oddly, I did read the article. Since I'm over 6' tall, I notice the front to back reductions as well, at the knees. I was making comment on the last flight I was on and objecting to the inch by inch reductions the airlines continue to make. While I was specific (because of the specific example I used) I intended it to be taken as a generalization. Next time, to make it clear to pendants, I will type a full paragraph containing technical specifications, rather than a 3 line blurb.

I'm a big guy. Not necessarily that I'm fat; but, I have a large frame and wide shoulders. Knowing this I always try to get a window or aisle seat. I found the seats on my last flight to be so tight and I had to lean to one side to avoid constantly rubbing shoulders and arms with the person sitting next to me. Take out another inch of width away and I'm just not going to fit.

Funny you're so confident about that. You should go back and look at the water landings and ask the survivors if they used their flotation seats or life jackets. Life jackets and flotation seats were added, FAA rules making them mandatory, for a reason. While most of the water landings included fatalities, I'm confident the fatality rate would have been higher without the life jackets.

he said he was using VBA, which is not fully compiled code and is probably a set of Excel macros. VBA in Excel isn't particularly fast and is single threaded. If, however, he moves his code to one of the compiled versions of VB then he will see a performance boost and be able to spawn multiple threads.

Personally, I would do it in C unless you have Fortran libraries you want to use, then I'd use Fortran. However, if you have existing VBA code you want to leverage, I'd just use VB.Net, import the core parts of the code and run with it. There's a moderately steep learning curve going from VB6 or VBA to VB.Net; but, it'll be much less effort than learning a new language.

Yes they can. A supermajority of 2/3 of the States legislatures have to agree to call a convention for creation and forwarding of the Amendment before it is put up for approval. You think that's any more likely than 2/3 of the members of Congress, who come from the same states, and who are members of the same political parties, to create and put forth an Amendment?

Not a problem. You only need for those same people to create a constitutional amendment, pass it, then submit it to the public for the states to approve.

Some of the same actors in the current crises are among those you refer to

This can and has happened. U.S. walks away, a bit annoyed but frankly moves on. If you don't want us there, then we'll leave. Just don't expect us to come running to your defense later.

While I understand what you're saying, I think your example is a poor choice... It would be foolish for a foreign country to attempt to sieze a military asset like an aircraft carrier -- it would be viewed as an act of war. Trying to blockade a carrier trying to leave a port is going to result in a huge mess.

As it stands now, it's doubtful that the Republicans will win the next election. Polls are showing between 60% and 75% of the population blame the Republicans for the current budget crisis. The polite phrasing of one poll is "...74% of Americans dissaprove of the way the congressional Republicans have handled the standoff..." While people might be unhappy with Obama's performance, there is a 15 to 20 point spread between them; so, if there was an election next month the Democrats would win. There was a somewhat surprising poll last week that showed that >60% of Americans would choose to replace their Congressional representative in the next election. If this continues, the balance of power in the House may shift in 2014. Assuming the Tea Party membership of the Republican party continues it's obstructionist behavior and the Democratic party maintains it's stance, then in 2016 a new Democratic president will likely be elected.

This, of course, is just my humble opinion.

What's the total cost of the fuel used by the combined cycle plant during the first 10 years? 15 years? 20 years?

But the demand is typically down significantly 6 hours after sundown.

"Commerce", "Necessary and Proper", and "Spending" clauses.

If you ignore the catastrophic earthquake, tsunami, explosions and fire(s), you might have a point.