And this is why I don't let my children go trick-or-treating. Where's the novelty in going as Death?

Now, there was a guy when I was young(er) that I remember; he came to our house for candy and was dressed up as a Domino's pizza box. That remains in my mind as one of the cooler costume attempts.

He did a pretty good job with the song and dance, too, as I recall.

In general, I disapprove of government bailouts to companies that overstretch themselves and get caught by the short 'n' curlies. But AIG is responsible for insuring a huge list of mutual funds and pension plans against failure and that's a long-term consequence that would make the Enron collapse look piddly. If AIG could not honor its obligations, the financial world would be in a lot worse shape.

Lehman Brothers was old, respected, and a pillar of the financial community. It was not part of the defensive structure that prevents a wholesale collapse similar to the events of 1929. The decision to let it die was hard for the investors and workers, but I applaud the decision there. If every firm on Wall Street felt they had a right to expect government bailouts, the risk-taking would expand drastically and the amount of taxpayer dollars poured into that particular black hole would be obscenely large.

Finally, I am glad that the government now has the ability (as part of the bailout) to toss AIG's senior management and replace with someone new. I only wish they'd made the same deal with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. I really do have a problem with Freddie Mac's CEO collecting bonuses and stock options worth multiple millions when his company tanked due to his risk strategy and leadership.

Phelps dominated in one sport: swimming. Thorpe remains the only gold-medalist for both the decathlon and the pentathlon in a single Olympics (while he took a large swath of silvers and a few golds, he was awarded the gold for both event sets). And he remains the only person who dominated so completely across the event sets that his name is still invoked as "the greatest athlete of the 20th century." Swedish King Gustav V was quite correct when he presented the gold medal with the statement "You, sir, are the greatest athlete of all time."

Those who study criminal justice issues are often faced with the question "What Works?" since answering that one takes less time than outlining the problems of the current system. Reform may in fact be the wrong word; tearing it out and starting over may be closer.

Our current system advocates punishment over intervention, harshness over leniency and marginalization over integration. The core of this problem began in the late 1970's, when it became a selling point for politicians to appear tough on crime. For many, that meant more prisons, harsher laws, three-strikes legislation and the like. And all of those measures fail to answer the question "What Works?" And for good reason. While we scold and punish, we fail to act on the core problem. What the criminal justice system in America requires is a total change in paradigm.

Consider the following. Housebreaking a puppy requires that you a) provide a place for him to go, b) show him what is the right thing to do and c)punish the bad behavior and reward the good. Our current system has half of c, and none at all of the other two. Is it surprising that it doesn't work? As a more real-world example, consider the case of Juan, a low-income kid with a drug habit, a gang and a juvenile record stretching back across assault, petty theft and a string of narco raps. He turns 18, robs a store for the cash to support his drug habit and gets busted. The court hands down a six-year sentence. While in prison, Juan gets straightened out. He gets his GED, he dries out from the drugs and he is a model prisoner. For that reason, he is released on parole after serving two years, four months.

Now for the kicker: where is Juan to go? Returning to his home, his family, the only place outside the prison walls that he knows, puts him right back in the same environment that he was in when he got into drugs and crime. He has no job, no skills, no experience. His criminal record acts as a bar from many types of employment (i.e. no security work, no liquor sales, etc, etc). He has no support network outside of the one he built when he was a criminal, and he has no real chance to build a new one, since he is now constrained to return to the old ways.

Is it surprising that Juan ends up back in jail? And this same scenario is repeated time after time after time, to the point where CJ students joke about the revolving-door prisons. The US has harsh laws, has incarceration as a punishment down to a fine art, but fails to rehabilitate or reintegrate the criminal. In essence, we perpetuate a criminal class.

No, it is not coincidence that I used a Hispanic name for my criminal. Hispanics are seven times more likely than whites and three times more likely than blacks to have criminal records. It has nothing to do with the national origin, and everything to do with environment, laws and perception. But that's another argument, or book of arguments...

The argument that is generally advanced for blanket gun bans is that the framers of the Second Amendment intended the liberty to bear arms in order to form a pool for the state militia. While a narrow reading of the exact language of the Second Amendment would seem to support that view, the historical setting in which the Second Amendment came into being disproves this. The British had attempted to disarm all colonists, even those engaged in militia duties, as a means of controlling the colonies and preventing them from rebelling. Combined with the lack of effective protection against French and native attacks, the prohibition on weapons was of major concern to many of the Founding Fathers.

For Jefferson, the appeal of this amendment goes far beyond the simple need to arm and staff militias. His notes include a statement that is especially apt for today: "I see this [amendment] as being truly necessary to impede the growth of crime. Even a madman must think twice ere he confronts an armed and trained citizen."

It is an axiom that criminals will have access to weaponry, and that guns form the primary source of such weapons. Blanket gun bans do nothing to stop the criminals from obtaining the guns; they succeed only in removing the guns from the hands of law-abiding citizens. And the state protection (i.e. the police) is not sufficient to compensate for the loss of the protection afforded by the possession and training in the use of the gun.

That said, I take no issue with banning certain types of weapons on the grounds that such weapons are not, in fact, suitable for personal protection or for hunting/recreation. Assault rifles, submachine guns, fully automatic weapons and miniguns are paramilitary-class weapons at the minimum; the average civilian has no more need of these weapons than he/she has need of hand grenades or rocket launchers. I also have no problem with requiring licensure and background checks for gun ownership. The vast majority of gun accidents occur in households where the people have little or no training in the care, use and safety of the weapons stored therein. Licensure requirements could include training in the care, cleaning, storage, safety and use of the weapon (including a minimum of 5 hours on the range), which would reduce the number of deaths from ignorance, as well as increasing the deterrent effect of the gun ownership.

As a final note, researchers have repeatedly attempted to determine what makes one target more likely than another for attack by career criminals (here, we are looking specifically at personal crimes, not corporate or societal). Criminals interviewed by these researchers have overwhelmingly stated that the knowledge that the potential victim is armed and trained in self/property-defense is the single most effective deterrent to the criminal selecting that victim as a target.

As one memorable interviewee stated to a researcher: "Lady, I don't care 'bout no dog, I don't care 'bout no alarm. But the guy that lives there [in the house this burglar was considering] has a gun? I ain't going in there."

Speaking as a historian and sociologist, George W Bush is not likely to be listed as the very worst of the American Presidents. While he will certainly not be remembered as a good one, I think my colleagues and I will be placing him somewhat above worst ever. Assuming that we eliminate Harrison and Garfield from the list entirely (neither were in office long enough to do anything), we are left with the likes of Harding, Grant, Buchanan and Andrew Johnson.

Harding was master of a government so steeped in corruption that we actually saw serving members of the Cabinet sent to jail and historians still use it as the litmus test for political wrongdoing. While the Teapot Dome scandal is the most easily recognized, more than 500 separate charges involving corruption, bribery, collusion, kickbacks and the like have been documented to date.

Grant was crude, rapacious and not very intelligent, an excellent warfighter but a very poor administrator. His administration was almost as full of corruption as Harding's, but without the malice toward Grant. Grant's mismanagement of the nation during his second term led to the Panic of 1873 (partly defused by the release of gold from federal coffers, but far too late to avert the depression that followed). He also abandoned the southern states to the local militias to combat the violent KKK uprisings, rather than using the military (as Lincoln and Johnson had). In essence, during the last years of Grant's administration, the nation essentially was rudderless and drifting.

Johnson presided over the debacle of Reconstruction and made things so bad in Alabama's case that the state was unable to recover financially for more than fifty years (Alabama still owes more than 3.5 billion to the federal government from that period, although no attempt has been made to collect it since 1917). He was also responsible for crushing reparations on several states, the ousting of rich plantation owners, the enactment of "Jim Crow" laws and the passage of the "Black Codes," which condemned freedmen to second-class status. His comment in this aspect was "This is a country for white men, and by God, as long as I am President, it shall be a government for white men."

Buchanan was totally incompetent in many ways; in fact, the only reason he won the nomination was because the Democrats needed someone that not everyone hated (he got in on the 17th ballot!). His inaugural address included a promise not to run for office a second time, he was President during the largest government financial collapse in US history prior to the Great Depression and in 1857, he sent the Army into the Utah Territory to crush the rumored "rebellion" of Governor Brigham young and his Mormon followers. The war move was so badly planned that the Army never even made it to Utah (they were winter-bound in Wyoming) and Young managed to defuse the situation prior to fighting actually beginning. Buchanan tried to take credit for "pardoning" the "rebels," not a brilliant idea. He was also President as the first seven states seceded and made no preparations for war.

While W has done several stupid things, his administration has been directional (unlike Grant or Buchanan), and his scandals are comparatively quite modest. Furthermore, while the US economy is slumping, it is nowhere near the problems seen in 1851, 1873-4 or 1929. Furthermore, Buchanan's idiocy in the Utah War cost the lives of some 4500 soldiers (mostly to the elements) and accomplished exactly nothing. I may not like Bush, I may not agree with many of his policies, but history says that there are a lot that are worse. Out of the 40 presidents available for ranking (Cleveland gets one ranking although he served two non-consecutive terms, making him both the 22nd and 24th President; Harrison and Garfield are excluded due to time in office), I would probably drop him in the lowest quartile, somewhere around 33rd overall from the top.

Akiva and Josephus, from opposite sides of the religio-political divide (Akiva was a leading light in rabbinical Judaism around AD 75; Josephus a historian under Rome at the time of the sack of Jerusalem in AD 70), acknowledge a number of contemporary sources that identify Jesus as a historical person. Roman records also show the evidence of the execution of several of this man's disciples. The writings of Akiva and Gamaliel in particular deserve mention here: they were both Jews and rabbis. They were opposed to the Christian sect which had grown out of the Judaic split and would have certainly trumpeted the falsity of the existence of Jesus if in fact that existence was false. That they admit the existence of Jesus of Nazareth is powerful evidence for the historical reality; remember that disciples who claimed to be close to Jesus lived up through the end of the first century AD (John the Revelator was imprisoned at Patmos until then).

I note, however, that all three of the sources I mention either carefully avoid the claims of Messiahship (in the case of Gamaliel) or throw cold water on the claim. What I believe, in this case, is of no moment; the evidence is strong to support a factual man named Jesus of Nazareth.

Best ever pen/paper? Ysgarth with the d10/d12 rule mods. Simple, sweet, expandable to any world and any genre and (since the rules were so simple as to be literally child's play) very little of the rules lawyering that goes on with the more complex systems. GURPS was also good. AD&D;spawned lawyers, not players.

Best online/computer: RuneScape. While simple and straightforward in many ways (and while skills are capped at lvl 99, sorry), it is constantly undergoing revisions, upgrades and additions. An incredible fanbase helps this one out. WoW, while larger in terms of players and unlimited in terms of certain skills, loses out in my mind by its overreliance on groups/clans; it provides very little opportunity for the loner. Plus, it runs under Java in a browser, no downloads necessary. And from a personal programmer viewpoint, I honestly didn't think it was possible to push Java to that level!

There are further items at stake here. Beyond the ban on offshore drilling, environmental regulations have forbidden the construction of new refineries and production sites in the US, and have simultaneously banned the refineries from full production and from upgrading their technologies. Thus, although the current level of technology available for refining oil into end-user products is increasingly clean, the US refineries are stuck with 1970's-era tech. That's one problem.

Another, directly related to the ban, is the problem engendered by our existing dependence on foreign oil. Yes, America has less than 3% of the US oil reserves, but we are actively working less than 10% of our existing reserves (Saudi Arabia, home to nearly 22% of the oil, is working nearly 70%). Why? Because, until recently, it was cheaper to purchase the foreign oil than to produce it here, and because easily-mined/produced oil fields in the US were artificially (i.e. legally) restricted.

Stances from McCain and Obama also need to be put in context. McCain is advocating a wholesale withdrawal from foreign oil dependence; his plan is to use the American reserves while we develop and implement our alternative solutions. To that end, he feels that the ban is counter-productive to American interests. We in America have the advantage of being in one of the few countries in the world to have virtually all resources available to us (food, wood, mining, technology, etc). McCain wants us to use that advantage so as to remove American dependence.

Obama, on the other hand, feels that the answer to foreign oil dependence is strictly a technology issue. Rather than using existing American resources, he wants to develop the new technology to replace our need while we continue to pay for the overseas stuff until we no longer need it. I have yet to see any plan from the Obama camp that would proactively reduce our resource consumption, or that would provide alternative methods of resourcing while we got away from the foreign dependencies. Asking people to cut back on their consumption (Jimmy Carter's sweater, anyone?) is at best an immature response.

Finally, I recognize the costs, both environmental and temporal, involved in offshore drilling. However, a rather simple solution may well be at hand. Currently, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve contains sufficient oil for American consumption for 6.3 years, and several petroleum production companies estimate that they can be at full production (with existing technology) in slightly more than five starting from scratch. My solution: begin selling the excess stockpiled oil at just under the existing price (if oil is $140 a barrel, target $125; this ensures you can sell any quantity required). Use the money thus generated to fund new technology acquisition and development and provide for a fund to reclaim ecosystems that have been damaged by the oil acquisition. The only caveat I toss in here: the developed technology is free to all. No sucking up patents on the governmental teat.

That's a proven reserves count, based on initial geological surveys done in the late 1970's and early 1980's. Additionally, there are estimates that the continental shelf may contain as much as five times that amount, although since no further exploration has been permitted, the estimates could be wildly wrong.