FlaSoxxJim

QUOTE(IlliniKrush @ Mar 31, 2007 -> 04:13 PM) You must not be in tip-top shape Hmm, actually that's true. Sick as a dawg.

QUOTE(IlliniKrush @ Mar 31, 2007 -> 01:51 PM) http://tinyurl.com/yp3vkk There's something really ridiculous in there... Gotta love the sense over at The Google.

Apple Store is on my s***e List. I've been back-ordered on an AirPort Extreme Base Station for two months, despote the fact that the website says ships within 24 hours.

QUOTE(Soxbadger @ Mar 31, 2007 -> 01:05 AM) The long and the short of it as follows: My computer has suffered the following error in dst status test: 1000-0142. Basically my hard drive is done. Im under warranty, but there are things on my hard drive that can not be replaced. Dell has given me the following list of companies who will give me a discount: Salvage Data Recovery Service On Track Driver Savers Action Front Data Recovery Labs Iomega Data Recovery Services CBL Data Recovery Services If anyone has any experience with any of these companies, or has another company that I can use I would greatly appreciate it. I will not be able to live with myself if some of this stuff is lost. Success is much more important than price. My ex-boss used Drive Savers and she got nicked for well over a grand to recover data from a $125 external firewire drive. Tex is right, you will become a backup fanatic after you drop a thousand dollars to retrieve your data.

Clearly, Congress doesn't support the troops spinach farmers. If we let the vote against the troops spinach farmers stand then the terrorists rabbits have already won. QUOTE(Texsox @ Mar 29, 2007 -> 06:19 PM) Couple things. 1. I would probably have voted with the GOP on this one. I don't like the idea of a deadline. I don't have a better alternative, but this just doesn't feel right. Withdrawal never felt right to me either. And now look at me, I'm a father of two!

QUOTE(NorthSideSox72 @ Mar 29, 2007 -> 05:46 PM) The real game is, what's next? If he vetoes, do the Dems have enough guts and/or leverage and/or votes to actually say "fine, then no money for your war"??? Sadly, no they don't. Now that we are at this stage, I'm not sure why the president was so vocal in vowing to veto the bill if they came to him containing the withdrawal timetable. That adversarial posturing certainly emboldened the bring-it-on attitude of the Dems and others voting for the bills. But since the withdrawal dates are, sadly, non-binding wouldn't the best strategy for Bush have been to refrain from the veto talk and then just craft an "F-You, Congress" signing statement thanking them for the war funding but also indicating that he would do whatever he damn well pleased in regard to the timetables? I'm glad he didn't take that route and has backed himself into a corner where he'll have to veto, but it would have been easier for him to just ignore the edicts of Congress the way he usually does, no?

QUOTE(LosMediasBlancas @ Mar 29, 2007 -> 02:13 PM) What's the update on Sammy Sosa? Still a horse's ass.

QUOTE(Texsox @ Mar 29, 2007 -> 04:38 PM) This fall, I too, will be a broke college kid. Again. Throw an egg in that ramen soup and it eats like a meal!

QUOTE(BigSqwert @ Mar 29, 2007 -> 01:43 PM) She almost looks photo-shopped into the pic. Kind of like his 'devil' giving him advice. Pretty sure she is Photo shopped. I think that's Pelosi's head on Bab's body.

That's what I wondered, and the way I interpreted your post as well. All those pesky lines that don't make it are always the trick.

That is a helpful summary. I have the paper in hand but it will be at least the weekend before I get to it to digest it all. The second point you bring up is one I had wondered about - whether the extant lines represented by the current research missed out on earlier diversification that resulted in lineages that disappeared later in the Tertiary. If so, then the dogma of the rapid rise of mammals after the K-T event may not be totally abandoned. Which is good because I don't want to have to toss out all my kids' dinosaur fact books.

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Mar 29, 2007 -> 11:52 AM) Isn't 10-15 million years pretty much instanteous when it comes to the planets timeline? I certainly do think that the vacant niche space left in the wake of the dino demise was still an important ingredient in the eventual explosive mammalian radiation event even if it happened 10-15 million years later, yes. But we're only talking 65 mybp for the K-T extinction, so 10-15 million years is a substantial chunk of that time span. The new question becomes, why the lag between the demise of one dominant taxa and the rise of the other? Although my undergraduate degree carries an emphasis in evolution, my graduate work and professional experience is not in that field so I'm very much an armchair evolutionary biologist. But, I do have a hunch that the timing of mammalian diversification events will turn out to have a lot to do with that fact that the Tertiary (which started when the dinosaurs died out) is the period in which angiosperm plants (particularly monocot grasses) became the dominant vegetation on the planet. Off the top of my head, I'd say that is the most significant ecosystem re-engineering event of the time.

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Mar 29, 2007 -> 11:04 AM) not to mention that they are all yellow, why no white American smilies? Where do you think these computers are manufactured?

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Mar 29, 2007 -> 10:04 AM) This move is to try to unite the public inside Iraq behind the government. Iraq?

QUOTE(Kid Gleason @ Mar 29, 2007 -> 09:39 AM) Ah, but according to the recent studies, "Sugar Rush" is nothing but a myth. There is no such thing. They also offer candies and other stuff to add to your cereal. Empirical observations of my kids (n=2, admittedly) suggest otherwise. If they get a bowl of ice cream in them just before bedtime sleep is a lost cause for a good hour.

QUOTE(Kid Gleason @ Mar 29, 2007 -> 08:44 AM) I heard the commercials on the radio about a month ago. They really push the "Every morning is Saturday morning here" thing. I guess what they do that is the appeal is that it isn't going in there and getting a bowl of Cheerios. You go in and order one of their concoctions. Stuff like 1 cup of Cocoa Puffs, 1 Cup of Peanut Butter CapN Crunch, 1 cup of Crunch Berries, 1 shot of Chocolate Syrup. That is the appeal. The stuff that WOULD cost you too much to make at home. That's the sort of thing my Boy and I call the Mega Mix, and it's the Saturday morning rule rather than the exception at our place. We haven't gotten to the shott of chocolate syrup yet or I'd have to peel his sugar-rushing arse down from the ceiling.

QUOTE(Spiff @ Mar 29, 2007 -> 02:26 AM) Happy Birthday Kap and Happy Birthday Tex's daughter! If I had money I would send you all flowers. Yes, Bestest Birthday Wishes to you both! If I had money I'd send you all postcards from my Tahitian private island vacation hideaway.

QUOTE(vandy125 @ Mar 28, 2007 -> 08:35 PM) That is very interesting, but I wanted to provide a counter-balance to your soapbox. This is not a tenet that would be attacked and be blasted for changing because it does not threaten the evolution theory. It changes an aspect or view of that theory just as (in the case of Christianity) has been done for 2,000 years (after all, how many years ago did people believe that the universe revolved around the earth). The basic view that science can look back and through trial and error discover and describe natural origins is not under attack. The scientific method nor its assumptions are not under attack with this discovery. Now back off my soap box. I really do find this stuff interesting, and I actually do believe in evolution. Thanks for the post Bravo, you pretty much got to the heart of it. There is no 'cult of evolution' as so many detractors would wich to pay it. And the only 'faith' involved is faith in the scientific method and that the process will continue to lead to a more refined approximation of 'the truth' in all valid fields of scientific inquiry. Heck, it can be a real bummer when sensible hypotheses don't stand up to scrutiny and contrary bodies of evidence. Ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny and all that. . . so elegant and easy to buy into - except of course that it was a load of hogwash. Maybe the rise of mammals on the heels of the demise of the dinos is similarly heading to the ash heap of discarded hypotheses, which will make the story less tidy maybe, but mostly it means there's a lot still to investigate as to what environmental factors really did align to allow the great diversification of mammals. Heck (again), we really don't have all the answers as to what led to the Cambrian diversity explosion so much earlier on. And maybe the accepted dogma on adaptive diversification of various primarily non-sessile marine phyla in the wake of the Permian extinction event needs to be revisited. Maybe half of everything I was ever taught in my evolution classes will be revised or tossed outright in our lifetime. And it is acceptance of those very real possibilities - that we have many of the details wrong but that the process of inquiry will get us incrementally closer to 'the truth' - is what makes all of evolution's detractors sound silly when they attempt to paint evolution as some sort of religion or cult unto itself.

This is an important study. It provides very strong evidence against the conventional wisdom that the dinosaur mass extinction at the K-T Boundary immediately set the stage for an explosive mammalian diversification event. In looking at the DNA from fully 99% of known extant mammal species, researchers concluded that the big mammal diversity explosion did not begin until 10-15 million years after the dinosaurs vanished. And now just a bit of soapboxing. . . In threads here and in discussions in general, evolutionists regularly get blasted for being as dogmatic and blindly faithful and certain of what they believe in as the religious anti-evolutionists. If that were in fact true, then a solid piece of research like this that potentially lays waste to a major dogmatic evolutionary tenet (i.e., mass extinction sets the stage for adaptive radiation) should be dismissed and decried and reviled as heretical in some way. But it won't be. It will be scrutinized and replicated and poked and prodded, but if it stands up to that scrutiny then it is our understanding of the biological past that will be changed. Our understanding of organic evolution will itself continue to evolve, as it has for nearly 150 years.

QUOTE(shipps @ Mar 28, 2007 -> 04:34 PM) If I hear the expression "Its like a kid in a candy store" 1 more time Iam going to punch the nearest person in the face! How about, "Like a Wino Bum in a Liquor Store"?? Well shucks, Huck n' Tom said the fishin' hole wuz' right around here somewhere. . .

QUOTE(Reddy @ Mar 28, 2007 -> 02:44 PM) they're f***ing legos people - this is how kids have always used legos. i remember doing it too You used to f*** Legos?

QUOTE(3 BeWareTheNewSox 5 @ Mar 28, 2007 -> 02:34 PM) I sharted today. Damn, ruined my entire day [/runs to Urban Dictionary to confirm that's what he thinks it is, confirms, giggles to self.]

Another good WKUK: Supersize Me - With Whiskey!

QUOTE(kapkomet @ Mar 27, 2007 -> 11:33 PM) O RLY? /waits SO RLY! Dennis, You Dog! QUOTE(mr_genius @ Mar 27, 2007 -> 11:43 PM) meh Meh, yourself.

Wow. Dennis Kucinich's wife is hawt. That is all.