"Srsly, Stevenson would have failed bigly in Korea! What a loser. SAD!"- Ike

Wow. That was pretty thorough. Not sure about the last two options...maybe one where there is possibly an answer (not that I have it)
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I have been a reseller of many things. A profit margin of 10% is amazing in the computer business, Dell being no exception. I sold a lot of Dell stuff (*shudder*). And I am not talking about net, but gross profit. Sometimes 4% was considered worth it. It all comes down to volume, ease of delivery, and credit. Everything else is just a guideline at best. If you worked at a company that only made a 1% net profit, but invested in its people, its infrastructure and its goals, would that be worth it? Supermarkets operate at low margin, but have high volume.

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Dude, if you know the question they *meant* to ask, then just answer it. Unless it is your child, and you want to help them learn. Or your wife, where vagueness is your friend, and answering what they actually asked is safer.

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Moose are more coordinated than you are giving them credit for. I know this personally, having seen them scramble up hillsides and stomp through swamps. Not sure about giraffes personally, but I have seen some video shots where they were running quite well. Both fast and with agility.

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Hang out with more kids. They'll give it to you straight up, they'll say "hey, I'm [Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Agnostic, Atheist, or other] this is what I believe, mainly because my parents tell me too, but still...

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Look, I know all you snow-hating people think snow is bad, but snow is one of the best things that has EVER happened. Meanwhile I will think about the snow that is occurring at my house, heated by Fuel Oil #2 (not as cheap relative to gas as one would suppose...) with a propane fake woodstove and a real woodstove. 3 sources of heat, 2 aesthetic, 2 clean for the interior, 2 work in a power outage, and 2 don't require hauling by me. Anyway, sorry for the rant, but snow is good. Snow is fun. Snow makes everything much prettier. And it is fun to ski, snowboard, sled, slip, throw, look at and eat.

I support the non-driving to the library guy only to a certain percent, though, as you don't just rock up to the circulation desk and ask for goatse...which, sadly, accounts for too much rainforest defoliation than one would ever hope for.

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I am in Guatemala right now and won't be home to the cold for another month. For the first time I am missing it.

The weird thing is Card wrote one of the gayest, and I mean that in a good way, books in Songmaster, which was basically a story about an old dude and his young, chemically castrated boy-lover. Also, as far as I know, Card is a Mormon, not a straight-mainline Evanagelical Christian. See his book Saints to see how he pretties up some of the weirdness of the Mormon founders (I'm looking at you Joseph Smith!)

Anyway, Xenocide was almost unreadable, and the Shadow series devolved into moralistic children pretending to be adults. His ability to talk about how teenagers think or feel is remarkably repressed. No urges or desires here, thank you! Bean doesn't even have sex with Petra. Card seems to place celibacy as some sort of purifying state, but has a hard time reconciling that with the need to pro-create.

Where Card seems to be at his best is when telling the story of a young boy (Ender's Game, Alvin series 1-3, first Shadow book). He doesn't seem to really understand politics as practiced by mature, and slightly less pure, adults.

Anyway, give Songmaster a read and you might start wondering why Card gets all huffy about gay people, maybe some sublimated feelings there, Mr. Happily Married Man? Still there are worse authors out there.

Just my 2Cents,
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