tyrius.

I think the "bass are dumb" side and the "bass are smart" side are talking past each other. Bass are dumb in that they will hit lures that bear no resemblence to natural prey. Bass are dumb in that they will potentially hit that same lure multiple times. Bass are smart in that given enough (subjective) negative influences they will learn to cease the behavior that is providing the negative influence. Both crowds are technically correct. It seems to me though that one side is reading much more into what the other side is saying. Now, to my opinion, one can not attribute the same level of "intelligence" to each bass in the lake. One bass may be caught by a spinnerbait once and never strike one again. Another bass may strike one once a week. The first bass' "memory" is "better" while the second one fails to "remember" the negative aspects of the spinnerbait. So, given a lake with bass of varying degrees of intelligence as well as new year classes (inexperienced bass) a specific lure will continue to produce fish. This is why angler's continue to have success on pressured waters. A new lure will likely enjoy a short time period of great success and then tapering off into it's "normal" range. The same is true for bodies of water that receive zero fishing pressure. When anglers first gain access to that water the fishing will be great but then when sufficient pressure is applied the results will taper off into a more "normal" success pattern. This is evidence that at least some of the bass have been conditioned to either correlate human activity with danger or specific lures with danger. This learned behavior seems to apply more to lures that a) do not resemble typical forage and are not retrieved at a high rate of speed. The high rate of retrieval will at times override the bass' normal reluctance to commit to that specific lure. They will see/hear/feel it coming and not have time to inspect it before it is gone.

There's 33 million barrels sitting in Cushings too. The storage capacity there can only hold another million barrels!!!

The bloomberg site is just an aggregation of currect energy commodity prices. There is no real industry information there, just actual prices (kind of like yahoo's stock information). Here's the nymex site, which is where this commodity is actually traded. http://www.nymex.com/index.aspx You can see there that the price matches the bloomberg price.

That is the futures market (but the most current month). I don't have any information on the "buy it right this second" price or wholesale price so I had to use the next best one.

Gas futures are currently: Nymex RBOB Gasoline Future 113.89 -2.88 -2.47 10:38 Add in delivery costs, gas station operating costs, federal taxes, state taxes, county taxes, city taxes etc and you're not going to get to 1.25. Around the X-mas holidays the RBOB gas futures dropped below 79 cents a gallon. So, the RBOB futures market is why the prices at the pump have risen over 30 cents a gallon. This is the main thing that I don't get. Everyone always talks about oil prices and how it should have a direct effect on retail gas prices. However, unleaded gas is also a traded commodity. Why would we not use this as the driver? It's a full step closer to the actual retail price than the price of oil is (it's the SAME product!). I don't get it. The DOE site provides a good breakdown on gas prices. Looking at their data it appears that distribution and marketing make up about 25 cents per gallon. So, add that to the current spot price of 113.9 and you get 128.9 a gallon. Now you have to add in federal taxes of 18.4 cents and you get up to 147.3 cents per gallon. Then you have to add in the state taxes. I'll do IL because that's where I live. 19 cents a gallon plus 6.25% sales tax and 0.3% storage tank fund tax. So that gets me to 177.1. I just paid 188.9 this morning. So, that means that the gas station owner had a gross margin of 11.8 cents per gallon. Credit card fees would've eaten up roughly 3% (or 5.7 cents) of that. So, now he has to pay the remainder of his expenses (employees, buildings, utilities, etc) as well as himself off of the remaining 6.1 cents per gallon. If you ever want to figure it out yourself then these sites are critical: http://www.eia.doe.gov/oil_gas/petroleum/info_glance/petroleum.html www.bloomberg.com/energy http://www.gaspricewatch.com/usgastaxes.asp

That's all part of my property tax bill. I don't break it down by what the tax money goes to.

X about 5 here. Fun stuff!!! I don't know what the actual rate is, but my bill is HUGE.

Nope, that's poaching. Selective harvest is the legal taking of a number of individual fish to better the overall health of the entire population. Kind of like deer hunting here in the midwest.

I broke 3 new ones this past year Someone I fish with broke one too. Too bad it was because he was too lazy to pull the weeds off of it and was just slapping it on the water. I told him that he'd break it and he didn't believe me. He does now. How are your's breaking?

State taxes in Texas are only 20 cents a gallon. Federal taxes are 18.4 cents a gallon. http://www.gaspricewatch.com/usgastaxes.asp

Read my last post, just above yours. Responded to it already.

I agree with you, but given this statement I can't see how anyone would classify it as "great/awesome" customer service. I'd classify it as adequate.

So what happens when the ones they send as replacements are tacky or split? What happens when the customer goes to purchase replacements and runs into the problem again? The best answer would have been "Thank you for notifying us of this issue. We will work with our quality control and manufacturing departments to ensure that this issue is resolved. While that is occurring we will be happy to send you replacements for the defective products that you purchased." This way they are actually taking care of the issue. With the response received the customer is required to continue to jump through hoops to replace baits that are defective. The response received implies that they have known about the issue for some period of time and are choosing not to fix it. Just my opinion though.

Wasn't he the one that is effectively barred from filing any new lawsuits? I read something about a person just like this in CA that now can not file another lawsuit. Looked it up and that was a different guy. http://media-dis-n-dat.blogspot.com/2008/11/supreme-court-wont-take-case-of.html It's extortion.

Can you get them to update their website too? It's horribly out of date.

I agree with stringjam. This isn't that great of customer service. According to the email response this is a known issue with their production and instead of fixing the known issue and not selling defective products they only take care of the people who go through the effort of contacting them. Great customer service would've been taking care of the root problem in quality control or production.

I grew up in Teutopolis, IL. I've never been to the actual vette show, but I've seen them all driving around town. Mid America didn't get big until I was in college.

Mid America corvettes in Effingham?

I'd go for the 4 inch ones. If you want to use them as trailers you can always pinch off part of the body. I don't know what hook I'd use for t-rigging them as I never fish 'em that way. Paca craws are good too, but chigger craws are also good baits. I LOVE berkley's scents. good stuff.

Retail gas prices do not fall as fast as oil prices because of a couple of factors. The main one is because of an economic concept known as sticky prices. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27269544/ Others are: That retail gas stations make a ridiculously small margin on gas. This is especially true during times of rising prices. So, the gas station tries to make up for the time of rising prices during times of falling prices. The cost of wholesale gas (to the station) does not always change at the same time and same amount as the price of oil. If oil declines 50%, but wholesale gas prices only fall 25% then gas stations will not be lowering their prices by 50% RW mentioned replacement cost. Gas Stations always have to keep this in mind. So, as the price of oil/gas falls they need to be fairly sure that it isn't going to rise the before they have to repurchase their next shipment of gas. Individual stations are more than likely owned by a person. These people are making all of the profit gleaned from a barrel of oil. Their only profit is the difference between the wholesale price and the retail price minus their operating costs. There are more, but this should get you started. Deflation is a result of the lower costs to the producer/retailer being passed all the way down to the consumer. Economic deflation can be REALLY bad.

The "stain" is the petroleum base. It's not good. KVD's does not leave the same stain. If I were you, I'd take the Real Magic back and get some KVD. It's far superior.

Well you were the one who made the claim were you not? Anyways, children develop astma, bronchitis, and pnuemonia that is directly attributable to being in homes where their parents smoke. I never said that they should. I just asked a question that still has not been answered. Tons of stuff. However, there are only 15 things that are classified as Group A carcinogens. Tobacco smoke is one of those 15. It shares that group with lovely stuff like asbestos, benzene, etc. Agreed. I said that much earlier in a few different responses. I do like the outcome of the IL laws though!! ;D

I agree. I stipulated to that earlier in a response to burley's post.

Again this is saying that the smoker has more importance than the non-smoker, that his "freedoms" are more important than the other person's. Why shouldn't the smoker have to go to a designated place to smoke? Why must the non-smoker leave?

Where's the proof behind this statement? I'll ask this question again. Why is the smoker's "freedom" to smoke more important than the non-smoker's "freedom" to not be subjected to that smoke? Why should the smoker trump the non-smoker?