FlaSoxxJim

Ramelle is the name of the town the final battle takes place in. The name of the river the town sits on is Merderet. LEARN TO GOOGLE, DUDE!!!

QUOTE(TheBigHurt35 @ May 19, 2005 -> 04:11 PM) Stem cell research is only part of it... I went to a seminar a couple weeks given by Peter Schultz at Scripps/Novartis, who is doing a lot of biotech work. He's done some very interesting work using these certain types of cells that can be "transformed" into other types of cells (can't remember what they're called). Anyway, he's actually found ways to re-grow large sections of severely-damaged or completely-destroyed tissue in rats. In one experiment, he took a hole-puncher to a rat's ear and, with his therapy, the gaping hole in the ear was completely gone within a few weeks. Freaking incredible... Schultz is hardcore, and somebody who really likes to play with the genomic and proteomic Tonka Toys for sure. In addition to that totipotence work, he was a combi-chem pioneer (nevermind for a moment that you and I both know that so far the combinatorial libraries of Big Pharma have yielded squat so far). In answer to his own musing question, "What would life look like if God had worked on the seventh day?", his Novartis Genomics Institute is cooking up bacteria with six nucleotides instead of four and capable of coding for 25 different amino acids instead of the boring old 20 the rest of organic life is stuck with... Wierd Science indeed

QUOTE(ChiSoxyGirl @ May 19, 2005 -> 04:01 PM) Is the Catholic church against fertility treatments? I can't remember (since I'm not Catholic) the Vatican position.... Anyway, Congrats to S. Korea! I, honestly and truly, look forward to all of the exciting medical break throughs that stem cell research will give us..... The Catholic Church officially asserts that all conception and procreation ought to occur as the result of marital sexual intercourse. That said, here's the introductory line of scholarly and less absolute Catholic thought on the subject from a very good review at American Catholic: http://www.americancatholic.org/Messenger/...97/feature1.asp Lots of divergent opinions from various Church figures follow in the complete piece.

QUOTE(TheBigHurt35 @ May 19, 2005 -> 03:42 PM) I disagree with those who oppose embryonic stem cell research. As long as embryos aren't created specifically for this research, I see no problem with using them for scientific work (it's better than destroying them). Agreed on using surplus embryos for clinics to further the research. I personally do not find the Korean cloning approach morally intractable either, but I'll grant that is a more heated debate. If we are to accept the opponents' assertion that sacrificing surplus embryos from a fertility clinic is essentially murder, then how do they deflect the counter assertion that leaving the embryos frozen on a shelf is essentially an undeserved lifetime prison sentence? That being the case, they should be railing against fertility clinics. Instead infertile holy rollers keep lining up to get a fistfull of eggs artificially implanted (which, curiously seems to fly directly in the face of God's will which was apparently for these people not to have kids) and doom another fistfull to eternity in the freezer.

QUOTE(RockRaines @ May 19, 2005 -> 09:43 AM) Its all about the votes folks, and 1 billion Japanese can really click those mice. Well... somewhat less that 1 billion. According to the last complete census from 2000, the population of Japan was only 126,930,000. Annual growth was tagged at 0.2%, so the projected 2005 population according to my napkin-back math is only 128,199,300. QUOTE(Leonard Zelig @ May 19, 2005 -> 09:45 AM) That's one crowded island. Actually it is four large crowded islands accounting for 95% of the land area, and some 6,850 smaller islands making up the rest. [/me = dick] Sorry... I don't know what it is but I seem to be in full-on smartass mode today. I think I'm antsy with the off day and the series starting tomorrow.

Congratulations, South Korea, on so quickly leaving us in the dust. http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory?id=772272 Honestly, does anybody think that the high and mighty opponents of embryonic stem cell research would opt against availing themselves of any of the future biomedical therapies that emerge from this work on moral grounds if it means life or death for them or their loved ones? After all, we saw how fast Nancy Reagan became an advocate once enlightened self interest took hold.

QUOTE(T R U @ May 19, 2005 -> 01:32 PM) So did anyone else see it last night or what?? IMO it was by far the best one they made, it was f***in awesome I need to see it a few more times to start to get some perspective but here are my thoughts at the moment. Sith is monumentally better than Eps I and II. And while it can't redeem the cinematic failings of I and II, Sith deftly tied together all the disparate story lines that those first flawed (OK, Very Flawed) gems put into motion. I think the reality is that Lucas became better at weaving elaborate, multi-layered storylines with the prequels, even as he demonstrated how as a director he had forsaken the human element in favor of CG everything. If anything, the storylines from Menace and Clones were too complex to be the basis of a perfect cinematic experience, unlike the very linear presentations of Hope, Empire, and Jedi. As books (not necessarily the film novelizations) I think the 3 prequels would blow the original trilogy away in terms of the depth of plot development. On film, though, it was too much for the casual fan (Sith notwithstanding). Sith is unbelievably gripping, and certainly surpassed my expectations. Someone earlier asked if it was OK for the kiddies and the answer is resoundingly no. My -7 and 5-year olds have recently become Star wars fanatics and have now seen the other 5 films. I probably pushed it with Empire, but they watched it in installments to diffuse some of the attention. Sith is easily 10x darker than Empire, and my kids are mad at me because I told them it would probably be a couple more years before they could see it. But no blame on Lucas. The film had to be that grim to get us from the 'Yippee!' happy podracing slave kid in Clones to the Galactic Bad Mutha from A New Hope. You're not going to get from A to B by singing Kumbaya with in the trees with the Ewoks. On the downside, what was still mostly missing was the attention to the human element and the witty wisecracking dialog that the Trilogy (especially Hope) was built on. That the most memorable lines from Sith are memorable because they recycle (or is it precycle?) some of the best lines from the other films tells you that Lucas just doesn't care if his dialog is cardboard-flat just as long as it gets the job done and advances the story. I fully appreciate that it is hard to get actors to put on career performances against blue screens with off-camera dialog and character stand-ins as the basic reference points. But, hell, this is the guy that gave us American Graffit. That was nothing but the human character portrayal.

QUOTE(YASNY @ May 19, 2005 -> 12:44 PM) Deservedly so. >>> And yes, that is actual whale s***.

QUOTE(doUrememberwhen @ May 17, 2005 -> 11:14 PM) I'd rather not not have him track me down to shove his foot up my ass when I vent about his stupidity. Then we'd have to ban Ozzie for a personal attack...

QUOTE(kapkomet @ May 19, 2005 -> 12:40 PM) Well, I'm from there - but a good one to PM is Sox4LifeinPA because he went to A & M. And as I recall he pretty much hated it, though that may have had more to do with the distance between him and Mrs4Life.

QUOTE(Soxnbears01 @ May 19, 2005 -> 12:30 PM) it's called limewire my friend. I thought you said it was called "The Closer"...

QUOTE(TheBigHurt35 @ May 19, 2005 -> 11:57 AM) I stand by my assertion that arresting Christians (you think they'll get due process in Saudi Arabia?) for spreading the gospel, something that most Americans find absolutely revolting, is a hell of a lot more newsworthy to Americans than someone flushing pages of a religious text down the toilet. And here I was beginning to think it was just me who found spreading the Gospel absolutely revolting.

QUOTE(The Critic @ May 19, 2005 -> 11:41 AM) Oh, PLEASE, you just TOTALLY made that s*** up...... It's really interesting to note that the poll on the site with that Bonds story has most respondents now thinking he's done: I admit that 'never' was my gut reaction to the question as well. But if it is at all possible that he can come back for maybe two more seasons would his ego let him take a pass when he's so close to passing Hank?

This is somewhat unsettling. http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Healthology/story?id=765240

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ May 19, 2005 -> 08:08 AM) OK, so I have a question. Theoretically, would long periods of steroids reduce the bodies ability to fight infections? I know that the kidneys and liver can be taxed by steroids, and often times ex-users suffer shutdowns of those organs, right? And the ability to fight off this stuff is a function of the kidneys and liver somewhat, right? Sorry if I am off here, but my biology knowledge is lacking here... Uhm, let's see... where can we find a biologist around here....? Uhm... wait, oh yeah, how about... ME!?! [Not that I feel slighted, of course...] SouthSider, I think you're actually asking a backwards version of the question, and this is possibly being borne out in the woefully small sample (n=2 = useless for all but idle speculation, but what the hell) of the currently infected Barry and Sammy. Some good research dating back a good 15 years, actually suggested a possible up-modulation in immune response in athletes taking anabolic steroids versus an unjuiced control group. The issue with the putative 'Roid Boyz right now (and here comes the idle speculation) is that being off of steroids now after presumably many years of use has severely compromised immune systems that had been artificially revved up by the anabolic steroids. The abstract of the paper that came to mind can be found here on PubMed. My interpretation follows. Your wife can help you translate the bio-babble, but the interesting part is that the steroid users in that study had significantly higher ability to proliferate B lymphocytes (the cells putting out antibodies in a cellular immune response) in response to exposure to SAC, which is a strain of (dum dum dumm!!) Staphylococcus. Juicers also had enhanced NK cell activity, but that would correspond to enhanced ability of these cells to seek and destroy cancerous cells or those infected by viruses. While not directly playing a role in fighting a staph infection, if NK effectiveness is compromised and the immune system is therefore overtaxed and stressed, it can certainly open up a person to a secondary bacterial infection like staph. A finding that seemed at first unusual to me (with rudimentary working knowledge of immunology but no expertise by any stretch) was the elevated immunoglobulin (=antibodies) levels in the unjuiced control group. In thinking about it though, that seems to make good sense as these circulating antibodies would be indicative of ongoing low grade cell-specific infections that a substantial portion of the control group is currently fighting. In contrast, the juicers don't have a lot of circulating antibodies because they are currently not fighting infection. If they became infected, their T cell-modulated scaling up of B cell numbers would be expected to be rapid and the infection quickly brought under control. The response would, of course rely on antibody proliferation, so if the juicers were sampled at the time of an incipient infection the immunoglobulin numbers would be extremely high. I'm not up on the follow-on research, but it's easily searchable on PubMed if you are interested. I encourage Soxy and Hurt and any other bio-geek types to offer their own assenting/dissenting interpretations of the research and add anything else they have. Also bear in mind something that has already been posted by Benchwarmerjim (pleased to meet you, btw), and that is that staph infections are becoming more tenacious and harder to fight with antibiotics, presumably yet another indication that our years and years of antibiotic overuse as a prophylaxis was a very bad idea and we've inadvertently selected for lots of superbugs. So, add that knowledge to the preceding for perhaps a clearer picture of the 'insult-to-injury' scenario being seen now.

Have a Giant-sized Japanese Monster of a Birthday, Kid!

QUOTE(Steff @ May 19, 2005 -> 08:14 AM) Maybe next he can work on that troll and idiot checker.. Weed out the idiots?!? It would be a virtual ghost town. [/imagines the digital tumbleweeds rolling through...]

QUOTE(LowerCaseRepublican @ May 19, 2005 -> 12:16 AM) Didn't see a thread for it so I thought I'd post it. Here's to the best damn Riddler ever...Jim Carrey had nothing on Gorshin. RIP. Hell, even John Astin was better than Jim Carey. But Gorshin was the man. If you ever get a chance, check out his stand-up/impression sets from back in the early 60s. The set he did on the Sullivan show the night of the first Beatles performance is brilliant.

QUOTE(Cy Garland @ May 18, 2005 -> 10:30 PM) And i went back to the video and fast forwarded and realized they re did the entire party scene with different music and a different order of showing things. That's one of the many things that bug me about the Jedi Special edetion version. The other big change in there is the completely different song the Sy Snootles band plays at Jabba's palace and the replacement of the muppets with CG characters. Just got back from Sith. Easily the best of the prequels by a longshot. Hard to get everything they had to into this one but Lucas did an admirable job. At times Hatden Christensen even seemed believable in the role, unlike his craptacularly stiff performance in Clones.

QUOTE(LowerCaseRepublican @ May 18, 2005 -> 10:01 PM) Jim, I expected better from you than not liking the cut of his jib by giving him a jab on his job. Ach, as soon as Kap gets that spellchecker built into the site we'll be living large and spelling error free.

QUOTE(TheBigHurt35 @ May 18, 2005 -> 02:22 PM) And speaking of hypocrisy... The U.S. shouldn't be concerned with the comments of corrupt dictator like Fidel Castro and will certainly not extradite Posada to Cuba. But they have no business harboring him here, either. My guess is that they extradite him to Venezuela. I'm not suggesting Castro has a good track record on much of anything (other than environmental protection at which he has been quite good). I'm in agreement that we're in a tricky spot because we can't harbor him and still give the 'either with us or against us' pap that we have for the last 4 years. And, yes, many thanks for correcting the typo Hurt. I'll sleep better knowing you're on the job. :rolly

I have tickets for the 12:01 show tonight. Not in the DLP theater sadly, but a nice large-screen stadium theater.

QUOTE(TheBlackSox8 @ May 18, 2005 -> 12:19 PM) we don't need pictures that big...just give a link...damn I don't think it's the pictures that are big...

QUOTE(kapkomet @ May 18, 2005 -> 01:39 PM) Now we really have done it. So that will piss the muslims off FOR REAL this time. Only if they're big Michael Moore fans. ..

I think it should open a big can of wormsfor the Administration since as we have all been told, a nation that harbors terrorists is as bad as the terrorists themselves. I say 'should' because in reality it won't officially phase the Administration, just like none of their hypocrasy ever phases them. I heard on the radio this morning that the guy was actually preparing to leave and earlier offered to leave so he would not put the US in a compromized position. It will be interesting to see what we do with him now.