And what's wrong with incorporating local traditions into the Church? We Catholics are never ones to turn down an excuse to party. And is it more accurate to say the Church usurped pagan traditions, or that the pagans brought their traditions along with them when they converted?

I'm genuinely interested if there is any scholarly work on this topic - a quick Googling seems mostly to turn up either gross ignorance or axe-grinding.

In Soviet Russia, these jokes are actually funny!

It says "PINBACK"

...about the agnostic dyslexic insomniac?

He used to lay awake at night wondering if there was a dog.

I read this blurb as well, and it sounds like the issue under appeal was the Florida federal court's dismissal based purely on jurisdiction. Ok, refile in D.C. I don't understand if there's more to it than that - anyone know more? There's no mention of case # or anything in this blurb.

... that my wife opened contained this message:

"Man who walks sideways through airport security is going to Bangkok."

(Score:5, Animaniacs)

Going a safe speed is the most important thing, I applaud you for that, but there are a couple of other relevant facts:
1) Impeding the flow of traffic is illegal.
2) Driving in the passing lane without passing is also illegal.
3) Your speedometer may not match those of other drivers. They may be "going the speed limit" as well.

I've heard this argument many times, and people need to remember there are more laws than the speed limit that govern how you should drive, especially what lane you should be in. Respecting the posted speed limit is good, but so is respecting all those signs that say "slow traffic keep right." If your aim is to follow the law, follow ALL of them. And probably don't assume people going faster are jerks. Speedometers can vary quite a bit. See Car and Driver's feature on the topic.

Amen to this. If your car, road, and driver are all prepared for 100 MPH, then 100 MPH is safe. The problem in the US is that while roads and cars are suited for high speeds, most drivers are not. We need to raise the quality standards for drivers.

In both the car's I've owned, this is not the case. Other factors, especially gearing (controlling where in the power band the engine is running) have a huge effect. My current car (Pontiac G6) gets about the same mileage at 80 MPH as it does at 70 MPH. My previous car (Pontiac Grand Am) got better mileage at 85 than at 70. Yes, you're burning more fuel per unit of time, but depending on horsepower curve, your fuel per unit of distance may actually be the same or lower since you're covering more ground in that time.

Because of aerodynamics, the wind resistance curve will at some point always win out and drive that efficiency curve downward, but you can't universally assume the peak of that curve is below 85.

Both cars I had were mechanically fully capable of 90 MPH+ cruising speeds, as long as the driver were able. The reason that high speeds are dangerous in the US is because (as stated elsewhere in this thread) drivers here are not very good at it. I've long thought a country of this size would benefit from a high-speed toll road with special licensing and vehicle requirements. It would work fine as long as lane discipline and safe following distance were enforced, like on the Autobahn.

Things like staying in the left lane without passing, driving too slowly, making unsafe lane changes, inattentive driving, etc. are already illegal and enforceable in most if not all jurisdictions, and I wish cops started paying equal attention to these drivers that create problems and not just speeders.

Make sure he can beat expert in less than 90 seconds. Only then can you be sure he has enough years of experience with Windows.

We have one of the higher-end Keurigs that my mother-in-law picked up at a garage sale for $5. We bought the filter accessory, and can now use whatever ground coffee at whatever strength we like with no extra "Keurig tax" and no waste (less even than traditional drip with disposable filters). It's the best way to use one of these machines.

We do have a stock of K-Cups on hand but rarely use them.

Ah yes, the "good old days" of using memmaker and trying to figure out how in the heck I'm going configure my boot disk to get X-Wing CD to run when it required 585KB of base memory and my CD-ROM drive's manufacturer driver took 40KB. Thank God for that Oak Technology driver I found somewhere that only used 18KB and seemed to work with every drive!

Kids these days, they don't know how easy they've got it!

Yes, exactly. Thanks for clarifying. I should also have been more clear that I meant that Direct3D is the only part of DirectX that competes with OpenGL directly.

I remember when MS announced the whole DirectX concept, and I never thought it would work - I had thought the overhead of the Windows OS was too much of a resource hog compared to DOS to get reliable performance in games. But the ease of writing to one API, versus having to code your game to support all the different hardware on the market, won out among developers.

Don't forget the origin of DirectX: Microsoft wanted to encourage game developers to embrace Windows 95 at a time when Win 3.11 had been seen as a business-application-only platform, with DOS preferred for games. DirectX was developed as a collection of APIs for games running in Windows 95 that handled input, graphics, music, sound, networking, etc. Only Direct3D, which initially shipped with DirectX 2.0, is directly competing with OpenGL.

I don't think there was a similar comprehensive API available for the PC market at the time DirectX was released. My copy of Need for Speed SE actually runs on either DOS 6.22 or Win95 w/ DirectX.