FlaSoxxJim

But 6 million of them are SS2K...

I assume since the anhilation of any nation would involve tremendous loss og human life that Apu would be horrified by the prospect. It's hyperbole to the point of rediculousness to suggest anyone advocates the anhilation of any people, don't you agree?

OK, so be it. But at the heart of this are serious questions. Number One Apostle Peter says “Always be ready to give an answer when someone asks you about your hope. Give a kind and respectful answer and keep your conscience clear.” So here are the questions and maybe you’ll respond. Your dedication to “the Great Commission” (Go ye therefore, and teach all nations – Matt, right?) is part and parcel to the Evangelical Christianity I believe from reading your posts you ascribe to (again, I have learned not to presume anything of your faith, but that’s all the more reason to not exit the conversation prematurely). Do I have it essentially correct that you consider yourself an Evangelical Christian? Were you born as a child into this specific flavor of Christianity, or is was it a born-again arrival to where you are currently at? Is being born-again an essential step toward salvation in your estimation? A lot of Evangelicals dismiss Catholicism and several other denominations as being cults that are something less than truly Christian. I suspect that the extra-Biblical nature of the Catholic teachings on the Saints I alluded to is off-putting to you (whereas it’s just kind of harmlessly silly to a lot of Catholics). But, what is your take on Catholics and their chance at salvation? Do they in general make the cut without born-againing? Unitarinians, Mormans, Jehova’s Witnesses, etc., are all rather disdainfully viewed by a lot of Evangelicals. Do you dismiss these? I wholeheartedly agreed with George Carlin all those years ago when he equated religion to using lifts in your shoes. “Use them for a while if you need them but don’t allow yourself to be crippled by them. And for God’s sake, don’t go nailing lifts on the feet of the natives.” Which is to say I really dislike the missionary aspects of Evangelical Christianity. I fear you and I are likely further apart on this point than on any other. I think Jesus could have considered those words on the Mount a little more carefully and just said, go teach those nations that come around looking for it but please leave everyone else alone, they’ll be fine. Rebut, please. Peace

Of course it's asinine and that's why green was in order; You, Sir, are no Saint Caoimhghin. And salvation is not the issue at the moment, Christianity is. By your definition, the Hermit Saints were not Christians while living in solitude. I actually think there is not a better public profession of faith than picking up and leaving the community you grew up in for a life of solitude and prayer in teh mountains or in a desert or on a rock outcrop in the ocean. I doubly like this approach because the singular professional act is made and then these Christians went about their business and kept it between themselves and God. Many of them did minister to pilgrims who travelled to see them, but other than that if these guys ever felt the urge to lapse into rabid evangelism, it was fortunately only the trees and moss that had to put up with it.

I know! I know! Poltergeist, right?! "Walk into the light..." That little old lady creeped me out. Also, wash your hands after you go to the bathroom and try not to play with yourself so much. Sooo many rules...

So, by decree, you negate the Christianity of Saint Anthony the Abbot, Saint Giles of Nimes, my favorite Saint Caoimhghin (Kevin) of Glendalough, and any others I don't know because they lived a significant portion of their spiritual lives as Hermits? I spent a day at Glendalough in the Wicklow Mountains about 10 years ago in ireland. Amazing. His cave and stone bed, beehive huts, a hand-built one-man (hey, he was a hermit) church. But because he felt solitude was the best way for him to know God (i.e., no church, no community), he wasn't Christian? 'Kay. Seems pretty committed to God to me. As a recovering Catholic, I got a lot more of the later Day 'Saint of the Day' kind of religious history than you did as a kid. I can tell you how far Saint Dennis walked AFTER his head was cut off to get to his final resting place. I can tell you that Saint George could Sooo kick a dragon's ass... Good stuff. But I always liked the Mystics and the acetics, they were commited. Congratulations on being a better Christian than them. (That should be in green, natch.)

I'm just pissed Mick Hucknall only placed 9th in the poll. By the way, who the f*** is Mick Hucknall??

OK. s***, 5 runs is a lot harder to muster than 1, why call it a 1-run game? I feel like we're getting rooked by the statskeepers now.

Thank you. I had never considered going to a Seventh-day Adventist teen magazine to get the truth concerning the hard-hitting stories of the day. Now I shall make sure to keep that one on the list of things that should never be considered.

I hear he kicks puppies too!

You can't count today as a 1-run game can you? We had a 5 run 9th. Then again, math was never my strongsuit...

Yessirree, the bullpen redeamed themselves after the implosion yesterday. Sadly though, it was more of the same from our starters. Esteban's gonna turn that around.

Sadly, it didn't last long. :headshake

Cool post, Steff. You're getting kind of nerdy aren't you? That's ok, you're in good company. This is probably it in a nutshell: Although the faster maturation isn't by itself to give separate species status to Neandertals, rapid onset of maturity is very quickly selected for in populations that experience heavy environmental-based mortality. The strategy is to grow up and contribute your offspring to the population (thus perpetuating your gene line which is what it comes down to in the fitness game) before you are killed in the harsh environment. The manifestation of rapid onset to maturity can happen in the span of a few generations too, it need not be a long-term evolutionary thing. Fisheries biologists have used a faster than expected onset of maturity in fish stocks as a good indicator of overharvest, again because only those individuals that output young early in life before being caught) are successful. if rapid maturation is controlled by heritable genes, each successive generation will exhibit a faster onset maturity. Sorry. I take it back, you're not nearly as nerdy as some of us.

No on a tele body, PA. I can't entirely make out the upper horn, so it might connect high to the neck rather than being cut away strat style, but I don't think so. More telling is the curve on the boddom of the body – that contour is assymetrical like strat/jag/mustang and mot the heavy symmetry of a tele. Also, the volume and tone knobs are angled here, again ala' strat/jag/mustang, whereas the tele knobs are straight up and down. I guess the body could have been rerouted to accomodate the customizations bnut I don't see why anyone would bother. Hey, have I made you jealous before by telling you MY tele is signed by Stevie Ray Vaughan? You may commence drooling now. Ah, we have injected some meaning into this thread, have we not?

WOW!!! Sox Friggin WIN!! WOW!!! Sox Friggin WIN!! WOW!!! Sox Friggin WIN!!

Looks like a custom job on a Jag-Stang to me, not a strat. Bridge hardware is wrong for a strat and the top horn looks like it has that weird Mustang/Jag angle to it. Also note the flat plug jack, not the trademark angled jack of the strat. Two double coil pickups are odd on a Mustang/Jag or any of the Jag-Stangs I've seen, but would be substantially odder on a strat. Maybe it's a modified Mustang, but not a Jaguar, because there's no pickup selectors up near the top horn.

crap, Bible quotes. OK, I'm out.

OK then, I'd better get to work on that millions of dollers thing...

Yes it is, I've seen it referred to as "Son of Netscape." Any ideas at all on how to get in on it??

Hot Damn! I'm not alone on this.

No I don't, and I posted as such. Reread please. The point of all the preceding evolutionaly discussion is that it didn't 'just happen.' Nothing in evolution, aside from the initial spontaneous mutations that are the source of variation, 'just happens,' and that is the whole point. There's heaps of physical NONLIVING evidence of our phyletic forebears, even if the magic bullet 'missing link' still eludes us. And 95% of all species that have ever existed are now gone - they failed to subsist [sic] on Earth from their day to the present. Some lines evolved into something else, and many others died out. The mere fact that 95% of all species ever are now gone,a nd that phyletic lines have changed over time is a big bite in the ass to any Creationist trying to hold up a notion of a Divinely ordained natural world created in total perfection. Extinction and speciation would not be required or anticipated if perfection existed from the outset. As far as an incomplete fossil record - yep, a very frustrating fact. It's really friggin unlikely that fossilization events will occur subsequent to the death of an organism, so gaps are undesirable but wholly expected. Molecular and genomic techniques are gaining wider use now though, and these gaps are becoming less intractable. Our cells contain plent of 'living fossils' in the coding and non-coding portions of our nuclear DNA, in our non-nuclear ribosomal RNA, in the "junk genes" that are no longer expressed and so continue to mutate and drift in a random but chronologically meaningful manner. My, but these are glorious tools now at our disposal.

Vince is so smart and well-read it scares me – though I some day want to go toe-to-toe with him in a trivia smackdown. As for me, I just transcribe what my 6-year old tells me to say – she's very advanced for her age (and plays a mean 2B on her T-ball team too!).

For that matter, infanticide in primates is a regular occurrence, if the offspring does not belong to the dominant male. Killing another male's offspring will allow the female to come into estrus more rapidly and hopefully sire the offspring of the dominant male. None of this is to say there are moral implications in what the animals do (ditto for the hamsters of course). The same actions that have a perfectly reasonable genetic/fitness based grounding for animals are morally and societally unacceptable for us, as well they should be. As Rosie (Kate Hepburn's character) said in African Queen: "Nature, Mr. Allnot, is what man was put on this Earth to rose above." (Hey, does that count as a Queen reference )

"I knew I shoulda taken that left toin at Albacurque..." Yeah, I get the distinction in that the Big Vengeful of the OT said, OK no more humanity-destroying floods, but never suggested there was not an eternal accountability for the wicked ways of man. In point of fact, I was turning PA's current No God = No real consequences stance back on him but with a secular bent. If the prospect of no Divine Agent/Eternal consequence can lead a faith-oriented person to say, 'well what's the point of acting morally on Earth?', then the prospect of a Divine Agent taking a breather from doling out deluges and whatnot in the physical realm can also be viewed as an existence without "meaningful" negative consequences for the secular-oriented.