Even dead-center in the middle of PA, where aside from the town itself it's solidly conservative, we had maybe forty people, with signs protesting everything from illegal immigration to abortion to taxes.

It was really more like an incoherent Ron Paul rally than anything else. I've literally seen impromptu drum circles draw more people around here. And the worst part is that the organizer somehow decided that rather than protesting at a city government building, they'd block the entrance to the post office. (thank goodness for e-filing, which I put off until last night since I owe for the first time in a while)

It's sad, too, because an on-message protest about the need to be very careful with deficit spending is something even my generally Keynesian self can get behind. It actually makes me feel pretty good to hear that some of these things went down in a way that wasn't completely counterproductive.

Heh, hard to have nostalgia for something you never played, I suppose.

If you liked Super Metroid, you owe it to yourself to pick up Prime from gamestop (it's maybe $10 these days)

All my phones have either been work-provided, smartphones, or both, so I've had reason to be paranoid about losing them. Never so much as put one through the laundry, in fact.

It's true to the original in the same way Metroid Prime was--"Holy crap, it's in 3D and yet it's got exactly the right feeling."

Yeah, I pretty much want to kick every anti-nuclear protester in the head. I mean, seriously, do they really think about it?

My favorite statistic on "green power" came from my father-in-law (a full professor of agricultural engineering) who pointed out that enough wind+tide power to run the electrical demands of the United States would literally kill the trade winds entirely, in terms of efficiency vs. wattage available to be extracted.

Granted, I'm doubly in favor of nuclear power precisely because I live two hours away from "the biggest nuclear plant accident in the US", namely, Three Mile Island. Knowing what I know about THAT (and everything I need to know is summed up by "the plant is still operating and producing power for south-central PA") makes me wonder what the big deal is.

I dunno if I made it clear enough I thought "Earth Hour" was pretty much a joke--either you're for conservation and you conserve all the time, or you're not and one hour of change will not do jack.

I've been cutting back my electricity use as much as possible for a while now anyway, but living in central PA I have a disproportionately high carbon/pollutant footprint (stupid coal power) per kilowatt.

Having lived in a former coal strip-mining town that is obviously a former coal strip-mining town I tend to be a bit sensitive about that particular environmental issue.

I'm pretty picky about pillows and I abuse mine shamefully, but these days I get the extra-thick "for people who sleep on their side" pillows from Target for about $10, they last me a year or so which is still better than most pillows I've tried.

This. Metroid Prime 3 is entirely too awesome.

(for that matter Prime and Prime 2 were the first console FPS I've ever actually been able to play without wanting to punch myself in the wang.)

I agree--and I also think my lawyer friend must have had a braino when he typed "attainder" instead of "ex post facto".

Saying first outright that I'm not impressed by the proposed tax changes to take the bonuses back, I was discussing this with a tax lawyer on another forum and his opinion was that it wasn't a bill of attainder since they have not yet paid taxes on that income and functionally it's no different than any other tax code changes that are enacted in mid 2009 to apply to income made in early 2009 and on taxes filed in 2010.

If I'm in one of AIG's still-profitable groups, like life insurance or whatever, there's no question that I'd keep it.

If on the other hand I have professional or personal guilt over poor performance, even if I'm a low-level employee (say I'm a salesman for sub-prime mortgages who sold a record number of them or something) I might well find myself feeling personally and professionally obligated to give the money either back or to charity (on the grounds that the mechanical bonus for my success in selling X contracts doesn't change the fact that my company is in hock partially because they all defaulted)

...my wife just started playing WoW.

Nice to see some folks return to the fold, although like the man above I can't remember why I friended you. =)

Funding for high school courses in firearms safety and marksmanship, and civics courses focused on gun ownership and the legal use of deadly force.

Again, the federal government should have nothing to do with education. At best the federal government should stay out of it.

In fact, when I was in high school, Pennsylvania offered free optional, after-school courses on hunting safety (and firearms safety as encompassed by that rubric) to high school students over age 11ish every year. This is probably one of the better ways to do it (especially as PA requires that course for a hunting license to be issued).