Balta1701

That chorus of angels you just heard? That was Obama making his official announcement.

This should prove to be an entertaining reply. No doubt the media who wasted a week blaming Pelosi for something she didn't even do will ignore it, but it'll still be fun to see.

So, it appears that back in 2003, the Iranians sent a Fax to the State Department through a Swiss intermediary proposing the outlines of negotiations towards a full long-term settlement, on topics including full transparency of Iran's nuclear program, agreements on disarmament of Iran's other chemical weapons systems, ending of Iranian military assistance to Hezbollah, Iranian support of the Saudi proposal for a 2-state solution in Palestine, and support for the establishment of a democratic and independent Iraqi government. As far as we can tell, the U.S. government appears to have not even bothered replying, and in fact responded by complaining to the Swiss about it. Seems we thought that Iran was about to fall apart completely, or something like that. Oops. Whether or not it was 100% sincere, if nothing else, basically it seems to have offered up everything the U.S. could have wanted from Iran, and therefore could have formed the basis for talks (and in fact it seems to have even included an outline for how the talks could progress). And on top of that, for some strange reason, our current Secretary of State testified yesterday that she did not remember the U.S. receiving that fax. link, but thankfully, the good people at Newsweek happen to have unearthed a copy of it to jog her memory a little more. So, let's see, Iran offers up everything we want, we say no, and before 6 years are up, we wind up bombing them for the same things they offered. This will truly be a triumph of something. Not sure exactly what.

QUOTE(SoxFan101 @ Feb 9, 2007 -> 12:23 PM) I got a total of 4 votes for biggest pessimist, and 3 of them are not by me! Maybe next season I can go the distance for sure That's a pretty optimistic view of things. You've lost my vote for next year.

QUOTE(NorthSideSox72 @ Feb 9, 2007 -> 12:32 PM) FWIW, I don't mean to say our society is full of scuzzy creatures. I'm just saying the media doesn't deserve the blame - they just deliver what we want. Is it just 100% that though, or does anyone else think that to some level it does flow both ways? In the sense that to some extent, the media does have the ability to decide what they think is important and how much emphasis to put on a particular topic, they can use their abilities to create topics of discussion when there really aren't anything. I mean, think about the "Missing White Woman" craze in the media from a couple years ago...every time some attractive, wealthy, young, white female went missing for whatever reason, it turned into a nationwide story for weeks/months. To my eyes, the media figures made a series of choices about what topics to cover nationally - there were older women, men, African American women, etc. who went missing or who were killed who never made it national, but someone made a choice that these particular stories needed to be covered. Hell, one of my former co-workers in NW Indiana was shot and killed in what appears to have been a bizarre love quadrilateral involving hit men, kids, and millions of dollars, and that never became a national story. Someone is making decisions about how much time to give stories and which stories to start featuring, and that does feed back into the system.

QUOTE(LVSoxFan @ Feb 9, 2007 -> 12:27 PM) So yes, after that season and a total question mark of a team this year, I'm not exactly inspired to be shelling out more dough and facing new restrictions. No one makes you go to the games. This is classic economics. If you increase the price of a ticket by a small amount, you do expect some amount of fans to decide that the product on the field is no longer worth their money and stop buying tickets. The goal is to increase the prices enough so as to increase profits without driving away so many fans as to reduce profitability. If you don't feel that a 90 win team at those prices is a good enough deal for your money, then don't spend it.

QUOTE(knightni @ Feb 9, 2007 -> 10:44 AM) Still using electricity. Shockingly little electricity all things considered though.

QUOTE(knightni @ Feb 9, 2007 -> 10:25 AM) Unless you use A/C! - Summer does not save money. Discussion reopened. Buy fan. Turn on fan. Get in front of fan.

The Mets have signed Chan Ho Park to a 1 year, $600,000 major league contract, with incentives up to $2.4 million.

Yahtzee. That's all I have to say about This.

These 2 guys get some bonus points. Especially Flake.

Writing this took some Balls.

QUOTE(NorthSideSox72 @ Feb 9, 2007 -> 05:52 AM) Note to Tex - there is no Speaker of the Senate. But let's avoid the house rep from Alaska too. However, the President Pro Temp of the Senate is also in the line of succession directly behind the Speaker of the House, and presumably would have some level of similar concerns. That is usually the senior member of whichever party is in the majority in the Senate, which, frighteningly enough, is currently Robert Byrd of Virginia. And on top of that, and I bring this up for this reason, the man Sen. Byrd replaced in that position was none other than Senator Ted "It's not a dumptruck it's a series of tubes!" Stevens, the senior senator from Alaska. God some scary people wind up 4th in line for the Presidency. There was a while when Strom was in that spot too.

QUOTE(Jordan4life_2007 @ Feb 8, 2007 -> 11:22 PM) I've been on the Boone Logan bandwagon for a while. I think last year he was kind of overwhelmed (most would be). He should be a lot better this time around. Also, I remember Kenny mentioning they were very high on Paulino (I think that's how you spell his first name) Reynoso. I expect him to get a legitimate chance at winning a spot in the 'pen as well. I sort of liked what I saw from Logan last year. Sneaky fastball, looks like in the long term he'll be an excellent lefty reliever for someone...he just needs to not p*ss himself when a donkey-man walks to the plate, and throw some freaking strikes.

I don't think I have any reason for posting this one other than entertainment

QUOTE(Kalapse @ Feb 8, 2007 -> 04:36 PM) So he's a right handed Barry Zito? Well, it would be the same pitch making each of them good if he does figure it out.

Not sure if this belongs here or in the Buster, but hey, I'm a mod here, I can always move it if I want! Al Gore is trying to organize a 7 city concert on the scale of or larger than Live Aid/Live 8 to promote action on Climate Change, with a lineup they're saying will "Dwarf" the previous ones. The date is July 7, which means I'll have to figure out some way to tape the thing cause hopefully I'll be getting married on that day. Let's all hope that Pink Floyd decides to give it another go-round...mainly because they were so bloody good at live 8.

QUOTE(mr_genius @ Feb 8, 2007 -> 02:53 PM) like i said, i agree with you the main issue of global warming. you don't need to convince me. but you are entirely incorrect that suggestions of natural climate change are not worthy of study and could not be a possibility. i'm not trying to be arrogant, but i don't think you understand what you are suggesting. I'm not at all suggesting it is not worthy of study on principle, I'm suggesting that there's no one publishing the statement you want for a reason. There simply is no evidence backing up that assertion, and studies which would have been expected to produce that sort of evidence if it were the case are done all the time in the process of analyzing recent climate shifts. I'm not saying "oh don't do this work", I'm saying that work which could prove the contrarian position, analyzing all sorts of recent climatic shifts and the driving factors behind them is done all of the time, and no matter how much work is done, nothing significant has come out which promotes any sort of challenge to the opinion that anthropogenic emissions are driving a strong warming of the Earth. There is an awful lot of money available right now for research into things like the Little Ice age, carbon sinks, ways that the earth will react to dumping CO2 into the oceans that might mitigate atmospheric shifts, the response of organisms to rapid CO2 shifts, etc. But even with all that, no research of any major quality has come out saying that the climate shifts we have seen in the past 50-100 years are mostly natural. The evidence simply isn't there, and it's not for a lack of effort.

QUOTE(Flash Tizzle @ Feb 8, 2007 -> 02:52 PM) That immediately came to my mind as well; but reasonably, would any assailant risk murdering Smith in the wake of heightened media attention? Who knows, though. If the biological father could possibly inherit the money from her previous marriage with the millionaire, it would definitely establish a motive. Although, again, could anyone be that dumb? He'd be the first suspect. According to CNN, both a bodyguard and a nurse seemed to be present shortly after the onset of whatever issues killed her. QUOTE(LosMediasBlancas @ Feb 8, 2007 -> 02:35 PM) What were the resutls of her son's autopsy? I heard had drugs in his system, but a heart condition might have been the cause of death. Is it possible there is hereditary condition? Again, all speculation. From Wikipedia...

QUOTE(mr_genius @ Feb 8, 2007 -> 02:16 PM) even the article you have cited states it is a likely hood human emmissions are a main cause and that natural enviromental factors are not the only source. all true. however, there have been huge climate changes on earth in the past and i've read a lot of credible reports that state the main cause is probably due to human activity, but natural weather patterns cannot be ruled out. this may be difficult for you to accept, but it's a fact. Yes, the paper says it is "Very likely", but you didn't pay attention to what this report actually is; it is a summary for policymakers. In other words, it is not a scientific paper, nor is it a paper meant for public consumption without taking time to understand the language. Saying that the things they have observed are "Very Likely" due to human activities is the strongest language they apply for anything in that paper other than it's predictions about future conditions, to which they apply the phrase "Virtually certain". This is language written by and for politicians to allow them to take action while still covering their bases. The SPM was actually vetted and to some extent rewriten by politicians from almost every country involved before it was released so that their governments would understand exactly the meaning of each word in it. Yes, there have been huge climate shifts in the past. In the Cretaceous for example, atmospheric CO2 was something like 4 times the current values (which we could reach in a little under 200 years at current production rates). The climate was also on average roughly 8-15 degrees C hotter than it is today, as a consequence of the hightened CO2. Simply saying that there have been huge shifts in the past is not an argument that we have no ability to understand what caused those shifts, nor is it an argument that we have no ability to understand what our actions will have on the current climate. And most importantly, it is not an argument that rapidly changing OUR climate is not a bad thing. The earth can survive shifts of 15 degrees C. But that doesn't mean we as a civilization living on the earth want it to happen. The fact is, we understand enough about the climate system to give you good estimates of the direction and magnitude of climatic shifts coming from rapidly dumping an additional 100 ppm of CO2 into the Atmosphere, and we are seeing the beginnings of exactly those effects showing up in the climate. This is the reality. The debate now in terms of the forcings is focusing on things like how much will specific areas warm up compared with others as the global average temperature increases, how much the total warming from the CO2 we have already released will be (that depends largely on cloud-feedbacks), what sort of impact it will have on ecosystems, why glaciers seem to be collapsing at much more rapid rates than we would expect from the current warming, and so on. And finally, no matter what you have read, if you are reading things that are claiming that the current shifts are natural and not man-made, then what you are reading is simply not any scholarly work that has been published in the last 10 years. There simply has not been any published scholarly work in the last 12 years challenging the consensus view I gave from the IPCC report (which went from saying likely to very likely between 2001 and 2007 btw). A paper in Science a couple years ago took a look at that question, and found that there had not been a single published, peer-reviewed work in the last 10 years that had challenged the conclusion of the IPCC that most of the late 20th century warming was due to anthropogenic emissions. The evidence simply is not out there. The people doing this work know what they're doing, and there is simply no evidence being produced on the "it's all natural variation" or even the "anthropogenic emissions aren't the controlling factor" side any more. The community has moved on to more specific questions, and they did so quite a while ago. This is not a question of respecting minority views any more, it's a question of there not being any credible views on the side you're claiming is the minority. The minority right now are people who say that yes CO2 is a major factor, but we'll only get 1.5-2 degrees C of warming in the next 100 years because of aerosol emissions or cloud increases (which is an entirely plausible conclusion)

QUOTE(mr_genius @ Feb 8, 2007 -> 01:41 PM) The big question, which is hard to answer, is how much of the temperature change is a natural cycle and how much is man made. i think reasonable dissent in this, as any scientific debate, is good. any honest, competent, scientist will tell you the same. First of all, no, that is not the big question any more. That may have been the big question for science 15 years ago. For all practical purposes within the community that actually works on this process, the question is settled; the late 20th century warming trend is almost entirely a man-made phenomenon, and even the perturbations in it like the 1960's are due to specific actions by humanity. I'm going to steal a few paragraphs from the recently released summary for policymakers of the 2007 IPCC report (keep in mind, this is a summary for policy makers, so every word here has specific, legalistic meaning, including the "Likelies"). Full report. The data simply do not support in any way at present the suggestion that any significant amount of the recent, last 100 year warming trend is related to natural cycles. The science has moved well beyond that. The debate has now moved on to how big the impact of what man has done will be, not what fraction of it is due to man, because what man has done has already overwhelmed whatever natural variation could exist within the system. Yes, Reasonable dissent is good. However, dissent for the sake of dissent, dissenting without solid evidence to back up one's case, accomplishes very little, especially in cases where politics get involved.

I can think of no part of this woman's life that actually reflects positively on herself, the people around her, and even this country as a whole.

The next WBC team for the U.S. just got a lot better.