Recent Comments

1. 2 days ago on The Duplex

   Because they’re only a buck.

2. 5 days ago on For Better or For Worse

   OK, I’ll bite. Where do you get mysogynistic (hating women) from my comment about college graduates being more intellectual than non-graduates or intellectual equals getting along better?

   Does being intellectual or attending college have something to do with gender?

   I guess the “snob” part of your comment is based somehow on a belief that intellectual people are superior to non-intellectual people, since snobbery has to do with feelings of superiority. You should lose that attitude — there is nothing wrong with finding joy in things other than reading, visiting museums, etc. Auto mechanics are as important as engineering professors and nobody should think of “didn’t go to college” as a put-down.

3. 5 days ago on For Better or For Worse

   No, a college graduate is not necessarily more intellectual that a non-graduate. That’s what I meant by “much more likely” instead of “necessarily.”

   There are lots of factors that determine whether someone graduates from college or not, with having an intellectual personality and having the opportunity being two of them.

4. 6 days ago on Baby Blues

   It’s hard to separate the regional vs temporal differences when you move around.

   My impression is that in the last 5 years or so, vinyl simulated wood hard floor replaced carpet. Also, the gray aged-cedar-like color has replaced brown. Carpet will be back as soon as people get tired of the current trend.

   I do remember carpet in the bathroom and kitchen in the 1970s, though. I lived in such a house in western Washington. The bathroom had plush white carpet (actually, 75% white, 25% black mildew), while the kitchen had a fairly practical indoor/outdoor carpet.

5. 6 days ago on Baby Blues

   I lived in Tucson for half of 1984. It snowed — in the fall, I think. Snow on a saguaro cactus was really incongruous. It was gone in a few minutes.

6. 9 days ago on For Better or For Worse

   The statement was “intellectual equal,” which does not just mean equal intelligence. A more important kind of intellectual equality is having the same level of interest in knowledge and mental exercise. Choosing to expend the time, money, and effort to get a degree says a lot about how much you value those things. A college graduate is much more likely to enjoy reading, visiting museums, playing bridge, and discussing politics, history, and science.

7. 13 days ago on Doonesbury

   “Overturned” is the wrong verb to use for keeping the existing certified results. “Circumvented” would be a better word to use for preventing better results from being developed. Would you call it overturning a guilty verdict if a judge accepts the jury’s not guilty verdict, just because the jury was wrong?

   Also, it doesn’t matter. The vote was so close, either candidate was a perfectly reasonably choice. That’s why election law accepts that elections won’t be perfect; it’s more important to have a clear winner in a short time than to be accurate within a few hundredths of a percent.

   I did misremember the results of the various scopes of recount. The recount that was requested, and was before the court, would have resulted in a Bush win, but various other scopes that were not in legal question, like statewide as you said, would not.

8. 14 days ago on Doonesbury

   Overrode the election? Let’s review the actual history: Scotus ordered that the results of the election, the only results that existed at the time, be used. It’s hard to call that overriding the election.

   The question before SCOTUS was whether votes should be recounted to possibly arrive at a different election result. Nobody had any reason to believe the existing count was wrong, they just thought it might be, since the count was so close.

   Still, the fact that it was exactly the Democrat judges who said Florida law required a recount and exactly the Republican judges who said Florida law prohibited a recount is really fishy.

   (FWIW, a team of journalists did the recount in question. It took a year, and they reported that the the result was the same: Bush won. And this was true under every possible interpretation of the ballots (partially punched out holes, etc.) and every suggested scope of recount except one).

   And, in spite of the fact that the people voted for Bush according to the law, it’s obvious that they meant to vote for Gore (there was a confusing ballot in Palm Beach County, Florida that caused enough accidental votes for Bush to swing the election).

9. 14 days ago on Baby Blues

   The fact that santa means saint is a coincidence; santa is for female saints. Also, it comes from Spanish or Italian, whereas Christmas traditions in the English speaking world do not come from Spain or Italy.

   “Santa Claus” is a corruption of the Dutch “Sinterklaas”, which itself is a corruption of the Dutch “Sint Nicolaas”, meaning “Saint Nicholas”.

10. 16 days ago on Monty

    It’s the illegal immigrants. Has to be. As if it weren’t enough that they commit all those crimes, eat our pets, smuggle in all the drugs and guns, and drain the Social Security fund.