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Seau Apparent Suicide Could be Watershed NFL Event
It's like Watt's "circle of sex" clock analogy. Really, really clever is at 11:59, and really, really stupid is at 12:01. That which is most advertised is least to be believed. "Methinks the NFL doth protest too much," as Ole Bill might say.— May 13, 2012 11:02 a.m.
Seau Apparent Suicide Could be Watershed NFL Event
Public statements are commonly made to mold public opinion, and the safe presumption until more actual information is at hand is that such remarks are made with a wink-wink, a blink-blink, and a nod. Don't forget that the "real" world is Alice in Wonderland where bad is good and good is bad and everything else is topsy-turvy. It's a Barnum and Bailey world . . . That the NFL is donating millions to provide evidence that football is wrecking brains may be the wackiest thing I've heard from DB is many a moon . . . It's called "scientific" window-dressing, folks! "Further research" is always needed after every study--that proliferating nest parasite, the yellow-bellied grantsnatcher, is far from an endangered species. Re: nan May 12, 12:32 p.m. and subsequent comments— May 12, 2012 11:31 p.m.
UC Education Increasingly Out of Reach for Local Students
It's smelling more and more like a conspiracy, as some have claimed. It's time to actually study the history of the system and to reveal just how today's ratios compare to those of the past. It's time to do simple input/output diagrams, and to cut through the BS. Methinks we're being hoodwinked--by some dissembling, obfuscatory petty foie grassers that must be eschewed and emeticked with great expectorations.— May 12, 2012 11:10 p.m.
Will Wall Street Cool on Bridgepoint?
What is needed is students who are really serious about learning--understanding, really, and teachers who are not required to put up with those who aren't. Everyone who really wants to learn should have all of society's knowledge freely available to them. Although institutions like MIT are trying hard to help to fulfill this via the Internet (reasonably open access), more needs to be done. Ever try to get a copy of a scientific or academic paper on-line. Paywalls are becoming more and more common. Fifteen or fifty bucks for 24 hour access, more or less. Nobody is thinking this through, and if anything needs rethinking, it's "education."— May 11, 2012 10:52 p.m.
At the World’s End: Bombay Beach and the Salton Sea
The inflow water has a certain salt content. The evaporation rate is at least nine feet per year. Evaporation leaves ALL salts, sediments, and contaminants behind, increasing their concentration. "Little" details like this need to go into every "fix." Some fixes are not possible, and if possible, not feasible. But "consultants" and other scavenging parasites will be only too happy to take your money. Trouble is, that means mine and everybody else's too. "We" have come to believe that Big Daddy Gummint can and should fix everything. We worship technology. After all, that's what got us where we are today!— May 11, 2012 9:54 p.m.
Patrick Wright looks for a San Diego legislator to defend his animal rights
When I was a kid in the country, we used to steal all kinds of babies from wild mothers and keep them for "pets," confining them to pens and sometimes "taming" them--to a degree. Fun. I did an awful lot of awful stuff when I was a kid. Then I grew up. I grew past the need to have animals for toys. I grew to learn that all animals are better off free than captive, but I have fought hard for taking wild things "in" from the wild when it became clear that a captive-breeding program was the only thing that stood between a rapidly-declining wild population and extinction, and got into a lot of trouble with friends who thought I was a traitor to "the cause." I would still support such a program, even well before the population went critical. Ecosystems are both resilient and delicate; that is, they can stand a lot of abuse, but only so much. It takes more than a nerdy fascination with something novel or weird upon which to build bragging rights around a twisted ego. There’s a phenomenon anthropologists call “sympathetic magic.” Put simply, that means that one believes that the “magic” possessed by, say a Maserati, a chimp, a boa-constrictor, or some other “exotic” “pet” confers that magic upon the possessor. Like some model with a brace of cheetahs for “chic.” The ultimate in egocentrism. Stuck in adolescence. Whether or not to enslave a wild animal, or even “keep” a domestic one is sometimes a close call, but usually it’s easy. In a world of freedom, the decision would be left to the enslaved. A hole in the Great Plains or the plaything of a braggart? Or, being part of a breeding program the sole purpose of which is to save a species from extinction and to replenish as soon as possible depleted populations to suitable habitats, wild and free once more.— May 11, 2012 9:36 p.m.
Magic of the Mirror and the Wind/EDIT
Let's see it.— May 11, 2012 1:14 p.m.
"Grand Theft Dog" Felon Has Moved
The guy on the other end of that "leash" is guilty of animal cruelty. I've had Belgian Malinois, and they can be a handful, but that kind of "control" is no control at all. Methinks the wrong person might have gone to jail.— May 9, 2012 8:35 p.m.
National Park Service Opposes Plaza de Panama Project
Even if all the aesthetic stuff didn't matter, the scheme would still only shuffle the present situation around AT GREAT COST. There are a lot of things that would do more good in terms of making the park functional with respect to ALL its NEEDS, before monumental and monumentally costly shuffling is done. Handicapped access, staff in and out travel, shipping and receiving, and other such "mundane" aspects of the WHOLE issue are conveniently ignored by armchair analysts who put their egos above other considerations, if they consider much else at all. Directing through traffic around the park hasn't been looked at seriously, nor has the option of a good internal transportation system that is more than a faux-trolley. There are complex needs and priorities that need to be efficiently served, and no study has taken any of these functional aspects of the whole seriously.— May 9, 2012 8:30 p.m.
Seau Apparent Suicide Could be Watershed NFL Event
Again, it's the sudden stop. The operative word is "rolling," not bonking. I'll bet the kid had other types of injuries as a result of the energy being spread out over the rest of his or her body, which absorbed fractions of the total force.— May 8, 2012 8:24 p.m.