ICanSleepWhenI'mDead

Now that I have your attention, what are your favorite rhetorical responses to questions that have an obvious yes or no answer? Here are a few for starters: For "yes:" 1. Does a bear s**t in the woods? 2. Is the Pope Catholic? 3. Does a one legged duck swim in a circle? [my favorite, even though the real answer to that question is probably no] For "no:" 1. Does a chicken have lips? Personally, I sometimes take the Yogi Berra approach and mix and match just to see people's reactions, for example: Does the Pope s**t in the woods? or Are bears Catholic? Expand my repetoire - - whaddaya got?

For the same reason that the North American Indians would have fared better, in the short term at least, if they had killed Christopher Columbus and his entire party of explorers.

Unlike 4merper4mer, I don't claim to have absolute certainty that there is no other intelligent life in the universe. That's why I'm open to considering anybody's logical explanation for the Fermi paradox. But it's disingenuous to pejoratively call the Fermi paradox a "rabbit hole." IF life hypothetically somehow forms from the right mix of non-living chemicals when the circumstances of temperature, pressure, etc are just right, then given the vast number of other planets in the universe, those conditions statistically would be expected to exist and have caused life to form in numerous locations. So where is everybody? If they ain't around, and we currently have no evidence that they have ever existed anywhere , then maybe the hypothesis that life will form from the right mix of non-living chemicals under specific but currently unknown conditions is simply wrong. If you think the hypothesis is correct, where is everybody? Of course, you can always avoid the logic of the analysis by calling the Fermi paradox a "rabbit hole" that isn't worthy of your consideration.

The folks at SETI think that, just like in 1961, we only know the value of one of the 7 factors that have made up the Drake equation since it was first postulated in 1961. Here's the proof: Excerpted from https://www.seti.org/drake-equation-index (for more complete details read the full link): ___________ "The Drake Equation was cooked up by astronomer Frank Drake in 1961 to serve as the agenda for the first meeting on the topic of SETI. . . . At the time of the meeting, essentially none of the seven factors in the equation was known excepting the first, the production rate of stars. . . . It has been sixty years since the Drake Equation was conceived. Have we nailed down more of the terms than the single one known in 1961? Sadly, no. . . ." __________ Like any formula or mathematical model, the adage "Garbage in, garbage out" applies. The fact that most people in this thread disagree with 4merper4mer's conclusions doesn't make him a troll. When you make what the SETI folks readily concede are just "guesses" about the value of 6 of the 7 factors, everybody is just speculating. Although 4merper4mer doesn't explain his analysis particularly well, if any of the 6 unknown factors have a true value of ZERO, then we are alone in the universe. That is true whether or not that math dashes the hopes and dreams of the scientists and ordinary people who would like, and in some cases fervently hope, that we are not alone. SETI says that the fraction of suitable planets on which life actually appears is unknown. If your own "guess" is that life actually appears on some planet anywhere in the universe other than earth, you have to explain the Fermi paradox to justify your "guess." I have yet to hear an explanation for the Fermi paradox that makes me think that 4merper4mer's conclusion is wrong. I find the topic interesting enough that I am willing to entertain new explanations for the Fermi paradox from people with some basis for attempting an explanation. With most human knowledge available on the internet, anybody can do google searches to look for a rational explanation for the Fermi paradox provided by someone with the appropriate education or training to enlighten the rest of us. If you ever find such an explanation, please post a link. I'll read it.

I'm not saying it was aliens, but when the earth's core starts spinning in the opposite direction, you gotta wonder what's happening on the ocean floor . . . https://www.cbsnews.com/news/earth-inner-core-started-spinning-other-direction-study/

By a team-mate in my younger days to opponents when things first started to get chippy (not if there was any imminent likelihood of a fight): " Little guys get in groups - - big guys single file ! "

In both hands (so that I didn't need a fire hose to wash up afterwards)!

What's "xmas?"

What's "Xmas?"

JA "You know that thing baseball pitchers have about not stepping on the baseline on their way back to the dugout? After the Jets and Vikings games, I'm not stepping on any yardlines after a TD pass!"

Most memorable fortune cookie I ever got was just one word - - RUN.

We need to shoot Billy Buffalo from a moving train, but nobody listens to me (can't imagine why).

That's just dumb. If you were a person falsely accused, should your life be diminished even though you did nothing wrong? Ask yourself if Nate Allen should have been blackballed from the NFL because he was falsely accused of exposing himself to a 16 year old girl in Florida in 2015: https://archive.naplesnews.com/news/crime/nfls-nate-allen-speaks-out-after-police-admit-wrongfully-detaining-him-ep-953070045-335607741.html/

In case anybody was wondering, here's a recent update on this: https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a29417939/unidentified-submarine-objects/ "Something is out there—in the skies and beneath the waves." Do sources of underwater UFO info get any more authoritative than Popular Mechanics ?

<< What say ye? >> I say they're twits. It's a "model." For any model (not just this one), the following adage applies: Garbage in, Garbage out They have a lot of bad assumptions (i.e., a lot of "garbage in"). The result was garbage out.

Well, Elvis (yes, Elvis) has recently discussed the high potential upside of Harvard professor Avi Loeb's project to search the Pacific for any underwater fragments of a 2014 meteor that could reveal remnants of alien technology. I sh*t you not: https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2022/9/21/avi-loeb-pacific-search/

If they do wind up cutting him before he ever plays a down for us, they could always re-sign him to a 1 day contract down the Rhode so that he could retire as a Bill.

If you don't mind waiting about 3 hours and watching a full game replay shortly after the game ends, check out the free trial option for NFL+ Premium, described here: https://www.nfl.com/plus/learn-more As discussed in a different thread, some people have had trouble getting the service to work, and I don't know if being in Argentina would further complicate things. I have not been able to get the service to stream the replays to my XBox console even after re-downloading and re-installing the free NFL app from the Microsoft store (which worked fine last year), but I can still stream the replays to my laptop with no problems after logging in at nfl.com (no VPN required, at least for me in the US). The NFL "Digitial Care" customer service absolutely sucks, so if you sign up for the free 7 day trial and then cancel, I would keep careful records of the cancellation request. I vaguely recall reading that the "Game Pass" service (which is what the NFL called it last year), is still available outside the US. I don't know if there is a similar free 7 day trial for "Game Pass" like there is for "NFL+ Premium" in the US. Maybe try googling "NFL Game Pass free trial Argentina" and see what turns up. Good luck!

If the new incentives are scheduled to get paid for performance this year only if it exceeds his actual performance last year, then they are considered "not likely to be earned" incentives that, if earned this year, will count against NEXT year's salary cap. If they don't get earned this year, they won't be paid, and will never count against the salary cap at all. From https://russellstreetreport.com/salarycap/nfl-salary-cap-faqs/ : "How do incentives affect the Salary Cap? Incentives are written into some contracts to pay a player for reaching certain performance criteria. Incentives come in two varieties – Likely To Be Earned (LTBE) and Not Likely To Be Earned (NLTBE) – each of which has different Salary Cap implications. Likely To Be Earned Incentives (LTBE) are incentives based on performance levels that were reached in the prior season. LTBEs count against the Salary Cap in the year they are scheduled. For example, if a RB ran for 1,200 yards last year and he has an incentive that will pay him $100,000 if he runs for 1,000 yards this year, the incentive would be a LTBE Incentive and would count against the Salary Cap this year. On the other hand, if the RB ran for 1,000 yards last year and he has an incentive that will pay him $100,000 if he runs for 1,200 yards this year, then incentive would be Not Likely To Be Earned (NLTBE) and would not count against this year’s Salary Cap. If the player does not earn a LTBE Incentive, then the amount of the incentive ($100K in our example) will be credited against the following year’s Salary Cap and the team would have $100K in additional Cap space in the following year. The opposite happens with NLTBE Incentives. If those are earned, they are charged to the following year’s Salary Cap. In our example, that would mean that the team would have $100K less in Cap space the following year."

Here's an update on this: "Eight years ago, a meteor believed to have been 2 feet long entered Earth's atmosphere at more than 100,000 miles an hour before exploding into tiny, hot fragments and falling into the South Pacific Ocean. Some scientists believe it came from another star system, which would make it the first known interstellar object of its size to impact Earth. Now, professor Avi Loeb, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, is planning an expedition to retrieve fragments of the meteor from the ocean floor. By analyzing the debris, he is hoping to determine the object's origins — even going so far as to make the extraordinary suggestion that it could be a technological object created by aliens." More at https://www.npr.org/2022/08/31/1119941103/astronomer-searches-ocean-extraterrestrial-meteor-alien-life-avi-loeb

Responsibility wasn't what got laid bare.

He may wind up being the only punter in NFL history to wind up with an unofficial (since it was preseason) career 82 yard/punt average.

Note to Draconator - - I hope you find your cat. Note to self - - If I ever get a cat, don't name it Chloe.

I had to watch yesterday on my MacBook Air laptop, because the NFL App for XBox was not working. I tried it again just now - - still no joy. I'm cautiously optimistic that they will get it fixed before the regular season starts, because that's what happened last year.

I am not in WNY. I used NFL Game Pass last year to watch the Bills game full replays on my large screen TV connected to my XBox. Replays were available as soon as the game ended, and it's pretty easy to avoid the sports news for a mere 3 hours. Supposedly, I will be able to do that again this year, because the NFL automatically "upgraded" my old NFL GAME Pass subscription (which is no longer offered), to the new NFL+ premium streaming service, all while lowering the annual price from $99 to $79. Sounded good to me, but when I tried to fire up the NFL app on my XBox to watch the Indy preseason game yesterday, I got a screen message informing me that the NFL is working on fixing bugs in the NFL for XBox app and to check back later. FWIW, the NFL app for XBox that I used last year also had issues for the first preseason game or 2, but worked just fine during the regular season. It's supposed to work just fine this year - - but we'll see. From https://www.whattowatch.com/watching-guides/nfl-plus-price-available-games-devices-and-everything-we-know-about-the-streaming-service "NFL Plus Premium provides its subscribers with full and condensed game replays from every NFL game each week (as well as condensed game replays going as far back as 2009). These replays are available to watch on all devices and are ad-free." (emphasis added) The above link has additional details that anyone interested in this topic may want to read.