StrangeSox

What was that bit about an advanced pre-Egyptian society?

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Jul 21, 2009 -> 12:02 PM) Why would I buy a "smart" car with almost no room in it and some safety questions that gets mileage more or less in the 30's, when I can buy a Prius with much more room and 50 mpg and lower emissions for roughly the same money? Because the Prius is so 2007. I really do not see the appeal of the Smart car. It's not very practical, its not particularly efficient, and it isn't exactly cheap, either.

If they react at all. I hate talking while I'm driving and try to do it as little as possible.

Caught a nice break there. Need to pick up a couple of runs off of that.

Banned Guinness Ad

QUOTE (santo=dorf @ Jul 20, 2009 -> 06:08 PM) Same thing as an astronaut or a firefighter. We raced Russia to the moon and ESPN the ocho sometimes shows fireman games. Are those sports too? Nope, I was just commenting on the physical conditioning required for it. I would contend that motorsports are sports, but its such a vague and poorly defined term that there's not much point in arguing.

Lousy socialism, taking money from the poor and giving to the rich! Oh, wait, I think they got that one backwards...

QUOTE (mr_genius @ Jul 20, 2009 -> 05:12 PM) you could go that direction with 'driving while sleepy' 'driving while mad' 'driving after watching too much NASCAR'. major offenders, such as drunk drivers and idiot texting drivers need to get busted. You should see the roads right outside of Route 66 (where they do the NHRA races). The road is covered in black stripes.

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Jul 20, 2009 -> 11:54 AM) Hmm, I never heard of a Black, Jew, or Mexican eating a small child. You learn something new every day, thanks longshot The propaganda of the time wasn't too far off of that.

QUOTE (LosMediasBlancas @ Jul 20, 2009 -> 11:20 AM) Of course. The question really is does a guy who is lean and in top physical condition have an advantage over a fat slob when it comes to steering and hitting the gas? Steering a race car isn't like steering a Crown Vic, though. The forces coming back through the steering wheel are much, much higher. The inside of a NASCAR car is usually well over 100* and you need to be in good shape not to black out from the g-forces in F1 cars. Rally racers also need to be in good shape for the absolute beating they take. Try karting some time and you'll know how much is can wear on your arms and shoulders. You obviously don't have to be conditioned like an Olympic sprinter, but to be a good driver you have to be in good shape or you'll be completely worn out by the end of the race and very prone to making mental mistakes. Think of how many overweight NASCAR or F1 drivers there are.

You need to be in pretty good shape to drive a race car (competitively).

Wendy's.

QUOTE (southsideirish71 @ Jul 17, 2009 -> 04:36 PM) I can agree that the demonization of MS is a bit too much. But your take on the disasters and expense of using Unix or Nix like systems is a bit shall we say overstated. There are no networking or communications hurdles with using Unix. Hell TCP/IP has been running on Unix for a hell of a lot longer than Windows has been around. Fair enough. I'll freely admit that I don't really know what I'm talking about.

Plenty of people b**** and moan about MS software, and maybe rightly so, but could you imagine what a disaster (or ridiculously more expensive) software would be if it had to be ported to 20 different proprietary versions of Unix along with all of the hardware/ networking/ communications hurdles with non-standardized operating platforms?

QUOTE (kapkomet @ Jul 17, 2009 -> 11:16 AM) A lot of these so-called profits this go round on the banks is due to the relaxation of mark to market accounting rules. I knew the banks would show a pretty healthy profit, if not for this reason alone. So, in other words, its nothing but vapor. Why was the M2M the cause of all this again? Because banks couldn't make up arbitrary values for their holdings?

QUOTE (bmags @ Jul 17, 2009 -> 09:00 AM) Studying for the midterm, the pace of summer classes is absurd. Annoying enough, I thought with the limited amount of hours (2/dayx5/weekx4) would lead to us to jumping right in and covering really intensely the revolution. But, the professor lets us know every ten minutes that he attended Cambridge, is incredibly long-winded, actually uses penultimate and antepenultimate...ugh, and spent the first week going through an overview of all of Russian history. I'm taking a summer online course. My midterm is next week and my final project is due a week later. Agreed 100%. And its not just in history.

QUOTE (SHIPPS @ Jul 17, 2009 -> 08:11 AM) Note to shipps...do not ever again take LSD going north when Elton John is having a f***ing concert at Wrigley. Do not attempt to take LSD from the Sox park to get to the Metro only to arrive right when the Police concert at Wrigley is letting out. Hooray for taking 2 hours to park.

It sells well, I guess.

Is Glenn Beck always that crazy?

QUOTE (jasonxctf @ Jul 15, 2009 -> 03:21 PM) here's another unpopular opinion... Lindsay Lohan is hot. Mean Girls era absolutely, now not so much.

I think we all tend to be pretty rational and agreeable people here, but I think hard-line fundamentalist religious beliefs are more dominant. There's a lot of people out there who know that they have the right answers and know that you're wrong.

QUOTE (ChiSox_Sonix @ Jul 15, 2009 -> 02:47 PM) Oh yeah, definitely. Someone is right* and everyone else is wrong. It's impossible to know. Hell, maybe everyone is wrong. I guess it boils down to I believe more in me being right than someone else being right, which doesnt mean I'm not wrong. Who knows, maybe i'll come back as a snail. Being an agnostic myself, I have no qualms at all with that and I wouldn't call you weak-minded for holding those beliefs. *edit: except for that part. It's possible (likely?) that we're all wrong.

It's just Pascal's Wager restated. The primary problem with the argument is that it assumes a binary state -- believe or not -- when it reality there's infinitely many belief choices. Who's to say that god wouldn't punish someone who believed in a false idol more than someone who didn't believe in any religion? I don't particularly care for Dawkins' theological writings, but I think he summed it up fairly nicely: "We are all atheists about most of the gods humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further."

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Jul 15, 2009 -> 02:17 PM) Turtles, all the way down. Best response ever to any prime mover argument.

QUOTE (kapkomet @ Jul 15, 2009 -> 02:17 PM) After all, we're all just a clusterf*** of cells running around that evolved from a cesspool of rocks. Ameobas I'm sure came from rocks. Or something. Besides that, we sure do have a lot of free will from evolving from amoebas, don't we? Proving or disproving the exisitance of God is something that can't be done from a scientific viewpoint, so I wish people would stop trying to view it from that prism. You either have faith that there's a God or you don't. It's your choice. I don't condemn people for thinking one way or the other, but just hope you're not on the wrong side of it the day you die. You can't prove or disprove a supernatural entity working from methodological naturalism, as science does. You can, however, falsify or support various ideas such as special creation or common descent with modification. When claims of the supernatural reach into the physical realm (evolution, abiogenesis, a 6k year earth), they can be tested scientifically. To keep with the spirit of the thread, I think all forms of pseudo-science such as ID should be kept as far away from the science classroom as possible. It's religion re-branded to get around Supreme Court decisions and nothing more.