Then you aren't paying attention.

Hear hear. He was the first one I thought of.

To each their own, I suppose.

Phht. It's Hardly The Fountainhead. Please. Despite the shared elements a common story archetype of one man fighting against popular thought (and architecture I guess? There's a statue in Faith of the Fallen), it has nothing in common.

I can understand your point of view to a certain extent, but I still hold book 6 (Faith of the Fallen), as one of the best books I've read. I actually enjoyed the whole series (though books 2, 5, and 7 were crap installments).

For my own limited opinion, I read the first two books and had to stop. The writing is incredibly well done, and I agree with other posters comments regarding characterization. However, the story was so damn dark and depressing. At the end of each chapter, something bad happens to one of the main family characters, who are essentially decent people. Every chapter. As I was reading, at the end of each chapter, I was like, "Oh man, that sucks." "Oh, god, that's terrible." "Holy crap!" "That's horrible!" "These poor people!"

I just couldn't take it anymore, it was so depressing, I had to stop reading the series.

Shouldn't your have circled various letters on those groups to spell "George Soros" or something?

AS do I. To each, their own. :)

I'm sorry you had a bad experience with the public schools. I still question the "designed to produce criminals and soldiers", though. Your milage may vary. *shrug*

"Sociopath: a person, as a psychopathic personality, whose behavior is antisocial and who lacks a sense of moral responsibility or social conscience."

Alright, I'll give you partial credit. I wasn't lying (but thanks for assuming that), but I did have an incomplete definition. The home schoolers I know are rather social people. But in my experience, they have lacked moral responsibility and social conscious, BIG TIME.

What public schools did you go to? Any? Because I went through the public school system growing up, in several different cities and states (navy brat; family moved all the time), and I did just fine. No criminal or soldier elements for me, nor the friends I had made in the later grades. I feel there is an undeserved slight on the public school system...I'm not sure if it's from the media focusing on inner-city, run down schools, or from some Right leaning political propoganda. Myself, I think home schooling is a horrible idea, and those I've known to be home schooled are more sociopath-leaning than any other people I know.

I've been with BoA for 20 years, and have been using their ATM's the entire time, and only once have I had an issue with one of the machines. Admittedly, I plan on leaving them soon, as I've been having some other issues with them, but I would hardly call the plethora of BoA ATMs something to avoid at all costs.

That's all I got, sorry.

I was in 6th grade, at lunch at the time. we came back in and our teacher had clearly been crying. There was a TV in the room, and she explained to us what had happened, and we watched the news about it for a while. Was an incredibly memorable day for a 12yo fascinated by astronauts and astronomy.

Oooh, interesting idea. I might have to borrow that one...would force my party to work together. For once.

That had occurred to me, as well. But I think it could get much worse. The whole Palin extravaganza makes me think we might be at rock bottom. We haven't hit Idiocracy level yet, but we are much closer than I'd like.