Bungee Jumper

Dune is one of my all-time favorite books, period. Children of Dune is up there, too. Most of Herbert's other books ("The White Plague" is another of my favorite books) I've read and enjoyed as well. And you're right...they're not for speed readers (which I am...so every time I re-read one of his books I get something new out of it). God Emperor of Dune, though...it took me seven YEARS to get past page 186. Nothing special about that page, it's just that somehow that was the point I'd hit and say "God, why am I even reading this?" and put it down. Tried rereading it last week, in fact...couldn't do it. Preferred reading a history of mud... I'll give Herbert and Anderson credit for not trying to mimic dad's writing style...but compared to what Dune was, their Dune novels are SO sadly shallow it makes me question whether or not they should have even been written...which pretty much defines "hack" for me. Never read any of Anderson's other stuff...I suspect, given that it's Star Wars writing, I'd be unimpressed (on the principle that any writer that has to borrow someone else's universe to write in probably doesn't have the imagination to be a truly good writer.)

In that case...I have no opinion. If you hadn't talked to him about it, I'd vilify you up and down the board, but beyond that I think it simply comes down to two things: how much do you trust your kid, and how much do you want your kid to trust you? Because it IS an invasion of privacy you're talking about, and your son almost certainly will resent it. You have to weigh his resentment (which only you can estimate) against your peace of mind knowing what he's up to (which only you can estimate). No one else can answer that for you...obviously...

Of course he doesn't. He's !@#$ing ignorant.

The Lewinsky scandal was part of Starr's Whitewater investigation, dumbass. In fact, it's the only wrongdoing Starr found - the Whitewater report ultimately found nothing wrong with the land deals. It always struck me as odd that no one questioned why Starr, as part of the Whitewater investigation, went digging into the President's sex life...but apparently there's enough people as clueless as you to believe they were two different things.

You know, I don't feel like retyping my arguments. Just read the previous 20 pages explaining how you are, in fact, a moron who can't distinguish "error" and "probability". And I'm not a divine authority, not in the absolute sense. Just the relative sense, compared to you. The only thing more amusing than the degree to which you embarrass yourself is the degree to which you're totally ignorant of it.

Go right ahead. Given your incredible penchant for being wrong, it'd be complimentary. I confess, I misread...I saw "was" where you typed "wasn't" (I'm working at an ultra-high resolution...and paying more attention to the Sabres than your stupid ass.) Mea culpa. Still...I call bull sh--. Simply because it's a stastical argument from a guy who once said a die had a "true value" of three and a half. Whatever the flaws in analysis other people are making, I guarantee that you're completely clueless on this topic.

If you want to discuss Byrd...start a topic. Why would you expect a discussion on Byrd on a topic about Lott?

That...would be a really good start. A better start would be learning something about it - or economics, or anything, really - rather than taking other people's words (like Hyperstat - pick up a stats textbook and work through the examples instead, dumbass.) But best would be to do what I actually meant: shut up when you don't know what you're talking about. Go make mud pies or something while the grown-ups talk...

Let's completely ignore that they were the same thing.

Yeah, I can see why you'd think an ornithology article was editorializing. I can't seey why an ornithology article would be editorializing, mind you...but I can see why you'd think so.

"The total public spending on healthcare for undocumented aliens between the ages of 18 and 64 comes to $1.1 billion, or about $11 in taxes per U.S. household. Total government spending on healthcare for all adults in the same age group comes to $88 billion." What part of "public" and "government" do you not understand? Jesus... You are honestly too !@#$ing stupid to discuss it. Amazing.

No, I understood your post. You're just - again - wrong. It's not a methodological error to look at government expenditures when you're looking at...government expenditures. It would be a methodological error to look at total consumer expenditures when you're looking at government expenditures, as you're suggesting, because they're different !@#$ing things!!!! You're a real piece of work; you actually manage to make the same mistakes through different disciplines. You can't figure out what your measurable is, and you can't tell when different things are actually different.

Physician, heal thy !@#$ing self.

Yeah, Jim. Just like "Ed gives head" as written by a Rutgers grad.

Yeah, the law school. Where the smart Rutgers students go. I can't imagine what the New Brunswick campus is like. Just the helmet sales alone...

You did? I thought you went to Rutgers? You know, I've been by Rutgers before. Drove down Warren St. to get to NJPAC. Lots of puddles of drool on the street. Which was yours?

Too bad the son and his co-author are hacks. It's also too bad I never got past page 3 of Heretics of Dune. It might be good...I don't know...I'm just so unmotivated to read it, after struggling through the piece of dreck that was "God Emperor of Dune".

Holy Christ, you're a !@#$ing moron. The study looked at the cost to government budgets, not overall cost. So they looked at government spending on healthcare, not overall spending. The study's not "flawed", you just don't understand the study's purpose.

And a dozen other people who do statistics for a living agree that you're fundamentally an ignoramous. But go ahead and argue economics with GG...this should be just as much fun to watch.

As if you went to U of Florida or Penn State. You went to friggin' Rutgers. Get over yourself already.

Hakuna Macaca, Trent!

In government budgetary terms, $6.2B total cost (all-inclusive, not just health care) would be the break-even then. Considering that 16-20% of the US GDP goes to health care, we can naively estimate (i.e. using stupid simple easy math) based on 1.1B in total illegal alien (aside: they're not "undocumented", they're !@#$ing illegal) costs to be in the neighborhood of $5.5-6.8B. Which would mean that, from a macroeconomic perspective, $1.1B in costs isn't all that unreasonable at first blush. Of course, what I just did was a back-of-the-envelope order-of-magnitude estimate and not the most accurate number.

You mean the papers that publish press releases about the peer-reviewed journal articles?

I read a very good history of mud recently. Titled "Mud", unsurprisingly.

DC Tom had glockenspeil. And it's tough to be funny when you've got a thousand posts in a month.