> > > > That same house in Boston would be 300K, is my guess. 
> > > More like 4 or 5, but who's counting.
> > Way out of our mutual price range, anyway.  I'm betting you could 
> > tack another 100 thou on the front in San Francisco.
> 
> You're living in another century, and that guess is off by 
> an order of magnitude - the average house in San Francisco
> goes for $1299000!
> 
Can't say I've checked real estate prices out there recently. 

> The news channel in expensive but not bizarre San Diego
> was running some stories on real estate prices. There
> was a town in the county, Campo, 16 acres, which is being
> offered for $6M as is, buildings, property and all. And
> then there was another feature on a single-family house 
> in San Fran that is going for $39M, 12000000 more than 
> the 9700 sf William and Vanessa Getty mansion sold for 
> earlier this year - tinyurl.com/gettysf tells details.

Yeep.  That makes Boston look cheap.
 
> > Not every child, but ever business major at least. 
> 
> After my father's death I was put in charge of some money,
> and my brother claimed that he could get a much better rate
> than I was getting; I admit my plan was extremely 
> conservative and also conservational (relatively green) and
> also that it did slightly worse than the then expansionary
> market, though it ended up pretty average. His plan would
> have made the assets go nearly in half.

Maybe for once he had it right?   
 
> > > pool (traditionally of women but true to some extent
> > > of guys) gets more desperate and less selective.
> > His late wife (unfortunately) thought she'd won the lottery and 
he 
> > felt (feels) the same way.  Late bloomers in this case.  
> 
> Interesting, but I won't ask!

She'd never had time to settle down before and he was a religious 
worker and a total nerd. 
 
> > > improvised snot rags also go into the back pocket, with the
> > > expectable results.
> > Snot in pocket.  
> 
> It washes out, and besides, it's better than snot
> in soup.

Or snot in someone else's soup.  Or someone else's in yours.
 
> > > good physical condition, so the methane cost is not zero.
> > True, but they're doing that to produce milk and more cows 
anyway.
> 
> I don't think anything we can do to survive in the short run
> is going to be environment neutral, and we have to take active
> steps to avoid catastrophe and mass extinction (unless we
> actually want that to happen, which in my more despairing
> moments I feel like rooting for). I wonder what our own
> methane production is - and how much it would increase if we
> all turned into vegetarians.

If we all started eating cruciferous veggies in quantity we could 
probably power the entire country on methane.