At 06:16 PM 8/12/97 -0500, Scott Baker wrote:

Everytime I look at this "Finance" flashes in my mind.. "Well I could see
Ranma having a finance problem.. if he wants to get a loan on a house". I'm
guessing that you think I'm an idiot. Guess again.. I'm stupid.. there is a
difference.

  This reminds me of an analogy that a Finance prof. of mine made about
options.  I should first explain that he is very bright (Ph.D in Physics
and Ph.D in Finance), but English is not his native language and he isn't
aware of the meaning of certain English slang.  

  He said that we could consider marriage as the early exercise of an
American option on the spouse's future value.  What put the class into
hilarity was that he then used a term for getting benefits from early
exercise of an option, "cherry-picking rights", which actually goes back to
the origin of options in agricultural pricings.

  I spoke to him later and he turned a nice cherry red when he realized why
the students were laughing so much.

  Ranma has multiple marital options, but I don't see him exercising more
than one to gain cherry-picking rights.
 
                                                                           dml