BigNote

I also had a handful of interactions with her as a student reporter back in the early 90s. She was always very gracious and engaging, but in my experience that's kind of true of all politicians by definition.

The one thing that always stood out to me is the way she handled the dual assassination of mayor Moscone and Harvey Milk. I was just a little kid at the time, and the way she stepped up and took control of the situation filled me with admiration and confidence.

Maybe that was the high-point of her political career, I don't know.

That said, you couldn't be a Northern Californian at that time and not appreciate her leadership, no matter what else you may have disagreed with her about.

I say all of the above while not touching the obvious fact that she stayed in office far too long.

Oh good, a pompous, nonsensical, deeply condescending, deliberately inflammatory, provincial and unhelpful comment! That's just what we need, said no one, ever.

Bullshit. There are vast areas of the western US and Alaska where this simply is not economically possible or even desirable. The same is true for huge parts of Canada and Australia and other countries that have very remote and thinly settled regions. Even when I lived in Ireland, which is tiny and relatively densely populated, there were rural communities that only had bus service once or twice a day.

The prefix "Mc" or "Mac" is Celtic anyway, not Germanic, so you failed in that sense too.

You mean my kids?

My cat's name is Nancy Reagan. She's almost lived up to it. And no, she doesn't like you either and if you try to pet her you'll get what you deserve.

Some cats have official titles. I had another cat whose title was "Chief Inspector." He was known to do home invasions and conduct snap inspections of my neighbors houses. He had more friends in the neighborhood than me.

I work in industrial construction on massive unionized projects with tradespeople coming from all over the US and Canada and I can tell you for an objective fact that the number of guys --it's almost always guys, which should tell you something-- who drive giant lifted obnoxious trucks as their daily driver vs the number who actually really and truly need them on a regular basis is like 100 to 1.

But even if it were only 10 to 1, that means we have 10 times as many of these giant gas guzzling dangerous trucks out on the road.

The industry has done such a good job at selling these trucks as part of a self-image, that a lot of guys are incapable of admitting that the only reason they drive one is because they think it looks cool.

I can easily do all of that and more with my non-lifted mid-sized long-bed pickup. It's just a fact my dude; they are selling a self-image, not actual utility. Or what about a van with a roof-rack. In my professional experience that's a lot more utilitarian if you're a tradesman.

Again, it's all about an image that's been meticulously and brilliantly marketed and sold to very specific demographics.

To be fair, they are hugely popular in both Canada and Mexico as well. I'll leave it to you to figure out why.

Hint; if marketing didn't work, it wouldn't be a multi-billion dollar industry.

Not true at all. There's tons of adaptive pressure. If there weren't, we wouldn't see the thousands of pelagic and shorebird species that we do. But even if what you say about the threat from predation were true --its not-- there would still be adaptive pressure from differential reproduction rates and access to nutrients.

They're probably just "dumb" in comparison to corvids and parrots and the like.

Well obviously it's very difficult for the poor to leave and if you aren't poor it's actually a pretty nice place to live.