Coyote Blog

Not many people predicted to 12-13 matchups in the second round, but if they had, they would have runup some nice points given our upset-bonus in the scoring system.  Here are the standings to date, which I reproduce only because, well, I am in them:

Bracket	Rank	Points	Correct Games	Upset Risk %	Possible Games
Jeff Charleston	1	74	37	16.7	52
hopeful	2	71	34	23.4	44
Keith Ehlers	3	70	36	16.7	48
Warren Meyer #2	4	70	33	21.4	46
Ron Gallagher	5	69	36	10.8	47
Nicholas Stergion ii	6	69	32	35.3	43
Dawn Werner	7	69	31	29.2	40
Stan Brown	8	69	30	32.0	43
Wade Condict #2	9	67	35	25.0	44
Craig	10	67	35	10.3	47
Paul Noonan	11	66	31	26.3	42
Warren Meyer	12	65	34	14.3	47

The good news is that both my brackets are in the top 12.  The bad news is that I do a good job every year of picking early upsets and racking up early round points, and then I fall by the wayside in later rounds.  We will see if I can hang in there.  By the way, my loud-mouthed, smack-dealing son is in 76th place.  The leader has 14 of his sweet-16 still intact, while my brackets have 11 and 9 respectively, which are pretty good leading indicators for future problems for yours truly.

One of the reason I like pickhoops.com is that they have some cool analysis tools.  Here is my favorite, analyzing who has the best chances to win:

See the whole analysis here.  

From the Arizona Republic:

Three day laborers filed a lawsuit Tuesday that seeks to overturn a
suburb's law prohibiting people standing on public streets from
soliciting employment from occupants of cars.

The federal lawsuit alleges Cave Creek's law passed is unconstitutional
because it restricts the free speech rights of people trying to find
work as day laborers.

"Cave Creek does not have the right to pick and choose who has free
speech rights," said Monica Ramirez, an attorney for the American Civil
Liberties Union, one of the group's representing the day laborers. "The
town cannot bar people from peaceably standing in public areas and
expressing their availability to work."

The stated reason for the law is this, but don't believe it:

Mayor Vincent Francia said the law was a response to concerns raised by
residents over traffic being impeded by people congregating on street
corners.

If you followed the genesis of this law, it has less than zero to do with traffic.  It was crafted as a way to prevent people of Mexican birth, with or without the proper papers from the US government, from seeking work in Cave Creek.  Which explains why sheriff Joe Arpaio is so eager to help enforce the law, and why, by some statistical fluke, everyone arrested under the law seems to be of Mexican Latin descent  (the three laborers filing the suit are Mexican and Guatemalan and are in this country legally).

I am happy to see this suit get filed under whatever auspices that it can, and have in the past supported using the first amendment to protect free commerce.  Further, I am thrilled to see the ACLU, given its Stalinist origins, for once actively support the right to publicly advertise and conduct commerce.  However, it is sad to me that Thomas Jefferson and company did not think it necesary to enshrine the right to free commerce as an protected right up there with speech and association.

One might argue that the enumerated power concept and the 9th amendment should be protection enough, but obviously Jefferson did not think so or he would not have pushed for the Bill of Rights.   And saying the following may just prove that I am not a Constitutional expert, but it strikes me that another problem with the original Constitution that probably wasn't fixable at the time was the fact that the Bill of Rights did not originally restrain the states, only the Federal government.  Only with the beat-down of states rights concepts in the Civil War and the passage and later interpretation of the 14th amendment did the Supreme Court begin to apply the Bill of Rights to states and municipalities as well.  It is good that they have done so, but these protections enforced on states only tend to be the enumerated protections of the Bill of Rights.  In fact, in this context, the 9th is meaningless because it reserves unenumerated powers to the people or the states, so it contributes nothing to reigning in municipalities, only the Feds. 

All that being said, it should would have been nice to have three extra words such as "or conduct commerce" inserted after assembly:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of
religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the
freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people
peaceably to assemble [or conduct commerce], and to petition the Government for a redress of
grievances.

Lobbying of course!  Silly rabbit. 

The wind industry's trade group spent nearly $816,000 to lobby last
year as wind companies tried to persuade Congress to extend a key tax
credit and make power companies use more renewable sources.   

Despite the efforts of the American Wind Energy Association, neither desire found its way into legislation this past year.   

The
group, whose members include General Electric Co., BP PLC, AES Corp.
and FPL Group Inc., is still pushing for the tax-credit extension after
lawmakers failed to tuck into the economic stimulus plan. The industry
argues that 116,000 jobs and $19 billion in investments are at risk if
the 1.9 cents per kilowatt-hour tax credit doesn't get a second wind.
It expires in 2008.

Here is the really, seriously amazing part:  In 2004, there were just over 400,000 people employed in the US power generation, transmission, and distribution business.  This means that, incredibly, this advocacy group is claiming nearly 30% of the electric utility industry owes their job to wind power, despite wind generating a bit less than 1% of all the power in the US.  If this is true, then here is a solution - forget the 1.9 cent subsidy, and cut some staff. 

Oh, you mean that job number probably isn't real, kind of like those municipal stadium and sports team subsidy studies.  Really?  Boy are you cynical.   

(HT Tom Nelson)

I don't mean to draw too much from a cutsie human interest story, but the Freakonomics Blog links an article in the Chicago Tribune about a guy who claims to have found 160,000 four-leafed clovers.  My only real take was that maybe they really aren't very lucky, since the previous record-holder recently died in prison.

It has already been reprinted around most of the freedom-loving portions of the blogosphere, but in case you have missed this quote from Hillary Clinton:

We need a president who is ready on Day 1 to be commander in chief of our economy.

Also revealed by Hillary:  John Galt has been captured and has been offered Wesley Mouch's job.

The joy of free exchange, and the law of comparative advantage, are explained quite well by Jeffrey Tucker.

Many seem to think of economics and capitalism as sterile or even ugly.  This article helps get at the real beauty of free exchange and capitalism, which I would boil down to the following:

1. Every exchange between free and uncoerced people increases the well-being of both parties (by each individual's definition of their own well-being).  It has to or there would be no transaction. 
2. Point #1 can and does occur even when one party to the transaction has no absolute advantage in any type of labor or production over the other party

Taking the economically illiterate but apparently politically powerful notion that it is important that commerce across arbitrarily selected geographic boundaries be minimized, some Arizona politicians are taking the argument to the next, ridiculous level:  Not content to blame perceived problems in the state economy (which has outperformed most other states) on NAFTA, Mexico, or Mexican immigrants, Arizona politicians are now blaming them on New Mexico.

An Arizona energy regulator is frustrated that Arizona Public Service
Co. is passing up in-state wind-energy for power from New Mexico and
Utah....

The state's largest utility buys 90 megawatts of energy from the
Aragonne Mesa Wind Project near Santa Rosa, N.M., and officials have
informed Corporation Commissioner Kris Mayes of plans to buy more
renewable energy from out of state, including from a Utah
geothermal-power plant.

"I am concerned that such out-of-state purchases hinder the development
of renewable energy here in Arizona, and potentially deprive our state
of much needed economic development," Mayes said in a letter to APS,
echoing concerns she raised at a regulatory meeting last week.

Of course, everyone knows that silly government energy mandates have much more growth potential than, say, low electrical rates.  So obviously the power company is just being treasonous in buying power from the cheapest sources:

When APS [one of our electric utilities] chose to buy power from the Aragonne project in New Mexico, it
rejected a similar proposal from a company that wanted to build a wind
farm in northern Arizona, which wasn't built because of the decision
from APS, Mayes said.

Brandt said the New Mexico project was better for customers.

"We put all these projects out with a competitive bid," Brandt said.
"Then we select the resource that comes out the best. It's not always
the cheapest. It's a combination of price, reliability and do-ability,
all the things a common businessperson would look at."

He said APS would rather support Arizona power projects, but so far those that have bid on power have not been competitive.

Of course, all of this, even taking the cheapest source, is more expensive than electricity would be without these mandates:

When the Corporation Commission approved the renewable-energy standard
in 2006, officials estimated it would raise an existing monthly tariff
on customer bills from less than 50 cents to $1.05 to help APS meet the
goal, but those projections have gone up. Regulators are expected to
set a new limit on the tariff in the next month, according to Mayes and
APS officials, with some proposals nearing $2.

The protectionist argument is summed up:

"This is Arizona ratepayer money that is currently going to other
states that ought to stay in Arizona," she said. "We are in an economic
downturn. It's a terrible time to be investing out of state."

Yes, yet another blow is struck against economic literacy and the concept of division of labor.  Just how arbitrarily small does a geographic area have to be before protectionists will accept that this area does not need to be self-sufficient of all products and services?

A couple of posts ago I said that Arizona could be very libertarian, and then could be just the opposite on the next day.  I showed the libertarian side in that post, here is the other:

The state Senate voted 17-11, with two senators not voting, to allow a
rock-and-roll theme park proposed between Phoenix and Tucson to issue
$750 million in revenue bonds to help build the project....

Revenue bonds are repaid with income from the funded projects. The park would tax visitors to repay the bonds.

To issue the bonds, the developers must come up with $100 million of their own financing.

Oh my god, three quarters of a billion dollars of public financing for a theme park?  And we give the theme park operator taxation authority?  And the developer has to come up with less than 1/8 the total cost from private sources?  Yuk.  Just for scale  (I know the spending sources are apples and oranges), $750 million is more than 2.5 times the total of the federal earmarks that go to Alaska, the #1 porkbarrel state.  So here we are patting ourselves on the back for being Congressional pork-free, and then our state Senate does something like this.  Sigh.

An announcement in the AZ Republic yesterday:

Best-selling author Bill McKibben, who wrote one of the first books on
global warming, will be the featured speaker at a roundtable discussion
on sustainability Tuesday afternoon at the Burton Barr Central Library...

In his latest book, McKibben argues that accelerated cycles of economic
expansion have brought the world to the brink of environmental
disaster.

Instead, he suggests that we should be creating smaller, more sustainable local economies. 

I have never fully understood the word "sustainability," but in this context, doesn't it mean "poorer"?  It strikes me that McKibben is trying to sell poverty, or at least advocating that everyone voluntarily become poorer.  He is successful with middle-class soccer moms at the library only to the extent that he hides this fact and calls poverty something else  -- in this case "smaller, more sustainable local economies."

By the way, does jetting from city to city across the country to sell his book make him a sustainability expert?  If he believes what he says, why doesn't he just sell his book within a 50-mile radius of his home?

Sustainability is always for thee and not for me.

Arizona can be a weird place, politically.  Sometimes it can be among the most libertarian, part of the Goldwater legacy, and sometimes it can be absurdly statist, for example in the huge popular support our individual-rights-abusing Sheriff Arpaio enjoys.  But this is certainly good to see:

Arizona has some powerful lawmakers in Washington, including Republican presidential candidate John McCain.

But when it comes to pork-barrel spending, otherwise known as earmarks, the state isn't very powerful. In fact, it ranks last.

That's mostly because three of the state's 10 lawmakers in Washington,
McCain and House Republicans Jeff Flake and John Shadegg, refuse to ask
for any federal money
for local projects. Another Arizona Republican, Sen. Jon Kyl, strictly
limits his earmark requests. They all say the earmark process wastes
taxpayer money and desperately needs reform. But other Arizona
lawmakers counter that their colleagues' stance hurts the state.

rizona, one of the fastest growing states in the nation, will receive
$18.70 per capita in federal earmarks this fiscal year. By comparison,
Alaska, with roughly a 10th of Arizona's population, is set to receive
$506.34 per capita, the highest in the nation, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense, a watchdog group that tracks earmarks.

Alaska receives about three times as much as Arizona in actual dollars,
$346 million to $119 million. That means Arizona gets less money for
water projects, bridge repairs, road construction and rural clinics.

Good for us.  While I have my problems with McCain, Shadegg and Flake are two of my favorite people in Congress. 

The article, since it comes from the Republic, of course fails to really explain the issues well.  It tries to get the reader confused into thinking that zero earmarks means zero government spending in the state:

"When you have reformers and purists, you end up not getting a
reasonable share of money coming out, which hurts the state," said
James Thurber, director of the Center for Congressional and
Presidential Studies at American University. "When you're holier than
thou, you don't get much of the money."

This is, of course, silly.  Having no earmarks merely means that the huge amounts of money the Feds spend are doled out by existing statute and by the bureaucracy, rather than the whim of individual Congress persons trying to pay back favors to large donors.

update:  see the bad half of AZ here.

I am a glutton for stats, so I always love to post this analysis.  Of the 125 brackets we have in the tournament, this is how many picked each team in each game  (teams in red are those already knocked out)

By the way, how about that buzzer-beater in overtime by Western Kentucky!

Pick counts for all PickHoops

The answer to why Easter comes so early this year is actually up in the sky tonight:  the full moon.  Easter is defined as the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox (which was today rather than the normal March 21, presumably due to it being leap year but someone may correct me on this).

Megan McArdle observes (via data from the ACLU) that over 900,000 Americans have their name on various terrorist watch lists.  One could argue that this is perhaps four orders of magnitude off the actual number of active terrorists running around the country.  How can such a travesty occur?  Well, its the government, and McArdle points out, unsurprisingly, its an incentives issue.

Can some smart lawyer from the ACLU find a way to void this list on due process or maybe 14th amendment grounds?

From Steven Milloy:

The audience -- a sold-out crowd of hundreds who had to apply to be admitted and pay a $3,500 fee -- consisted of representatives of the myriad businesses that seek to make a financial killing from climate alarmism. There were representatives of the solar, wind, and biofuel industries that profit from taxpayer mandates and subsidies, representatives from financial services companies that want to trade permits to emit CO2, and public relations and strategic consultants to all of the above.
    
    We libertarians would call such an event a rent-seekers ball -- the vast majority of the audience was there to plot  how they could lock-in profits from government mandates on taxpayers and consumers.
    
    It was an amazing collection of pseudo-entrepreneurs who were absolutely impervious to the scientific and economic facts that ought to deflate the global warming bubble.

    In the interlude between presentations by the CEOs of Dow Chemical and Duke Energy, for example, the audience was shown a slide -- similar to this one -- of the diverging
    relationship between atmospheric CO2 levels and average global temperature since 1998. That slide should have caused jaws to drop and audience members to ponder why anyone is considering regulating CO2 emissions in hopes of taming global climate.

    Instead, it was as if the audience did a collective blink and missed the slide entirely. When I tried to draw attention to the slide during my presentation, it was as if I was speaking in a foreign dialect.

    The only conclusion I could come to was that the audience is so steeped in anticipation of climate profiteering that there is no fact that will cause them to reconsider whether or not manmade global warming is a reality.

But of course we all know that it is the skeptics that are corrupted by money ;=)

Note: This post sticky through 3/20.  Look below for newest posts.

We had a blast with it last year, so back by popular demand is the annual Coyote Blog
NCAA Bracket Challenge.  Yes, I know that many of you are bracketed
out, but for those of you who are self-employed and don't have an
office pool to join or who just can't get enough of turning in
brackets, this pool is offered as my public service.   

Last year we had close to 100 entries, and we expect more this year.
Everyone is welcome, so send the link to friends as well.  There is no
charge to join in and
I have chosen a service with the absolutely least intrusive log-in
(name, email, password only) and no spam.  The only thing I ask is
that, since my kids are participating, try to keep the team names and
board chat fairly clean.

To join, go to http://www.pickhoops.com/Coyote and sign up, then enter your bracket.  This year, you may enter two different brackets if you wish.

Scoring is as follows:

Round 1 correct picks:  1 points
Round 2:  2
Round 3:  4
Round 4:  6
Round 5:  8
Round 6:  10

Special March Madness scoring bonus: If you correctly pick the underdog in any round (ie,
the team with the higher number seed) to win, then you receive bonus
points for that correct pick equal to the difference in the two team's
seeds.  So don't be afraid to go for the long-shots!   The detailed rules are here.

Bracket entry appears to be open.  Online bracket entry closes
Thursday, March 20th at 12:20pm EDT.  Be sure to get your brackets in
early.  Anyone can play -- the more the better.

For all our problems in this country with protecting individual liberties, we at least still have pretty free reign in criticizing public figures.  Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of Canada.  I am not really that sympathetic to all that gets written on these Canadian web sites, but I support their right to say it.

Do not be too complacent, however.  I am absolutely positive that there are many prominent people in this country who are scheming to bring exactly this sort of regime to the US.  In fact, it is already being tested at various college campuses, where a newfound right "not to be offended" has begun to trump free speech, at least so far as offense is defined and felt by the ruling elite on campus.

We have 99 brackets so far, lets get it over 100.  Remember, entry is free and fun.  As an added incentive, I will send
the winner a copy of either of my books  (yes, I know the inevitable
joke - 2nd place gets two copies).  Enter here:  http://www.pickhoops.com/Coyote.  More about the rules and scoring here.

Remember, entry is free and fun.  As an added incentive, I will send the winner a copy of either of my books  (yes, I know the inevitable joke - 2nd place gets two copies).  Enter here:  http://www.pickhoops.com/Coyote     .  More about the rules and scoring here.

Despite seeing all kinds of major problems in tort law today, I have never been a huge proponent of many tort law reforms (though I support loser pays).  I don't see why my ability to pursue legitimate damages in court should be curtailed.  What all these tort law reforms never get at is this:

A Glendale jury on Friday cleared an emergency room doctor of
negligence and liability in John Ritter's death, holding he did
everything he could to save the comic actor. ... Jurors, who voted 9 to
3 against liability for Lee and Lotysch, said they were torn between
sympathy for Ritter's wife and children and their conviction that the
doctors were blameless.

The fact that the jury is at all conflicted on this point represents a huge miscarriage of justice, but this goes on every day in court.  In fact, if the doctors had worked for Exxon, you can bet Exxon would have been paying despite being blameless.

What patients (and juries) really seam to want is bad outcomes insurance rather than malpractice insurance.  This is in part born out by the fact that researchers can usually find little statistical relationship between truly bad doctors and the size of court malpractice payouts.  Maybe the answer to malpractice insurance is to convert it to a workers-comp-like no-fault insurance systems that pays off on bad/unexpected outcomes following a fixed schedule and keeps everything out of court.  The reduction in legal costs alone would be staggering.

I mentioned yesterday that, consistent with our perfect 15 for 15 history of having sick kids on the family vacation, I missed a day of skiing to take care of my sick son.  Well, the other shoe dropped today, and my wife missed a day of skiing with my sick daughter.  Fortunately, we only have two kids so we may all ski tomorrow.

By the way of disclosure, I enjoy the fun my family has skiing but it really is not my favorite activity or even in my top 50 or so activities.  Too cold, too much stuff to bring, too expensive, too many lines.  Like having to buy $1000 of equipment to go to Disney World and finding that they moved it to Alaska.  With the added risk of breaking a leg.

I wondered if folks would find my analogy from Bear Stearns to Enron I posted the other day stretched. 

Because Enron's demise came in exactly this sort of liquidity crisis,
and the situations are nearly entirely parallel, all the way up to and
including the CEO telling the world all is well just days before the
failure.  But no one understood Enron's business, so its failure seemed
"out of the blue" and therefore was attributed by many to fraud,
lacking any other ready explanation.   In the case of Bear Stearns, the
public was educated in advance as to the problems in their portfolio
(with mortgage loans) such that the liquidity crisis was less of a
surprise and, having ready source of blame (subprime loans) no one has
felt the need to apply the fraud tag.

Apparently, the Economist sees the same connection (via a reader):

For many people, the mere fact of Enron's collapse is evidence that
Mr Skilling and his old mentor and boss, Ken Lay, who died between his
conviction and sentencing, presided over a fraudulent house of cards.
Yet Mr Skilling has always argued that Enron's collapse largely
resulted from a loss of trust in the firm by its financial-market
counterparties, who engaged in the equivalent of a bank run. Certainly,
the amounts of money involved in the specific frauds identified at
Enron were small compared to the amount of shareholder value that was
ultimately destroyed when it plunged into bankruptcy.

Yet recent events in the financial markets add some weight to Mr
Skilling's story"”though nobody is (yet) alleging the sort of fraudulent
behaviour on Wall Street that apparently took place at Enron. The
hastily arranged purchase of Bear Stearns by JP Morgan Chase is the
result of exactly such a bank run on the bank, as Bear's counterparties
lost faith in it. This has seen the destruction of most of its roughly
$20-billion market capitalisation since January 2007. By comparison,
$65 billion was wiped out at Enron, and $190 billion at Citigroup since
May 2007, as the credit crunch turned into a crisis in capitalism.

Mr Skilling's defence team unearthed another apparent inconsistency
in Mr Fastow's testimony that resonates with today's events. As Enron
entered its death spiral, Mr Lay held a meeting to reassure employees
that the firm was still in good shape, and that its "liquidity was
strong". The composite suggested that Mr Fastow "felt [Mr Lay's
comment] was an overstatement" stemming from Mr Lay's need to "increase
public confidence" in the firm.

The original FBI notes say that Mr Fastow thought the comment
"fair". The jury found Mr Lay guilty of fraud at least partly because
it believed the government's allegations that Mr Lay knew such bullish
statements were false when he made them.

As recently as March 12th, Alan Schwartz, the chief executive of
Bear Stearns, issued a statement responding to rumours that it was in
trouble, saying that "we don't see any pressure on our liquidity, let
alone a liquidity crisis." Two days later, only an emergency credit
line arranged by the Federal Reserve was keeping the investment bank
alive. (Meanwhile, as its share price tumbled on rumours of trouble on
March 17th, Lehman Brothers issued a statement confirming that its
"liquidity is very strong.")

Although it can do nothing for Mr Lay, the fate of Bear Stearns
illustrates how fast quickly a firm's prospects can go from promising
to non-existent when counterparties lose confidence in it. The rapid
loss of market value so soon after a bullish comment from a chief
executive may, judging by one reading of Enron's experience, get
prosecutorial juices going, should the financial crisis get so bad that
the public demands locking up some prominent Wall Streeters.

The article also includes more details of exculpatory evidence that was withheld from the Skilling team and will very likely lead to a new trial.  The Enron prosecution team has not had a very good record in appeals court scrutiny of their actions at trial:

For what it is worth, prosecutors have had a tougher time in the
appeals court with Enron-related cases than in the initial jury trials.
Convictions have been overturned in a case relating to Nigerian barges
that Enron sold to Merrill Lynch. The conviction of the chief financial
officer of Enron Broadband has also been vacated, after two trials. So,
too, was the decision to convict Enron's auditor, Arthur Andersen
(albeit too late to save the venerable firm from liquidation).

I have not ever been able to make solar installation on my house get a reasonable payback, even with rising electricity rates, the best location in the country for solar, and huge government subsidies.  Large solar installations remain a publicity stunt, a sort of really expensive indulgence bought to garner the "green" title:

Scott Gustafson runs the numbers on the solar installation at the revamped Phoenix convention center:

capital cost:  $850,000
operating costs:  not provided
annual electricity savings:  $15,000
return on investment (ignoring operating costs and interest):  1.7%

Solar is still a fine toy for the rich and public figures like Al Gore looking to disguise their true carbon footprint.  But the economics aren't there yet for big boy investors -- its still off by an order of magnitude, at least.

Hopefully, this will change as high energy prices encourage innovation.

Via TJIC, from that California homeschooling court decision, as reported in the San Francisco Chronicle:

"A primary purpose of the educational system is to train school children in good citizenship, patriotism and loyalty to the state and the nation as a means of protecting the public welfare," the judge wrote, quoting from a 1961 case on a similar issue.

Excerpt from my novel BMOC that I posted hours after the Spitzer revelations:

Taking a deep
breath, Givens said, "Senator, there is a reason that this one is not
going
away. I will spell it out: S-E-X. The press doesn't give a shit about a
few billion dollars of waste. No one tunes in to the evening news if
the
teaser is "˜Government pays too much for a bridge, news at eleven.' The
Today Show doesn't interview the
contractors benefiting from a useless bridge."

"However, everybody
and his dog will tune in if
the teaser is "˜Your tax dollars are funding call girls, film at
eleven'. Jesus, do you really think the CBS Evening
News is going to turn down a chance to put hookers on the evening news?
Not just tonight but day after day? Just watch "“ Dan Rather will be
interviewing
hookers and Chris Mathews will be interviewing hookers and for God's
sakes
Barbara Walters will probably have a weepy interview with a hooker."

OK, I missed it by that much.  It is Diane Sawyer, not Barbara Walters.

At least one good thing has come out of Eliot Spitzer's fall from
grace: Diane Sawyer will finally get to air her hooker special!

Almost two years ago, Sawyer and producers at "Prime Time Live" set
out to do a story on prostitution. Wanting to examine Nevada's legal
brothels, she headed out to the famous Moonlite Bunny Ranch.

"She really hit it off with all my girls," Bunny Ranch head Dennis
Hof tells us. "We even gave her one of the terry-cloth bathrobes they
wear. We had it embroidered, "Diane: Trainee."

I am a big proponent of front projection for serious home theater.  I currently have a 108" wide (not diagonal) projection set up and I paid less for it than many people do for their 50" flat screens.  Unfortunately, it is 720p rather than 1080p, but there is a great new crop of affordable 1080p front projectors that I am lusting after.  This site has very good, complete reviews of front projectors and has just posted its roundup of the best 1080p machines.