StrangeSox

Whine about the reality of the judicial branch f***ing over real people all you want, but it's a hell of a lot better than having BP agreeing to pay out legitimate claims! Also, blackmail typically doesn't involve the person being blackmailed causing tens (hundreds?) of billions of dollars worth of damage. Hope that helps.

QUOTE (Quinarvy @ Jul 12, 2010 -> 03:54 PM) Thome will go in as an Indian. Only way he would have went with the Sox if he was still here and hit 600 and 650 as a Sox player, and even then its a stretch. Or if he got a ring. But yeah, there's no way we goes in with a Sox hat.

QUOTE (Milkman delivers @ Jul 12, 2010 -> 03:32 PM) I never saw it, but the people I know who did have said that it was almost pointless to be in 3D. They said there were very few scenes that utilized it. you don't need crap flying at the screen for a 3D movie. In fact, I hate scenes that are added strictly to throw stuff at the camera.

Don't get me wrong, Dee was a very, very good player that year. But I think he was able to do what he did because of Deron and to a lesser extent Luther. He capitalized on the chances and was a key part of the time, but he wasn't nearly as good without those guys around.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jul 12, 2010 -> 12:37 PM) Probably already been discussed, but thoughts on Burton's Alice In Wonderland? Cool visuals, but otherwise pretty meh IMO. Depp was mediocre at best (was the scottish accent to british accent to no accent at all on purpose?), Hellenah Bonham Carter just screamed the whole time, and the award for most awkward out of place scene in a movie goes to . TOTALLY out of place and weird. From a serious, ominous tone of music to funk tones from the 80's? Just brutal. Made my fiance and I cringe. VERY cool effects throughout though. Generally agree with that, posted similar thoughts back when it came out. We saw it in IMAX 3D, so visually it was a top-notch movie. Mediocre otherwise, but not bad.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jul 12, 2010 -> 11:58 AM) I think it was best player during their college years. Dee Brown was a better college player during his time at Illinois. Deron had the body size and potential. Deron drove that team.

QUOTE (lostfan @ Jul 11, 2010 -> 08:07 PM) Ok so I'm on a business trip to Louisiana, in some small ass town in the middle of nowhere, and I'm on an AT&T network (I'm T-mobile, I don't get charged for roaming though) and all of a sudden like 45 mins ago it disconnects data from me and tells me I'm on an international network and if I want data I have to pay international rates. WTF? Uh no, Louisiana is in the United States. Social statement. Hooray for middle-of-nowhere business trips! I'm leaving for Kansas later today.

QUOTE (SnB @ Jul 12, 2010 -> 09:44 AM) 500 days of summer was fantastic, my type of flick. Very enjoyable movie. Watched Up in the Air last weekend. Pretty good film, though it may have been a little over-praised. Watched Zombieland again this weekend. What an awesome movie.

Because Keith Law is a gigantic douche. Look at other teams with a "weak" schedule over that stretch (which included a couple of first place teams, a bunch of road-series sweeps, and the always-hard LAA for the Sox) and let me know how many went 25-5. Could they fall back down? Could the Twins regroup and take the division? Sure, but you cannot ignore a 25-5 streak unless you're baseball retarded.

QUOTE (PlunketChris @ Jul 11, 2010 -> 02:21 PM) Twins up 5-2.. runners on 2nd and 3rd, no outs. When was the last time we were rooting for the Twins to win?

This offense has just been ridiculous lately. Even during the first half of this great stretch, the offense wasn't this explosive.

Dayan! Keep 'em coming, boys!

JONES! 400!

QUOTE (FlaSoxxJim @ Jul 4, 2010 -> 11:01 AM) I keep buying that lotto ticket and hoping. . . Quite frankly, to most people it seems like too expensive a proposition to have a well-stocked home bar. Slowly stocking up over time, though, it doesn't have to be too bad. Read through some recipes and find just one or two mixed drinks cocktails that use a few different ingredients and just shell out for those. Play around with those recipes and decide if you like the base flavor components as much as you thought yu would. Then maybe once per paycheck treat yourself to another new bottle — find new drinks that you have most of the ingredients for, and lowly add to the war chest that way. In a few months you'll have a respectable little home bar, and you'll probably have explored a couple different base spirits in a bit of detail. Once you have a few different base spirits, liqueurs, syrups and mixers on hand, the CocktailDB website will come in handy. If you decide you like using a certain ingredient you can search this database and find a boatload of other drinks that use that ingredient. Thanks for that link. We have a bar full of mixers but never know what to do with them. I have some Jack Daniels Single Barrel waiting for me tonight. I've also discovered recently that Buffalo Trace whiskey mixes very, very well with some cola.

This streak of awesomeness still hasn't really sunk in for me.

Just keep in mind that it was almost certainly creationism of the anti-evolution type. edit: this maybe? BIOS 442 - Evolution and the Creationist Challenge -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Evolutionary theory and tenets of present-day anti-evolutionists with emphasis on providing students with the skills to articulate the theory of evolution as it applies to the biological sciences. Not a substitute for a formal course in evolutionary theory. Recommended for students pursuing careers in secondary science education. Credits: 3

QUOTE (kapkomet @ Jul 10, 2010 -> 07:56 PM) Strange, there's an echo in here. We're agreeing too much today. This is unsettling.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Jul 10, 2010 -> 07:53 PM) Why is Gavin so good right now compared to earlier in the year? He's masterful. I think that can be said of a good portion of our roster.

QUOTE (lostfan @ Jul 10, 2010 -> 06:39 PM) This is what I was getting at earlier when I made the "faith in God is weak if" comment. Science doesn't have to be a threat to someone's faith. That's why I believe in the possibility of alien life and I don't accept the idea that God made it that way being an argument against. Why would God's ability to create life be limited to just us? When you get to Biblical literalism, god-made-the-world-in-six-days stuff, then science is a threat because that sort of reading of the Bible doesn't stand up to what we know about the way the world works within pretty damn reasonable approximations. Glenn Morton's "Morton's Demon" gives a view inside the mind of a young-earth creationist's mind and how they handle challenges to their faith. Sorry, this stuff is a hobby-horse of mine!

QUOTE (kapkomet @ Jul 10, 2010 -> 06:34 PM) Why does everything have to be scientifically proven to be true? Do you have faith in anything? Or is faith something that is groundless? I don't necessarily mean "creationism" faith, either. You have faith that a car will stop when you walk out into the street as a pedestrian, right? Or is that some science? I don't think I said that anywhere. They come from different epistemological viewpoints and have different objectives, if you want to ascribe an objective to science. Though I am agnostic myself, I don't have a problem with faith or look down on those who have faith in various religions. Well, I guess it depends on exactly what you're referring to w.r.t. creationism. If you're referring to what it typically means in the "Evolution vs. Creationism" debates/ lawsuits, then they are mutually exclusive. That form of creationism actively rejects evolution and common ancestry for life on Earth. It seeks to have religious viewpoints taught as equivalent to decades of scientific research in the science classroom. If you're talking of a much broader version of creationism, then they are not mutually exclusive. I think this is better described as theistic evolution, however, given the baggage that comes with the word "creationism". There are many scientists out there who are still religious but accept modern evolutionary theory. Ascribing the label of creationist to them is inappropriate and would be rejected by the likes of Ken Miller. If you're interested in the ID/creationism vs. evolution debate, I recommend his book Only a Theory. Well, I believe your question has been taken the wrong way because of the baggage of the word "creationism". If you go back through the Dover trial, the trial in the 80's that banned creationism from the classrooms and even back to the Scopes trial, I think you'll see what sort of connotation that word carries. Me too! But there's still a big difference between why evolution is accepted by biologists as a fantastic theory explaining the origins of life and why people have faith in religion. It's a different approach to truths of the world. Many people get the two to coincide very nicely. Two things: I was just today reading an article in Scientific American on what "time" really is or isn't. Interesting ideas but that level of physics is beyond my comprehension. Second, I know you asked Balta, but I thought I'd provide an answer as well. I wouldn't try to argue against your point here. I flip back and forth to it sometimes myself. But, in the end, I chose to believe things based on scientific skepticism. I want evidence or some other logical reason to believe something to be true (there's a loaded word). I don't rule out the possibility of some explanation far beyond our current understanding, but I don't hold faith (anymore) that there is something like that. I'm agnostic because, as you said earlier "I don't know" and so I don't think there's anything wrong or inferior or anything like that with having faith in something like you just described. Where my problem with "faith" comes from is when you get into 6-day-creation Biblical literalism stuff that requires active rejection of known reality, but that isn't anything like what you mean.

QUOTE (lostfan @ Jul 10, 2010 -> 06:33 PM) I'm not an expert by any means but I think the Koran more or less defaults to the other religious texts for anything that happened pre-Mohammed. I know that there are Muslim creationists and young earth creationists for sure. That makes sense because both it and Christianity both derive from the same source, though I don't think there's a lot of creationism in Judaism, ironically.

Either way you approach the question kap posed, the answer is "no". For evolution and creationism as explanations for the diversity of life, no, they do not ultimately go back to the same starting point. I think that's self-evident and won't expand. For the epistemology behind each viewpoint, again, the answer is no. ToE is held as provisionally true because it is the current best explanation we have for the diversity of life. This was initially based on some evidence and a lot of good reasoning when Darwin first wrote Origin of Species; since then, tens of thousands of scientists have researched the issue for over 150 years and have found more and more evidence to support, modify and expand the ToE to what we have today. Noting again that these theories and explanations are held as provisionally true, not absolutely true. On the other hand, creationism arises from a literal reading of the Bible (or Koran and probably other versions of creationism I'm unfamiliar with). It holds that species were specially created and (depending on the flavor of creationism) have only undergone a small amount of evolution, but certainly not speciation or "molecules to man" evolution. These viewpoints are not arrived at through meticulous research over decades--in fact, they are held in direct contradiction of such research. Special creation is held as absolute truth based on faith in a literal reading of creation stories in scripture. The concepts of truth and knowledge are markedly different from the manner in which science is conducted. I think Isaac Asimov's "The Relativity of Wrong" and Carl Sagan's "The Dragon in my Garage" illustrate my point far better than I could. edit: grammar fix.

I still don't understand where this team came from or what they did with the April-May 2010 White Sox. but I love it.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jul 9, 2010 -> 11:54 AM) This is bulls***. Just last week the chicagobreakingnews.com website had 2 stories about OLD black men shooting YOUNG black intruders. I think if anything it's the weak, defenseless old man taking on young criminals in an old school way. THAT's the catch to the story. Read the article. then read Y's first post. That they're illegal brown people was used as justification.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jul 9, 2010 -> 12:18 PM) what? a scientist has "faith" that his/her hypothesis is correct, despite the fact that it could be proven incorrect. Science might be more "factual" than spiritual belief, but at least with some aspects of sciene, it's still believing in something that cannot be proven. Not unless you go about redefining words and bastardizing the word "faith" into something meaningless. You come up with a hypothesis and you test it; you don't just write a pretty argument and assume it's true. And scientists are very much aware of the idea of provisional truths and changing paradigms. No one thinks they've got it all figured out; it's all just working models that approximate reality reasonably well, all subject to replacement by something new or modification by some novel, unexplainable aspect of nature. This is not, in any way, comparable to faith. IMO you weaken the idea of faith by trying to tie it to a methodology like science. Faith isn't about hypothesis testing. edit: This is not "faith", nor does it go back to creationism at the end of it all.