Soxy

It took, what 500 years for the Catholic Church and the Lutheran Church to get over the whole reformation thing and apologize. The Vatican's apology for its role in the Holocaust was also late (anyone know if they ever said anything about their ties to Mussolini). The lateness doesn't take away the meaning of it, though. And I think that admitting wrong doing is sometimes the best way to prevent it from happening again. I think that a sincere apology is appropriete no matter how much time has passed. I think it can help both the one asking and the one forgiving. I would like to say, though, that apologizing and forgiving are about a million miles away from monetary reparations. I think that is a stupid idea and an affront to the very idea of forgiveness.

Happy, happy!!!!

QUOTE(winodj @ Jun 2, 2005 -> 11:12 AM) That's "The Dharma Bums" you're thinking of. Yes! I was thinking Karma Bums--but I knew it was wrong. You're wicked well read.

QUOTE(winodj @ Jun 2, 2005 -> 11:09 AM) One of my favorites. You might also enjoy "Lonesome Traveler" by Jack Kerouac. It's a collection of short stories/vignettes of his own travels over the course of the fifties and sixties. Very much not like his speed fueled novels. I will check that out. I wasn't the hugest fan of On the Road and the one with Karma in the title--but I'll check that one out.... Thanks!

QUOTE(skidoochic @ Jun 2, 2005 -> 10:36 AM) Anyway, I paid a lot of money for that jersey so I think I will just see if my priest will bless it. Think that will work? A better question is: do you think the priest will actually bless it?

Jeez, I wish I had that much control over my own life--let alone a game played by people I've never met, in a place I'm not, and being managed, called, umped by other people I've never met.

QUOTE(tonyho7476 @ Jun 2, 2005 -> 10:02 AM) I'm going with....plethera (sp?)... As in, I have a plethera of Frank Thomas Rookie Cards One of my friends in high school just really hated our american history teacher. And so he would make up words and use them to see if the teacher would use them to make himself sound smart. Most of them didn't catch on, but by the end of the semester the teacher was using "abereth" (synonm to plethera) almost daily. It was hilarious.

QUOTE(EvilJester99 @ Jun 2, 2005 -> 09:38 AM) Travashammockery!! I forgot about that one!

exacerbate manifold and of course, asspussy

QUOTE(winodj @ Jun 2, 2005 -> 08:13 AM) I read East of Eden in 1996 one summer. Fell in love with Steinbeck over that book. Funny thing is that I still can't get through Grapes of Wrath. I really liked Travels With Charley--such a wonderful book. A perfect summer book too....

QUOTE(Soxnbears01 @ Jun 1, 2005 -> 05:12 PM) I believe ross gload is the most beloved bench player in the majors. he's so amazing plus so attractive ^^^^^ I hope he comes back soon. And I would be sad to see him traded or in AAA all season--he's a grinder that produced well last year.

In the news again.... Cult-Like Lure of 'Ana' Attracts Anorexics By MARTHA IRVINE, AP National Writer Mon May 30, 1:13 PM ET CHICAGO - They call her "Ana." She is a role model to some, a goddess to others — the subject of drawings, prayers and even a creed. She tells them what to eat and mocks them when they don't lose weight. And yet, while she is a very real presence in the lives of many of her followers, she exists only in their minds. Ana is short for anorexia, and — to the alarm of experts — many who suffer from the potentially fatal eating disorder are part of an underground movement that promotes self-starvation and, in some cases, has an almost cult-like appeal. Followers include young women and teens who wear red Ana bracelets and offer one another encouraging words of "thinspiration" on Web pages and blogs. They share tips for shedding pounds and faithfully report their "cw" and "gw" — current weight and goal weight, which often falls into the double digits. They also post pictures of celebrity role models, including teen stars Lindsay Lohan and Mary-Kate Olsen, who last year set aside the acting career and merchandising empire she shares with her twin sister to seek help for her own eating disorder. "Put on your Ana bracelet and raise your skinny fist in solidarity!" one "pro-Ana" blogger wrote shortly after Olsen entered treatment. The movement has flourished on the Web and eating disorder experts say that, despite attempts to limit Ana's online presence, it has now grown to include followers — many of them young — in many parts of the world. No one knows just how many of the estimated 8 million to 11 million Americans afflicted with eating disorders have been influenced by the pro-Ana movement. But experts fear its reach is fairly wide. A preliminary survey of teens who've been diagnosed with eating disorders at the Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford University, for instance, found that 40 percent had visited Web sites that promote eating disorders. "The more they feel like we — 'the others' — are trying to shut them down, the more united they stand," says Alison Tarlow, a licensed psychologist and supervisor of clinical training at the Renfrew Center in Coconut Creek, Fla., a residential facility that focuses on eating disorders. Experts say the Ana movement also plays on the tendency people with eating disorders have toward "all or nothing thinking." "When they do something, they tend to pursue it to the fullest extent. In that respect, Ana may almost become a religion for them," says Carmen Mikhail, director of the eating disorders clinic at Texas Children's Hospital in Houston. She and others point to the "Ana creed," a litany of beliefs about control and starvation, that appears on many Web sites and blogs. At least one site encourages followers to make a vow to Ana and sign it in blood. People with eating disorders who've been involved in the movement confirm its cult-like feel. "People pray to Ana to make them skinny," says Sara, a 17-year-old in Columbus, Ohio, who was an avid organizer of Ana followers until she recently entered treatment for her eating disorder. She spoke on the condition that her last name not be used. Among other things, Sara was the self-proclaimed president of Beta Sigma Kappa, dubbed the official Ana sorority and "the most talked about, nearly illegal group" on a popular blog hosting service that Sara still uses to communicate with friends. She also had an online Ana "boot camp" and told girls what they could and couldn't eat. "I guess I was attention-starved," she now says of her motivation. "I really liked being the girl that everyone looked up to and the one they saw as their 'thinspiration.' "But then I realized I was helping girls kill themselves." For others, Ana is a person — a voice that directs their every move when it comes to food and exercise. "She's someone who's perfect. It's different for everyone — but for me, she's someone who looks totally opposite to the way I do," says Kasey Brixius, a 19-year-old college student from Hot Springs, S.D. To Brixius — athletic with brown hair and brown eyes — Ana is a wispy, blue-eyed blonde. "I know I could never be that," she says, "but she keeps telling me that if I work hard enough, I CAN be that." Dr. Mae Sokol often treats young patients in her Omaha, Neb., practice who personify their eating disorder beyond just Ana. To them, bulimia is "Mia." And an eating disorder often becomes "Ed." "A lot of times they're lonely and they don't have a lot of friends. So Ana or Mia become their friend. Or Ed becomes their boyfriend," says Sokol, who is director of the eating disorders program run by Children's Hospital and Creighton University. In the end, treatment can include writing "goodbye" letters to Ana, Mia and Ed in order to gain control over them. But it often takes a long time to get to that point — and experts agree that, until someone with an eating disorder wants to help themselves, treatment often fails. Tarlow, at the Renfrew Center, says it's also easy for patients to fall back into the online world of Ana after they leave treatment. "Unfortunately," she says, "with all people who are in recovery, it's so much about who you surround yourself with." Some patients, including Brixius, the 19-year-old South Dakotan, have had trouble finding counselors who truly understand their struggle with Ana. "I'd tell them about Ana and how she's a real person to me. And they'd just look at me like I'm nuts," Brixius says of the counselors she's seen at college and in her hometown. "They wouldn't address her ever again, so it got very frustrating. "Half the time I'm, like, 'You know what? I give up.'" Other days, she's more hopeful. "I gotta snap out of this eventually if I want to have kids and get a job. One day, I'll get to that point," she says, pausing. "But I'll always obsess about food." ___ On the Net: National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders: http://www.anad.org National Eating Disorders Association: http://www.edap.org/ The more I hear about this stuff the creepier and sicker it sounds to me.

Happy, happy, happy! Way to get born you guys.

After work, I'm going to go to the library to pick up some trashy reads. Most notable: The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullum. I'm been rewatching the miniseries, and for some reason feel the burning desire to read the book. Also working on: Bodily Harm--Margaret Atwood Random books by Agatha Christie and Ian Rankin. Summer reading goal: read Crime and Punishment

Wow, just wow! HURRAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

QUOTE(FlaSoxxJim @ May 31, 2005 -> 07:46 PM) Your teacher picked the wrong Billy Joel song for me to be much help with. Now, if he'd have assigned you Only the Good Die Young I could have told you quite factually that Catholic girls do not "start much too late" as the song would have you believe. But the real Catholic school question is: do patent leather shoes really reflect up?

QUOTE(nitetrain8601 @ May 31, 2005 -> 05:16 PM) This pretty much should do the trick. I think you also got to set the wireless card to latch onto any connection that's being sent. Yep, that's what I, errrr, uh, someone else does....

Not just alaska... Wilderness Site May See Oil Drilling By Julie Cart Times Staff Writer Tue May 31, 7:55 AM ET GULFPORT, Miss. — Tucked away in the 96-page emergency military spending bill signed by President Bush this month are four paragraphs that give energy companies the right to explore for oil and gas inside a sprawling national park. The amendment written by Sen. Thad Cochran (news, bio, voting record) (R-Miss.) codifies Mississippi's claim to mineral rights under federal lands and allows drilling for natural gas under the Gulf Islands National Seashore — a thin necklace of barrier islands that drapes the coastline of the Gulf of Mexico. As a preliminary step to drilling, the rider permits seismic testing, which involves detonating sound-wave explosions to locate oil and gas deposits in the park. Two of the five Mississippi islands are wilderness areas, and the environs are home to federally protected fish and birds, a large array of sea turtles and the gulf's largest concentration of bottlenose dolphins. The legislation marks the first time the federal government has sanctioned seismic exploration on national park property designated as wilderness — which carries with it the highest level of protection. Energy exploration has been allowed on rare occasions in other parts of national parks over the last decade. Since taking office, the Bush administration has been pushing aggressively for oil and gas drilling in traditionally protected areas. Moreover, administration officials have been whittling away at a long-standing policy aimed at sheltering parks from the ill effects of oil and gas exploration initiated outside park borders. Mississippi officials and the Department of the Interior have not agreed on the extent of energy exploration in the park. And there are still unresolved conflicts, the most pressing of which is how setting seismic charges on wilderness islands is compatible with the constraints of the federal Wilderness Act, which prohibits ground disturbance and almost any type of development or construction. "Seismic testing inside a park, in wilderness, with endangered species, arguably inside a place where the mineral rights arguably belong to all of us … I think that's particularly outrageous," said Dennis Galvin, former deputy director of the National Park Service. Galvin testified before Congress in 2000, warning of environmental havoc if energy development was allowed in the national seashore. Jack Moody, a geologist with the Mississippi Development Authority, which is responsible for energy leasing, said the authorization shouldn't be cause for alarm. The law pertains only to Mississippi's mineral claims. "We want the right to develop the minerals that the state owns," he said. "But that doesn't mean we will go through there with a bulldozer." The Gulf Islands National Seashore has long been a Gulf Coast playground. The small islands, with white sand beaches ringed by clear shallow water, sit perched on the edge of what locals affectionately call the Redneck Riviera. The islands extend in a thin network from Mississippi to Florida. Alabama's Dauphin Island, which is surrounded by extensive oil and gas development, is not included in the park. In Mississippi, boats ferry day-trippers to West Ship Island where visitors loll on beaches or visit Ft. Massachusetts, built in the 1860s to shore up coastal defenses. Horn and Petit Bois islands are federally designated wilderness and are accessible by private boat or charter for campers, fishermen and others seeking solitude and quiet. Park officials have been so insistent on maintaining the islands' primitive nature that self-propelled water skis are banned in their waters — the Mississippi Sound to the north and the Gulf of Mexico to the south. Walking amid Horn Island's expansive dune system, park ranger Ben Moore pointed to the island's unblemished vista — a tabletop of water running unbroken to the horizon. "A lot of people don't understand that this flat horizon is what people from Nebraska come here to see, it's what people from New York come here to see," he said, adding that oil rigs, even if planted a mile away from the boundary of the park as anticipated, would be highly visible structures on the horizon. The Cochran amendment sets the stage for sinking 16-story drilling platforms in state waters that would be in full view of residents and tourists who flock to the gulf's beaches. In the last 60 years, five wells have been drilled in Mississippi state waters, and none of them has produced oil or gas. But the state now contends that shallow deposits of natural gas could be tapped. Proponents of exploration said that state and federal regulation would continue to protect the islands and their wildlife. "By the time someone produces natural gas, they will have gone through a number of state agencies and a number of federal agencies," said Joe Sims, president of the Alabama and Mississippi division of the U.S. Oil and Gas Assn. Moreover, he said, the economic boon to the state could be significant. "You don't know until you drill," Sims said, "but I use the number $200 million to $300 million over the life of the production" as a likely estimate of the state's share of royalties and taxes from production under the islands. Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, the former head of the Republican National Committee and one of Washington's most powerful lobbyists, laid the groundwork for drilling in the Gulf Islands National Seashore by signing a bill last year allowing oil and gas leases in state waters surrounding the islands. Barbour also signed legislation transferring authority over drilling from the state's environmental quality agency to the Mississippi Development Authority, an economic department with no regulatory power over the environment. Though the state has the right to allow testing on the islands, Mississippi officials said they didn't intend to let energy companies set off explosions on land unless the park service requested it. Although that seems unlikely, Moody, of the Mississippi Development Authority, said "good management practices" might lead park officials to want to have the best possible picture of what minerals lay beneath their lands, especially if testing indicated there was nothing worth drilling for. Moody added that the state would permit cables to be strung across the wilderness areas to facilitate sonic exploration of underground gas deposits. The lines would be attached to high-pressure air guns placed just offshore. Scientists suspect that seismic testing under water was linked to the death of a pair of beaked whales in 2002 in the Gulf of California and to the deaths of several humpback whales along the coast of Brazil. In controlled experiments, scientists demonstrated that the air guns used in the testing damaged the hearing of fish. Until recently, national parks had been spared much of the oil and gas prospecting taking place elsewhere on public lands. But new policies have removed some of the barriers to drilling. Today, oil and gas platforms sprout in a dozen national parks. The park service's traditional objection to energy development near its lands has been eroding steadily in recent years. The change of approach is reflected in a November 2003 memorandum that said the park service didn't have the legal right to block energy exploration projects that originated outside a park, even if drilling extended under park property or was likely to cause harm to the park. The memo also made it clear that energy companies would no longer be automatically required to provide the park service with a formal drilling plan. That exemption has the potential to save companies time and money. It allows them to avoid being specific about drilling methods and cleanup procedures, and excuses them from filing a costly federal bond that pays for land remediation after wells are abandoned or stop producing, according the park service's geology office in Denver. "The park service has completely reinterpreted what it has jurisdiction over," said Tanya Sanerib, a lawyer representing the Sierra Club, which is suing over the policy change. "Congress gave the park service broad authority to get involved with issues outside the park if the project impairs park resources. This memo took away their veto power." In the past, the park service has opposed projects it said would harm parks. In 2003, the agency objected to a coal-fired power plant hundreds of miles outside Yellowstone National Park. It also objects to a proposed Las Vegas airport just east of the Mojave National Preserve and a massive trash dump next to Joshua Tree National Park. The park service has headed off previous efforts to drill at the Gulf Islands National Seashore. Galvin, the agency's deputy director who retired in 2002, told Congress in 2000 that government lawyers had concluded that the agency had the authority to prohibit energy extraction under the seashore. He said that conveying the park's mineral rights to the state of Mississippi would "negate the authority the National Park Service currently has to protect and manage the valuable natural and cultural resources that are part of the seashore." Carol McCoy, chief of the park service's Geologic Resources Division, said although it was true that the agency had a history of weighing in on outside projects that might affect a park's wildlife, water or air quality, in the case of oil and gas extraction, the agency viewed its authority as ending at a park's borders. "Outside the boundary, we can only recommend," she said. McCoy said that parks must balance the right of the property owner — in this case whoever owns the mineral rights in the park — against the park's obligation to protect its resources. The Department of the Interior has generally acted to avoid such cases, often siding with property owners. Liz Ford of Pascagoula, Miss., has a personal connection to the policy changes. In the early 1970s, when the Gulf Islands National Seashore was being established, Ford's family conveyed 500 acres of land they owned on Horn Island to the park service for safekeeping. Ford said her family also relinquished the land's mineral rights to the federal government. Her family had always spent summers on the island. Now she worries about what will become of their cherished place. "My family thought the island was the most wonderful place in the world, and we wanted it to retain its wildness and not be subjected to the kind of development we see elsewhere," Ford said. "We thought it would be safe in the hands of the park service. It distresses me that what was done in good faith has been undone. To me, it's a betrayal."

QUOTE(winodj @ May 31, 2005 -> 12:56 PM) I'm surprised it was that close. The EU is due for a big backlash this week in the first dozen states. It sounds like the Dutch are also going to vote against it....

Vanity Fair actually is more than a fashion mag--they do a lot of cultural and political stuff. I subscribe and I'm not shocked that it's in there. And I look forward to that article.

Wow, that's crazy. I was disappointed to lose Morse, and I'm interested to see what he does. Although, it doesn't look like he was really tearing up the minors this season--so we'll see.....

Pretty sweet site.

QUOTE(LosMediasBlancas @ May 30, 2005 -> 06:27 PM) I am the rear hook master and it still is not very sexy at all. I don't know...I had a guy friend who could unhook a rear bra with one hand (and very stealthly) it really was an artform. Unless of course he took you for surprise with a hug in the caf. But, man, nothing is sexier than a man who can get in your knickers (no matter how complex) expertly. With the possible exception of someone *not* being able to get into them at all. The look of torment and frustration is also pretty hot.

Saw a news story about a new web browser called Opera--has anyone tried it? Any comments? Thanks!

The excitement of someone else muckign around with the back of your bra for a while, that is a great pre-game show.