FlaSoxxJim

QUOTE(Kid Gleason @ Aug 14, 2007 -> 01:44 PM) I guess the VH1 news conference for Van Halen was last night and the tour kicks off next month. Obviously this is still not to be believed until the first note is struck. So, what do you think, have they just been laying low and rehearsing for the past few months, or are they just going to "wing it"? One month from now doesn't seem like a whole heck of a lot of time to launch this thing. No it doesn't seem like much time, and I'd bet they have not been rehearsing a whole lot so far. To hear David talk about it they are trying to make it sound like this is more than a one-off cash-grab reunion thing, but I think they are too volitile to keep it together for very long honestly. So what's the deal with Eddie's kid over Michael Anthony? Is there really an estrangement there, or is this merely a decision by Eddie?

QUOTE(Kid Gleason @ Aug 14, 2007 -> 12:16 PM) My wife and I finally finished watching all of the Six Feet Under seasons last night. She didn't like the final episode. SPOILER. Well, she loved it until they got to the deaths, and she was really disappointed to see how Keith died. She thought the show should have ended at the dinner table with them all thinking about Nate. My thought was that whereas Everybody Loves Raymond was a show about life and ended perfectly with that one just continuing on, this was a show about death and should have ended with death, as it did. I liked the ending though. I agree with you. Every episode began with an on-screen death that became a vehicle to tell the story that week. It was only fitting that each of the stars had their on-screen death moment. I miss that show.

QUOTE(Soxy @ Aug 14, 2007 -> 11:47 AM) I think the most interesting to me is how few people there are in the middle. Although, this is a very lovely example of a bimodal distribution. Ha. Or as my major professor liked to call it, a gluteal curve.

QUOTE(sox4lifeinPA @ Aug 14, 2007 -> 11:25 AM) Still, Religious is different than spiritual. The question is "Are you religious?" the answer is that 24 people are not. Yes, I guess we've established there is an open-endedness to the categories. Here's a good summarization of some 2001, 2002, 1nd 2004, national survey data. It does show a substantial decline in those who identify themselves as religious in the last 15 years, but still has over 80% of the country espousing either a religious or a spiritual bent. http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_prac...g/chr_prac2.htm

QUOTE(Soxy @ Aug 14, 2007 -> 11:10 AM) Personally, I would group the spiritual but not religious and the seekers in sort of a no man's land. Not necessarily non-religious, more of a still looking sort of thing. I can accept that categorization.

QUOTE(sox4lifeinPA @ Aug 14, 2007 -> 10:57 AM) Religious Yes, I attend services 3 or 4 times a month [ 9 ] Yes, but I don't make it to services very often [ 5 ] Christmas and Easter (and when someone drags me) Christian, baby! (or Yom Kippur Jew or Ramadan Muslim, etc) [ 2 ] total: 16 Non Religious I'm more spiritual than religious, per se [ 3 ] I'm still trying to figure that out [ 4 ] Nope, not at all. [ 10 ] Is atheism a religion? [ 7 ] total: 24 in otherwords: 3 to 2 Remind me not to have you do my science.... The spiritualists are confirming their belief in some metaphysical agent and the undecided are exactly that. Whether the undecidess are agnostic (in which case they can be tallied with the secularists) or whether they are wrestling with spiritual issues is left undetermined by the survey question. But the spiritual folks believe in something beyond the physical plane so I'd not lump them with the heathens.

QUOTE(Texsox @ Aug 14, 2007 -> 09:02 AM) Which I believe was my original point that started this. Thank you. It takes some degree of faith to accept unproven, and can never be proven, information. I guess, but it is faith in the gradual revelatory process of science, not in the "truth" of any slice-in-time snapshot the process has allowed.

QUOTE(Texsox @ Aug 14, 2007 -> 09:05 AM) Aren't all laws based on morality? QUOTE(vandy125 @ Aug 14, 2007 -> 09:05 AM) So laws should be based upon a common agreed societal position? What if the racist position was a representative of societal mores? Can you say that the Jim Crow laws are wrong if everyone else says they are right? What if 50% say it is right and 50% say that it is not? Hammerhead pretty much encapsulated the response I'd give. And I concede the real question is not then can we legislate morality, but whose morality do we legislate?

QUOTE(sox4lifeinPA @ Aug 14, 2007 -> 10:21 AM) looks like 3 to 2 in favor of the non-religious. That's some Karl Rove Math there, huh? As of right now. 19 people have confirmed spiritual leanings, 4 are undecided, and 17 are decidedly secular. Remind me not to have you do my banking.

QUOTE(Texsox @ Aug 14, 2007 -> 10:01 AM) I would have made the same guess as PA, I guess this one is worth eleven points? Viv Lives! Tho, 'es gone a bit soft in the head I hear.

QUOTE(BearSox @ Aug 13, 2007 -> 11:37 PM) I feel bad whenever I "sin"... the thing is though, I sin a lot. Left hand or right hand?

QUOTE(Texsox @ Aug 13, 2007 -> 11:33 PM) So we can decide morality for the nation? My views should be rejected because I go to Church? How about anyone that drinks beer shouldn't be allowed to force their views of alcohol laws on anyone? If you own stocks you shouldn't be allowed to have an opinion on financial matters? Perhaps I mis-speak when I say morality cannot be legislated, and I really mean morality ought not be legislated. Cartainly laws can and do have moral weight, but they should not be based on relativistic moral positions (e.g., I'm a racist so I'm going to push for a new set of Jim Crow laws even if my position is not representative of societal mores.).

QUOTE(Texsox @ Aug 13, 2007 -> 11:29 PM) But bottom line, because we can not test the beginning of human time, it currently is out of the realm of science, yet some still believe science has "proven" evolution *and* the beginning of time. That is not the case, may never be the case, and if you believe in the primordial soup theory, it is by placing your faith in an untested theory. Firstly, anybody who believes that science has "proven" anything - ever - doesn't get science and aren't really adding to the discussion. Again, scientific inquiry allows for orderly and rational hypothesis testing to gradually build a body of evidence in support of one explanation over any of several others regarding some phenomenon of interest. That said, the body of evidence standing in support of a Neodarwinian explanation for the diversity of life on Earth far outstrips that in support of any competing theories - so much so, that there are currently no real contending causative explanations. Not to say there are not loads of details that need to be worked out, and not to say evolutionary biologists won't be don putting the ears and the eyebrows on the theory in my lifetime or in that of my great-grandchildren. Back to your post. You are tossing out three wildly different timeframes (the beginning of time, the beginning of terran life, and the beginning of human life) in this one paragraph and it muddies the discussion a bit. I'd say that astrophysicists have a pretty good working timeline of the beginnings and age of the universe (predicated on the assumption that the speed of light and the behavior of matter and energy have remained constant, see previous post). Measurements of the rates of expansion of nearby and distant galaxies away from us put the universe at around 14-20 billion years old. Mind you, that's a 5 billion year spread, so science hasn't "proven" anything. Discovery of a previously predicted Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation also lends strength to the Big Bang explanations for the beginning of the universe. To measure the age of Earth and other solar system objects, radioactive decay measurements are used, and again we assume that specific isotopes decay the same way now that that they did several billion years ago. As for the primordeal soup origins of life, I hold the Urey and Miller abiogenesis experiments in high regard much as I do the much earlier biogenesis experiments of Spallanzani. They are part of the historical fabric of my field. But there are as many problems with the popular misconceptions about what those primordeal soup experiments demonstrated as there are with evolution itself. Miller-Urey produced some simple amino acids in a methane-ammonia-water environment with some electrical discharge to catalyze reactions, but that's a far cry from life. If fact, the amino acids were quickly catabolized in the same mimic primitive earth atmosphere required to make them, so if anything I'd say that result cast some serious doubt on Darwin's "warm little pond" hypothesis as to where life on earth began. Yes indeed, Darwin got a lot of things half-right, and plent of things flat out wrong. Darwinian evolution only stands up to scrutiny once a particulate mechanism of inheritance (genes) is incorporated into the picture (That's the difference between Darwin's original idea as presented in Origin of Species, and the refined Neodarwinian principles that make up modern evolutionary biology). Then there's the most recent events you alluded to - human evolution. That's where we have a really great chance at putting together a really good picture with a few gaps here and there. Vandy's "blink of an eye" comment is right on - in evolutionary terms, humans appeared on teh scene in the last few seconds of the hypothetical 24-hour evolutionary day. lots of well-preserved fossils (with many more to be discovered), viable DNA in some of them, recent and narrow timeframes that lend themselves to very accurate dating. We can't help but get most of this story right in the end, and certainly hypotheses will be revisited, revised, trashed and reformulated along the way. But that's what it's all about.

QUOTE(vandy125 @ Aug 13, 2007 -> 09:00 PM) On the other side, there is a belief in a kind of uniformitarianism when attempting to project ideas in to the past. You have to have the assumption that conditions as they exist now behave in the same manner that they did millions or billions of years ago. This is, I think, a corect assessment and an important point. Scientists do, by and large, contend that the basic laws of physics have held constant over the lifetime of the universe. We accept that there have been universal constants like the speed of light and the nature and behavior of subatomic particles, etc. A favorite tactic of the creation "scientists" (I'm allowing myself the PA Conceit of openly deriding a group that has no bisiness calling themselves scientists) is to suggest that in the early days of the universe (maybe the first six, for example), perhapes these universal constants were not so constant. Maybe the laws of physics were a bit more malleable at this time and, the argument goes, that is because the Hand of a divine agent is at work at this time and physical laws do not pertain to such a Hand. Well, of course, none of this is testable even if it iis imaginative. Once something falls out of the realm of the testable it is no longer of concern to science. That distinction, that which is testable by means of scientific inquiry and that which is not, is the dividing line that ideally should serve to keep the physical and the metaphysical at arms length. It is not for science to ponder the existence of divine agents, souls, heaven and hell, etc. It is the job of science to develop and over time incrementally improve on working explanations as to how the physical universe operates in the absence of (untestable) metaphysical causative forces.

QUOTE(Balta1701 @ Aug 13, 2007 -> 06:11 PM) So, am I the only one who's hoping that TD 4 does actually become "Hurricane Dean"? YEAAAAAAAAAAAAARHHHHGGGGGG!!!!!!! Do Not Cheer on the Hurricanes! :stick Mudslides, western forest fires, and San Andreas fault tremors on the other hand. . .

QUOTE(Texsox @ Aug 13, 2007 -> 05:43 PM) And that may be the sadest commentary of all. He was arguably one of the ten most powerful men in the world. His control over President Bush seemed absolute. An Imperius curse, perhaps?

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Aug 13, 2007 -> 05:37 PM) No serious answers yet? Religious, but not in an organized church sort of way. I don't think most of them have the right idea anymore. Way to institutionalized based on how I read the New Testament. My vote was serious, even if my beer quip was (mostly) not. I voted 'Nope, not at all', because I do not consider atheism to be a religion. But that doesn't mean I begrudge anybody's right to practice their faith as long as it doesn't abrogate anybody else's personal freedoms. I come from a staunch religious family whom I very much respect. And I have immense respect for anybody who can walk it like they talk it and who refrains from using their faith as an excuse to attempt to legislate morality for the nation or to codify and condone bigotry. My wife is also a trained scientist, but she does maintain a belief in a divine agent, and we don't come to blows over it. We also pay through the nose to send our kids to an Episcopal school because it is a top-rated school for academics and because my beliefs shouldn't automatically be my childrens' beliefs. If their schooling also gives them a solid moral footing that's great. It has taken me a lifetime to figure out what I think of religion and the existence of a divine agent and my kids have the right to take up that same journey. I readily tell them I don't have the answers to questions of faith and I encourage them to listen to the minister at chapel as intently as they do their classroom teachers. At 8 and 9 years old, they are learning to recognize hypocrisy when they hear messages of hate and discrimination dressed up as faith belief (the Episcopal gay unions/gay ministers schism plays itself out in miniature in parental debate in the parish), and I am proud of them for it.

QUOTE(Rowand44 @ Aug 13, 2007 -> 04:33 PM) Boo religion, hooray Beer. If we're considering Beer as a religion then I'll have to change my vote.

QUOTE(kapkomet @ Aug 13, 2007 -> 12:26 PM) Because a MANDATE was sent in November of 2006 to STOP THIS WAR... Oh, the irony... Absolutely. I feel completely sold out by a spineless Congress. Caving on FISA was the last straw.

I felt a little cheated with only one song this week, but excellent episode otherwise.

QUOTE(Texsox @ Aug 13, 2007 -> 09:46 AM) I wonder if the $503,000 winning bid is legit. Would you rather have Bonds Homerun ball or this bottle for 1/2 a mil? The beer. Not even a question.

QUOTE(Athomeboy_2000 @ Aug 12, 2007 -> 11:15 PM) To me it's pretty clear... Then to you it is also pretty clear that it's OK to sell your daughter into slavery (Exodus 21:7), and it's OK to own slaves as long as you buy them from a neighboring nation (Leviticus 25:44), and that you can of course kill your neighbor if you find he has been working on the Sabbath (Exodus 35:2). Likewise, you're crystal clear about it being better for you to give your daughter up to be raped if it keeps two men from sinning by lying together (Genesis 19:1-9 - a personal favorite of mine). If you are clear about all of these things, and a boatload of others taken right from the Bible, then you are somewhat of a misanthrope in modern society. If you only think God's word as recorded in the Bible is only eternally binding when it condones bigotry against gays but less so regarding these other ancient dictates, then certainly you are in good company. But your interpretation of the Bible and which of God's laws should be heeded nonetheless remains distressingly selective.

QUOTE(kapkomet @ Aug 13, 2007 -> 08:30 AM) He's gone. Now let it go. That certainly would be convenient for Karl and for the White House, yes. 'You don't need to worry about those RNC emails now, Karl's gone.' Short of any conspiracy theorizing, this really does seem more like Friday afternoon BushCo fare and not the way to begin the week. I wonder what the rest of the week will bring.

QUOTE(DBAH0 @ Aug 13, 2007 -> 05:40 AM) If it's a youtube video, you can convert it to a .flv file, and then either download a .flv player, or convert that to an .avi or MP3 file. I forgot how to do it, but there's a site on the net somewhere which gives you the steps of how to do that. You are correct, and there are a couple good ways to download from YouTube now. There is a Qooqle site is a YouTube Downloader site: http://video.qooqle.jp/dl/ go there, insert the URL of the YouTube video you want to use and it will return a download URL that you can click to download the source video to your desktop. Like DBAHO said, the trick now is that the file you download is a flv file - a compact Flash video file. Native Quicktime can't touch that file but for the mac there is a great shareware app called iSquint (get it here: http://www.isquint.org/) that will convert the file into mpg4-encoded Quicktime that will optimize for iPod video. There is also a great FireFox add-on called Video Downloader that lets you download flv files directly, and that will work on sites other than YouTube.

QUOTE(Athomeboy_2000 @ Aug 12, 2007 -> 04:10 PM) Hate the sin... love the sin. But dont condone the sin. That's my issue. What sin? That's my issue. I'm figuring your God isn't a narrow-minded homophobe and it's people who have it wrong.