It put me in Level 6 (high) although I also scored high for Level 1.

Frank Robinson wrote an understated but pretty good novel called "Waiting" in 1999 that was ripped off into a pretty mediocre NBC show "Prey" (most notable for launching Debra Messing's career, I guess). It's about a related species of humans, but not homo sapiens, who co-exist among us, but that homo sapiens don't know about (because they resemble us physically). Jeff Carlson's "Interrupt" is a less successful techno-thriller about some kind of global EMP pulse that brings out latent Neanderthal personas among affected humans.

I don't say so explicitly, but I do exactly the same thing you do, for the same reasons.

Lloyd Alexander's "Chronicles of Prydain" series has a male assistant pig-keeper named Taran as the primary character. Also: Emily Rodda's "Rowan of Rin" series Jacqueline Jules' "Freddie Ramos" series Roald Dahl, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and the sequel, Charlie and the Glass Elevator

Hmm, but is it accurate to say that Medicare taxes me "enough"? Considering the massive unfunded liability in Medicare, it seems that Medicare does not come close to taxing enough to pay for what it's promising.

"[T]he federal government could give everyone a voucher that would be worth the full cost of the lowest-priced health care plan on the market. People could purchase more expensive plans, but they would have to pay the difference in cost between their plans and the low-cost plan." I understand the point that programs have more popular support when they have a broad base of beneficiaries, but I have a hard time seeing how it could be more efficient to tax me enough to provide benefits for the poor *and* for the voucher for me, and then give me the voucher back. I mean, I suppose there could be some efficiencies of scale, but more likely the extra transactions costs and government bureaucracy would eat away at those efficiencies and more.

Isn't the better analogy that you are *forced* to play a game in which you throw a 100-sided (or whatever arbitrarily large number you like) die, and if it comes up 1, you will have to pay $10000; and any other number, you pay nothing. You cannot avoid playing the game, except by paying $105 (or whatever). Your expected value is certainly better to play the game than to pay, but, as Mike Rappaport notes, it would still be rational, given risk aversion, to pay to avoid the game.

As an Angels fan, all I can say is, "Nooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!" Granted, Pujols has been an incredible player the past decade, possibly the best overall given his remarkable consistency. That said, locking him up for 10 years when he's already 32 (a baby by law faculty standards, but middle-aged by pro baseball standards), is a really horrible decision. You only have to look at Alex Rodriguez's declining production to see what an albatross of a massive long-term contract looks like. Oh well, I should casting about for a back-up team to root for. Perhaps the Tampa Bay Rays?

This reinforces my speciesm in favor of mammals. Some mammals are clearly cuter (lion cubs) than others (hyenas). But there really aren't any horrifyingly ugly mammals.

I thought about "M*A*S*H," although I personally thought the early years with Trapper John and Colonel Blake weren't quite as good as the years with BJ Hunnicut *and* Frank Burns (i.e., seasons 4-5, I think). But then Burns left, and as you note, the show got preachy and experimental. I don't really watch sitcoms anymore, so can't comment on your observations there. I do think "The Simpsons" was kind of lame at first and then got good, but I haven't watched it in . . . what, a dozen years? (Man, that show is OLD!) "Malcolm in the Middle" seemed to hold up all the way through; that's the last sitcom I watched regularly.

That's unfortunate for you. I can only hope that Oregon takes heed of this -- and everything else dumb that California does.

I guess I'm not entirely sure what I mean by "accurate" -- just a general sense that counting my weight as the low weight of the day is starting to feel like cheating. On a more psychological point, I might put it like this: my goal has been to get down to 150 lbs (which is what I weighed in law school, when I was probably at my fittest). If I go by my low point of the day, I'm just 2 pounds away, which seems pretty close. However, at other times of the day, I can be as much as 155 pounds, and I start fretting. So I think if I envision myself as 150 pounds, it's really a question of what's my weight range throughout the day, and that could be 150-53 or it could be 147-50 or something in between. I'm leaning toward thinking that 147-50 is the range that I'd like to be at.

I don't dispute any of what you say about the causes of health care costs. I do think that it is fair to view with skepticism ObamaCare's brute force cut in Medicare rates with no meaningful addressing of the underlying causes of skyrocketing costs.

Note that Justices O'Connor and Thomas voted to limit the Commerce Clause in Lopez, Morrison, and Raich, and there are numerous other people who are skeptical of the health care mandate who also favored allowing the States to trump the federal government's controlled substances law.

Matthew, I could've mentioned that it's been upheld by two judges (both Democratic appointees), but I don't think it has relevance to the question of whether it was inconceivable (yes, Princess Bride reference) that a judge would strike down the mandate. I'm not saying that Judge Hudson was right, just that a McEnroe-like reaction to the ruling would be . . . strange(?). On why the Commerce Clause has been a blank check for so long, see U.S. v. Lopez (1995) and U.S. v. Morrison (2000), where the Court struck down the Gun-Free School Zones Act and parts of the Violence Against Women Act as beyond the Commerce Clause. I do not think that viewing the individual mandate as beyond the Commerce Clause would invalidate a lot of legislation. It could, depending on how one reads it, but it need not.

Yes, that is true. I am looking forward to my opportunity in 2012 to vote against Mayor Sam Adams.

There are some issues with the outer boundaries of the AUMF, such as whether people who knowingly donate to al Qaeda fall within its terms. But I don't think there's any question that Ghailani would fit within the "core" of al Qaeda and therefore within the "enemy" as defined by Congress. I agree that the Obama Administration would simply continue to detain him even if he were to win his appeal. But doesn't that seem like a pretty bad outcome? It'll look like the trial was just a sham if it wouldn't affect Ghailani's ultimate disposition.

Well, I'm not really endorsing Trump. But do you really think it's even close between him and Palin?

Regarding the re-amendment of the habeas statute, it should be interesting to see the debates about whether this represents Congress's original intent of the DTA, or revisionist history. It does seem to me that if this bill passes by largely the same vote as the DTA, it would be something of validation of Justice Scalia's dissent.