You dropped something. It looks like the "h" from "amphitheater".

I'm not sure it looks weird to me.

This looks way weirder: Washington, D.C.'s, which I think is technically more correct--but people be droppin' their periods all over these days.

The recession hit in 2008, didn't it?

Or did you mean the previous high point was in 2007?

Oh, Goldy, you make my heart sing. Never more than when you tear TST a new asshole.

@1) Fixed You're a gem.

@2) Our style guide, CMOS, doesn't use periods in abbreviations like "DC."

Getting a descent house around here (scratch that...getting any house) means moving out of The City proper into satellite suburbs connected with Rapid Regional Rail.

Is any metro doing that?

Toronto...the discussion begins with Seattle Transit Blog..my comment here:

http://seattletransitblog.com/2014/08/07…

@3 & 4) You're right, that was ambiguous. Bad me! I fixed to clarify that the previous high point was in 2007, which was before the recession.

RE: home prices
I was going to ask what the median price of homes was and then went to the article and found out $543,500 IS the median, not the average.

@9) Medians are a type of average. xo Dom

No prob.

Anyway, regarding Indonesia, I think they are a relatively secular nation, much like Turkey, even if they are the largest Muslim country on earth.

I guess technically "medians are a type of average," but I think almost everyone uses average only when they're talking about the mean value. Especially in situations where there's a very long tail (like housing prices), median is a much better measure!

Does your style guide also say that you all should be abbreviated as ya'll, rather than y'all? Because that 'll shit looks like you're adding a will and it makes me cry.

@13) Yes, it's a Pacific Northwestern dialect edition.

Well, it makes absolutely no sense given the rules of abbreviation.

@10,
I'm going to assume you're just being silly.

@18: Silly, and as I recall reading years ago on Slog that Dom never did finish high school.

@15, it's not an abbreviation, it's a contraction:

you all = y'all

So ya'll is straight up bullshit.

Huh? "fast-food franchises are considered large businesses, because they're propped up by giant corporations"? How exactly do giant corporations "prop up" local franchisees?

Last I heard, franchisees pay for every single thing the parent company does for them. No propping in evidence.

If I'm missing something, please advise.

http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/qand…

See I thought you were talking about DC comics, and was wondering why they had a ballot.

jk

@10: You're not seriously going to make that argument rather than fix your mistake, are you?

@21: Franchisees prop up the corporate parents by assuming essentially all the financial risk for opening a particular location, but the corporate parents prop up the franchisees by a) lobbying extensively for favorable legislation at the national and local levels, and b) shifting the labor economy sharply toward monopsony (or "oligopsony"), e.g. fast-food outlets become the dominant buyers of labor in many areas, which further depresses wages.

A shift is beginning to occur, however, where the corporate parents will be more often held to account for labor abuses. Example: http://www.npr.org/2014/08/06/338354844/…

IMHO, a balanced adjustment needs to occur where wages rise for employees of franchises (tending to decrease franchisee profits), while payments to franchisors—for licensing, mandated product purchases, specialized equipment, consulting—need to fall (increasing franchisee profits).

The fact that we don't hear much discussion of this demonstrates the current dominance of the giant corporate parents through the knee-jerk response of franchisees to try pushing their workers down still further while not pushing up against their overlords.

Thank you, Dom. Now I don't have to throw myself out a window from despair.

Wow an entire comment section of proofreaders.

@Everyone who is wrong about median not being average: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Average

So Dom is right, and you're all wrong.

@20, that should be "straight-up".