Bungee Jumper

Hell, you're probably one of 'em...

Hey Ed, did I ever tell you about that time I met Tsar Alexander?

If, by "interesting", you mean "God, I wish that idiot daquixers would just shut the !@#$ up already, can't someone just break his fingers?", then yeah...

I, uh, umm...yeah, you chickened out! That's it! Of course you fear my culinary skills! I don't blame you, either. What makes you think you can make a lasagna? You can't even cook retatta correctly...

I'm boom. Right, eryn?

Have another drink, boom...

That and excellent lasagna recipes.

Mine earns between -3% and -5%, depending on the current inflation rate...

But she was 98 in dog years...

And here I was working it out from first principles, which is what was taking so long, and why I posted the flippant comment I did (to mark time, so you knew I'd seen the thread). But if you're going to be a dick about it: you're an idiot. Now I'm not answering.

You tell me which one you think is right, and I'll tell you why you're wrong.

Look into whole life rather than term life. A term policy, you pay for it, and after the end of the term you have nothing. Whole life acts more like an asset; it annuitizes, and you can actually draw against it later in life before you die (e.g. you can borrow $100k against a $500k policy that you've fully paid up). Whole life costs more than term...but it'll only get more expensive as you get older, and as young as you are you might actually be able to afford it. I don't know ALL the details - it's been a while since I looked into it - but it's something to at least research. Or, if you want to go REALLY cheap, just pretend you have life insurance. Just like you pretend a woman's interested in you.

That, and there's a surprising number of people who are just incapable of scanning a UPC code across a laser.

Roman Polansky dated a 14-year old girl or something. It's sad, really. Ed tries so hard, and yet...

Sorry, I did not know that. I'm not current on the alternative lifestyle automotive market.

Pretty soon you'll have enough money to upgrade to a Yaris...

You're wrong. I'd tell you why, but it's so much more fun watching you be wrong.

You perisist in ignoring the fact that, even if he expressed his copious knowledge on the subject, you couldn't understand it anyway. Hence, any demonstration of his would be futile. Hence, he couldn't demonstrate his ability to your satisfaction. Or in other words, your claim to expertise is being completely incapable of discussing things.

Frankly, it's all you deserve. Your point of view is so ignorant and warped, he doesn't want to waste the time correcting you. Hell, I don't know why I'm wasting my time. He, and Coli, know more about this than me. I know vastly more about it than you, through the simple expident of knowing statistics and being able to read a research paper. You are way out of your depth talking to any of us. Ramius is not the terrier masquerading as a pit bull here.

Nice post. Pearls before !@#$ing swine, unfortunately. But nice post.

What do you know? You only do this sh-- for a living. Plus, I'll bet your parents are hetrozygotes, M1M2s, whereas his are both homozygouous M1's...so he's much smarter than you...

Although, if history bears anything out, automation results in an increase in stupid people, as it makes their lives easier and safer. And if you want a serious answer: again, assuming it were possible to breed for intelligence, basically breeding idiots out of the gene pool, you would end up with a less diversified gene pool, which is generally a bad thing. The benefits of genetic diversity in a population (e.g. disease resistance - the American Indians weren't wiped out by disease because of a simple "lack of immunity", they were wiped out because Eurasian infectious agents, having evolved to attack a population with a diversified immunological profile developed over hundreds of thousands of years, had a field day in a population with a very limited immunological profile derived from two very limited waves of migration 20k years earlier) greatly outweigh the benefits of breeding for a desired trait. It's kind of a truism, following from that, that breeding for intelligence would be counter-productive, ultimately resulting in a lack of genetic diversity that would end up breeding more stupid people than smart. It's a statement that can't be backed up by evidence, simply because the evidence - much as for your hypotheses - isn't available, and is overly complex where it is. But as an unscientific statement based on anecdotal evidence, it has the single benefit of being more scientific than your bull sh--. It always amazes me they don't have more of that happening on the New Jersey Turnpike.

No. The world needs people to pump gas.

First you'd have to demonstrate a genetic propensity for stupidity. And while I'm convinced that you, specifically, have one, I have yet to see any evidence of it in the population as a whole.