SageAgainstTheMachine

I don't know why, but this just crushes me. He was 99, but it felt like he was immortal, I guess. You know Jeter's gonna knock one out of the park for him tonight. RIP Bob

Freddie Mercury by a mile. Honorable mentions to Kurt Cobain and Janis Joplin.

+1,000,000 I'll think about heart, guts, precision, etc. later on...just beat the f*ckers

I'd love that, but it ain't happening. Boston went from worst to first by adding an aging Allen and Garnett to Pierce. I can't even imagine how good Miami will be by adding Bosh and Lebron.

Yeah, let's make no mistake...Lebron, Wade, and Bosh will all have to take minor hits in salary, ego, and PPG...but they will win titles barring some catastrophic injury situation.

Yeah, a lot of people are just impossible to please. Everybody complains that the team doesn't have enough grit, so the organization brings in a gritty veteran and the same people complain that he's not a goal scorer.

You're generalizing way too strongly. Not every liberal is a smug prick who brags about reducing his carbon footprint, just like not every conservative is a back-country idiot who thinks the Earth was created 5,000 years ago. Now, there's not a very good way to test for which side is inherently more rational, but I personally know just as many irrational conservatives as I do irrational liberals. Stupidity and ignorance don't follow any sort of political bend.

I got a little lucky, because it happened to be one of my first guesses in the trial/error process. What keyed me in was the two O's in a row...in longer words, I figured the sound is more likely to be fragmented than the traditional "oo" as in toon, and there aren't too many long words with "oo".

Answer to #1...highlight to read, I don't want to spoil it for people. MICROORGANISM

Thinking that this type of disgusting hate-speech is somehow related to liberalism is entirely misguided. I'd estimate that there are an equal percentage of hateful fanatics on both sides of the aisle.

How many cups of coffee are you on so far today?

I've probably got the wimpiest story here, but this is probably the closest I was to dying. I had a pretty bad cold for a few days when I was 15 and one of the symptoms was heavy sneezing. After taking a shower, I stepped out to dry myself off. As I approached the bathroom counter to brush my teeth/shave/whatever, a sneeze suddenly came upon me and I sneezed so hard that I smacked my forehead against the iron, which my Mom had left out. Knocked me out for about 5 minutes, and I only came to after my family found me lying naked on the bathroom tile with blood seeping out of my head. I had a fracture in my cranium and it gave me a very bad concussion...I got bad headaches for a while, but those have gone away. I still have a trianlge-shaped dent in my forehead.

Modern political leaders could learn a hell of a lot from George Washington. To lead, you don't need a fancy education (he didn't have one), or an impressive political pedigree. You need two things...to be a leader, and to be a good person. Unfortunately, we've been very short on men and women like that in political office recently.

234 years ago today, our nation was born (or 11 score and 14, for our lincoln enthusiasts). No matter what your political beliefs are, your level of trust/distrust in the current administration, or past administration, or administrations before that, no matter which pundits you listen to, no matter what you think of the economy....please take this day to remember that we live in the greatest country on earth, and it's because of the people.

The greatest relief pitcher of all time, and he's not slowing down even at the age of 40. His cutter has dropped from 95 mph to 93 mph over the course of a 15 year career, and that's the only difference between 25-year old Mariano and 40-year old Mariano. Amazing. Just look at his stats, he's just as good as he ever was, maybe better. http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/r/riverma01.shtml Also the best postseason pitcher of all time. Is he the most dominant athlete at his position in the history of American sports? I think you could make that case. And to think, the Yankees almost traded him in the minor leagues.

That option exists in every thread...don't click the link.

So Broward County is footing the bill for Lebron, and not the Heat? That sucks.

David Lee is a scrappy center with some surprising offensive abilities and a tenacious rebounder, but he is a defensive liability.

Same here...I've always thought superstars should stay with their team, because they are such a part of the city's identity. Except for end of career identity crises (Jordan playing for the Wizards, Montana with the Chiefs, Favre with the Vikings, etc.), superstars shouldn't just up and switch teams in their prime. People talk about which location will be best for Lebron's legacy...that is without a doubt Cleveland, IMO.

Since I don't see the whole Lebron/Wade/Bosh in Miami thing happening, my vote is that he stays with Cleveland for the time being.

Ok, let's think this one through...we've got Ontario, British Columbia, Nova Scotia, Manitoba, and Alberta So, that leaves us with the Canadian domain code, which I'm pretty sure is .ca so, we have C-A-N-R-O-A-L which anagrams to ummm...Car Loan? That doesn't seem quite right, but it's the only thing I can think of.

I'm pretty good at making moonshine, if that's something you want happening on your farm.

I thought Up was Pixar's best work so far. The final 20 minutes of the movie aren't so great because they add an unnecessary antagonist, thinking "well, there has to be a bad guy to defeat.". Other than that, though, it was spectacular. I'm usually not a crier, but I was already weeping like a baby after the first five minutes And, yes, Ratatouille was excellent too. Cars was just awful, I think Pixar chooses to forget about that one. I enjoyed Finding Nemo even if it was designed to be a cute kids' story. There were enough funny moments and good voice-actor performances to keep it afloat for me.

By the way, bart-shan, thanks for these daily puzzles. They're hard enough to be challenging, but simple enough to not be incredibly frustrating. Do you use a web-site that posts these things, or do you write them yourself?

The letter is Y. 1. Stylish 2. Eyelet 3. Century 4. Nymph I focused on the fourth word because the puzzle form contained no vowels, so it had to be A, E, I, O, U, OR Y.