Just when you thought it was safe to eat at Taco Hell again…

http://militarybenefits.info/veterans-day-discounts-sales-deals-free-meals/

Site has a lot of places w deals for those who served in defense of our freedoms.

Today, the 6th of August, in 1284 the little known naval battle of Meloria was fought between the  powerful city states  of Genoa and Pisa. It was a Genoese victory, which marked the end of Pisa as a power in the region and would see it absorbed in 1406 by the flourishing banking and textile rich city of Florence. A position as leading Tuscan city which she would hold for hundreds of years, under the clever and super rich Medici family.

One of the losing Pisan Admirals, Count  Ugolini, can be found in the Florentine poet Dante’s Inferno.
He is in the Ninth Circle with Satan punished for treason, found forever gnawing on the Archbishop Ruggieri who betrayed, imprisoned and starved him and his family.

@moralecheck:

You know what ruined that movie for me? I’ll tell ya…

When the main character first ran outside in his avatar and saw the other avatars playing basketball in street clothes. From that moment I could not get the image of the “all-star monstars” from Space Jam out of my mind.  :x

Haha… that’s pretty good.  :lol:

I really wanted to walk out on this stupid ass movie, but I stayed till the end.  Dumbest movie since “Swing Kids”.

Did you know the Nazis didn’t like dancing?  They also hated Rainbows and kittens as well.

Ya know, it’s not fair.  The Holocaust gets all the publicity and no one ever remembers the poor swing kids who were not allowed to dance.  It is like the the “flash dance” of the 30s and 40s.

Perhaps this needs to be moved to political discussion after my comments:

Shanghai is quite nice, and, yes, Beijing needs a ton of work.  Although I don’t think when people say that they think that Beijing city authorities should kick out thousands of poor residents on the city outskirts in preparation for the 2008 Olympics.

Overall, though, China has some significant problems that it needs to work out if it’s going to overtake the U.S.  Their environmental policy is god-awful.  90% of their water is undrinkable, and the dust storms that roll off the northern border are large enough to create their own weather systems.  There was also that benzene spill that happened last year, the one that was 50 miles long.  Unfortunately, while that was a notable case, it’s not the only one.

Also, China is definitely benefitting from its cheap labor supply right now.  The problem, however, is that their current birth rate is not high enough to maintain the population (1.73 children/woman versus the 2.3 widely considered necessary to prevent population declien), and in about a decade or 15 years, they will have an elderly population that makes the baby boomers and the problems associated with it look like nothing.  The Chinese need to start shifting to service industries, like India has, in order to keep their economy rolling.  It’s fine for a time to develop manufacturing capacity, but they don’t necessarily have the supply of educated workers that can compete and perform the way the country needs.  Also, some estimates of public debt mark it as 85% of GDP.

This isn’t to say that the U.S. doesn’t have massive problems as well.  But the infrastructure in the U.S. is well-established, and the procedures time tested but still open to change and challenge.  I think that’s a significant advantage over China, and while I know you aren’t saying that China will overtake the U.S., I think these are all points in favor of caution.

Not my #s…
just my emphasis!
:-P

:-)

good stuff, im not religious in any aspect, and i think christmas is a made up hoiliday (because, and this goes with most major hoilidays, it is in the middle of the worst part of the year, i think people invented christmas to have something to look forward to in the middle of winter, otherwise people go nuts. i can elaborate on this later, but in my wierd head it makes sence.) even when i feel like this i think if someone wants to throw a hollow plastic baby jesus with a light bulb up his @$$ on thier front lawn, then more power to them.