ajzepp

Thanks man, I'll definitely give that a read. I do remember Darwin's Finches, but thought that had more to do with natural selection than it did speciation...I'll have to update myself in this area cause it's been about 14 years since I was last involved with it.

Couldn't agree more. The Christians here in the south were mentioned earlier...one of my biggest criticisms of them is that they don't know about ANYTHING else in the world. They have their one view of religion, completely to fail to understand how strong the cultural/parental influence is on one's religious bent, and have absolutely no tolerance or interest in the basis for another's views or beliefs. It would be like someone who believes that Georgia is the best place in the country to live, even though they've never set foot in any other state, have never taken the time to learn about other states, and have no desire to ask you about your feelings on the matter. I don't see how you can know if you really believe what you believe until you have at least some understanding of the alternative explanations. One of the best things that ever happened to me was when I took a series of courses called "Intellectual Heritage". It was over three semesters and we read and discussed some of the world's literature, religious beliefs, etc. I had no idea what Hinduism was specifically when I took the course, but I had a professor who was a classical romantic and he presented it in such a way that really appealed to me. Do I subscribe to Hindi beliefs? No. But I find their religion beautiful and I loved learning more about it. Same was true when we read and discussed the Koran, poetry (Pablo Neruda changed my life!), literature, etc...I would have loved to have gotten more of this in h.s, especially considering how our country doesn't exist in a vacuum anymore.

Lots of great memories of Mr. Dawson... According to that article, he met his wife (or one of his wives?) on the show...she was one of the 20,000 babes that he smooched for "luck and love". RIP, good sir!

I'm pretty sure the boys didn't qualify for the Olympics this year, IIRC.

Endings always make for interesting discussion when it comes to how I approach movies. I have a lot of friends - and I'm assuming you fall into this category - who tend to look ahead when watching a movie, trying to figure out the ending or anticipate certain plot developments before they happen. When I watch a movie I never do that for some reason. I've always just sort of allowed the movie to unfold scene by scene without trying to do that, and so I will often be more affected by an ending than others may tend to be. One of the most common criticisms of movies is that they are "predictable", but that's a term I'll almost never use because of the way I approach it. BTW, someone mentioned the documentary "Senna" earlier in the thread...I just watched it yesterday and it's a definite thumbs up. I didn't really know much about this guy at all so it was a very interesting film to me.

I smell a set-up!

You and your "issue" would be in some deep doodoo if this were a Hindu country mister!

If it's a physical barrier, then yeah, it can definitely be the fly in the ointment....but I assumed this wasn't a tree issue or else chances are DTV wouldn't have installed him to begin with. They typically need to establish a miminum signal strength in order to install. As for customer service, I have experienced that sort of thing as well, but my current experience with DTV has been nothing short of fantastic. The current CEO has taken steps to ensure that the product is solid from top to bottom and I'm thrilled with the service.

To my knowledge, there isn't any widely accepted, factual evidence for evolution as a "ground up" theory. The evidence is limited to the evolution of particular species over time. Although I am personally accepting of evolution, the idea that this theory accounts for our physical and biological origins isn't any more factual at this point than creationism, IMO. I'm not sure where new species come from, but last I knew there wasn't any "factual" evidence that species evolve into OTHER species. The factual evidence of evolution is limited to intra-species variation and cannot yet account for, say, our evolution from apes or fish or whatever. Perhaps at some point that evidence will be found, and it's something I will probably find as fascinating as anyone else, but as of today (last I knew) it simply doesn't exist. It is, of course, THEORIZED how one species evolves into other species, but I don't recall there being anything definitive on this as of yet.

lol

Powerful is an understatement....wow

Well, admittedly, I'm not a big fan of central PA...I was born in the NW part of the state and went to school in SE PA and adopted Philly as my unofficial hometown. I just can't believe that there is a cable company that is just now rolling out HD channels, especially with the switch to digital OTA signals and such. Definitely agree about Ohio lol

HFBD, Rock!!!

Wow, I'm embarrassed that this is going on in my home state!! lol If I were you, I'd call DTV and have them come out to fine tune your dish. As Fezmid always points out, typically when the signal drops frequently or easily, it's because the physical dish needs to be adjusted a bit. If I were you I'd get rid of the cable and keep the DTV!

I'll never forget the billboard I saw the very first day I arrived in Georgia when I moved here from Philly back in '99. The first thing I saw was the EKG waveform, and since I was about to become an RN it naturally caught my attention. As I got closer, I saw the words above it...it said, "Jesus Loves You...Turn or BURN!" There are a lot of big-hearted, well-intentioned, God-fearing Christians down here....but there is also another type who use scripture and religion to place themselves above others and take part in discrimination and bigotry. I remember when I was engaged to my ex-wife and many of the members of her Baptist church found out I was Catholic. They sent her emails and took her aside after service DEMANDING to know about our personal lives, particularly if we were sexually active. They threatened her with ex-communication if she didn't disclose to them private details about our relationship. Ironically enough, this was a church where a youth pastor was arrested and convicted of molesting underage girls who were attending that church. When I found out what they were doing to my ex-wife, I wrote the pastor (who stated he didn't realize what was going on) a very direct and candid letter indicating the steps I would take if I heard one more instance of a church "leader" attempting to interrogate and/or threaten my ex. I was disgusted by the whole thing.

Same here...and you're exactly right, they aren't mutually exclusive at all, a point that is lost on nearly everyone who doesn't take the time to obtain a basic understanding of the principles of evolution. I remember when I took my first legit college level biology course back at Temple U. It was my first real exposure to evolution and the instructor would ALWAYS make comments about how there could not be a God given the physical evidence that contradicted this belief. I remember one time we were discussing the anatomy of the human knee joint and he just went on and on about how the knee would be a far better design if there actually were a God. Anyway, I got a real big dose of evolution and I recall being pretty shaken by it since this guy was using the topic to make the case for atheism. I kid you not, about two or three hours after the lecture that REALLY pushed me over the edge, I called a buddy of mine who is a very devout Roman Catholic. (I'm Catholic, as well, but a pretty lousy one by most accounts.) I told him just how much I was bothered by what felt like an attack on my beliefs, and literally while I was on the call with him, there came the Pope (JP the Deuce) on the local news addressing evolution. It was one of the most surreal experiences of my life due to both the content of the news clip and especially the timing. I believe he was visiting the U.S. at the time, and he basically said that it's perfectly fine for Catholics to accept and study evolution, but to remember that God is the architect of it. All of a sudden I felt like I could reconcile what I was learning about the science component with my faith. The topic became even more interesting to me and every science course I took from that point forward (especially genetics and physiology) was absolutely fascinating to me. I've since "evolved" my own view of what Adam and Eve represented and love to learn more about what the scientific community is discovering about God's universe

Where the heck do you live?

I'm a firm believer in evolution, but only within species. I don't feel that evolution is an explanation for how we came to be, however.

"Ahead of time" was 2001 lol. Your cable company is just NOW adding HD channels??

LOL

Wow, the only other time I saw facial damage to that degree was a guy who got the flesh-eating bacteria in his sinuses and it ate away the top front quarter of his head. My heart goes out to this guy....that's awful.

I don't know if this is a possible explanation, but one thing I have noticed is how American soccer culture is less on an island and more adopting of the Euro culture, so I think a lot of the terms pertaining to the sport is a result of the American audience having greater exposure to the Euro and/or world soccer culture and becoming more indocrinated into it. I even find myself using terms that are more typical of the Euriopean side of things simply because I watch far more coverage of the euro clubs and euro events. Yep, I think that Gooch's size worked against him there. He's the biggest dude on the field and as the announcers said, there's only so many places he can put his arms. Clearly it wasn't intentional, and to give them a PK was BS. I do think you're right about his play on the corner, as well. I also don't know wtf Howard was doing, cause if you watch his movements he sort of dives to his left for no reason. He took himself out of the line of the header and I can't figure out why. He had a defender to his left already, and the angle he was at was alreayd appropriate to defend the ball. I don't know if he thought the ball would carry to the Brazilian who was more in the center of the goal or what and he didn't expect the head to begin with, but he could have stopped that shot. It really is amazing the level of talent on this Brazil team, including the keeper...I loved how the announcer said, "to Brazil, there is no such thing as a friendly..." indicating how important EVERY match is to their country...they're just on a totally different level than we are, BUT, we're moving in the right direction.

I'm sure you have many new terms for soccer

Damn those Brazilians! I'm actually going to call this match a 3-2 loss. The PK goal after the Gooch hand ball was BS...and then there was another opportunity where the ball pulled a "magic bullet" right in front of the mouth of the goal and didn't go in...so that gives us two scores. Most of the first half was just pathetic on defense. We would have been better off just playing it back to the keeper and then running under the punt or something, cause we had no answer for Brazil's "full court press" type of play. What matters most in a friendly against this team isn't the win, though, it's whether or not we can create and take advantage of scoring chances. That's what I was looking for more than anything else, and even though the team was flat and sloppy for a lot of the match, we DID create more of the sort of chances that we could not create in the past against Brazil. They're clearly the better team, even when they're playing most of their young guns like Nemar, but I don't consider that loss as much of a disaster as the score would indicate. They may have even taken Brazil a bit lightly after the match vs Scotland., I dunno...but how they respond to this will be a good indication of where the team stands. A set back here and there is a healthy thing for this team.