with respect to the dot com boom and bust - he got in just before people started making a boatload of money (and paying a good chunk of it to the government), and he got out just before some of their companies lost 90% of their market cap. I think that generally (though not exclusively) presidents get more credit than they deserve when things go well, and more blame than they deserve when things go badly. I don't think his economic reputation would have been quite so stellar presiding over a post-market crash and post 9-11 economy. Would've been nice to see him try, though, particularly as it probably couldn't have been much worse. IMO, it remains to be seen whether Obama takes fiscal responsibility seriously. As you say, that involves paying down some bills when things are good, and he hasn't had that good economy yet. You may be right, and it'd be great; OTOH, we may just see more $ = more spending. Part of the problem is that much of the spending that gets done during good economic times is by its nature ongoing - people get hired, which is an annual expense; or capital projects get started, and they take a long time to complete and require subsequent funding commitments or abandonment, which would waste the earlier spending. If you get an unexpected $50,000 bonus this year and buy a car with it, that's great - next year, you just need to buy gas and pay for maintenance. If you get an unexpected $50,000 bonus this year and hire a chauffeur, you've got a potential problem next year. In California, since our semi-recent flush period in the 90's, over the following decade, we had significant population growth, and revenue growth that outpaced that growth, but spending that outpaced the revenue growth. We could have increased spending with population and inflation adjustments and still had extra money to PAD the surplus; instead, we (as a public entity) lived up to and beyond our means. When revenue growth outpaces population growth and inflation, and you go from great fiscal shape to poor fiscal shape, that's primiarly an expenditure problem, not a revenue problem. California taxes, by and large, are the highest in the country, and we're still hurting. That's not to suggest that California is a microcosm for the country; obviously, both sides of the equation are constantly in play, and things differ between different states, as well as between state, federal, and local entities. In addition to cutting university funding, California is making a number of other cuts, including public safety (e.g. early prisoner release). And the recent tax increases make it about the most heavily taxed state in the country (sales, property, & income). Ultimately, it's the usual question - spend less, spend differently, or bring in more.

The CSU system has been hammered pretty hard. They lost about half a billion dollars in funding this year (though they got back almost 100 million in one-time federal stimulus money), and at the same time, applications for both transfer students and incoming freshmen are way up.

If you equate the word "huge" with "long-term," we differ in our understandings of the English language. Perhaps I have not mentioned enough that I would have preferred more aggressive cost savings. No, that was hurried typing while not looking at your first post while typing. The gist I took from your post, though, is that the political benefit that would presumably accrue to Obama would be due to the content of the bill and it's beneficial results; not generic political capital that would come from sponsoring a major bill that passed. Then you are pretty damn ignorant about the topic being discussed... 1. Almost any serious discussion of this topic includes questions related to political momentum 2. No one in their right mind believes that we'll be able to make an objective evaluation about the "success" of health care reform in the near term. The only way to evaluate this is in terms of short term political gains. I'm responding to a specific post. That post suggests that one of the reasons Republicans have been trying to block reform is solely to prevent Obama from having long-term success that he is certain to gain if the bill becomes law BECAUSE "anyone with a head for business can see [that]." "That" appears to = "it is absolutely clear that the reforms Obama advocates will cut costs now and in the future." I agree that almost any serious discussion of the topic INCLUDES questions related to political momentum, but it seemed pretty obvious to me that the post I was responding to wasn't LIMITED to political capital, but rather was a comment on the substance of the legislation, as well. To suggest otherwise would pretty much eviscerate P.O.'s post, which was about the content of the bill, not the politics of whether or not it passes. But if the question is really going to be construed as, "Are there Republicans who oppose the bill in part because Obama supports it?" then sure there will. Just like every other bill sponsored by either party. But answering that question implies nothing favorable about the content of the bill, which is why it appears pretty clear to me that it wasn't the question in question, so to speak. This construction is essentially tautological; bills that have no purely partisan opposition whatsoever are few and far between. The more interesting question, and the question that I still think was obviously implied by the post, is "Are there Republicans who oppose the bill because it's so obviously good that those Republicans perceive that it will have a beneficial impact and don't want that impact attributed to Obama?". I agree the answer to the silly question is, "Yes, WTP?" Sorry for briefly hijacking the thread by perceiving a meaningful question.

That's a far cry from opposing it because they believe it will be a huge success that would reflect favorably on Obama. And that's a far cry from opposing it because Obama would have success if it became law, which was the original comment. I think that the "Because"s in P.O.'s post are consistent with my reading of that post, i.e. not just "success" in that a bill that was supported did in fact pass, but "success" in that it would provide a massive cost savings that would translate into better care, etc. You must be a lawyer to insist you are right when you are not. Rather than inferring what he meant from prior sentences I prefer to just read the words in the actual sentence, which refer to Obama being a success if the bill were to pass but do not refer to the bill being a success. And you must be a non-lawyer, and a non-English major to ignore the clause "Because anyone with a head for business can see that too," which 1) is part of the final sentence as well, and 2) incorporates (at least some portion of the) prior sentences by reference (i.e. "that").

If you equate the word "huge" with "long-term," we differ in our understandings of the English language. Perhaps I have not mentioned enough that I would have preferred more aggressive cost savings. No, that was hurried typing while not looking at your first post while typing. The gist I took from your post, though, is that the political benefit that would presumably accrue to Obama would be due to the content of the bill and it's beneficial results; not generic political capital that would come from sponsoring a major bill that passed.

That's a far cry from opposing it because they believe it will be a huge success that would reflect favorably on Obama. And that's a far cry from opposing it because Obama would have success if it became law, which was the original comment. I think that the "Because"s in P.O.'s post are consistent with my reading of that post, i.e. not just "success" in that a bill that was supported did in fact pass, but "success" in that it would provide a massive cost savings that would translate into better care, etc.