FlaSoxxJim

Wow. I saw the thread title and was all set to come on with some snarky comment or another, and then reading the article just blew me away. Great story. Hopefully it attracts the attention of some well-heeled Brazilians that can give them some underwriting.

QUOTE(Rowand44 @ Sep 30, 2005 -> 11:40 AM) So the extra arm means no Blum or Gload. Meaning if we need a pinch runner for Pauly in a late game situation it can't happen. Yep, if we're only carrying 11 pitchers then there's going to be 2 odd men out. Viz has got to be one of them but I'm torn about who the other should be. I can see why Ozzie recused himself from these decisions and is leaving it up to the coaching staff and KW.

QUOTE(WilliamTell @ Sep 29, 2005 -> 05:30 PM) lol I've never heard it before, awesome. You never rocked out to captain Stubby and the Buccaneers?!? For Shame. My kids make me crank that song on the drive to school in the mornings, and they know every word.

QUOTE(Texsox @ Sep 29, 2005 -> 09:18 AM) I usually shortened it to dj in my mind. I wonder how many shortened it to wino? wino, always wino. But in my mind it was an obtuse homage to an obscure Zappa song, "Wonderful Wino."

QUOTE(KipWellsFan @ Sep 29, 2005 -> 08:02 PM) edit: did we already know Libby was her source? No, not categorically. We also don't know Novak's source with certainty yet, though we've been promised all would be revealed.

Great post smalls2598. There are indeed generations of Sox fans who stuck with the team through it all and never celebrated with them when they won it all. Hopefully the spirits of all of the Southside fathers and grandfathers no longer with us will give the team a cosmic playoff push. Here's to all the White Sox Fans who have gone before.

Hell Yeah!

Great to hear everyone is doing well and that Joe will be returning to the lineup.

QUOTE(Milkman delivers @ Sep 28, 2005 -> 07:36 AM) In the article, I thought it said that the suckers had small teeth and that another kind of squid (the colossal squid?) is the one with the hooks? And the colossal squid is even bigger than the giant squid? So many question marks. Small hooks = tentacle teeth, just different lay terminology. No, the colossal squid is smaller than the giant squid. On the sex arms hooks are actually peobably used to grasp femalse during copulation, aned not primarily for predation or defense. There are actually about a half dozen very large squid (2 meters or greater) that most biologists all group together as 'giant squid," althoiugh Architeuthis is the holy grail mac daddy of them all. Some of the indirect historic giant squid size estimates that came from sucker marks on captured sperm whales were huge overestimates of the sort that led to the Jules Verne sci-fi sized fictional squids. Basically, the scientists assumed all the suction marks were recent marks when in fact they didn't have to be. That meant that if a juvenile sperm whale had silver dollar sized suction cup wounds on it from an ecounter, in 20 years that animal as an adault would have marks that had stretched to the size of a small dinner plate, hence the overestimate.

QUOTE(Mercy! @ Sep 28, 2005 -> 03:48 AM) Neat. Thanks for the link. I hate to sound too cynical, but I’m thinking: Japanese are big whalers => sperm whales eat giant squid => find out more about giant squid => catch more whales. But I do like (regular-sized) squid. Umm, ika is tasty. Bingo, Bro! The Japanese are always trying to expand their "scientific" (BULLs***!) whaling program, including taking sperm whales, and will no doubt they will use the need for more information on Architeuthis as a justification. Korea, Iceland, and Norway and Russia to a degree - are the other big pro whaling nations, and they have been pulling out all the stops in trying to roll back the International Whaling Commission ban and resume limited commercial hunts. Iceland already engages in such, in open defiance of the world ban. The ICW provisions say that if any whale stocks return to more than 50% of their historic levels limited takings can resume, and the pro-whaling position is that several stocks are close to those numbers. Recent genetic work however suggests that the historic stocks may have been underestimated by an order of magnitude, so in fact the current numbers may be closer to 5% and not 50% of pre-exploitation population numbers. The work was done by the same people who used DNA probes to prove that there were lots of illegal whale meat products being sold in Japanese and Korean markets as legally caught "science" species. So needeless to say, Japan is doing all it can to cast doubt on the validity of the new population estimate data. I'll stop being a nerd now.

QUOTE(Heads22 @ Sep 27, 2005 -> 08:51 PM) I expected Flaxx to reply by now. Flaxx was otherswise occupied, but this is completely cool.

This is quite an historic event, actually. Sure it was just a matter of time before live observations were made, but people have spent years trying. Claude Roper at Smithsonian has pretty much become the Captain Ahab of the giant squid community, and most folks thought Claude would be the first to nab one. Interestingly, it is really fortuitous that the tentacle (which looks to me to have been one of the two lsex tentacles that house sperm packets in males and serve as copulatory organs. Without expert close examination of the suckers and hooks on teh tentacles, they likely would not have been able to peg the animal as Architeuthis. Kudos, Japanese Sqid Dudes!

QUOTE(KipWellsFan @ Sep 27, 2005 -> 02:12 AM) I think I see the virgin mary!

QUOTE(Texsox @ Sep 25, 2005 -> 12:48 PM) Are you familiar with the works of Jesus, Martin Luther, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Cesar Chavez? Not every problem requires a military answer. Non violence also has a roll in shaping our world. I know it isn't as deeply satisfying as actually killing people to get your way, but is has worked. Moses didn't make the cut? Damn. You're just dissing him for his later work with the NRA, How about Upton Sinclair, NUKE? If he hadn't protested the meat packing industry in his writing do you think the industry would have cleaned up its act? 'protesting never solved anything' is a rather hyperbolic and non-factual statement.

Would'ja believe. . . I was just about to post this, but Kid beat me to it. Missed it by that much. Agent 86.

QUOTE(WilliamTell @ Sep 26, 2005 -> 01:46 PM) Sweet, I get to see it. Here on the east coast where the Yankees and Red Sox are the only two national teams that get any coverage, I'm sure I will not get the game as usual. I hate the Fox Saturday exclusivity thing. That and the WCIU exclusivity thing (like tonight) are the only times the Extra Innings package fails me.

Gonzales?? :puke

Oh, yeah, I forgot one of my favorites. Larry = the voice of the guy who shouts "is anybody here a marine biologists?" in the episode where George pretends to be a marine biologist and pulls the golf ball out of the whale's blowhole.

Larry's Seinfeld cameos arre great. Here's the other ones I've caught: - Larry = the Steinbrenner voice overdub - Larry = the guy that says "I ordered the Kosher meal" in the epicode where Elaine is stuck in coach and Jerry is in first class. - Larry = the guy that wouldn;t take a $20 bill from George because George drew lips on Andrew Jackson. - Larry = the voice of the guy who stole Jerry's car - Larry appeared dressed as a king with a crown, robes, and scepter for a film premiere (Henry V??) What other ones am I missing?

QUOTE(Rex Hudler @ Sep 25, 2005 -> 05:58 PM) He may have been boring, but on your deathbed, you will have total consciousness.... Which is nice. So I got that going for me. Gunga Gulunga, Gunga Gunkala Gulunga.

QUOTE(Rex Kickass @ Sep 26, 2005 -> 06:41 AM) Funny, I don't listen to Barbara Streisand for political advice. *Filed under W for Who gives a crap?* Funny, I don't listen to Barbara Streisand.

QUOTE(Balta1701 @ Sep 26, 2005 -> 12:08 AM) I believe all the rest were actually side effects of the Cialis. I should read the labels more carefully.

I'm not going to stick up for Dr. Babbs in any way, shape or form. But I do need to point out a sleight-of-hand by Drudge in play here that is showing up with increasing frequency. The initial assertion was that more intense AND more frequent tropical storm systems can be expected if current warming trends continue. Drudge (or wherever this originated) then rattled off a litany of intense storms occurring over the last 60 years, but he declined to take on the frequency issue. If you're wondering why, just take a look at the level of tropical activity over the past 15 years. Whether it's an upswing in activity as part of a natural long-term cyclic phenomenon, or whether something else is going on, the last 15 years have been rocking in the tropics.

Well, I don't know about any 36 armed and dangerous cetaceans, but I'm about 99.98% certain that's a hose. I can tell you a little about the real recover and rescue ops for the 8 captive bottlenose dolphin that did escape during Katrina (you may have followed some of it with the news coverage). My institute's marine mammal rehabilitation group was one of the key groups involved in that recsue. When they found the dolphins they wer all hanging out together maybe 20 to 40 miles offshore, and they were freaking out (Dude, when's feeding time?. . . Hey, why is te food still swimming??). It took several days but they did recover all of them. It helps that they were trained to jump up on the gurney thay they lower into the water to retreive them. I've lost track of what the latest battle plan is, but there was a plan to bring them all to the Marineland facility over this way for rehabbing once they were stable. In other awsomely cool news. . . my office mate does some freelance science writing, and he got a call from the journal Nature to go fly-along in the NOAA hurricane chaser plane Friday to run the Rita gauntlet. Lucky bastard, I hope he puked his guts up.

Rally Crede has cured my male pattern baldness, chronic halitosis, sleeplessness, anxiety, gout, erectile dysfunction, scurvy, leprosy, and pimples. I simply don't know how I got along before without my Rally Crede!