Agreed.  I would think it would generate a ton of comments.  Hmmm.

Needless to say I ...oh forget it.

I followed the link provided to the Amazon site for the book.  There are no reviews for either the hard or soft cover versions.  That seems odd.  Is it really such a niche topic that nobody has bothered to leave their thoughts? 

Great idea tab, I may just go back and reread the whole thing...

Preordered...patience fading though.  But I think I can make it.

'64 Dodge Powerwagon.  Someday I hope to own one and spend my golden years puttering around town with some hay bales in the back... 

I hear ya.  So, did you get a working definition?  Or were you left with "I know it when I see it" kind of thing?

I guess.  I don't see it but that's just me.  Is it time to start another evolution thread yet? 

Fred,

After 100+ comments do you think this discussion was "fun and/or interesting?"  It lost me after about 20 or so...

Why would you pull the hammer back to check if it was loaded?  That's crazy.  Just swing out the cylinder and take a look... 

I think the captain is going to catch it from the guys back at the base when they see this.  Restraint is when you don't punch the guy for the fifth time...

Lefties are about as rare at 2nd, 3rd and short too.  While there are technical reasons that a righty is prefered behind the plate I agree with Terry that a lefty with talent is going to pitch.  For a lefty that is the easiest route to college or the pros - there is just not enough left handed pitching to go around... 

How many parts are there?  Can you pick a chose which you accept?

There sure are!  But this is the particular hammer that I have in my hand right now so...

It would seem the viability of the whole enterprise was predicated on the idea that people died when they hit 70 so they only took benefits for 5 years, on average.  There must have been some analysis at the time that supported their selection of a retirement age of 65 and surely their examination of the data used in that analysis would have shown that the death rate was dropping.  Unless, of course, FDR just pulled that number out of his ass...

Hmmm.  Presumably this information was available at the time so we can surmise that they either had no curiosity as to what the long term trends in demogrphics would be or they were trying to hide the fact that one day the house of cards they had built would collapse under its own weight.  In either case this collapse would be well off in the future and they would be safely in the ground when their descendants came looking for scapegoats... 

I found the graphic below in this publication: http://www.ssa.gov/oact/tr/2012/2012_Long-Range_Demographic_Assumptions.pdf

It would appear that very early in they would have seen that the death rate was dropping, i.e people were living longer...