Lot's of Newbie's on board

In light of all the recent events concerning this stock, there are many new folks (such as myself) which have joined this great forum. I opened my first brokerage account with Merrill Lynch back in 96. Then some yrs later, after I started getting a better grasp of how things concerning the market worked, I opened a Scottrade account in 2002. At any rate, I feel my knowledge "today" concerning the ins and outs of the market is vastly improved. My economics background doesn't hurt, but it really didn't teach me the stock market per say. I attribute my understanding of the market to many painful "hands-on" trial and error.

Even though I have been trading in the market since 96, I still have much to learn. Rather than bombard current threads in this forum, I was hoping that maybe during lulls in the day or after hours, some of the more savy market guys here, would be so kind to clue us folks in on some of the finer points of the market and it's lingo. Some of the questions I have are...

1) What's the "real" skinny on "bid" price and "ask" price?

2) When someone points to heavy manipulation taking place to say a current event, ie drop or rise in SP, are we sometimes talking old fashioned, "I call my insanely rich buddy who owns SIRI and tells him I'm buying today (or selling SIRI) scenario...the you scratch my back I scratch your back type of manipulation? That's just one scenario, but maybe a short list of other forms of manipulation could be voiced here.

3) How does controlling the blocks of share effect a stock?

4) AH trading...good or bad?

Those are just a few questions off the top of my head. I've gone from losing my shirt in the market (tough learning curves), to doing pretty decent nowadays. But I'm a firm believer that people who want to expand their knowledge on any given subject...there's plenty to learn everyday. I'm in the camp where I learn something new almost everyday. Hek, since coming to this forum, I've learned a great deal about the market. I really like how the atomosphere is such that it truly revolves around helping folks understand the daily events" along with the "underpinnings" of this stock, for both the short term and the long term.

To all the Vets in here, keep up the great work.

For the record, I'm long on SIRI. My current position is 28,789 shares. My goal is to accumulate roughly 36,000 shares before we go back over a buck. And then of course, I would love for my crystal ball to forcast a $35.00 a share price 5 or 6 yrs down the road. I would be more than happy to exit SIRI at that point with a cool $1.25 mil. Ok, enough dreaming. But as an ending question or rather prediction...what do some of the more savy guys in here think the SP will be in 5 or 6 yrs if SIRI continues to grow expedentially and form new and powerful alliances on the way there.