It’s cool. Here’s an unsolicited anecdote. Bob Bennett was the head of the Senate’s Y2k Committee entrusted with studying and providing courses of action for its eponymous problem. I actually had the opportunity to meet him with my small (17 pupils) class on the Hill. Senator Bennett told us that anything with…

I was with you until the last sentence. It’s pretty important. I say this from across the pond. Would partners in my firm know who is the current gov? Some. Do they pay attention to what laws get signed in NY? Yup.

Even my blood is A+.

I'd love to offer an explanation, but I've never lost at anything. Except being unable to understand or experience loss.

Apart from being forgettable, apparently.

People don’t know who Pataki is? I’m 34, from Montana, and have lived literally the second half of my life in Spain, and I certainly know who he is. This fascinates me, because I can't think of any cohort less likely than mine. Are you mole people?

Islam is a race?

Please tell us what wars your grandfather started.

Also, “Colombia”, not “Columbia”.

I star things I don’t understand.

At least you now know what to get nana for Christmas.

I built a house with my parents, including the oak flooring. My German shorthair still managed to scratch the shit out of the apexes of the floor plan.

I have lived half my life in Continental Europe and almost half in Rocky Mountain states. I have been in the houses of hillbillies and those of Ivy classmates.

I follow Real Madrid (socio abonado), the Eagles, Sixers, and Michigan. I told my dad I'm giving up sport for the next calendar year. I sort up my mind freezing my butt off and going through security to watch Real Madrid lose to BCN, but this does it.

I haven’t seen someone drown, but my wife and I spend August at her family’s beach house in Malaga. Now, in Malaga, there are these restaurants that sit literally on the sand called chiringuitos. So there’s the boardwalk, and then the beach, on which a sits these restaurants where they grill sardines and other seafood…

@Clark Andrews: This has to be Whitefish, Montana and “Stagecoach Pizza” on the way to the Big Mountain ski resort and near the skating rink (I lived a two-minute walk from there). I haven’t lived in Montana since 1989, and I don’t even live on the same continent anymore, but there is NO WAY you are not talking about…

Depends, how many people use .22s to shoot people?

.... but it would be nice to lose out without such devastating injuries.

Lives weren’t “lost”. They were taken. By murderers who actively sought to kill civilians. France has not actively targeted civilians in Syria. To use your favorite phrasing: “Let us" not forget that one side tries to avoid killing civilians, the other side believes killing civilians is optimal strategy. Partly…

So, I’m going to ignore the guy to whom you’re responding (partly because anyone with 88 in their name makes me nervous).