ICanSleepWhenI'mDead

Don't know what level of detail you already have, but my brother Darryl thought this was pretty informative:

It was sort of a reverse Kobayashi Maru scenario. The coaches should be cast as Star Trek villains.

I think the game could have gotten pretty entertaining at the end, if the referee had allowed each team to shoot at the wrong basket. The game would have switched from the team playing the worst getting the desired loss, to the team playing the best (but shooting at the wrong basket) getting the desired loss. It essentially would have turned into a "winner's outs" situation, too - - if a team A shot at the wrong basket and scored 2 points for team B, team A would get to take the ball out and try to do it again. But they would have a 10 second "score" clock (not a shot clock), because if team A didn't score in the wrong basket quickly enough, the refs would call a 10 second back court violation - - like they actually did once in the real game. But let's say team B starts playing defense to prevent team A from scoring points in the "wrong" basket for team B - - what does team B do when they get the ball? If they take the ball over half court in the wrong direction, it's an "over and back" violation. So team "B" either has to take shots at the "wrong" basket from beyond half court, or somehow be awarded the ball out of bounds. If I remember right, you can inbound the ball from the front court into the backcourt, so long as the player catching the ball is already in the backcourt when catching it. So if team B plays good defense and gets possession of the ball before team A can score in the "wrong" basket, does team B try to make the ball go out of bounds off a team A player - - so they can pass the ball into their own backcourt without being called for "over and back?" But there's some other wrinkles. What if team B starts fouling team A before team A can shoot at the wrong basket? The refs will make team A take foul shots from the proper free throw line. Team A could intentionally miss the free throw, but would have to make sure they at least hit the rim with the shot - - otherwise team B gets to take the ball out directly underneath the "wrong" basket that team B will try to score at. And even if team A successfully rebounds the intentionally missed foul shot, team A would need to shoot at the wrong basket from beyond half court or figure out how to be awarded the ball out of bounds - - because team A now has possession in the front court and has the same potential "over and back" problem when heading to score in the wrong direction. The possibilities are mind boggling. How about this scenario? What if team B fouls team A before team A can try a shot at the wrong basket, so the refs walk everybody to the other end for team A to take a foul shot. And then - - wait for it - - the team A player turns around and shoots a 3/4 court shot at the wrong basket? If the long wrong-way shot misses everything, then team B obviously gets the ball out of bounds at the end where the team A shooter was standing. But what if the wrong way 3/4 court "foul" shot hits the "wrong" rim? Better yet, what if team A's wrong-way 3/4 court "foul" shot actually goes in? Does it count as 1 point for team B? And which team gets the ball out of bounds if the long wrong way "foul" shot goes in? Wonder if there's a rule that requires a forfeit if you can't put at least say 3 eligible players on the court? At some point, would a team fearing that it might not be able to lose on the scoreboard, try to foul out enough of its own players to require it to forfeit the game? And even if there's no minimum number of players rule, what happens if a team fouls out every last one of its players, wouldn't THAT require a forfeit? And what if the ref refused to call fouls to prevent such an intentional forfeit - - would players fake injuries to try to reduce the number of available players (to zero if necessary) to get the forfeit? I'm not sure a ref would risk requiring a player take the court if the player claimed to be injured. What's the ref gonna do, award a forfeit against the team trying to throw the game? That's exactly what they want. I think it would have been fascinating watching how creative each team would get in trying to lose the game if the refs had simply let them play and just enforced the existing rules. Sometimes I ain't right.

As I suspected. Would anyone (anything?) but an alien make reference to "prevailing HUMAN THOUGHT?" If you were human, you would have simply said "prevailing thought." Only aliens have non-human thoughts. Has your society been monitoring us since before the time of Galileo? Hope your vaccinations are current. Ribbit. Ribbit.

You might be able to convince me that Cookie and Elbert played in the old AFL (Alien Football League). Maybe Otis Sistrunk really was from the University of Mars: http://slicethelife.com/2012/09/18/former-oakland-raider-otis-sistrunk-from-the-university-of-mars-66-today/ Little known fact - - Otis actually played for the minor league Norfolk Neptunes, so he kind of had a planetary-themed career: http://articles.latimes.com/1986-10-19/sports/sp-6283_1_columbia-football

1. So what if your premise is wrong? What if the speed of light somehow increases in ultra-low gravity environments that we are incapable of testing or have not yet tested? People say that manned space capsules operate in "zero gravity," but anybody who took basic Newtonian mechanics knows that's wrong - - gravitational forces are just extremely low - - not zero. What if the laws of physics that apply in even lower gravitational fields haven't been discovered yet? There are certainly changes in the characteristics of materials that change drastically when those materials are cooled near zero degrees Kelvin. What if something analogous happens in ultra-low gravitational fields (just in the sense of drastic changes compared to what happens at more "normal" temperatures)? BTW, how do you know how far man's deep space probes have traveled? Aren't you just extrapolating what you presume to be the speed of light under the street lamp in our solar system's gravitational field (where you can hope to find the keys you dropped) to deep space conditions? Maybe our probes sped up and traveled much farther, and everybody just assumes that we can still calculate the distance they've traveled by how long it takes radio communications to travel back and forth to any given probe. Find the notion heretical to current thinking about the speed of light as an absolute "speed" limit? There was a time when prevailing scientific thought branded the idea that the earth revolved around the sun as heretical. Maybe there's more yet to be discovered about the "laws" of the universe than you think.

I get the sarcasm, but no punitive damages were requested in the case - - trying to get them would actually be counterproductive, because, among other things, the wife's [driver's] liability policy wouldn't cover and pay for those kinds of damages. To get a better understanding of what is really going on here, read this: http://www.loweringthebar.net/2015/02/utah-court-says-woman-can-sue-herself.html Here's the full Utah Court of Appeals decision (unanimous, BTW): http://law.justia.com/cases/utah/court-of-appeals-published/2015/20131077-ca.html I haven't read the full opinion yet, so I don't know if it applies here, but sometimes the law is an ass: http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/the-law-is-an-ass.html

The "heyday Bills" didn't win a Super Bowl with Jim Kelly, so what you're really asking is - - is the rest of the current Bills team (sans QB) better than Kelly's teammates in the "heyday." No way. The current Bills are improving, but it's not even close.

Some possibilities: 1. For the exact same reason that there is serious debate on this planet about whether SETI should passively listen or actively send messages; 2. For the exact same reason that nomads covertly scout desert water holes for bandits before openly walking into the oasis; 3. For the exact same reason that bandits lie hidden at desert water holes waiting for visiting nomads while letting frogs continue to live at the oasis; 4. Because they saw an early TV show where the cavalry followed the Indian scouting party back to the Indian village and killed all the Indians, and they don't want us to track them back to the wormhole leading to their own planetary system; 5. Because maybe alien life forms are on a scale so small that we can't see them - - why does alien life have to be human-scale? 6. Because they saw Mike Tyson proclaimed in a TV broadcast as "heavyweight champion of the WORLD" and they don't want to mess with him, just in case. Maybe they stumbled into some other backwards-appearing life forms in some other planetary system and got more than they bargained for. Better safe than sorry; 7. Because on some other planet they revealed themselves and all the frogs committed suicide and it took them hours to clean up the mess. 8. Because there is a shortage of meat on their planet and there aren't enough of us yet - - why make the cattle nervous?

If you lived on Stopthepain's home planet, would you want to see what appeared (from your planet's perspective) to be an alien frog trying to have sex with your planet's picnic tables, pool toys and couch cushions? I think not.

Seems to me like if aliens ARE among us and studying us like frogs, they would do their best to discourage the frogs from traveling to the aliens' home planet and bringing frog diseases. They would use their superior intelligence to convince the frogs of all the reasons why space travel was either impossible or very impractical, and persuade the frogs that UFO sightings were the result of misinformed and irrational frogs. In particular, they wouldn't want the frogs to find the wormhole. So I figure "stopthepain" is an alien alias that describes your mission here ("PreventFrogSpaceTravelThatBringsDisease" would have been kind of obvious). Based on how much effort you spent warning about the dangers of space rocks, my guess is that one end of the wormhole is in the asteroid belt. What better place for an alien life form to influence frog decisions than a message board that allows all posters (whether or not they are frogs) to remain eponymous? Ribbit Ribbit.

I've been there and it's beautiful, but you know about the weather, right? http://www.craterlakelodges.com/find-us/weather/ 533 inches = more than 44 feet of snow! Guess you and the GF will need to figure out some way to stay warm. Xanterra Parks & Resorts?

Not a review - - more like "coming attractions" from a month ago, but it's by c/net: http://www.cnet.com/news/dish-launches-20-sling-tv-streaming-video-service-with-channel-lineup-that-includes-espn-disney/

So why is the pale blue dot in a "sunbeam" in the photo? Alien flashlight?

Turns out, you can already get ESPN from the service I linked to above: http://deadline.com/2015/02/sling-tv-adds-amc-sports-1201369355/ It's pretty new - - anybody tried it?

Saw this about a month ago and bookmarked it for future reference: http://deadline.com/2015/01/sling-tv-dish-network-turner-cord-cutting-1201339761/ Seems like a pretty viable option to me if it got offered as planned, but I haven't followed up yet. Anybody more up to speed on this to save birddog and me some search time? Hey birddog - - one other thing. If you can stand waiting a bit to see the Bills and other NFL games, you can see every regular NFL season game of every team on demand (but delayed) for about $40/year at NFL.com. All Sunday games are first available to stream shortly after that Sunday night's game ends. The stream is also unavailable when any NFL game is being broadcast live. So the service is a better option for west coast fans who can start streaming that day's Sunday Bills game around 9 pm or so west coast time. If you live on the east coast, you can't start watching until around midnight east coast time, and you also can't watch during the next day's live Monday night TV broadcast, so you may have to avoid the sports news for an uncomfortable amount of time if you want to watch the delayed stream without knowing the outcome in advance (assuming you work some version of 9-5 M-F). Also, here's a useful site for seeing what you can pull off the air for free with the right antenna: http://www.tvfool.com Edit: Oops, just saw you mentioned "rewind" - - but left it in the post for others who might not know about it.

Just spitballing here. Sometimes I wonder if the natural progression of technological advances will lead to some sort of experiment that results in an extinction event of our own making. Sort of like if the people, who thought the Large hadron super collider might create a black hole that would consume the earth, were right. There were similar concerns when the atom bomb was first tested - - turned out the chain reaction was self-limiting. Hadron collider was powered up - - we're still here. Maybe after 3 or 4 or 87 false alarms we get unlucky, and exterminate our whole civilization. Maybe there's nobody more advanced than earth out there to find, because we're just a "few" years (on a civilization timeline) from repeating the same extinction level experimental event that already exterminated those who previously reached our state of advancement. It would be ironic if the same intellectual curiosity that helped mankind get from first manned flight to walking on the moon in one lifetime exterminated all of us in the end. Future experiment: "That's one small step for man, and … [poof]."

Picture this above 6,000 feet in the snow:

So how are you gonna post here? On a more serious note, found this that might be of interest if you are thinking about making NPS a career. Not sure if it applies to your situation now or down the road, but FWIW: http://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/senior-executive-service/candidate-development-programs/ Will it be a situation where after you are on the job a while, you can transfer based on seniority to a similar position at some other NPS site? That could give you a chance to move to a still beautiful but perhaps less remote location in the future (if that would help keep both you and the GF happy). Good luck!

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/plan-to-broadcast-messages-to-alien-worlds-leaves-cosmologists-worrying-10042555.html

Are you intellectually honest enough to confirm that under some versions of string theory, there is at least one parallel universe in which you are an idiot?

Skynet knows we'll be looking for killer robots, so they must have made a deal with palm trees. This link has a picture of the tree that killed the first guy: http://northlasvegas.8newsnow.com/news/news/698062-tree-trimmers-death-highlights-hazards-job Turns out, during 2009 - 2013, TWELVE people suffocated in palm trees: See chart - - http://tcia.org/blog/safety/five-year-analysis-tree-care-accidents

So where am I gonna get my Circuit City TV repaired?

Here's one I haven't seen discussed anywhere: In round 7, draft the best college QB who is too young to be drafted under current NFL rules. Then lobby other owners to change the rules, or take the NFL to court to void their existing draft policy, or buy a Congressman to try to change existing laws so that existing NFL draft policy becomes illegal. Or some combination of all three. Very low risk because it will only cost a 7th round pick - - very little chance of success, but potentially very high reward. Pegula can afford the cost. After 15 years, we gotta think outside the box: http://espn.go.com/nfl/draft2013/story/_/id/8943142/draft-restriction-makes-sense-colleges-nfl-not-players

They're gonna block somebody?