Posted by: Victor at July 19, 2007 03:17 PM (8xTyo)
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Good lord, I got 6 of 10, and I'm technologically & mechanically disinclined. So I could get civilization all the way to the 15th century...good enough for me, they had movable type.
Mookie: Birthday GirlYesterday. I didn't forget, except the posting about it part. Good thing I'm married to a woman with a better memory than I.
We didn't go see her because she's up to her neck in her summer job getting the second show up and running. La Boheme premiers on Saturday, we'll be seeing it in two weeks.
"It's an opera." I'll pass on the body-cavity search.
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Oh,please!Don't even get me started.Catholics have absolutely no room whatsoever to be pointing fingers at other religions.Not only are the majority of Catholic teachings and ideologies not bible related but many are actually rooted in Pegan rituals absorbed by the church in an attempt to stoke the parish numbers.
The list runs the gaumet from limbo to the teaching of "hellfire" and "Christmas".
Benedict should try studying both his scripture and the history of his own religion then perhaps he would then see the conflict of interest.
Oh and BTW,many Baptists don't fare much better.
Posted by: Russ at July 10, 2007 04:43 PM (ix4On)
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As Mark Twain said, I'll take Heaven for the climate and Hell for the conversation.
Posted by: Doug Pratt at July 12, 2007 10:13 AM (LNuIJ)
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BTW,thanks for the hookup to this site.This is very cool.The video galleries are cool especially.Plus,I never thought I would say it(being into lifting weights and all)but those bodybuilders are all too dambed big.Once you're so big that it interferes with your natural movements it defeats the purpose.The idea is to be Conan and not a doorstop.
Remove Head From Ass. Open Mouth. Insert Foot.
Baseball fans know that the San Fransisco Giants stadium is built on the edge of the bay, and that just behind the right field wall is "McCovey Cove", where during any given game many fans float around in kayaks and canoes or anything else that floats. They do this in the hope of catching a home run ball that travels far enough to clear the stadium and plunk into the water.
San Fransisco hosts this year's All-Star Game and it has been announced that motorized watercraft will not be allowed in McCovey Cove for safety reasons. Also, to accomodate the press, the Giants have chartered two media boats for reporters, which prompted this quote:
"Most of the media appreciate this," Daum said. "They didn't know how to charter their own boats."
I knew a guy who majored in Boat Chartering at M.I.T., so I understand where they're coming from. You can't leave that kind of fact-finding and research in the hands of people who do fact-finding and research for a living.
*snicker*
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So okay, the big weekend arrives, and the guys come over to my place bright and early, everybody's jazzed about rolling up some kufr carnage. All the propane tanks and propellant and nail cannisters are ready to go. I look at Ali and say, "okay mate, back up your car to the garage and I'll start loading it up." He gets this dumbstruck look on his face and says, "my car? I thought Hassan was going to do the martyrdom." And then Hassan does a massive spit-take with his tea, and he's like, "whoa dude, I rigged the cell phones, I didn't agree to blow up. I thought Mohammed was going to do the blowing up." Then Mohammed's like, "don't look at me, pal, I thought I was just providing the spiritual guidance. Plus my car's in the shop for transmission work." From there it just descended into this big shouting match. Holy frickin' prophet, two years of planning this prank and now everybody wants to pussy out on the actual martyrdom.
Long story short, we decided to draw straws. And guess who wins? Yep, yours truly, good old sucker Khalid, the same guy with a pile of charge card receipts for petrol and propane and hardware. The same guy who ended up having to host two thirds of the martyrdom planning parties at HIS house, because his good old college "pals" always have some convenient excuse about "kitchen remodeling" or "MI6 surveillance," and never lift a finger to help clean up the empty bottles or paper plates or the C5 mess. Well, you know what they say: no good deed goes unpunished. Then the other short straw get pulled by Bilal, and I'm like, oh, great. Now I'll be banging some celestial virgin with that wanker looking over my shoulder.
So, I'm like, "okay, whose donating the cars?" And these dicks just look around at each other, and ANOTHER big argument breaks out, because "I still have 28 payments left," or "it's due for a tyre rotation," or some other lame excuse. So we draw straws again to pick the explosion cars, and guess who wins? Yup, my Benz, the same fucking car I just paid £129.95 to have detailed. So I go to the house and tell my wife Jumanah about the whole deal, and here it comes -- The Look. complete with the whole exasperated eye roll and head shake. I swear, if her dad wasn't my uncle, I'd be tempted to smack that irritating sneer right off her face. So she's like, "fine, go have your fun with your lazy jihad buddies and your 72 virgins. Just leave me the keys to the Jeep so I can get groceries."
There's so much more to the story. Really, go read.
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Colorful Inspirations
Here at Rocket Jones, I've had exactly two style designs over the last four years. The "retro" one that you see now, and the original, rather subdued version that lasted for most of three years. Lately I've been giving some thought to another redesign, and looking at different ideas and concepts because I don't want to change things just for the sake of change. The idea is to stretch my HTML/CSS skills, and if it involves some Javascript or other goodies, so much the better.
This blog entry examines the color palettes used in several famous paintings. The comments to the post are great too, as designers chip in with the palettes from their favorite paintings.
If you're looking for color ideas (blog or otherwise), this is great inspiration.
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Intriguing Idea for Baseball's World Series
I can see the appeal of "World Series Weekend" to a lot of people, from players to owners to cities across the country.
Scott Boras loves the World Series so much, he wants to make it best-of-nine -- and open with two games at a neutral site.
Arguing that the shift would create a marketing bonanza that would rival the Super Bowl, Boras outlined his ideas in a two-page letter he sent to baseball commissioner Bud Selig on April 15.
For cities like Chicago and Washington D.C. that haven't seen a World Series at their parks in years, this could be huge.
I especially like these ideas:
He would open the weekend on a Friday night with a televised gala announcing the MVP, Cy Young, Rookie of the Year and Manager of the Year awards, and have the five top candidates for each in attendance.
Hall of Fame voting would be announced Saturday, with the opener that night and Game 2 on Sunday night. After that, the Series would pick up the 2-3-2 format that's been used since 1925...
Not that I think any of this will actually happen, but maybe the proposal will shake up some of the moribund thinking in baseball circles.
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I'm all for the neutral site idea, but I'll take a little more convincing re: 9 games. A seven game format, 2-1-2-2 (guaranteeing that no team ever gets swept without playing at least 1 home game, which I think is why he advocated 9 games), would work for me.
Posted by: Boy Named Sous at July 03, 2007 02:22 AM (bM2l6)
But one aspect missing from the film is the defense. Do not expect to hear anyone speak well of the care they received in the U.S. On the other hand, patients and doctors from Canada, Britain, France and Cuba marvel at their health care.
If the bias is that obvious, then even those who wish to believe are going to have trouble with it. I mean, who would've thought you'd see things like this:
Moore tells viewers there are about 50 million people in the U.S. without health insurance.
Just this past week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated there are about 43.6 million uninsured people in the country. In March, the Census Bureau put the number at 44.8 million.
That's still a lot, but undercounting by millions?!?! Or how about:
Taking on the pharmaceutical industry, Moore says it spent millions of dollars lobbying Congress for a Medicare prescription drug benefit.
"Of course it was really a bill to hand over $800 billion of our tax dollars to the drug and health insurance industry," he said.
Moore is citing the projected cost for the Medicare drug benefit's first 10 years.
Last year, however, Medicare officials told The Associated Press that the projected cost of the benefit through 2015 stood at about $729 billion, a substantial drop compared with original estimates.
What's that first rule about digging a hole?
Moore also noted the some of the elderly in the drug program could end up paying more for their prescriptions than they did before. That is true. But the vast majority do save because of the tens of billions of dollars in annual government subsidies to help cover the cost of their medicine. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services says people save about $1,200 a year on average by participating in the program, called Medicare Part D.
We need a bigger shovel.
At one point, Moore notes where the U.S. ranks in terms of health care around the world.
"The United States slipped to No. 37 in health care around the world, just slightly ahead of Slovenia," he said.
That ranking is based on a 2000 report from the World Health Organization that some health analysts viewed as misleading.
Yeah, riiiiiiight. Thirty-seventh.
The rest of the article notes where Moore gets it right, but also points out where he tells half-truths, hides inconvenient facts, and misleads you about the numbers in order to make his opinion seem valid.
Michael Moore is a liar. Too bad too, because I understand that he's a talented filmmaker.
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Tie Dyeing and Fabric Dyeing
While stationed in Germany with the Air Force, my best friend and I got t-shirts for volunteering to help with the Special Olympics. Soon after that, we tie-dyed the shirts. Soon after that, we wore those shirts to a unit picnic. Soon after that, we were ordered to report for urinalysis testing.
Whether you're a drug-addled hippie freak, or just don't get enough chances to pee in a cup, tie-dyed shirts rock. And now, thanks to this site, you can learn how to do fabric dyeing without the enormous amount of waste that most techniques seem to generate. Follow that link for color recipes, step-by-step methods and much, much more.
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Or you could take a dyeing class a Springwater Fiber Workshop in Alexandria. They need volunteers to dye wool for their shop as a fundraising item. Dye Days are good stuff and they might have another set of them in July.
They also have a low immersion dyeing class involving a lot of microwaving. You might like that one.
Posted by: mapgirl at June 29, 2007 04:40 PM (rs2RF)
Geeks Are Sexy, Unless They're Just Geeks
Horror stories from the world of computers: WorseThanFailure.com.
Besides the head-shakers and groaners, there are some funny stories (unless they happened to you).
"There's a way to schedule tasks?" Frank replied, surprised.
Of course there is a way. Dripping faucet drips into bucket on seesaw. When bucket is heavy enough, seesaw tips lifting lid off cheese plate. Mouse runs out of hole to eat cheese. String tied to mouse tail pulls crank that pushes pencil into CPU power switch. Computer boots and runs browser from Startup menu. When mouse is full, he runs back to his hole, where a piezoelectric switch starts an electric motor that turns a paddle wheel scooping water out of the bucket and onto the floor. Water runs into surge protector, shorting it out and shutting down the computer. Bucket returns itÂ’s original position. Paddle wheel stops when mouse gets hungry (and loses weight). Water dries, leaving power available for the computer.
Really quite elegant.
Ask anyone in the profession and they'll tell you, Dilbert is a documentary.
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On the other side, you have the competent user calling tech support to report a network outage.
Tech: How do you know there's a network problem?
Me: I got the "No network available" error from the e-mail program, I can't connect to the intra- or internet, and in My Computer, the only drives showing up are C: and D:.
Tech: Can you take a screen shot of the error message and e-mail it to me?
How well do you understand the energy situation as it stands today? Harris conducted a poll among Americans, and the results were pretty dismal. Take the poll below (in the extended entry) for yourself, and then check out the answers here.
Let me know how you did in the comments. I didn't do so hot.
more...
I notice in your "dated" link that there is no reference to Gazprom or LucOil, two of the Russian giants. Those two alone control as much oil as all of the privately held companies in the world put together.
According to the Guardian, ExxonMobile made the largest profit. You ignore the fact that government owned companies don't report profits, so your question should be "which investor owned company made the largest profit?" Oddly enough, an investor owned company is supposed to make a profit. Also, apparently you're upset over the size of the profit, when you should be more concerned with the percentage of profit. Google made more than twice the percentage of profit as ExxonMobile, so is the oil company evil because they're bigger, or is Google evil because they made twice as much profit on each dollar?
Every Time We Think We've Got It Figured Out...
You remember what you learned about RNA, right? They're basically molecular dump trucks, running back and forth and collecting the building blocks needed to create proteins in the human body.
That may be a more apt description than we thought, because suddenly scientists are discovering that the "dump trucks" may be just a small percentage of the entire RNA "fleet".
What is being proposed is the inheritance of characteristics acquired during an individual's lifetime, rather than as the result of chance mutations. This was first suggested by Jean Baptiste Lamarck, before Charles Darwin's idea of natural selection swept the board. However, even Darwin did not reject the idea that Lamarckian inheritance had some part to play, and it did not disappear as a serious idea until 20th-century genetic experiments failed to find evidence for it.
They're seeing hints pointing to that evidence now. This isn't an alternative to evolution, it's the idea that our bodies tweak the DNA that we pass along according to experiences that occur during our lifetime.
"Fails miserably" is the understatement of the year. The thing is a deathtrap, and after seeing the photos of the crash results, you'll realize that "deathtrap" isn't hyperbole.
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Smile For The Camera, Even If You're Wearing A Mask
Thanks to a good bud for sending me this link:
The traffic cameras in England are called Gatsos after the manufacturer. Apparently destroying the cameras has become popular sport. Here are four pages of photos showing how people fight back against government surveillance.
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D, 
