or your spelling

Wow, good thing I use NoScript to block all incoming JavaScript crap and just whitelist the sites i trust. I would recommend others to do the same (and no, i am in no way affiliated with the firm).

On the contrary, I'm one of the most capitalist people you'll ever meet. Capitalism is about improving the product and increasing benefits for everyone involved through voluntary trade (voluntary being the key word here). What's going on here is NOT a form of competitive, voluntary market, but rather one group of people forcing others to stop their work for their own personal reasons. This is not capitalism; not by a long shot.

Perhaps you're right. Yet that's absolutely NO excuse to use your little girl as a roadblock and make threats and intimidation to coerce others to stop doing their jobs just because you don't like the situation you're in.

Strange: my family made it pretty well without the need of unions to force and coerce people to do their own bidding (by, you know, actually working competitively). Furthermore, I could agree with you that, in the start, unions did serve a positive purpose. Yet the conditions and situation back then were far worse than they are now, and their demands typically involved improvements in safety - fair enough. Yet over the years, unions have become cartels to force companies to do their own bidding at the cost of everyone else (do you really think that NYC transit workers make that little? MBTA workers in Boston typically made 40-50k/year - more than what I made working in finance and actually graduating from college). Also, don't be so naive to think that unions are there to help us: they only help themselves at your cost - i've seen it happen every single time. And not to sound condescending (in all seriousness): go read Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt.

What really pisses me off about union workers is how selfish they are, when they claim to be otherwise - it's become a cartel. Did the (incredibly foul-mouthed) union worker think of the families of the other two drivers? Of course not - all that matters is their own well being and screw the rest of the company / people. I recall working for a top university not too long ago and I was supposed to get a new desk placed for me from an office next door. I offered to do it myself when my boss told me not to touch it, as there was a union guy in charge of that. Turns out that, had i moved the desk myself, we could have faced some serious fines for "taking away his job".

Here's another example: instead of getting fired, teachers are getting paid to do jack shit waiting their union "trial" to make sure they really should be fired. At times, this could take years - that's right, years that teachers are getting paid full salary for doing nothing (I actually think they created a parody of this in Futurama).

Or how in 2005(?) Union workers halted NYC public transportation, significantly affecting the entire economy. My brother was right: all they care about is increasing their share of the pie, not the total size. And people wonder why I'm so anti-union.

mod me troll if you like, i don't care.

He certainly had no problem with their ratings when they were rated AAA, why should he now? But then again he's the guy who insists on an 8 - 10 Trillion USD stimulus plan to "save" the economy. God forbid he understands the concept of fiscal responsibility - I wouldn't trust that man's opinions with a nickel.

Oh really, and how would printing money help? The housing prices were far to high and increasing at an unsustainable pace for it to go on; it was a bubble that had to be burst (as all bubbles do). And no, pet projects trying to keep the prices artificially high (that is, higher than what the market thinks its worth) does NOT help your situation at all. It's just throwing good money after bad.

That's not quite true. The rich and more educated typically either have far greater access to inflation-prevention measures (i.e. buying gold en mass, forex etc) and/or the know-how to do so. Contrariwise, the very poor and uneducated (which often happen to be blacks and hispanics) are utterly and entirely screwed. Not to mention the inflation will drive up prices of exports, making the US less competitive on the global market. Believe me - inflation is not the way to go. But then again, the assumption that the government will act responsibly (fiscally or otherwise) is probably just wishful thinking...

Cant you just exclude the outliers from the analysis?

King's Quest and Space Quest have always been on the list of my favourite game series, the latter of which, as an added bonus, is filled with humour (PG-13 i believe).

Some may tell you that they're too hard, especially the first games of the series (keep in mind that point and click didn't come until KQ5, so everything is typed). While that may be true, my response to that is that it gives you an added chance of bonding with your daughter by working with her (they grow up fast at that age). Some of my best memories of childhood involved my dad and I getting through King's Quest together...