John Adams

I keep getting confused about who's who. Is DC Tom the Zimmerman guy or is ...lybob? You guys are too much alike these days to tell apart.

It bothers me. It definitely paints him as a celeb and celebrates him. If we ignored excrement like him instead of giving him Dr. Hook's dream, maybe a few less of these nutjobs would follow through.

You finally made me laugh. Should have used that in a thread about the plane crash though.

Bush's spendathon is our problem. Obama's spendathon is our problem. Congress's spendathon is our problem. "We the people" are the problem.

Someone on Facebook posted a photo of their parents in high school in the 60s recently. There were 30 or so kids just walking the quad in the background. There was one girl--one--who might have been a little overweight by today's standards but even she wasn't that big. Probably 5-5, 160. The rest look rail thin. I'm not sure you could pick 30 high schoolers at random today and come up with 15 who were not fat. When I look back at the "fat kids" in my class at McQuaid from 1989, a couple are fat even by today's standards but most of the other "fat kids" look pretty normal.

Stop thinking.

Tom and ...lybob sitting in a tree

Zimmerman idiot is all you know for sure. And all the jury knew for sure. You don't know what happened when he saw Martin. None of us do. Maybe he called him a n**er and bragged that he banged his mom. Maybe he was walking to see the street sign and Martin instigated the confrontation. The truth is: No one knows and there was no proof to say Zimmerman instigated anything or had the frame of mind required for murder. None. And that's why the murder case sucked balls. Martin's death was unnecessary and tragic. Zimmerman is a grade A f***tard. Still not murder.

I worked for a few years as security at various jobs. My fellow security guards were the biggest bunch of Chernobyl survivors I ever saw. Almost all were dumber than a jar of mayonnaise.

The bumbling prosecution added the manslaughter as the case closed. What that means is that the prosecution did NOT set the case up as manslaughter, but instead spent the entire case trying to get at Zimmerman's frame of mind, which was required for Murder 2. The jury (probably) didn't buy that Zimmerman was a nutjob. I gotta tell you--if the prosecution doesn't prove what it spent 2 weeks trying to prove, adding a lesser charge at the 12th hour usually won't stick because the jury thinks the prosecution failed. Zimmerman was not stupid for calling the cops. He was stupid for leaving his car. He didn't have a duty to stay in his car. He did not have to listen to the dispatcher. He was just being dumb, but dumb doesn't equal murderer.

Let's play lawyer for a second. Murder 2 requires that the accused acted with "depraved mind with no regard for human life" in FL. Zimmerman is an asshat's asshat for sure. He should have stayed in the car.He should not have confronted Martin. Or if when confronted by Martin, retreated back. But that's just his keystone cop security guard stupidity. None of that is "depraved mind with no regard for human life," and that is what the prosecution could not show. Manslaughter in FL requires no such mindset, although self-defense would probably have been his defense to manslaughter and there was no evidence that Zimmerman acted in anything but self-defense. Hard case to prove for the prosecution. Sad that Martin is dead. Seems preventable if Zimmerman wasn't a stupid eff. But being a stupid eff doesn't make him a murderer or even a guy who committed manslaughter.

So far I've seen friends post 3 "Boycott Florida" sign-ups on Facebook. Might be the time to book a trip to Disney World.

You must have been the person who mentioned the Sears book in the Gettysburg thread. I put it in my queue and moved it up the list out of curiosity. I prefer political history to military and so usually don't cover engagements in great detail--but it's a great book. The annoying thing is that I have to keep looking at the map.

Reading Sears's Gettysburg now. That's awesome.

"Just sex" is when you don't get someone pregnant, you don't get an STD (increasingly difficult), you aren't cheating, and the other person is not a psycho, and when the other person doesn't think it's more than "just sex."

I work with a company that makes simulated cheese, ie, the stuff you get with your nachos at a movie theater. No dairy required. (PETA rejoices!)

Not knowing what a scientist is/does is a pretty bad excuse for not doing science. A bio/chem undergrad is pretty useless unless you want to sit in a lab all day.

Article title too funny to pass up--almost like an Onion story. Some gems of quotes: “What they didn’t expect is that even if they work hard, they still won’t do well.” "The students switched out because they were dissatisfied with their grades." The study was limited to Berea College in Kentucky. http://blogs.wsj.com...ze-theyre-hard/

Bears have the best uniform. Sorry.

I have a close relative who got his associate's degree in prison. You would not believe how hard the prison system made it for him to do this. At least in NY, the prison system is a penal system--not in any way a rehab system. It's a shame actually. Sure we don't want to give them country clubs but why not help at least the handful that would accept the help? The last thing we want are repeat offenders, and most inmates are.

Someone recommended this book and it wasn't until Chapter 3 that he mentions he's from Buffalo. Interesting first person account of SSG David Bellavia's experiences fighting in Fallujah. The book is House to House. From the Amazon write-up: "Staff sergeant Bellavia's account of the fierce 2004 fighting in Fallujah will satisfy readers who like their testosterone undiluted....Anyone expecting an overview of strategy or political background to the war has picked the wrong book. Bellavia writes a precise, hour-by-hour account of the fighting, featuring repeated heroic feats and brave sacrifice from Americans but none from the enemy, contemptuously dismissed as drug-addled, suicidal maniacs..." Part of what makes it so good are his personal admissions about how the fighting made him feel and changed him. Mostly posting for the Buffalo connection but also if anyone is interested in an account of house to house warfare. I wiki'd him and he now lives in Batavia--has run for office a few times.

A 2.7 GPA Electrical Engineer from Penn State is getting a good job. A 2.7 GPA Poly Sci major from Penn State is folding jeans at the Gap.

You keep picking the outliers and ignore the vast majority. You see that right? A poly sci major (I can't believe that of all the degrees, you picked that one) is not qualified to run the fry basket at McDonalds. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were exceptionally smart, incredibly motivated people who went to the best schools in the country--of course they did OK. Romney is from one of the richest and most connected families on the planet--his college degree is not why he succeeded. But your average middle class family poly sci major from Canisius? Niagara? Bona? The degree is not taking them far.

There are several things off about your post but I'll just hit one. The idea is not that we don't need liberal arts educated people, and in fact, I'm willing to posit that someone with a good liberal arts pedigree (not necessarily major, but at least well-read and thought out) will make an excellent scientist. The problem is that we have an enormous need for scientists, and American students don't want to do the work required to fill that need. Most students opt for the Communications degree or its equivalent and have nothing useful to offer society except a load of student debt and a warm body in their parents' basement.

Marv Levy is the outlier and you know it. An electrical engineer has a job we need coming right out of school. A history major might be qualified to work as a Target Cashier, but with a sense of entitlement. I like LA's idea (I think it was LA). Put a premium on certain degrees. You want to be an art major--hey that's great. But you get 20% of the funding of an engineer. Come on blz: this is what liberal social engineering was made for.