Jenksismyhero

This is pretty interesting... http://www.spotcrime.com/il/chicago

QUOTE (Leonard Zelig @ May 21, 2008 -> 06:34 AM) I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the Shawnee National Forest in southern Illinois. It is very nice and about 5-6 hours from Chicago. I've done Garden of the Gods (very cool) and Cave-In-Rock (over in 5 min). Garden of the Gods was really pretty out on the bluffs in Aug-Sept when the leaves are changing. Problem is there are so many scary people down there. You feel like you warped into another world. Not judgin, just sayin!

Ok sweet, I'm gonna put a couple of these places on the list. My GF actually grew up in Spring Valley, which is about 10 seconds from Starved Rock and Mattheson (sp?). We've hiked those a number of times. Basically I'm an outdoorsey guy (grew up in the country down by Champaign) that used to go on camping trips all the time with my family and a few trips to Colorado and the Appalachian region with friends during college, but never really went out on his own. Someone else always had the tent, the tools, etc and I just stuck along for the ride. I bought a tent last week and decided I'm gonna go hardcore with it because I love to get out there (and I learned that after 4 years in the city, I miss open space and green things called trees). I def want to get up to the boundary waters some day, but I doubt my gf would be into that. While I think I could definitely handle that kind of trip, I think she's had enough hiking/being unclean after one weekend. I've also tried to set up a trip with friends to go to Isle Royal. That place looks awesome.

So my GF and I decided this spring to become more out-doorsey and see this beautiful land we call the Midwest. I just "booked" a camping/hiking trip to Turkey Run in a couple of weeks and am looking for some input from anyone out there that's a big camper/hiker. My goal is to go camping at least one weekend out of every month so long as the weather is bearable. There's only a few stipulations: 1. the destination is within 3-6 hours of Chicago (so that we can leave on a Friday mid-day and get there in time to set up camp for the night) 2. we have a dog and she loves the outdoors so if possible the park needs to allow pets 3. we like to wind down by the fire with some brewskies, so alcohol must be permitted as well I've heard that North Kettle Moraine in Wisconsin has some good trails. Anyone have any suggestions?Any other place to go with cool trails?

QUOTE (knightni @ May 11, 2008 -> 10:43 AM) Hanging out with Roman builds trust and he'll sell you stuff cheaper. The Michele banging is just entertainment, I believe. Supposedly the more friends/girlfriends you make the easier the game plays because they give you benefits. For example, you can meet a woman that works as a Public Defender and she can take heat off you if you call her. Roman can give you a free car service. That's all I know of now. I'd imagine there are more later. Anyone beaten the game yet? I think after like 20 hours I'm only 40% complete.

I've never messed with the Garmin gps units for cars, but I've owned two for my boat. I can't imagine they'd be any different, except for the pre-loaded maps. I've been very satisfied with Garmin, very user-friendly little machines.

I'm think it all depends. If you have s***ty parents who don't spend any time raising you, then yeah, I could buy the argument that a video game/tv can alter your reality to the point that you may think certain things are normal or acceptable when they are not. However, if you have decent parents who spend the time necessary to teach kids right/wrong, normal/not normal, acceptable/not acceptable, then it shouldn't be an issue. That said, it's still a matter of degree. I mean I don't see how a child could play GTA IV and think those types of actions are normal and acceptable. Something like the use of cuss words on the other hand, where the rightness/wrongness factor is a little more vague, meh, I could see that rubbing off on kids.

So for those with GTA IV, what are you supposed to spend money on? I'm about 40% through the game and have over 400K. Seems to me it's sort of worthless to have so much money with nothing to spend it on. Also, do you ever get to invite anyone to your crib? I've got a sweet penthouse on the northside of the middle island (Algonquin maybe?) but it too feels useless without the ability to get people to come over, especially with the hot tub outside.

Meh, I wasn't thrilled with the wheel. You don't get a good feel for when the kart will start drifting. To each his own.

QUOTE (almagest @ May 1, 2008 -> 10:52 AM) Damn right. Tossing the wheel in for free with the game was a great move by Nintendo. You can't snake as well with it as you can with a Gamecube controller, but it's an incredibly fun way to play. Reminds me a little of the Mario Kart arcade game. I liked the wheel, but you guys should try the nunchuck and remote set up. I find that to be the most "accurate" way of steering/handling. Also, even though I wasn't going to buy it, my gf ended up bringing home GTA IV yesterday because she thought I'd like it (awesome gf right?). Anyways, so I have the 60 gb ps3 and for the 2-3 hours I played it last night it worked without any problems. So far I'd give it an 8-8.5. The graphics still blow (but are excusable given the size of the game), the storyline is much, much better than previous games, and I really like the new lock-on feature with the combat system. But in the end it's still the same game. Get mission. Drive. Complete mission. Drive. Get next mission. I did score pretty quickly with some chick Michelle though, that was kinda funny. I haven't gotten the chance to check out the multiplayer. For some reason it wouldn't connect. I wonder if the servers are still down.

QUOTE (Texsox @ Apr 28, 2008 -> 05:45 PM) It's not an extra requirement? OK b****, then why are they passing a new law? I meant it's not an inconvenience.

QUOTE (Texsox @ Apr 28, 2008 -> 04:17 PM) Because it is an extra step. Something more they have to do. Maybe punishment is too harsh a term, inconvenienced? Anytime we enact requirements like this, basically we ask innocent people to prove they are not criminals. Pet peeve of mine. Stores that check my bags as I am leaving, pay first anything, etc. What? No it's not. It's a hey, you registered to vote at this place so I want to make sure you are who you say you are before you vote. Why take the extra step in forcing someone to register before you can vote? That's just as much of a pain and inconvenience but we still have to do it. It's a pain in the ass to go to the DMV, but we still have to do it. Being lazy is not agood excuse. If you can't afford a free ID, I think you have bigger problems than whether you can vote.

I think im in the minority here, but i just dont understand the draw. I've owned the previous three versions and I always got tired of it after about 1/4 of the way through the game. I'd imagine i'll get it eventually, but i'm certainly not gonna rush out at 12 tues to pick it up. Mario Kart Wii is solid, as to be expected. I really like the online play. Now if only we can get Goldeneye and Mario Tennis on the Virtual Console, my Wii experience would be complete.

mendenhall > stewart > jones. I'm shocked mendenhall is still on the board.

This is what it comes to? Also, for those not in the know: from urbandictionary.com "hillrod" - a big f'n hillbilly, with a rusted out pick up truck, full of old tires and farm equipment. Example: "Did you see that hillrod driving next to us with buck teeth?" (no offense to any hillrods on the site)

QUOTE (southsideirish71 @ Apr 21, 2008 -> 05:34 PM) And tell me how is this germane to the FLDS story. Does that church branch into Roman Catholicism on some level that I don't know about. This was just a cheap shot side cart comedy act that Mr. Mahr decided to jump into because the pontiff is visiting America. I don't know what your angle is on this. If you think that the MSM has ignored the catholic priests poking kids, I would say you have had your head in the sand for the last few years. That seems to be a pretty active news story. Its a bit more than the 2 minute news clip you make it out to be. The hiding of these priests has been monstrous, as well as the acts that the priests have committed. They should be excommunicated, and should serve time for their acts. The people who committed the acts, and the ones in power who have hid the truth. I can only hope that they work to clean this up and make the church what is should be, holy and revered. I thought it was a funny (and accurate) quote about where certain priorities lie in this country and it was about the FLDS story. I think it was accetable to post in a general discussion about the topic. I'm not saying Catholics aren't disgusted/outraged/whatever about what certain priests have done, but that sure as hell doesn't equate to raids and mass-sentencing. And I think the fact that you say "should" be excommunicated and "should" serve time is exactly the point he (and I) were trying to make. I remember when all that news first came out the Church essentially demoted the priests or sent them to new areas instead of turning them over to the police so that they could be tried for their crimes.

QUOTE (southsideirish71 @ Apr 19, 2008 -> 10:33 AM) New Rule: Listening to a anti-catholic bigot like Bill Mahr who believes that chickens and dogs should live over people is dumb. "To those people who say, `My father is alive because of animal experimentation,' I say `Yeah, well, good for you. This dog died so your father could live.' Sorry, but I am just not behind that kind of trade off." -Bill Maher, PeTA celebrity spokesman Also bringing the catholics into the FLDS story is akin to Mariotti bringing up the Ligue incident when describing the Cubs throwing crap on their field. My church has problems, and the priests who poke kids should be excommunicated and locked with with the key thrown away, but I am sick and tired of having my religion raked over the coals and brought in as a side cart comedy act when another church is brought up. Please. I'm by no means a huge fan of Mahr. In fact I disagree with 75% of what he says on his show (including his "anyone who is religious is dumb" mantra). But I think he's totally spot on with this. Our society hear's about a strange compound in the woods with 100 people and we all scream bloody murder, there are raids and we get 24/7 news coverage. The pope tells his cardinals that f***ing little boys is wrong but that if they get caught they should be quiet about it so they don't get bad PR and there's a 2 min news clip at 10:28. I'd say there's a funny irony there.

My favorite reaction to this story so far has been from Bill Mahr: "New Rule: Whenever you combine a secretive compound, religion and weirdos in pioneer outfits, there's going to be some child-f*cking going on. In fact, whenever a cult leader sets himself up as "God's infallible wing man" here on earth, lock away the kids. Which is why I'd like to tip off law enforcement to an even larger child-abusing religious cult. Its leader also has a compound. And this guy not only operates outside the bounds of the law, but he used to be a Nazi and he wears funny hats. That's right. The Pope is coming to America this week, and, ladies, he's single! Now, I know what you're thinking: "Bill, you can't be saying that the Catholic Church is no better than this creepy Texas cult! For one thing, altar boys can't even get pregnant. But, really, what tripped up the "little cult on the prairie" was that they only abused hundreds of kids, not thousands all over the world. Cults get raided. Religions get parades. How does the Catholic Church get away with all of their buggery? VOLUME, VOLUME, VOLUME! If you have a few hundred followers and you let some of them molest children, they call you a cult leader. If you have a billion, they call you "Pope." It's like if you can't pay your mortgage, you're a deadbeat, but if you can't pay a million mortgages, you're Bear Stearns, and we bail you out. And that's who the Catholic Church is, the Bear Stearns of organized pedophilia. Too big to fail. When the - when the current Pope was in his previous Vatican job as John Paul's Dick Cheney - he wrote a letter instructing every Catholic bishop to keep the sex abuse of minors secret until the statute of limitations ran out. And that's the Church's attitude: "We're here, we're queer, get used to it." Which is fine. Far be it from me to criticize religion. But, just remember one thing: if the Pope was, instead of a religious figure, merely the CEO of a nationwide chain of daycare centers where thousands of employees had been caught molesting kids and then covering it up, he'd be arrested faster than you can say, "Who wants to touch Mister Wiggle?""

QUOTE (santo=dorf @ Apr 16, 2008 -> 05:42 AM) Science isn't a democratic debate. If taxpayers want social study teachers to teach the world is flat and have math teachers teach 1+2=4, they shouldn't tell the dislikers to go to home school. A more serious example, how about a town filled with Neo-Nazis who don't want history teachers to teach about the Holocaust because they feel it didn't happen. Doing away with public funding education is beyond ridiculous as well. Your comparisons are not comparable in the slightest. I don't think the issue of creation is "settled." At the end of the day we're still talking about theory here, not something you can actually prove (i.e. taking pictures of the earth in space, walking through concentration camps, etc. And math is a man made construct, so...). And I totally disagree with your last statement. If only this country let private schools pop-up like Wal-mart (heavily regulated of course), this country's educational system would sky-rocket instead of being pulled down by inept bureaucracy.

QUOTE (FlaSoxxJim @ Apr 15, 2008 -> 12:30 PM) Yes, the film is certainly going to conflate these very different fields - you can tell that from the ads running for it on Comedy Central. As far as hearing what the main focal figures of the film have to say, keep in mind that three of the four key figures have existing ties to Intelligent Design advocacy groups like Discovery Institute and the International Society for Complexity, Information and Design. So, basically, we should expect the same kind of fringe scientists trotted out to bolster up ID as we saw when Big Tobacco paid some fringe scientists to trot them out and tell us all to smoke up and not worry about cancer and lung disease. And like Michael Moore uses in every one of his films right? Or Al Gore in his? I grant you that this is not going to be a scientific documentary, but it should have as much clout as other documentaries put on the big screen - i.e. viewers are smart enough to realize that they are merely introducing a topic for discussion and obviously have an agenda for doing so, so the discussion will be weighted accordingly. It's up to individuals to take that and go find their own facts and own opinions about it.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Apr 15, 2008 -> 12:11 PM) The problem comes in when people try to push purely philosophical ideas and beliefs into the science realm. Science cannot deal with supernatural events and things like omnipotent creators. We can detect gases and background radiation and hypothesize that there was a Big Bang. We can't collect data on God. As far as I know, science does not try to deal with where the matter came from for the Big Bang or what anything was like before the Big Bang, but I could be wrong. Another problem that anti-evolutionists have is that they often confuse cosmology (formation of the universe) and abiogenesis (formation of life from non-life) with evolution. I'm not sure if this movie does that, but I really can't find much information on their website about the actual content of the film. The Wikipedia page for the film lists a lot of controversy. There's also this site run by the National Center for Science Education. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expelled:_No_...ligence_Allowed http://www.expelledexposed.com/ From what I can tell from the trailer and website, this is exactly his point. Scientists lecture about everything that happened after X point in time, but they have no explanation for what happened prior to that.

Well I doubt I'll be going to theaters to watch it, but if he gets a good discussion in the country going I say good for him. I have no issue with evolutionary theory, nor do I have an issue with there being a creator. I don't see how both ideas can't mix. As I tell my athiests friends all the time, you believe that gases just existed there in space and eventually formed together and blew up and millions of years later we came into existence. I believe (at least right now) that a higher being put those gases there. Both of us have a huge leap of faith in believing in something that can never be proven. I don't see why one side is so much more obviously right than the other, which is what our educational instutitutions seem to suggest. That's what I got from the trailer of this movie, and if that's the case then i'd be interested in who he talks to and what they have to say.

http://www.expelledthemovie.com/home.php Anyone see the trailers for this? As someone who's sorta is down the middle with this topic, I think I'll check it out.

I'm no expert in the matter, but why invest in fiber optics when the future is going to be wireless? Also, this is another reason I'm a happy RCN customer.

The greatest leader ever, Abraham Lincoln, November 19, 1863 (FYI if anyone is interested, I just finished a fascinating book on him. Check out Team of Rivals by Doris Goodwin)