mothboy88

I am considering going out there this weekend. My wife is not into being cold while rock climbing though. Could you give me some beta on the temperature in the sun? Was the rock cold enough that your fingers were getting numb?

Oh, he could screw it up still. Look at what Dean did...

So if you had to pick one of the candidates to be your belay partner, who would yo go with? Bush is out for me - I am just not convinced he knows his knots and the adavancing of the rope might be hard. Maybe if Cheney was looking over his shoulder... Even still, communication might prove difficult if he is making up words when he gets "flusterated" or something. Dean - the screaming would adle me. Sharpton - couldn't be trusted to focus if someone with a camera walked by. Kucinich - I would have to see how his vegan stamina holds up first. Edwards - reminds me a little too much of Clinton. Might lose focus if young women were around. I guess that leaves Kerry and Clark. I figure anyone who has succeeded in the military like they have would have a good appreciation the technical aspects of belaying and knows how to look out for his fellow man in case a stressful situation occurred.

555.1. Maybe some andro will help me break the record...

Ours was pretty crazy too. I got the impression from the more experienced "caucusers" in my precinct (Ballard, Crown Hill, Broadview area of north Seattle)that this was by far the biggest turnout they'd ever seen. Do you think thats because we are so polarized politically right now or is it more due to the primary being cancelled?

The little girl died after they removed the "head" or whatever we should be calling it. Story on this link Too bad. I feel bad for the parents. That would have been a hell of a decision to make.

Did you go? What did you think of the process? I went to my first on today. I just found out that they would let you go even if you were registered as an independent. I thought the public exchange of ideas was pretty cool. Plus I got to meet a lot of my neighbors. My precinct nominated 1 delegate each for Kerry, Kucinich, and Dean. To bad the one Clark guy couldn't persuade some Deanies and then we could of had a good alliteration.

Also, glucosamine has not been shown to be effective with pain related to alien embyros that are gestating in one's knee.

Regarding inconsistant dosages - My father, who happens to be a MD for what its worth, says that the best brand he knows of for glucosamine is actually the kind that they sell at Costco. Sorry, I can't remember the name. Apparently its imported from Germany where supplements and herbal stuff are supposed to be regulated much like the FDA regulates pharmcueticals in the US. He concurred with your info Slothrop and said the quality control of the domestic stuff is terrible.

Word to that Stonehead. Well said. But I don't think your intellectual dissent has been stifled by a few yahoos telling you they think you are hell bound. I think it would be great if everyone could present an articulate response like you can in a debate about creationism the world would be a better place. But I don't think that is going to happen if we were to uniformly prohibit discussion of creationist attempts at scientific theories like intelligent design. How can someone counter an argument he doesn't understand?

But people do beleive in ghosts, demons, angels, supernatural powers, etc. Wouldn't it be effective to take the approach Carl Sagan did in The Demon Haunted World and confront these concepts through the lense of the scientific method? I agree though, you obviously can't do this early on in a kids education. I wish kids could be trained to be critical reasoners by high school so we didn't limit such discussions to those who are college educated.

To quote the X-Files - "Can't keep a Peacock down."

I am the guilty party: I thought it would be intersting to juxtapose the issue and see of those of us who believed it was a bad idea to ban the mention of evolution also thought it was a good idea to ban mention of creationist theories that are attempting to get a foothold in the scientific world. To get back to the orginal topic - I think attempts to censor words and ideas is pretty spooky in an Orwellian sort of way. And it probably makes the ideas seem more powerful if people are so threatened by them. So by the same standard, I think its fine to discuss creationism in school since it is a very prevalent idea and I hope that kids could be armed with some ability to debate the validity of creationism in a scientific context.

A site with some strong arguments against creationist fossil record critic: Click Here! I don't think I could offer a better critique than they did. So there! What they said... I have never heard anybody but a creationist suggest that we descended from any ape species that exists today. Rather the great apes and us hominids descended from distant simian ancestors and developed our own unique characteristics that worked in our environments. Humans seem to have scored with the whole prefrontal lobe thing. I think that suggesting that that ground hogs haven't developed the ability to kill farmers shows an incredible misunderstanding of evolutionary theory. As far as I know, ground hogs don't seem to going extinct. They seem to have an ability to reproduce and hide that doesn't neccesitate them to develop an intelligence to create a farmer missle defense shield. And of course they couldn't develop dramatically new traits in the eyeblink of the time that modern agriculture has been present in North America. I'll stop talking now because I feel like I've been hooked by a troll.

like your disbelief was totally suspended up until that point? Well, I was pretty convinced it was a documentary. But since Oliver Stone wasn't invovled, I didn't quite take it for historical fact.

OK, so here's my LOTR geek question. What the heck were the trolls doing fighting in the middle of the day? I thought they turned to stone in the sunlight. Maybe they had a high SPF...

I would argue that, since creationism has a strong footing in the market place of ideas, students are better off knowing the tenants of the arguments behind both sides. That way kids can learn to call BS on weak arguments. It could lead to great discussions of what is science and what is philosophy and/or faith. If we make a concrete judgment that only reproducible, observable science should be taught, then we would also be saying that other very important, exciting ideas (E.g., string theory)have no place in the class room. I remember learing about evolution in high school biology and comparing Darwin's theory to Lamarck's acquired traits. I think its pretty useful to compare and contrast the ideas.

OK, so most of us agree that its ludicrous to not teach evolution in school. My question then is do you think the latest permutation of creationism - Intelligent Design - should be given any time in a science class?

Props to Gollum for flashing all those routes. He is a definate proponent of the fast and light school. All he needs is a loincloth. And the precious...

Maybe it all began with seeing Deliverance as a child... And no, I am not a reincarnation of the banned Trask. I submit my ability to refrain from swearing so far as evidence of this. For real though, I am curious to see the evidence that humans are "closer" to pigs than chimps. I am pretty skeptical that is true from a DNA standpoint, which most would consider to be the gold standard of determining biologic affinities. I would just like to see the evidence if Scrambled Legs still has access to where he learned this. I don't believe a pig heart has ever been transplanted successfully into a human. I think some guy in India tried it in the 90s resulting in death for the patient and jail time for the surgeon for violating Indian law. Pig valves that are dead and chemically treated to prevent rejection are transplanted into humans all the time. I don't know why they choose pigs over any other animal - my guess would be that its probably close in size since pigs can have a similar body mass to humans. And pigs must be an awful lot cheaper to raise for valve harvesting than chimps. If I had to have tissue from another animal transplanted into my body, I would prefer to have pig over chimp because I would guess there would be a much smaller chance of an undetected disease making a cross-species jump and attacking my human cells. For similar reasons, Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle won't allow simian feces in their ZooDoo fertilizer because as a precaution against simian to human disease transfers. Scientists are also trying to gentically alter pig organs so they could be transplanted live into humans and fool the immune system so they don't get rejected. But virologists are concerned about the possibility of porcine viruses making the jump to humans. Anyways, sorry for the thread drift of this ramble...

What exactly do you mean whe you say closest? Are you talking about how you organize your refrigerator? Where could I find some more details about the human-pig relationship you are citing?

I agree. I Bush is really straying from his conservative base with his spending and immigration/border policy. But its probably politically brilliant. He is free to pander to moderates now because who else are conservatives going to vote for? LaRouche?

This [article link] seems to indicate that no same party challenge to an incumbent president has ever succeeded in getting the challeger elected. But they have definately succeeded in in helping defeat the incumbent. Or says a political scientist who has developed a 13 point rubric for predicting re-election chances. From the article: I have heard conservative pundits comment that Bush announced his immigration policy immediatly following the deadline for registering to be a Republican challenger in the New Hampshire primary. They were pissed about the "its not amnesty" amnesty for illegal workers and felt he held his cards on the policy until he knew it was too late for a Republican challenger to organize his or herself.

I believe that Ed Kennedy actually ran against his own party's incumbent Carter in the primaries of 1980.

More wussification evidence in this SI link. Discusses how dodge ball and other elimination type games are pretty much gone from current PE curriculums. No more picking teams either. The linked article offers the following predictions for future bans: Tag. Referring to any child as it is demeaning and hurtful. Instead of the child hollering, "You're it!" we recommend, "You're special!" Red Rover. Inappropriate labeling of children as animals. Also, the use of the word red evokes Communist undertones. Sardines. Unfairly leaves one child alone at the end as the loser -- a term psychologists have deemed unacceptable. Hide-and-seek. No child need hide or be sought. The modern child runs free in search of himself. Baseball. Involves wrong-headed notions of stealing, errors and gruesome hit-and-run. Players should always be safe, never out. Hopscotch. Sounds vaguely alcoholic, not to mention demeaning to our friends of Scottish ancestry. Marbles. Winning others' marbles is overly capitalistic. Marco Polo. Mocks the blind. Capture the flag. Mimics war. Kick the can. Unfair to the can. If we let these PC twinkies have their way, we'll be left with: Duck-duck-duck. Teacher spends the entire hour patting each child softly on the head. Upsy down. The entire class takes turns fluffing the gym teacher's pillow before her nap. Swedish baseball. Players are allowed free passage to first, second or third, where they receive a relaxing two-minute massage from opposing players. Smear the mirror. Students take turns using whipped cream to smear parts of their reflection they don't like, e.g., the fat they have accrued from never doing a damn thing in gym class.