millennica

I agree completely. My spouse and I had 2 vehicles that we purchased new with cash 20 years ago, a VW Fox and a small Isuzu pickup truck. Although the truck finally gave up the ghost early this year, the VW Fox is still running well. In November, I purchased a new Honda Fit with cash that I hope, but don't expect, will last for 20 years. It was wonderful not to have had any car payments or other consumer debt for 20 years.

Harvard solicits money from all alums. They call and write me too, but I haven't given them a dime yet. I am planning to include them in my will and leave them some money to endow a small graduate student fellowship in my name.

This is an exquisite house. Makes me wish I lived in Houston, so I could buy it.

I was merely stating a fact about which Democratic candidate David Paterson endorsed in the New York primary. I wasn't prognosticating that isn't my bailiwick. I'll leave the prognosticating to others. So, yes, we'll have to wait and see if Governor Paterson changes his support to someone else.

Lieutenant Governor David Paterson, the African American who would become governor if Spitzer resigns, endorsed Hillary Clinton in the New York primary election.

I never answer my phone--mobile or home--unless I know who is calling. Even then I frequently don't answer. People criticize me too because they feel I should answer when they call, but I tell them that I pay for the phone and that gives me right not to answer it and that if they feel I have to answer their calls, then they are free to pay my phone bill. That usually ends the discussion.

A potty poll

It also brings to mind the kidnapping hoaxes described in this NY Times article. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html...FK%2FKidnapping

Does this mean you don't approve of women of color who marry white men? In California, where I live, many Asian women, particularly Japanese Americans marry white men. According the information from the US Census Bureau, in 2006, 50 percent of U.S.-raised, married Asian women were married to Asian men, while 41 percent of U.S.-raised, married Asian women had white husbands. 60 percent of U.S.-raised married Asian men were married to Asian women, while 30 percent of U.S.-raised, married Asian men had white wives (2006 U.S. Census Bureau). Consult the following for more detailed information http://www.asian-nation.org/interracial.shtml

Undergraduate, masters, and doctoral degrees all in anthropology and I'm an anthropology professor at a university.

In many cultural and social groups, it is common that women are encouraged to and indeed marry up the socioeconomic ladder by seeking mates who are wealthier, more privileged, have greater occupational status and/or are older. This practice is called hypergamy and it isn't unusual in many societies in the world. This could account for some women from groups of color seeking out white men for marriage partners, who in some cases are presumed to enjoy the highest social status in society.

In addition to being known as the Oxford comma (the house style of Oxford University Press), it also known as the Harvard comma (the house style of Harvard University Press). It is also referred to as the serial comma because it is used to separate items in a series-- 3 or more items of the same type (single words or groups of words, phrases/clauses) connected by and, or, or nor before the last item.

Not living in Houston, I can't speak to whether the Riverside/Riverside Terrace/Washington Terrace area has an area called "Sugar Hill", but if it does/did, it wouldn't surprise me as there are many US cities that had Black middle class sections of neighborhoods that carried the moniker "Sugar Hill". Some of these include a section of Harlem around St. Nicholas Avenue, a section of Roxbury (a predominantly Black neighborhood in Boston), near the Franklin Park Zoo, where I owned a house, the Druid Hills area of Baltimore, MD, and the West Adams neighborhood of Los Angeles which in early 1940s as successful African-American entertainers moved into West Adams Heights was dubbed

If you want to read an informative and witty book about comma use, see Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss who makes a compelling case for why the correct use of commas matters. An excerpt from her book that explains how and why using commas correctly matters follows below: A panda walks into a caf

Perhaps Gary meant abysmal meaning very bad, dreadful, awful, terrible, frightful, atrocious, disgraceful, deplorable, shameful, hopeless, lamentable; informal rotten, appalling, crummy, pathetic, pitiful, woeful, useless, lousy, dire, the pits.

It definitely isn't a good idea to loan someone making 75,000.00 a year a loan on a 500,000, but that wasn't the situation in this case. Seventy-five thousand dollars only represents one spouse's salary. Ms. Ummel made 75,000.00, but the NYTimes article indicates that her spouse was also employed. If he was making a salary comparable to hers, then their combined salaries would have been 150,000.00 not 75,000.00. The price of the house was 1.2 million dollars, not 500,000.00. Although the NY Times article doesn't mention whether this couple sold a house before buying this one, before moving to Carlsbad which is in San Diego County, the Ummels previously lived in the SF Bay Area. It is possible that they sold a house in the SF Bay Area. If so, this might have given them a substantial down payment toward the house so the loan amount may not have been risky and the mortgage payments may not have been outrageous. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/22/business...&ei=5087%0A

The California Association of Realtors has different kinds of buyer broker contracts. One The Exclusive Authorization to Acquire Real Property

Cosmo Quizzes? Never saw them, never took them. Did you learn anything from them? You don't say. But based on what you say about the "candidate" quiz, it appears to have corresponded to your candidate preferences. Of course, there is a gap between what people say and what they do and this is not just with candidates. Social scientists who study this phenomena distinguish between their beliefs--what people say-- and their actions-- and what they actually do. In many cases, the discrepancies are startling. One would expect the same for political candidates.

Today's NPR Talk of the Nation featured Bob Collins, who created a web quiz that asks about various issues and then matches the answers with the presidential candidate whose positions match the answers selected. The link to the page from which one can navigate to the quiz is posted below. Enjoy. Can a Web Quiz Really Tell You Who to Vote For? Talk of the Nation, January 17, 2008

New Investigation in Texas E-Mail Case By RALPH BLUMENTHAL--New York Times Published: January 9, 2008 HOUSTON

I completely agree. Just a small selection from the rather large corpus of malapropisms, semantic or linguistic errors and gaffes made by our current president. "Families is where our nation finds hope, where wings take dream." Oct. 18, 2000 "It's your money. You paid for it." Oct. 18, 2000 "I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family." Jan. 27, 2000 "They misunderestimated me." Nov. 6, 2000 "Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?' Jan. 11, 2000 "Never again in the halls of Washington, D.C., do I want to have to make explanations that I can't explain." Oct. 31, 2000 "They said, 'You know, this issue doesn't seem to resignate with the people.' And I said, you know something? Whether it resignates or not doesn't matter to me, because I stand for doing what's the right thing, and what the right thing is hearing the voices of people who work. Oct. 31, 2000 "Reading is the basics for all learning." --George W. Bush, March 28, 2000 "One of the great things about books is sometimes there are some fantastic pictures." Jan. 3, 2000. "We want our teachers to be trained so they can meet the obligations, their obligations as teachers. We want them to know how to teach the science of reading. In order to make sure there's not this kind of federal --" federal cufflink." March 30, 2000 "If the terriers and bariffs are torn down, this economy will grow." --George W. Bush, Jan. 2000 "There's an old saying in Tennessee

Jan. 8, 2008, 3:28PM Spring teacher charged with sexually abusing teen By JENNIFER LEAHY Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle A Westfield High School teacher has been charged with sexual abuse of a child. Shannon Kay Hrozek, 42, of Houston, was arrested after an assistant principal entered her 10th-grade English classroom after school on Thursday and found her performing oral sex on a 16-year-old male student, court records show. http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5435742.html From the Smoking Gun "Room 143 With The Lights Off" Texas teacher charged in sex assault of 16-year-old male student http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years...ml?link=rssfeed

We agree that high stakes testing is one thing that lowers the bar and is easily fixed. However, I am not hopeful that this easy fix alone will result in students being better prepared for college level work. Too may other factors conspire to keep that from being a reality. Complex situations require multi-pronged solutions and that to solve them we must heed Mencken

While I agree that high stakes tests are a contributing factor to students not being prepared for the rigors of college level work, they aren't the sole factor. NCLB was not passed until 2002. When I first began teaching in the UC System in the early 1990s, California did not have high stakes testing and even then many students weren't well prepared for college level work. The reasons for students not being prepared are complex. There is no doubt that a singular focus on test scores, particularly if teachers feel compelled to teach to the test, is problematic, but to my way of thinking that isn't the only reason students entering college aren't prepared to do college level work.