The mysterious part is that my wife has problems opening the jelly jars that closes tightly, yet can crush my arm, hand or knee with no trouble during a movie. Almost makes me wonder...
The kids at the 1:30 show my wife and I went to were very well behaved, although the one at the end of our aisle was a little too young to follow the plot so every once and while you'd hear something like "Why is [Aunt May] sad?". Nothing like when we saw "Prince of Egypt" though when a kid in the back said "I pooped" with what can only be described as pride in his voice.
The nice thing about being a governor who knows that you're probably going to jail is that you can release some prisoners early to give yourself a little more elbow in the slammer.
Of course, if he goes to a Federal pen, it won't do him much good...
I think that the Compaqs would look better in either all black or all brushed silver. The desktops Evos aren't too bad, but the Presario notebooks are a little too guady for me.
The article points out many instances where Lucas himself is taking his own entertainment too seriously, and the more he does this the more his own work goes into the crapper.
Amen to that, brother. There was a book called, ims, 'The Worst Albums of All Time', and in the introduction the authors referred to the 'Internal Bullshit Detector'. This is the part of the creators mind that gets put into standby mode when someone becomes convinced that they are saying Something Really Important, Dude, and therefore they don't have to worry about entertaining the audience. This seems to be a more common problem with people who got their start in more 'lightweight' genres, then moved into 'heavier' fare. I mean, does anybody think Robin Williams was better in 'Patch Adams' than 'Mork and Mindy'? How about Jim Carrey in 'The Majestic' or 'The Mask'? Is there a Pink Floyd fan who likes 'The Final Cut' better than 'Dark Side of the Moon'?
Hey, he'll throw in a few nuggets of Confucian (sp) wisdom for you to contemplate while you're being flogged, so there's a silver lining with Fang, at least...
Well, I think I may be humiliating myself by responding to this comment, but here goes...
My wife and I just watched Pete's Dragon (Oh, the embarassment! It was a gift and we were too tired to go to the video store, OK?), and I'm pretty sure that I remember a scene where everything gound to a halt while Whatsherface sang on a lighthouse, that was followed by some more plot stuff, then the credits. Details are sketchy becuase I kept dozing off, but I'm pretty sure that the song came during the middle. That was one of those movies that I liked a lot more when I was a kid.
Speaking as a married non-parent, I can see the attarction of this device, although I probably wouldn't get one. As you say, stranger abductions are pretty rare, as opposed to the disgruntled ex-spouse without custody and other people known to the victim. However, my wife and I already have a list of people (well, one person) in our area that we would warn our kids about and keep an eye on even now. It's harder to handle the unknown, and this gadget helps the parents feel better if nothing else. Also, even if the child is abducted by an ex-spouse, something like this might help a bit in finding the child, so it's probably worth the price for peace of mind. Still, I mostly see overprotective richies buying these and bragging about it, but I am a bit of cynic...
I stole this link off of a previous post but here you go: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/speciation.html. There's four speciation events listed, although the fourth one (actually a group of 4 events) occurred within the last 4000 years, and probably wasn't 'observed' in the sense that people were paying attention at the time. The strongest case is the first, where two Drosophila paulistorum strains developed hybrid infertility in the lab. Hybrid infertility is the basic 'litmus test' for speciation. If the flies in group A can't successfully mate with the flies in group B, they are probably different species. The link gives a lit cite for each event, so if there's a good university library around, you should be able to look them up and check out the info for yourself. Are the professors you ask actually evolutionary biologists, or are they molecular/cellular folks? Asking the molecular people about specific speciation events is like asking evolutionary biologists about specific enzymatic mechanisms - it's biology, but not the kind they know the guts of.
Science is supposed to change when new evidence comes out. That's pretty much the whole point of science. Science is the understanding of humans about various subjects based on their observations. Religion is the expression of eternal truths by humans. Religion tells us that God, or gods, created the Earth and everything else. Science gives a mechanism for these events. I can never understand why saying that there was a Big Bang, or that humans arose via evolution threatens people's beliefs so much. They can accept a God that allows death camps and babies with birth defects, but not one that used the Big Bang to create the universe. Isn't it possible that your God directed this evolution? He gave us brains, why shouldn't we use them to learn about how He worked?
If China were to invade, they'd collapse the PRC. Plain and simple.
Your statement that the Industrial Revolution un-levelled the playing field is exactly right, but it made small differences in tech even more significant. The US has a huge tech advantage and not just in tanks, planes, ships, and subs (I assume that you don't think that the PRC can equal M1 tanks and Nimitz class aircraft carriers), but in technical intelligence gathering, communications and logistics.
Launching a trans-Pacific amphibious invasion is not something that can be done without satellites noticing, so there is no way that the Chinese have the element of surprise. As the invasion fleet moves, taking the best equipment and personnel in the Chinese military with them, the US could attack the fleet directly with carrier battle groups and nuclear attack subs, and hit the mainland with strategic bombers, attack subs launching cruise missles, and possibly additional carrier battle groups, depending onb where they all are, etc. Meanwhile, US ballistic missle carrying subs would be moving into position to strike mainland China. Chinese communications would be intercepted routinely and the codes would be cracked quickly, so there would be little to no tactical surprise. Of course the fact that there is several thousand miles of ocean to be crossed would be a great hindrance to the Chinese, since they lack a chain of bases across the Pacific to be used for resupply and don't have significant nuclear-propelled warships. IOW, they can run out of gas. Sure, they can bring oilers with them, but they'll slow the whole fleet down and will be prime targets for subs and planes. The Chinese would be doing good to get any ships across to the US coast.
Even if we totally handwave the transit away, and several million members of the Chinese army show up on the West Coast one fine morning, tehy'll be crushed on the beach. How? Air superiority. The Chinese don't have big aircraft carriers or combat planes that can reach the US, so all their troops will completely open to attack from the air. The biggest problem for the US will be coordinating the attacks by the Air Force fighter, bomber, and attack planes, with the Navy's fighter and attack aircraft, the Marine's Harriers and attack helicopters and the Army's attack helicopters. Obviously, the extent of the response will vary depending on where the invasion occurs, but major cities tend to have military and naval bases associated with them. Plus, ground forces will respond, be they Army, Marine or National Guard. The American forces will have much better supply (mainly becuase the Chinese won't have any) and will be fighting in familiar territory, with a supportive populace (one would hope:) that they can communicate with. The Chinese will be in a country where they cannot read the roadsigns, have never travelled, with hostile natives, and very tight and dwindling supplies. Relying on numbers in this situation is an active disadvantage.
Before you say "Paratroops and air-dropped supplies", you should review my air superiority comments above and remember that we've got lots of radars looking across the Pacific Ocean, so there would be no surprise. Also, large successful airdrops (that aren't part of a larger amphibious operation) are few and far between, historicly speaking. So, how does this destroy the PRC? Well, they have sent the best parts of their military across an ocean, leaving the not so hot parts to defend themselves against their neighbors. If you were in charge of a former Soviet republic with some claim to territory that the PRC owns, would you make a move? Especially since you could probably get support from the US for doing so? Add in that these forces are destroyed, and the Chinese mainland is being bombed and cruise-missled regularly and does that change your response? Plus, if the PRC government has just launched a fruitless and bloody attack, do dissident groups begin to get a little fiesty? What are the chances of an internal power grab by party members that kicks the current leaders out? What does the EU do? How about Russia? Economic sanctions? Attack in support? No matter what combination of these events occurs, it's bad for the current gov.
Personally, I'm more concerned about the Michigan Militia that about the Chinese. Of course, I live in the Midwest...
Late reply here, sorry about that. You're right PNAS isn't peer-reviewed like most journals - I've apparently gone senile. Again.
Anyway, I got the impression that these results weren't in a journal, just in press releases. Doing both at once is not a big deal, but when people go for the spotlight first, it makes me nervous.
ObJokeToldByGrossAnatomyProf: The one about the farmer who delivers his wife's baby while stuck in a snowstorm. When the county MD asks him how it went, the farmer says "It was just like deliverin' a calf, 'cept she made me fry the afterbirth 'fore she'd eat it."
The problem with accepting this claim at face value is that press releases are not the most reliable way of getting your info. Do you trust everything that the government says in press releases? How about big corporations? Enron told people that their stock was a great buy pretty much until it was delisted, which doesn't seem accurate to me. The scientists who 'discovered' cold fusion went to the press before they went to peer-review, which led to accusations ranging from sloppiness to fraud. That's why people don't trust press releases.
As far as the specifics of their claim goes, the site is/.'d, so I can't be sure what they are claiming to actually have done. However, getting a bunch of kidney cells to arise from stem cells is a long way from actually having a kidney in a Petri dish. It's analogous to getting a block of metal and calling it the engine of a car - It's a necessary step, but not a sufficient one.
Also, if the researchers were really concerned about the ignorant masses shutting down their studies, press releases are exactly the wrong thing to do. If they wanted attention from serious scientists, but not uneducated mobs, they should publish the results in a peer-reviewed journal like Science, Nature, PNAS, or Cell.
The families do have to be informed that their child has been killed, but they could be lied to about the manner. A death on a clandestine op could be described as a training mission. Of course, if too many people die on training missions around the time of major combat situations, people will get suspicious, which is why I don't think that there are lots of casualities that go misreported, but II think that there could be some.
Re:College Football, what else is there?
on
New Years Marathons
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· Score: 1
I always wondered who I would root for if Miami played Nebraska for the national Championship, since I've always hated both teams. The I married somebody who grew up in Coral Gables, where UoMiami actually is, so now I can only say "Go (University of Oregon) Ducks". Well, I'll actually feel good if the 'Canes stomp Nebraska, but the perfect result would be if both teams played poorly, with Nebraska winning by a small amount, while the Ducks crush Colorado. Why? The Associated Press has said if Nebraska and Oregon both win their games, the AP would give strong consideration to awarding Oregon the #1 ranking, thus spoiling Nebraska's joy. Yes, it is petty, but there you go...
...and he had never learned how to learn math... This is a real problem in high schools in my experience. I had some pretty good math teachers in high school, but it sometimes seemed like they were coming from a whole different plane of existence. (Also every math text I ever used from middle school algebra through Calc I in undergrad sucked). I think part of the problem was that my teachers seemed to be 'naturals' at math so it was hard for them to translate for the 'un-naturals', so to speak. Almost like having Barry Sanders[1] as your football coach - "You need to be evade tacklers better, like I did.", "How?", "Dodge 'em, spin, run backwards, reverse field, whatever.", "When I try that I get crushed like a grape!", "I know - that's why I said you need to get better." [1]This is a American football, not soccer. Barry Sanders was probably the most evasive runner ever. Somebody once described him by saying "People always claim say Barry Sanders defies the laws of physics - that's crazy, he just embodies some of physics' more outrageous concepts."
Of course, his wife could be a gaming freak too. Actually, she'd better be, or he's probably not coming home in one piece.
Lucky people are able to share some obsessions with their spouses. Frex, my wife is also a huge football fan (she's UMichigan\FSU and Lions, I'm UMichigan\Notre Dame and Bears) and our honeymoon was over New Year's Day, so we both got to indulge our obsession guilt free.
Great, great book. Funny, terrifying, depressing, uplighting (sort of). Regardless of your feelings on Somalia or American foreign policy in general, you will probably enjoy this book and learn from it.
UPS, or at least some of the managers, tends to treat it's employees like crap. My brother-in-law hurt his back working there, but his boss tried to keep him from reporting it because he wanted to keep his safety record looking good.
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The mysterious part is that my wife has problems opening the jelly jars that closes tightly, yet can crush my arm, hand or knee with no trouble during a movie. Almost makes me wonder...
The kids at the 1:30 show my wife and I went to were very well behaved, although the one at the end of our aisle was a little too young to follow the plot so every once and while you'd hear something like "Why is [Aunt May] sad?". Nothing like when we saw "Prince of Egypt" though when a kid in the back said "I pooped" with what can only be described as pride in his voice.
The nice thing about being a governor who knows that you're probably going to jail is that you can release some prisoners early to give yourself a little more elbow in the slammer.
Of course, if he goes to a Federal pen, it won't do him much good...
I think that the Compaqs would look better in either all black or all brushed silver. The desktops Evos aren't too bad, but the Presario notebooks are a little too guady for me.
Isn't that Jack-in-the-Box?
Of course, if the brain irradiation is bad enough, you might remember, or even recognize the other problems...
The article points out many instances where Lucas himself is taking his own entertainment too seriously, and the more he does this the more his own work goes into the crapper.
Amen to that, brother. There was a book called, ims, 'The Worst Albums of All Time', and in the introduction the authors referred to the 'Internal Bullshit Detector'. This is the part of the creators mind that gets put into standby mode when someone becomes convinced that they are saying Something Really Important, Dude, and therefore they don't have to worry about entertaining the audience. This seems to be a more common problem with people who got their start in more 'lightweight' genres, then moved into 'heavier' fare. I mean, does anybody think Robin Williams was better in 'Patch Adams' than 'Mork and Mindy'? How about Jim Carrey in 'The Majestic' or 'The Mask'? Is there a Pink Floyd fan who likes 'The Final Cut' better than 'Dark Side of the Moon'?
Hey, he'll throw in a few nuggets of Confucian (sp) wisdom for you to contemplate while you're being flogged, so there's a silver lining with Fang, at least...
Well, I think I may be humiliating myself by responding to this comment, but here goes...
My wife and I just watched Pete's Dragon (Oh, the embarassment! It was a gift and we were too tired to go to the video store, OK?), and I'm pretty sure that I remember a scene where everything gound to a halt while Whatsherface sang on a lighthouse, that was followed by some more plot stuff, then the credits. Details are sketchy becuase I kept dozing off, but I'm pretty sure that the song came during the middle. That was one of those movies that I liked a lot more when I was a kid.
Speaking as a married non-parent, I can see the attarction of this device, although I probably wouldn't get one. As you say, stranger abductions are pretty rare, as opposed to the disgruntled ex-spouse without custody and other people known to the victim. However, my wife and I already have a list of people (well, one person) in our area that we would warn our kids about and keep an eye on even now. It's harder to handle the unknown, and this gadget helps the parents feel better if nothing else. Also, even if the child is abducted by an ex-spouse, something like this might help a bit in finding the child, so it's probably worth the price for peace of mind. Still, I mostly see overprotective richies buying these and bragging about it, but I am a bit of cynic...
I stole this link off of a previous post but here you go: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/speciation.html. There's four speciation events listed, although the fourth one (actually a group of 4 events) occurred within the last 4000 years, and probably wasn't 'observed' in the sense that people were paying attention at the time. The strongest case is the first, where two Drosophila paulistorum strains developed hybrid infertility in the lab. Hybrid infertility is the basic 'litmus test' for speciation. If the flies in group A can't successfully mate with the flies in group B, they are probably different species. The link gives a lit cite for each event, so if there's a good university library around, you should be able to look them up and check out the info for yourself. Are the professors you ask actually evolutionary biologists, or are they molecular/cellular folks? Asking the molecular people about specific speciation events is like asking evolutionary biologists about specific enzymatic mechanisms - it's biology, but not the kind they know the guts of.
Science is supposed to change when new evidence comes out. That's pretty much the whole point of science. Science is the understanding of humans about various subjects based on their observations. Religion is the expression of eternal truths by humans. Religion tells us that God, or gods, created the Earth and everything else. Science gives a mechanism for these events. I can never understand why saying that there was a Big Bang, or that humans arose via evolution threatens people's beliefs so much. They can accept a God that allows death camps and babies with birth defects, but not one that used the Big Bang to create the universe. Isn't it possible that your God directed this evolution? He gave us brains, why shouldn't we use them to learn about how He worked?
How could I forget bad neighborhoods...
If China were to invade, they'd collapse the PRC. Plain and simple.
Your statement that the Industrial Revolution un-levelled the playing field is exactly right, but it made small differences in tech even more significant. The US has a huge tech advantage and not just in tanks, planes, ships, and subs (I assume that you don't think that the PRC can equal M1 tanks and Nimitz class aircraft carriers), but in technical intelligence gathering, communications and logistics.
Launching a trans-Pacific amphibious invasion is not something that can be done without satellites noticing, so there is no way that the Chinese have the element of surprise. As the invasion fleet moves, taking the best equipment and personnel in the Chinese military with them, the US could attack the fleet directly with carrier battle groups and nuclear attack subs, and hit the mainland with strategic bombers, attack subs launching cruise missles, and possibly additional carrier battle groups, depending onb where they all are, etc. Meanwhile, US ballistic missle carrying subs would be moving into position to strike mainland China. Chinese communications would be intercepted routinely and the codes would be cracked quickly, so there would be little to no tactical surprise. Of course the fact that there is several thousand miles of ocean to be crossed would be a great hindrance to the Chinese, since they lack a chain of bases across the Pacific to be used for resupply and don't have significant nuclear-propelled warships. IOW, they can run out of gas. Sure, they can bring oilers with them, but they'll slow the whole fleet down and will be prime targets for subs and planes. The Chinese would be doing good to get any ships across to the US coast.
Even if we totally handwave the transit away, and several million members of the Chinese army show up on the West Coast one fine morning, tehy'll be crushed on the beach. How? Air superiority. The Chinese don't have big aircraft carriers or combat planes that can reach the US, so all their troops will completely open to attack from the air. The biggest problem for the US will be coordinating the attacks by the Air Force fighter, bomber, and attack planes, with the Navy's fighter and attack aircraft, the Marine's Harriers and attack helicopters and the Army's attack helicopters. Obviously, the extent of the response will vary depending on where the invasion occurs, but major cities tend to have military and naval bases associated with them. Plus, ground forces will respond, be they Army, Marine or National Guard. The American forces will have much better supply (mainly becuase the Chinese won't have any) and will be fighting in familiar territory, with a supportive populace (one would hope:) that they can communicate with. The Chinese will be in a country where they cannot read the roadsigns, have never travelled, with hostile natives, and very tight and dwindling supplies. Relying on numbers in this situation is an active disadvantage.
Before you say "Paratroops and air-dropped supplies", you should review my air superiority comments above and remember that we've got lots of radars looking across the Pacific Ocean, so there would be no surprise. Also, large successful airdrops (that aren't part of a larger amphibious operation) are few and far between, historicly speaking.
So, how does this destroy the PRC? Well, they have sent the best parts of their military across an ocean, leaving the not so hot parts to defend themselves against their neighbors. If you were in charge of a former Soviet republic with some claim to territory that the PRC owns, would you make a move? Especially since you could probably get support from the US for doing so? Add in that these forces are destroyed, and the Chinese mainland is being bombed and cruise-missled regularly and does that change your response? Plus, if the PRC government has just launched a fruitless and bloody attack, do dissident groups begin to get a little fiesty? What are the chances of an internal power grab by party members that kicks the current leaders out? What does the EU do? How about Russia? Economic sanctions? Attack in support? No matter what combination of these events occurs, it's bad for the current gov.
Personally, I'm more concerned about the Michigan Militia that about the Chinese. Of course, I live in the Midwest...
Late reply here, sorry about that. You're right PNAS isn't peer-reviewed like most journals - I've apparently gone senile. Again.
Anyway, I got the impression that these results weren't in a journal, just in press releases. Doing both at once is not a big deal, but when people go for the spotlight first, it makes me nervous.
ObStephenKing: "The Survivor Type".
ObJokeToldByGrossAnatomyProf: The one about the farmer who delivers his wife's baby while stuck in a snowstorm. When the county MD asks him how it went, the farmer says "It was just like deliverin' a calf, 'cept she made me fry the afterbirth 'fore she'd eat it."
The problem with accepting this claim at face value is that press releases are not the most reliable way of getting your info. Do you trust everything that the government says in press releases? How about big corporations? Enron told people that their stock was a great buy pretty much until it was delisted, which doesn't seem accurate to me. The scientists who 'discovered' cold fusion went to the press before they went to peer-review, which led to accusations ranging from sloppiness to fraud. That's why people don't trust press releases.
/.'d, so I can't be sure what they are claiming to actually have done. However, getting a bunch of kidney cells to arise from stem cells is a long way from actually having a kidney in a Petri dish. It's analogous to getting a block of metal and calling it the engine of a car - It's a necessary step, but not a sufficient one.
As far as the specifics of their claim goes, the site is
Also, if the researchers were really concerned about the ignorant masses shutting down their studies, press releases are exactly the wrong thing to do. If they wanted attention from serious scientists, but not uneducated mobs, they should publish the results in a peer-reviewed journal like Science, Nature, PNAS, or Cell.
The families do have to be informed that their child has been killed, but they could be lied to about the manner. A death on a clandestine op could be described as a training mission. Of course, if too many people die on training missions around the time of major combat situations, people will get suspicious, which is why I don't think that there are lots of casualities that go misreported, but II think that there could be some.
I always wondered who I would root for if Miami played Nebraska for the national Championship, since I've always hated both teams. The I married somebody who grew up in Coral Gables, where UoMiami actually is, so now I can only say "Go (University of Oregon) Ducks". Well, I'll actually feel good if the 'Canes stomp Nebraska, but the perfect result would be if both teams played poorly, with Nebraska winning by a small amount, while the Ducks crush Colorado. Why? The Associated Press has said if Nebraska and Oregon both win their games, the AP would give strong consideration to awarding Oregon the #1 ranking, thus spoiling Nebraska's joy.
Yes, it is petty, but there you go...
...and he had never learned how to learn math...
This is a real problem in high schools in my experience. I had some pretty good math teachers in high school, but it sometimes seemed like they were coming from a whole different plane of existence. (Also every math text I ever used from middle school algebra through Calc I in undergrad sucked). I think part of the problem was that my teachers seemed to be 'naturals' at math so it was hard for them to translate for the 'un-naturals', so to speak. Almost like having Barry Sanders[1] as your football coach - "You need to be evade tacklers better, like I did.", "How?", "Dodge 'em, spin, run backwards, reverse field, whatever.", "When I try that I get crushed like a grape!", "I know - that's why I said you need to get better."
[1]This is a American football, not soccer. Barry Sanders was probably the most evasive runner ever. Somebody once described him by saying "People always claim say Barry Sanders defies the laws of physics - that's crazy, he just embodies some of physics' more outrageous concepts."
Of course, his wife could be a gaming freak too. Actually, she'd better be, or he's probably not coming home in one piece.
Lucky people are able to share some obsessions with their spouses. Frex, my wife is also a huge football fan (she's UMichigan\FSU and Lions, I'm UMichigan\Notre Dame and Bears) and our honeymoon was over New Year's Day, so we both got to indulge our obsession guilt free.
Great, great book. Funny, terrifying, depressing, uplighting (sort of). Regardless of your feelings on Somalia or American foreign policy in general, you will probably enjoy this book and learn from it.
Grandma Annie? Is that you? Naw, she would've wrapped the socks with enough tape to contain an explosion...
UPS, or at least some of the managers, tends to treat it's employees like crap. My brother-in-law hurt his back working there, but his boss tried to keep him from reporting it because he wanted to keep his safety record looking good.
They saw it, but they wiped it's existence from their minds.