For some reason the janitors have my home IP or subnet blocked from posting comments so I was unable to comment and participate in the MNF pick'em last nite.
Instructions: Post a comment below expressing your disgust with a particular way this site is run
Work Account (that is me) won this week's NFL pick'em challenge 6-4, besting the 2nd place finisher ShadowWrought.
Pick'em for tonite's Monday Night Football game but be sure to include the total # of points scored. Whoever picks the winning team and has the point total closest to the real total (going over is OK, this is not the Price Is Right) wins.
Monday, October 31, 2005
9:00 pm
Baltimore 2-4
Pittsburgh 4-2
Comment below before 1pm Eastern time on Sunday October 30th with 10 teams you think will win.
That is, out of the 13 Sunday games listed below, pick who you think will win in 10 out of the 13 games.
The Slashdotter with the highest % of being correct wins!
I'll announce the winner Monday morning!
All times are US/Eastern
Arizona at Dallas 1:00 p.m.
Chicago at Detroit 1:00 p.m.
Cleveland at Houston 1:00 p.m.
Green Bay at Cincinnati 1:00 p.m.
Jacksonville at St. Louis 1:00 p.m.
Minnesota at Carolina 1:00 p.m.
Oakland at Tennessee 1:00 p.m.
Washington at N.Y. Giants 1:00 p.m.
Kansas City at San Diego 4:05 p.m.
Miami at New Orleans (Baton Rouge, LA) 4:05 p.m.
Philadelphia at Denver 4:15 p.m.
Tampa Bay at San Francisco 4:15 p.m.
Buffalo at New England 8:30 p.m.
It's discussions like this, full of a boatload of misconceptions about the role of religion, charity, and politics, that make me want to just go to ars full time.
I'm a professional, successful scientist, working at a world-class scientific laboratory, doing my best to make an impact on basic energy, climate, and materials science. I'm also a conservative Catholic Christian, exactly the type of person that most of the people in this discussion are railing against. If you followed all of the bile, you'd think that being a scientist and being a Christian were completely incompatible. I have never believed so. In fact, I consider them inextricable.
And it would seem that my colleagues find the positions compatible as well. I don't have the statistics here, but I believe that something like 75% of scientists believe in God.
Yes, I know I should get involved with the conversation, try to pull
Edit: I decided to toss my hat into the fray.
Okay, I'm trying to like this software. I have to give a presentation tomorrow (or maybe Friday) about the state of visualization where I work. All I want to do is make a slide with two columns of bulletted text.
It's not possible! You can't have more than one "text area" in a slide. You can put other text thingies on the slide, but they won't get bulletted formatting. You have to put in the bullets and tabs yourself. And forget about pagination and wrapping.
So I tried to use a table. Tables are very cool in Keynote. However, you can't have bullletted text. The control in the inspector that would let you choose bullets or numbering is just a blank gray box. Simply not possible. You're back to the same state that you are with text "thingies".
So then I tried to create what I wanted in Powerpoint and then bring it into Keynote. You casn do it, you can, as long as you don't want to edit the text once you bring it into Keynote. All of the wrapping and pagination has been done manually with tabs and spaces!
Something about this software feels not quite finished.
I'm trying to like this program. I really am...
Well, here we go! I've recently accepted a position at Oak Ridge National Laboratory as Visualization Task Leader and will be moving to eastern Tennessee on Saturday. This is going to be a big move for us, as I've been in California for 11 years now and my wife's been here for 9 years. On all fronts (professional, personal, etc.) this is a good move for us, but it's scary nonetheless.
Wish me luck!
Ramesh Ponnuru has a well-reasoned article talking about the criticisms of President Bush's embryonic stem cell stance. In the article, he talks about the question of when to determine, in an embryo's/fetus' life, to say that they are human and deserving of a right to life.
An exerpt from the entire article:
We know that the embryo is alive, not dead or inanimate. We know that it is not just alive the way that one of our skin cells is alive: It is a distinct organism, not a part of some other organism. It has the capacity, under the right circumstances (circumstances that are in an important sense "normal"), to direct its own development from the embryonic to the fetal to the infant stages of development and beyond. And we know that this organism is human and does not belong to some other species.
We do not generally believe that the right of members of the human species to live--that is, not to be killed--depends on their size, age, location, condition of dependence, or number of limbs. Any claim that the embryo does not have a right to be protected from killing has to involve a denial of the idea that "mere" membership in the human species is enough to confer that right. That right will instead have to be posited to depend on some accidental quality that some human organisms have and others do not. Perhaps that quality is sentience or rich relationships with others or an ability to perform high-order mental functions or something else.
But whatever that something is, making the right to life depend on it creates serious problems. First, it is not just embryos who will be denied protection. Newborns can't perform high-order mental functions either, which is why philosophers who are consistent about denying the importance of membership in the human species, such as Peter Singer, approve of infanticide. Second, these qualities vary continuously. It is impossible to identify a non-arbitrary point at which an entity would have enough of the quality in question not to be killed. Third, for the same reason, it is impossible to explain why some people do not have more or fewer basic rights than other people depending on how much of this quality they possess. The foundation of human equality is denied in principle when we allow some members of the human species to be treated as mere things.
Anonymous Coward:
Yeah, just like I was supposed to have a flying car, affordable robot that can clean, cook, mow the lawn, and feed the pets, AND my fully-automated home by 2000?
Please.
It's coming, fools!
The value of 50,000 yen in the Japanese economy is not equivilent to the value of $450 in the American economy. Japan is much, much more expensive. Does your company have a per diem for travel? Check their rate for Japan, and compare to anywhere in North America. Dollars to donuts that Japan is significantly higher. The last place I worked paid $35/day for The US, $45 for Canada, and $75 for Japan.
So how much will the PS3 cost? $300. Well, $299.99.
I'm big on predictions lately. Play along at home!
I'm also standing by my prediction that Microsoft will either have a Linux-based kernel in Windows, or shelve Windows in favor of a Linux-based operating system by 2015. I've been saying this since Apple picked up BSD for OS X. It'll happen, people! Watch for it!
This is an impressive story. It's about a serviceman who has been pushing hard to go back to Iraq after a debilitating injury. It's a very interesting look into the drives and motivations of a particular serviceman.
There are some of you who will probably find his actions foolhardy. There are some of you will will find his actions noble. And some who will probably think they're a little of both.
As a father of two small children, I can understand some portion of his dilemma.
You are in a maze of little twisting passages, all alike.
