I guess we're just communists. Everything is joint.

It helps that we started with no money.

Yes. If you're under that age, you're not a curmudgeon, you are a psycho.

Oh, boy do they have a separate vaginal opening.

There is variation, but the basic plan is that the male has a bifurcated penis. The female has two lateral vaginas, each leading to it's own uterus. In addition, there's a median vagina that opens into near the pouch (marsupium, which gives them their name) and that the babies must crawl from that opening to the pouch immediately* after birth, when they are just feet and lips*.

I rate the Wikipedia article on marsupials essentially accurate. Not worth the time and effort to clean up.

* Eh, close enough.

Edit: eliminated some false facts.

Some definitions call for "chemical compounds". So Iron isn't a mineral, but iron oxide is.

The top half looks like it was painted by Bosch. (Except no demons or people.) Just amazing.

But if you donate it to a museum, you can donate the full $20 million AND not be taxed on the increase.

Changing that was considered when they changed the law from you deducting the blue book value of your donated car to only the amount actually received. Apparently the museum lobbyists are better than the PBS lobbyists.

Note that it's a memoir. By definition, a memoir is "This is what I remember".

Some of the names have been changed to protect the innocent. And maybe the guilty as well.

Also keep in mind that it is human nature to never let anything as inconvenient as facts get in the way of a good story.

With all that as background, Look Me In The Eye, by Burroughs' brother John Roberson reads very similarly. So you're looking at fictionalized truth or an impossible (based on my extensive interactions with people with ADD) conspiracy.

Note also that the estate of Burroughs' foster family sued him for libel. They settled out of court (so we can't know what they agreed to) and future editions of the book say that although the foster family remembers things differently, this is what Burroughs remembers. Burroughs said he felt vindicated by the settlement.

Even if the author wrote the preface, it was written after the book was written. You should read it after you read the book. If at all.

Exceptions: in textbooks, the preface often contains a description of what the book is about, what order topics should be studied in ("for a one semester course, do chapters 1-6, 10 and 14, for a two semester course, just do them all in order"), what knowledge is assumed, why you should use this book instead of the warhorse everyone else uses, and so on. Worthwhile stuff to see.0

>I think it's just like hanging around a location doing nothing

Depends on the state. That's legal in Tennessee.

If you are interfering with traffic (including foot traffic), that's loitering.

It was a trope (long ago) that disreputable looking people who just hung around doing nothing would be arrested for "loitering with intent". O. Henry used it at least once.

>I don't actually have first hand knowledge but slaughtering livestock just for adrenal glands simply makes no sense.

And yet.

We (as in humans, not as in you and me) slaughter rhinos for their horns, sharks for their fins, (both of those are "traditional medicine") and elephants for their teeth (to make trinkets and piano keys).

Bezoars (most frequently gallstones but sometimes other types of spherical objects from an animal's intestines) were popular in Europe from the 11th to the 17th centuries. Unicorn bezoars could cure anything.

Only the piano keys is /s. Everything else went away when we adopted a more scientific approach to life (/s), but was once believed to be true.

Sort of. Part of the reason that antibiotics work so well is that the amount to kill a bacterium is way smaller than the amount to kill a person.

The problem with mercury (and heavy metals in general) is that there's no way to flush them from the body.* We don't usually worry about salt buildup, because our bodies naturally dilute the salt and flush it out the kidneys. Things like that don't happen with the heavy metals.

* Yes, chelation therapy exists as a treatment for heavy metal poisoning. There are pretty strict guidelines, mostly because one of the side effects of chelation therapy can be death. "The therapy was a success but the patient died."

I saw a tv show that showed a surgery to separate twins conjoined at the top of the head. It was a 24 hour surgery. The lead surgeon performed the first 8 hours, some other surgeon on the team performed the second 8 hours, and the lead surgeon finished up the last 8 hours. It didn't mention food and restroom breaks.

PBS is amazing.

I think that most solstice celebrations are not Christmas celebrations.

I also think that Odin and Zeus are not the same, so I can see that some might think I'm being overly pedantic. But if you admit to any religious significance to any of the solstice celebrations, then they are not Christmas.

More accurately, the early Christians replaced the local solstice celebrations with Christmas when they were vying for the minds and souls of the population. (Addition: How can you compete with the local religion if your holidays aren't anywhere near as good?)

That's why in English we celebrate the Paschal Holy Day under the name of Eostre, the goddess of dawn. (And rebirth [spring], and fertility [hence eggs and bunnies].)

You invest it in the stock market. Then "on average", between dividends and capital gains, you should make 5% above inflation. (I don't remember if this is since 1900 or since 1790. US figures.) So you take your 5% and leave the rest.

With $50k you can live in the US. Pretty well in some areas, not at all in others. But because you don't have to live near your job, you don't have to live in an area where $50k won't actually support you.

Stock returns average about 5% above inflation. Invested conservatively (there are rules about that, how to spread your risk, but nowadays you can just buy Index Funds), that means you can take 5% per year out for living expenses.

Of course, if the market goes down, your income goes down. If it goes up more than inflation, you can give yourself a raise. There's no way to eliminate all risk, but this is relatively safe.

Banks don't make stuff. They lend money to people and companies. A loan to make stuff has to pay less than the company is making. That means that the loans the bank makes with your money have to earn less than the companies are making. You keep your money in the bank because it pays better than keeping it in a sock, but other than that it's for convenience, not return.

This is close enough that it's not worth anyone's time to "fix" it. A truly better answer would be at least 150 pages and more likely 300. Rambling is fine because there were lots of variants on the basic plan.

For a specific example which illustrates many of your points, a good case can be made for Edward the Black Prince's campaign in 1355-6. Edward arrived in Gascony on 20 September, 1355. On 5 October, the English forces left their stronghold in Bordeaux and raided and pillaged all the way to Narbonne and back, a distance of 675 miles (1,100 km), returning on 2 December. There were no battles along the way (a few skirmishes), and sieges resulted in either immediate capitulation, a very easy (and violent) capture, or abandonment to look for better looting.

After Christmas the English continued plundering and destroying. The campaign of 1356 became the English raising havoc and trying to get the French to fight, and the French besieging Breteuil. The English couldn't dislodge the French, but the French couldn't take the town.

Eventually, the English moved away and took up more looting and burning. This was a great hardship on the French people, so King Jean had to go looking to fight the English. Neither side would fight on ground where they didn't have the advantage, so August and the first half of September were just six weeks of two ham-fisted powers playing cat and mouse, with a lot of damage to the French countryside (and population).

Finally the two sides met at the Battle of Poitiers on 19 September 1356. Just one day shy of the anniversary of the landing the previous year. The English cleverly deployed their troops (and baggage train) in such a way that the French thought they had an advantage, so when they sprang their trap the French army was destroyed and the king captured.

There you have it. One year of war. A lot of death (of civilians) and destruction. One battle. Which ended the war.

Note: I checked Wikipedia to get dates and verify that my memory is at least somewhat correct. Any errors are my own.

That has become a low bar. $1 million will generate $50,000 a year in income. (You can't eat into the principal too much our you'll run out of money.) That's certainly a livable income (you can move to somewhere that has affordable housing), but it's not the lap of luxury.

I assume you meant multimillionaire. If you have $10 million you can live anywhere, and if you have $50 million your only worries are losing your millions and whatever demons live in your head. And that the asteroid that wipes us out comes before we have the planetary defense system set up. And ....

The consensus (not always the same as the truth) is that coins were first minted as a guarantee of purity/honest weight of the precious metals. Of course the people doing this put their logo on the product.

There is some evidence that gold coins were ceasing to be currency and becoming a method of hoarding gold in the latter half of the 3rd century.

For Cortés, it was Geronimo de Aguilar and La Malinche (name unknown).

No doubt. I can sue Greg Abbott because he signed a bill that causes me emotional distress.

The state of Texas employs tons of lawyers. (Literally. A ton of lawyers is somewhere between 20 and 40 people.) They go to the office and work. It costs Texas literally nothing to file a motion for dismissal and the fact that I, with no formal legal training, can think of six reasons to dismiss this case without even stretching my mental muscles, means that the lawyers can probably think of 60. Their motion will be granted, and the case will (I hope: I've heard bad things about Texas judges, which I'm sure are entirely fabricated) be dismissed "with prejudice". (That means I can't bring the same lawsuit again.)

But one of my favorite examples of a "frivolous lawsuit" is the Stella Liebeck (McDonald's coffee) case. She asked originally for her medical bills to be covered. (Because they had done it for previous burn victims from spilled coffee, they had already established that they knew the coffee was dangerous and they were liable for injuries.) They refused, so she sued. Her lawyer convinced the jury that the appropriate award was "3 days' coffee sales". (Apparently logic is not required in courtrooms.) $105 million. Whatever the final settlement was (it's sealed), we do know that it did not involve the lawyer working for free, and it was less than $105 million.

Was that lawsuit frivolous? (For any foreign readers, hospital treatment in the US is far from free. There is essentially no chance of a company being put out of business, or an executive jailed, for safety violations. The only downside to bad behavior is lawsuits. It's essentially private enforcement of the laws.)

They are.

The difficult question is "What is the line between frivolous and raising a valid objection, even if unlikely to win?" In much of the world, you don't want to bring a lawsuit because of "loser pays" rules, meaning that if you lose, you have to pay for the winner's attorneys.

The bar to being found frivolous is fairly high. A much lower bar is set by the defense attorneys, who simply file a motion for dismissal. "We understand how losing his wife in this tragic accident is a severe blow to Mr. Plaintiff, but we believe that it cannot possibly be our fault because we were merely the auditors for the company he claims is at fault."

The easiest way to get your claim dismissed, and your lawyer disbarred, and have to pay for the other side's legal costs, is to have your lawyer get caught lying to the court.

In German, we always for the verb at the end of the sentence are waiting.

>Professional football players and boxers have a 100% chance of suffering traumatic brain injury during their careers (literally--a study of the brains of deceased football players showed that all of them had CTE).

We really can't consider this proven. (Admittedly this is a technical quibble.) The players who were studied had some reason to fear they they had CTE. The NFL has done a pretty remarkable job of deflecting both science and common sense from this issue. (Although it's common sense from their point of view to emulate the tobacco companies and try to avoid paying damages to the people they've injured. They apparently didn't look at the end game in the tobacco case.)

It's also hard, looking at the chain of causality, to figure out how the chance might be less than 100%. But we really haven't showed empirically, yet, that the probability is 100%.

I thought pakicetus looked mostly like a kitty with a ringed tail and was electric type. No?