<Even if Mexico suddenly tried to turn back the clock 180 years, most Mexicans would be happy living without drug wars and bandits.> Again, I think you're being short-sighted. Those may not be permanent features of Mexican culture.

<Texas adds value to the USA that Northern Ireland never had for England. Texas has the oil, the coast guard/navel base possibilities. Trade routes ending in Houston. Fishing industry, military bases. San Antonio river walk! That wealth is shared with latinos, who work in these industires, buy a house, raise kids, etc. If someone who posts here is from England or Ireland, it would be interesting if they could explain what northern Ireland added to the British Isles, if anything. As I recall, the area was so poor, with such high unemployment, the taxpayers of Britain had to shell out an allowance of 1,000 pounds per year, just to keep the northerners happy.> Good point. But the sentimental desire of Irish Catholics to reunite Ireland was strong enough to overcome rational objections. Might the same not be true for Hispanics?

I wonder if anyone has the Triple Crown-- an Erdos-Bacon-Fischer number.>

I think Morphy numbers are better recognized than Fischer numbers, so IMO a Morphy number should be the third jewel in the Triple Crown. A fair number of people have Erdős–Bacon numbers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erd%C5... I'd think that most people brainy enough to have an Erdős number would at least have tried chess, and most people who've played chess have both a Morphy number and a Fischer number, so the answer to your question is almost certainly "yes." You of course have a Fischer number of two, so if you ever wanted to hit on the now-divorced Ms. McKellar, that could be useful. "Hey baby, how'd you like to lower your Erdős–Bacon-Fischer number to 9?"* **

* McKellar has an Erdős–Bacon number of 6. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danica... If she played <Shams>, her Fischer number would be three: she'd have played <Shams>, who has beaten Viktors Pupols, who won Fischer vs V Pupols, 1955. Her Erdős–Bacon-Fischer number would be the sum of her Erdős number (4), her Bacon number (2), and her hypothesized Fischer number of 3.

<al wazir:>

WRGB is celebrating its 85th year of TV broadcasting.. First TV station in the world.

It has at least 5 weathermen. The one I heard is Steve LaPointe, their chief meterologist. he clearly said 41 minutes of warning.

Even the weather channel's radar is greatly improved. It can tell the size of hail and count lightning strikes. The tornado had over 1000 lightning strikes per hour visible to radar.

I am a "weather spotter" for WRGB and have my weather station hooked to them by internet.

How interesting that you can see that, but you can't see how Israel keeping the Occupied Territories as "its own" for <x> years could be viewed in the same light.

I defy you, <HeMateMe>: Set aside for a moment whatever you believe about *me*, read what I am *saying*, and ask yourself whether Israel would not save itself much head-beating by making a fair and equitable peace with its Palestinian neighbors.

<al wazir:>

Rick Scott the weather Warning coordinator in Norman, Oklahoma said they had 36 minutes of warning.

Debris from Moore was found 150 miles away.

Not the only EF 4 tornado in the OKC area

It is said that men treasure nothing so much as a good insult, but I still think you've been here too long.

In any case, *something* is awry when one finds it easier to tolerate adverse and sometimes caustic criticism than to accept a compliment. ;-)

<A 2-year-old boy in North Carolina is expected to survive after shooting himself with his father’s gun over the weekend.

Randolph County deputies said that the toddler found the handgun in his parents’ room at their home just outside Asheboro around 2 p.m. on Saturday. The boy put the gun in his mouth and fired it.

According to WGHP, the boy was listed in critical condition Brenner Children’s Hospital in Winston-Salem on Sunday, but was expected to live.

“The bullet missed all the vital arteries there in the neck in the head and also missed the spinal cords, so I said it’s a miracle the child is still with us,” Randolph County Sheriff’s Office Captain Derrick Hill explained to WGHP.

A neighbor told the station that “the good Lord was looking after him.” [Yay, God!]

You don't seem to actually 'know' much about anything but expend quite a bit of effort trying to impress people by having an 'opinion' on everything.

<The New England area police or FBI may have made some arrests in this regard, in the 1970s, so don't assume everyone just looked the other way.>

Read the sentence that you wrote again. 1) Do you see that it is itself a complete assumption as presented? 2) Do you see that it has nothing whatsoever with the point that was being made?

<I do believe that England beat its own head against a tree for about 25 years longer than they had to, by symbolically keeping Northern Ireland as "our own". A peaceful transition to one Ireland could have happened in the 70s or 80s. So much wasted money and lost lives.>

Perhaps. You don't 'know my politics' on the matter either it appears, but it doesn't actually have anything to do with the point being made anyway.

<But, if you are hinting that because I'm a white person in the USA I support the donations that went to the IRA, you are wrong.>

I wasn't, but thanks for using the assumption to quote a little John Lennon anyway and rendering the rest of your post meaningless. The point wasn't veiled in any way, others seem to have understood, and since you feel it is acceptable to tell others what to 'do' or 'don't do' in a subject you appear to know next to nothing about... Don't ask me to explain what the point actually was, try a little harder to understand it yourself and then 'don't' proceed with tangents that have nothing to do with it when you have worked it out. To use your vernacular.

<It's a unique problem, that one can't really understand, unless you grow up in that part of the world.>

One could debate this all day, but the broad American view is that there is "one Ireland". It took Britain and the Irish 40 years to figure that out, but it seems to be mostly settled.

They don't have enough jobs, water or arable land for a growing population. They endemic kidnappings and a drug war problem so serious that local police cannot contain it in some areas--their army has to come in and fight a pitched battle.

If you compare some of the border towns in south texas to their opposite number on the Mexican side, the murder rate is 20x higher in Mexico. If you are a latino in Texas, with a job and a house, do you really want all these problems suddenly spilling into your backyard?

<HeMateMe>: the Ford truck of resident pundits?

Unfortunately, it has long been apparent (given what kind of individual typically applies the adjective to himself) that "tough" is a synonym for "stupid."

As for "tuff," that belongs to the kind of folks who "laff"; but <HMM> goes this one better by YELLING it.

Ultimately, <King Sacrificer> was right.

YOU were the one who kicked off with the tone, do's, dont's and pure assumptions in an attempt qualify your viewpoints. It isn't very polite is it?

<The majority of Americans share my opinion that hanging on to Northern Ireland was 1) very costly in lost lives and monies spent and 2) was mostly wrong, because Ireland is a separate country than Britain.>

And what does that have to do with the point that was being made. Hint: NOTHING.

<One could debate this all day...>

There's no need. The only person who is 'debating' the points you added to the tangential pot is yourself, nobody else. You appear to hear but not listen.

<If you don't like my opinions--TUFF.>

I assure you that during The Troubles - and I got to see some of the victims first hand - the usual view in Britain wasn't that we needed to hang onto Northern Ireland as if we were still stuck in the days of our empire. It was just to wish the horror, the violence, the whole place would go away. I remember friends in the Republic thought much the same. Regular joke was that Americans like yourself who had easy solutions were welcome to the place, it could be your 51st state.