Edwin MacPhisto

That shouldn't be too surprising. College, especially at a top, private research university, is expensive as balls. I don't think there will be any "violent" protest, if you're insinuating rioting or something along those lines.

What you just posted is exactly what I'm talking about.

Yeah. He did insane things while Hughes was out, played incredibly while Z was out...he's been playing better in the second half of the season than even Wade. Get over the "needs to be clutch!" nonsense. I'm all for making tough shots, but you give me 34, 6, and 6 and basically will your team to victory in the second half of games, and you're more than fine by me.

DNA is so minor a component of a criminal investigation. I don't know why the news has focused on this so much, both when the story broke and now. I guess CSI has just made this sort of thing sexy. There's a serious problem with the way rape allegations are processed in this country. Sexism comes into play way, way too often. I agree with Ripper that there really needs to be a much tighter lid on all this stuff. I know it's "news," but reporting all this is sensationalism at its worst. I haven't seen a single piece of intelligent journalism on this entire affair; all I've seen is a bunch of lurid tabloid speculation with which major news outlets should be embarrassed.

The only other season I noticed the music so much was the first. Sean Callery's busting up prices.

As macro as I can make this topic: 69 Love Songs, discs 1, 2, and 3

Big news out today...I'll spoiler tag it, since while it has nothing to do with the season at hand, it does have lots to do with the future of the show:

Yeah. That skit in question is actually only, like, 6 seconds long. They fit in rap albums since it's generally such an emphatically vocal medium, and while often just a waste of time, they can be great. Actually, I think the new Ghostface album uses them pretty well--extremely brief transitional pieces, or thematic introductions to songs that follow (i.e. "Bad Mouth Kid" and "Whip You With a Strap"). I feel that rap skits had their heyday with Niggaz4life, The Chronic, and Doggystyle, and a lot of the Ice Cube and Eazy-E stuff in that same period was similarly good.

They're really wonderful, The Go! Team. Unreal live, if you ever get the chance. I listen to that album all the damn time. As for ballpark music...Gary Glitter's "Rock and Roll part II"? I don't know much else it might be.

That's a really good idea. Especially if later seasons are going to be more like this one--when all the stuff from season 2 is supposed to have taken place in a little over 2 weeks, the two and three week gaps really shake up everybody's head about what's going on, what happened recently, etc.

"I'm not a bad person!" Reminds me of "The Other 48 Days," and the list. Decent episode, kinda filler, but fun. Sawyer struggling with Oreos was almost as good as him complaining about the lack of sex in Are You There God, It's Me Margaret. Harry from Sex & the City was fucking hilarious. TACO NIGHT DUDE!

Real barn-burner so far. UCLA looks like LSU looked against them on Saturday.

This has gotta be the last season of this show, really. How on earth could you top the President of the United States as your bad guy?

Yeah, this is going to be strange. Kinda cool, though it was pretty obvious throughout the episode is wasn't going to be Garner. Of course, you could say the same thing about Spencer being the "mole" earlier in the season, and that was pretty straight-up. I'm thinking it's going to be very hard to explain unless it's like metr0man said, two totally separate plans. But if that's the case, the nerve gas being totally incidental and random is really wild. If Logan did know about all of this and was the great orchestrator, how do we explain away all the stuff with Walt coming to admit to Logan what he was doing? And all the stuff with letting Bierko attack Subarov's convoy...it's pretty convoluted. I guess you could go with the notion that Logan has been playing this whole time, and that he and Henderson are the only ones who really know what's up. Like, the Chain of Evil Command is Logan---> Nathanson ---> Walt...buuuut, that's tricky, because we know that Bierko ostensibly was responsible for killing Erwich, Nathanson, and all the loose ends. Then there's Colette. Or, maybe Logan/Henderson are actually responsible for killing of Nathanson & friends, while Bierko killing Erwich was just his own thing...oh, it's all so convoluted. I dunno. Kinda silly. I'll be really interested to see how it plays out next week.

I really like Wolf Parade too, especially the second half of the album. As for music-stealing stuff, I also use Soulseek--or, rather, the Mac client for it, ssX. Far and away the best thing you can use if you're running OSX. I very rarely use file sharing to get older albums, unless said older albums are really expensive and I'm using it as a stopgap till I can justify spending $30 (re: Songs in the Key of Life).

I will say that I'm pretty uninterested in UCLA/Florida. I had UCLA in the championship game, but I didn't really want to see them there. My hope is that it's a good enough game to cap off this excellent tourney (though, just like last year, the Final Four games were pretty much cakewalks for the winning teams). All I want is each team scoring over 60 points and a margin of victory no greater than...4.

Virginia is pretty woeful. Out of the NCAA tournament for 5 years (though that's likely to change next year), and one of few major conference schools yet to taste a BCS game. Football's disappointing just because they've been sending so many great players to the NFL recently, but those individuals haven't been able to put it all together in the college game. Virginia Tech is the football power of the state, but Virginia has squandered countless opportunities to make a really great run in the past 5-6 years.

So is the Iggy suicide watch on?

What about questions without question marks.

In my case, I only ended up doing that because of a particular program. I got through the first half of my M.A. during the 4th year of my B.A., so I was able to finish it up in just one more year. Otherwise, yeah--though I can definitely see how people interested in the math or science end of things want to get the M.A. or Ph.D. right off the bat.

Great episode. Show is getting back on track, like I hoped. This map is going to be great fun. I just need a slightly higher-resolution copy. My job is basically reading old manuscripts with miniscule handwriting, so I can already make out a whole lot of this. If anyone finds a higher-res one, post it, and I'll have something to distract from my thesis for, like, weeks.

As is well known in these parts: University of Virginia for a B.A. and an M.A.

Why don't you just, you know, do the research if you're that insistent? Google "u.s. immigration quota" or "u.s. immigration restrictions" or "u.s. illegal immigrants" and you'll find plenty. I'm not going to give you the long because the long is LONG, as you'll see if you look at any of what you can find with those basic searches. But here's some more short: -Extremely difficult to get a work visa if you're the kind of person who needs to be doing the cheap labor illegals do/are qualified for; those go more often to people starting businesses. -Quotas per nations, as legal immigration from one nation can't make up more than 7% of the total in a given year; a majority of the people coming over from Mexico would be denied on that basis alone. -Incredibly long waits for greencards and various citizenship tests if you're trying to become a citizen. Some greencard processes have backlogs of years--I mean, like a decade--and maintaining provisional status as a low-wage laborer is extremely difficult. Another aspect of it is that people very often don't have to live like a "criminal," per se. INS is lax in many states (Florida particularly, my home state) because illegals are a huge part of the economy. Yes, they'll be packed into a small residence with several others, usually under the name of their employer. Yes, they won't make a ton of money. But chances are, with their current statuses, they couldn't do any of that, because they're not going to get the opportunity to immigrate legally, or be able to last the duration of time to make it worthwhile. Some people can't wait as long as immigration takes, for the reasons alluded to earlier by Agent. Mexico ain't got shit for them. The U.S. provides a marginally better situation, so there you go.

I nominate Slayer to write fanofcoils fanfiction to appease Jingus' lust for suffering.

I think they exchanged some manly vibes when simultaneously shooting those baddies with their silenced pistols. At that moment, they synced up, and Jack sort of winked, "I'm sorry about choking you," and Curtis was like, "it's okay broseph, look at what we can do with our guns--TOGETHER." Actually, I've thought this season has been pretty good about sticking to its guns. Bierko and Henderson have really been the only ones (it never really seemed like Nathanson or Walt Cummings were the top dogs, so I don't count) in that position, and I think it's been arranged nicely, as they've really been working on parallel but non-intersecting paths. I have a feeling that we'll find out what Wayne knows in the next episode or two, and that what Henderson's really doing will come to light as well.