FlaSoxxJim

Have a great one, Wino! Party like you mean it.

QUOTE(marsh @ Sep 6, 2005 -> 03:11 PM) R.I.P. Maynard Ah, another one who prefers his Gilligan with bongos and a goatee.

Damn. RIP, Little Buddy.

QUOTE(Kid Gleason @ Sep 6, 2005 -> 01:42 PM) You stole my score!

I will however take you on in the "Science of Monsters" category, Kid, fully expecting to be blown away by your superior geekosity. I'll let you know how I did. EDIT: Hey, I got them all. Must be easy questions.

QUOTE(Kid Gleason @ Sep 6, 2005 -> 01:28 PM) Hmmm, could have sworn I posted the link. Nope, guess not: http://www.cool-movie-trivia.com/vaults_main.shtml I'm surprised nobody mentioned the lack of a link. I found your link to be lacking, but didn't know how to tell you.

QUOTE(Texsox @ Sep 6, 2005 -> 01:08 PM) Generalisimo Francisco Franco is still dead. I'm Chevy Chase. And you're not.

QUOTE(Texsox @ Sep 6, 2005 -> 12:48 PM) What's nice is they cover themselves in oil first . . . Sometimes I see them getting baked too.

QUOTE(Texsox @ Sep 6, 2005 -> 12:43 PM) There is a tourist season . . . I hear they taste like chicken.

to all the the Gary Maclaughlin's out there.

QUOTE(Texsox @ Sep 6, 2005 -> 12:32 PM) Do you have a source? This is the first I've ever heard that theory. http://www.thenation.com/doc/20001106/wiener

QUOTE(Heads22 @ Sep 6, 2005 -> 12:19 PM) The neatest thing about deer hunting is getting up into a stand at 6 AM in the middle of December. It's one of those times when you actually connect with nature. Very soon the tide will turn, and the deer will have their day my friend.

QUOTE(Heads22 @ Sep 6, 2005 -> 12:21 PM) Nerd. But I get the babes. The really, really nerdy babes.

QUOTE(JUGGERNAUT @ Sep 4, 2005 -> 02:21 PM) Is Darwinism a religion? No, it isn't. And I actually largely agree with the rest of your post, other than the science-bashing. A value of 10% or 4% or 1% difference in overall genetic sequence taken by itself in a vaccuum is not particularly meaningful. What becomes meaningful is when genes coding for specific proteins are taken from various source organisms and compared to one another. Highly conserved genes, like that encoding for p53, can be used as informative sources of information concerning the chronology of divergence of evolutionary lineages. We share an astounding amount of similarity on those regions with those species we diverged from very recently, i.e, the other great apes. we share much less similarity with more distantly related taxa such as fruit flies and corn plants. Without this kind of comparative genomic technology, we might be tempted to again believe that all our intellect and accomplishments makes it impossible that we're still really great apes. Really. really smart animals, but animals nevertheless. Older paraphyletic (splitting the descendants of a common ancestor) classification schemes artificially put human and a some prehistoric Homo spp. groups into the family Homidae, while placing the rest of the great apes (gorillas, chimps, orangutans) into the family Pongidae. More current systematics relegates the Pongidae to subfamily status (Ponginae), and puts all of us together as the extant great apes in family Hominidae. Systematic revisions like this are largely done when the comparative genetic work indicates. In this case, the taxonomic 'lumpers' have done us all a favor by reminding us that we're still just smart, naked apes. Back to the % genetic similarity issue. What we don't yet have much of a handle on is how important gene suites and gene clusters are at making us so dffferent from our nearest evolutionary relatives. Even though the blueprints in humans and Bonobo chimps are so as similar as two slightly different editions of a school textbook, somehow our translational machinery for making proteins out of these blueprints is squeezing more information out of the same blueprints. Novel gene products seem to emerge when some information from gene A is translated along with some information from gene B and gene C, etc. basically, our DNA regulatory mechanisms are more different than a gross value of 1% or 4% or 10% would seem to sugggest.

I'm going to be magnanamous and spread the blame around. For all the fingerpointing between the locals and the feds, nobody seems to be learning anything along the way and actually getting it right. Trent Lott actually has been trying hard to get things moving for the residents of Katrina-ravaged Mississippi, and I commend him. he's pointed out how unreal it is that there are 20,000 FEMA trailers "sitting in Atlanta" to the that can be used to sheltter displaced families in Mississippi coast, and he urged President Bush during a meeting Monday to intervene. The reason the trailers have not been mobilized? Lott said FEMA has refused to ship the trailers until contracts are secured. On to the local f***-ups: full CNN story

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Sep 6, 2005 -> 09:09 AM) Thanks Jim. We just spent this weekend moving into the new place, and spending butt-loads of money to get it baby ready and safe. It was a strange feeling, I should have felt estatic for our first home and a baby on the way, but mostly I felt guilty for buying half of the stuff that we did. We can't give anything worth while, but hopefully this will connect someone who can. Tell me about guilt over the little things we take for granted. We took the kids to Disney for the weekend for a birthday trip. it was planned a month ago and the hotel was non-refundable so even though I wasn't much in the mood we had to go. Every drink of cold, clean water I took during 90+ degree days at the theme parks was accompanied by massive guilt that I could have all the water i wanted whil 10 hours to the west people were dying for lack of the very same thing. It's fuuny the odd ways things hit home sometimes. I'm sure it's been psoted somewhere, on PHT probably, but it was great to hear the BoSox were donating a portion of ticket proceeds from the game yesterday to relief efforts. I didn't hear, does anybody know how much tht amounted to?

QUOTE(Kid Gleason @ Sep 6, 2005 -> 09:15 AM) I also never understood how somebody could follow Hunter's ideals and beliefs. Kid and Apu are throwing down after school, I can feel it.

QUOTE(Texsox @ Sep 6, 2005 -> 08:56 AM) I hope this isn't second term, I don't give a rip, setting in. And I don't find it that objectionable telling jokes at a time like this. It's how I cope in similar situations. Too bad he couldn't preface it with and speak in green. It's not the attempt at levity - sorely needed - that's the problem for me. It's how badly it blows up in his face when his true stripes show. This crisis has completely boiled down to the haves and the have nots, those that had the means to get out, and those that didn't, those whose lives are absolutely going to be rebuilt and those whose neighborhoods are at this very moment being reconsidered and are unlikely to even be rebuilt in the New World Order New Orleans. The NYT editorial's comparison this weekend to the Titanic hits home. The first class passengers largely made it into lifeboats and had a hell of a story to tell, while the have nots in steerage did most of the dying. So, knowing that it's come down to the haves and the have nots, and knowing that this is the story that the media is going to continue to run with, the Lott bit should have been seriously scrutinized, better prefaced, or abandoned altogether. I doubt that was his speechwriters, it was more likely him improvising on the spot. And it could have been used very effectively IF the all-in-this-together message was the one that came out of the comments. Instead, the message that came out was, 'don't worry about Trent, he's one of the Haves and even though his house was destroyed he'll have a bigger and better house in no time (I'm sure much quicker than the rest of you).'

FWIW, nominating Roberts for the top spot was in all likelihood the plan all along. O'Connor asked Rehnquist if he was stepping down this year and he said he thought he could make another year, so she announced her retirement this year in an attempt to avoid two simultaneous appointment needs. With Rehnquist's passing it didn't work out that way. O'Connor has commited to staying on until her replacement is appointed, but pointed out how problematic that would be if she heard a lot of cases and then stepped down before decisions were handed down, since her replacement would not have been seated for any of the cases but her opinion would no longer be able to be considered.

QUOTE(Texsox @ Sep 6, 2005 -> 07:17 AM) BTW, I cannot picture Reagan doing nothing for a couple days, and I can't see Clinton not rushing to the area, holding some babies, and proclaiming he "feels our pain". Bush blew a chance to take his approval rating through the roof. I truly believed this would have been his finest hour. Looking tough in the cameras towards the lawlessness, and looking compassionate to the victims, and rallying the volunteers and workers. This played right into his strength. Instead, he jokes about how huge Trent Lott's new Gulf Coast house is going to be and how he's looking forward to sitting on his big porch when it's finished. :headshake Hope nobody's still hholding their breath waiting for the 'bullhorn moment' this time around.

Good to hear. I wish all the stories had happy endings like the missing celebrities so far.

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Sep 6, 2005 -> 08:42 AM) Could some post the coding for the Red Cross link? I want to put it on my blogs.

QUOTE(aboz56 @ Sep 5, 2005 -> 08:22 PM) Farmer is going to be handling the pbp, so I don't see Wills coming back. Better get ready for even more boring golf stories...

QUOTE(aboz56 @ Sep 5, 2005 -> 08:17 PM) He is beyond awful on the TV pregames and postgames and on the radio he really adds nothing. Hell Dolgin carries him on the pre and post. Just say no to Melton! I agree, Melton would be several steps down from Rooney. Unless Wills got and accepted the gig, which I'd doubt very highly if the money they offered Rooney was as much of a joke as has been suggested here, the radio broadcasts next year are going to really suffer.

As a polotical speechwriter Stein's job was spin. And that list is certainly a lot of spin. Agreed that the ball has been dropped on several fronts, not the least of which are the local response efforts. But, from the cutting of the money for the levee reinforcement projects, to the curuious refusals of aid as listed above, to both Brown and Chertof (sp?) admitting they wre ecompletely unaware that as many as 25,000 refugees had been dropped off and essentially abandoned at the convention center, there are plenty of huge federal screw ups that people are rightly being taken to task for. As Presedint, Bush is going to be taken to task for such things regardless of how personally involved in any of the decisions. And I think he's made plenty bad decisions of his own in the last week that will not help his anemic poll numbers at all. Not immediately cutting his vacation to get back to DC before or immediately after landfall was certainly one. underplaying the degree of catastrophy involved and never missing a chance to pimp the GWoT even as hell is eruptimg around him was bad form. Taking more than a day longer to get back to DC to tend to relief oversight and signing off on emergency Congressional legislation for Katrina relief than he did when the issue was Terri Schiavo certainly doesn't look good either. Stein's also quite incorrect in his climate change comments, but I think that's tangential at the moment. Three landmark papers were just simultaneously published in Science last week that pretty much destroy the tenuous 'surface temps are changing but atmeospheric temps are not' mantra that the climate change naysayers have been repeating the last few years. Even Roy Spencer, the principal investigator whose MSU and AMSU troposphere temperature data set analyses have been the best scientific support for the naysayers has come out and stated that his conclusions were incorrect. Long story short, there was a drift in the recording times off of the NOAA polar sattelites that carry Spencer's sensors such that temperature readings that were supposed to be taken in teh early afternoon were actually being taken at night, but Spencer didn't know about the issue. And surprise surprise, in his original conclusions he didn't see any warming of the upper atmoshere, and may even have seen some cooling. In related news, my weather guy said it was going to be a hundred degrees out but hes full of s*** because I just went out and it's not even 80. Does it matter that it is 9 o'clock in teh evening? I'd say, yeah it does. Of course, "smart" people like Ben Stein are going to keep chanting the mantra, despite the facts.