Sip

Nice find Nair!!!! If you are curious, this is the original poem I was referring to: There once was a brainy baboon, Who always breathed down a bassoon, For he said, "It appears That in billions of years I shall certainly hit on a tune". Arthur Eddington (1882 - 1944) New Pathways in Science (Cambridge 1939)

The level of difference between how much the guys and how much the girls are willing to compromise in relationships

I like that!!! Wow, how was this for sarcasm

How's this for a consensus: 1) Football kicks ASS 2) Soccer is for pansies and cry babies ... although I enjoy it a lot. 3) Baseball sucks. I'm sure the French were behind it's invention. 4) Tha Patriots are going to PWN and the pathers will be PWND of course. Let the festivities BEGIN

That's potato salad hill ... a really nasty obstacle out in Moab. I've been there .... I couldn't do it with my blazer but next time I go there with the Jeep, I am definitely going to give it a try. That guy in the video was just waaay too heavy on the stupid pedal By the way, I just got back from a bit of wheeling out in Michigan in about 2-3 feet of snow!!! It was a blast ... I'll try to post some pics later but right now I am about to pass out

Dear Arpa, the reason I got intereseted in this thread is that unlike countless other evolution threads, this was not a "creationsim as the anthithesis of evolution thread but rather a "let's ditch evolution as it ain't doin us no good anyway" thread. I have to say the points raised are interesting but I still don't see enough grounds to ditch the theory. I look at all these species of domesticated dogs that we humans have created. Some look ugly, some look cute. They definitely varry a lot in terms of physical appearance, their strengths and weaknesses, personalities, and essentially their "identity". They are still dogs I guess ... Then as I mentioned before, I look at a horse, a donkey, and a zebra or a leopard, a tiger, and a kitty cat ... and I just can't get myself to accept what is seemingly right there before our eyes. A common ancestary would very trivially and very cleanly explain the amazing similarities between many current day species that are considered "different" yet share sooo much in common. Sure maybe in a simulation done on a computer it takes 5 billion years for an earth covrered meteres deep in Ecoli to have a viable mutation or evolution from one form to another ... but I do know that our science of computing isn't NEARLY close enough to being able to model the AMAZINGLY complex interplay between something as complex as a colony of millions of bacteria. There are just waaay too many variables, waaaay too many unknowns, and just waaaay too many things to keep track of, that I simply can't trust a simulation to disprove or prove anything like that, yet. Heck I don't even trust the result I get out of a simple series of multiplications and divisions as I KNOW how badly an algorithm can screw up with computer math, even though the algorithm itself is flawless in pure math.

By the way, Anon, for the record I just want to say your posts here make excellent points ... well yah up to the last paragraph of that last post

Oh and just to clarify my position so I don't sound like a naive dumbass ... mathematically there is a very low chance of winning in Vegas ... but there are those that hit the jackpot every once in a while. Even in lotto drawings where chances are one in 80 million, you end up having several winners sometimes. The key point to make is that there are a LOT of people trying. Now sure here things may seem faaar less likely but compound that in millions of years and COUNTLESS species gettin it on and now it's a whole different ball game. A single DNA strand changing in such a way as to form another survivable DNA may be unlikely ... but just imagine how many such things are happening simultanously!

Anonymous ... just because something is mathematically unlikely, doesn't mean it can't happen. I will abandon that theory when you have a better one to replace it with. So what is your alternative?

The fact that we have seen mutation proves that genetic sequences in a species can in fact be changed. The fact that we have seen "micro evolution" as anon calls it, again supports this fact. I think the confusion comes from looking at a final "species" and ignoring the underlying fundamental building blocks ... i.e. the DNA. I don't know about you guys, but when I look at a horse, a donkey, a zebra, a camel, and a lama, and a zebra, I basically see the same creature. When I look at a wolf and big dog, or looking at a lion, leobard, tiger, and even my little kitty cat I home, I get the same fuzzy feeling that there is some tremendous amount of similarity. I can easily see a common ancestor or multiple ancestors from which these funny lookin beasts have all come from. Don't even get me started on birds and fish and insects ... How can you account for SOOO much similarity between the species? Why do almost all mamals have 2 eyes, a nose, and two ears? Why do they have 4 limbs (either 4 legs or 2 arms and 2 legs?) I keep hearing that there is no evidence that species evolved from each other while EVERYTHING I see points directly to that!

We are observing both evolution and mutation in our daily lives ... maybe not at the scale of dinosaur to human, but at an observable scale non the less. How else do you explain new viruses and bacteria that keep cropping up resistant to our previous ways of fighting them? How can you sit there and so comfortably claim evolution is just an "unproven theory" when RIGH BEFORE OUR EYES we see bacteria that have built up resistance to our anti biotics and are thus changing to survive better in a preceived hostile environment. And if you think the flu vaccine you took this year is going to protect you for years and years and years to come, since evolution and mutation are simply "unproven theories" ... then get I hope you have a lot of accumulated sick time at work, since we have definitely seen mutating viruses appearing with changes at the genetic level. What mostly gets lost in such discussions is that we only have a recorded history of several thousand years while evolutionary changes take place on the orders of millions and millions of years.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4096586/ For some reason I thought this was one the most hillarious things I've seen in a while Anyone up for some free sushi? http://armenians.com/forum/style_images/1/icon8.gif But I can't make heads or tails of this quote:

Dan, posting "stereotyping ... the passtime of shallow people" is an act of stereotyping in and of itself.

Did that post make you shallow too?

Here's some recent stats for some of the major p2p file sharing networks as reported by zeropaid.com P2P Networks January 24, 2004 - 17:00 EST Network Users FastTrack 3,667,453 eDonkey 1,721,882 Overnet 1,635,602 iMesh 1,229,931 MP2P 247,725 DirectConnect 222,888 Gnutella 214,562 Ares 65,354 Filetopia 3,866 TOTAL: 9,009,263 P2P Networks January 11, 2003 - 16:00 EST Network Users FastTrack 4,194,808 iMesh 1,393,150 eDonkey 423,089 DirectConnect 157,759 Overnet 91,750 Gnutella 65,206 Blubster 63,496 FileNavigator 17,850 Filetopia 3,896 URL Blaze 2,459 Ares 2,190 TOTAL: 6,415,653 P2P Networks April 11, 2002 Network Users FastTrack 1,314,066 iMesh 429,498 Gnutella 221,922 eDonkey 155,356 DirectConnect 83,464 SongSpy 14,022 Blubster 5,961 TOTAL: 2,224,289 You'll notice that FastTrack is still the biggest ... some popular clients for the FastTrack network are Kazaa, Kazaa Lite, Morpheus, Grokster, etc, if I remember correctly. But things are changing almost at a daily basis

But isn't that's your answer to EVERYTHING?

"I am sorry, although I am flattered, I have to decline"... or the last part could be more casual ... like "I can't". They should get the hint there ... if the question comes as to "oh why girl ..." Then the answer could me more along the lines of "I am very busy with school and have other priorities at this point" ... and if they still keep going, then you increase your level of bluntness ... and at some point you may have to say "Listen, there is NO WAY, ok?"

HERE ... ebay to the rescue once again.

Sounds like a nice place gev. You've probably picked the best time to go there ... I'm guessing it's around 130F there in the summer (~54C for non US people) I have not been offroading around Death Valley ... I have a buddy that once drug his sister out there for a 26 mile hike!!!! Evil ... pure evil I called him ... she was visiting from Colorado I think. I guess around So Cal, I've done pretty much all the good trails around Arrowhead and Big Bear ... a lot of exploration in the Johnson Valley area around Barstow ... a couple of things by Calico. I've been to the Hungry Valley OHRV a few times which seems to be a big play ground for bikers ... did a couple of trails there around Frazier park like Lockwood canyon and Miller ... Actually I've done that trail about 5 times I think Further south, I've been to the Anza Borrego area a couple of times ... explored quite a bit out there. I never actually went into the sand dunes at glamis which I guess is another big biker hot spot but passed by it a few times. That's pretty much it for me in Southern Cal ... I've done a bunch of trails in Arizona, Moab of course, and just last summer I ran the Rubicon (around Lake Tahoe) with a decent sized Jeep group which was pretty amazing. I am going to try to make it out there again this year ... but not sure yet. If not Rubicon, then I'll surely try to do another Moab trip (Utah).

Well ... these little cars are not your traditional body on chasis type of construction ... they are all unibody and even worse, mostly cheap plastic. Especially with the front wheel drive ones, there's not much reinforcement in the back ... no heavy axles or drive lines to tie into anything. Just a couple of wheels riding on bearings I guess and a couple of shocks or struts. That would NEVER happen to a truck or a body on frame type of vehicle if you tie the strap to the frame ... the worse you'd see is the bumper coming off if the strap was on the bumper but the frame would stay even if a bomb went off. I don't know if I'd ever try to pull a suburban in my S10s ... the front end is just too weak on those to handle that kind of weight. I migh try it in 2WD but I would NEVER do it in 4x4 ... you'll snap a CV joint in a second. Oh yah and especially trying to pull backwards ... that would be just downright stupid in an S10.

I can't believe how many things they did wrong ... First of all, with all those guys around, any 2 of them would have easily been able to push that little car back on the road. Second, why pull him back when only his rear is on a bit of snow? Third, the first crack crack should have been a big hint of things to come ... the driver got out and just looked at the bumper ... he never got down to check the hook or wherever the strap was on ... that was when it gave way. All in all, I just laughed soooo hard when the entire rear end came off

The old link is down ... Updated link http://www.fluxtech.ca/depository/snowtowcar.wmv

Cool gev ... what kind of truck is it and what trails and where did you take it? It's around southern cali I'll probably know it... yah and never never never ask ANYTHING from any sales guy ... they are all idiots. I was looking for a 4x4 2-door Rodeo (aka Amigo) around 2001 and they couldn't find me a single one around LA for weeks. So the guy tells me oh why don't you just get one of these Ford Escapes? (that was after I had made it clear I needed it for offroading) I just kinda gave him this look and then started laughing ... walked right off the lot, went home, checked the chevy dealer's inventory and realized they had a $3000 rebate thing on the blazer I wanted which put it right in my budget range. Next day I drove the blazer off their LOT It's been a great little truck ... I've pushed it to it's limits and waaay beyond and it has held up great. I wouldn't imagine buying anything other than a 4x4 ... except if it was a sports car or something ... and even then, I'd probably lean towards an AWD.

I cleaned up the insults/jokes in here. Let's stick to the question. The rest should be taken to private messages or the chatroom. Thanks. I also changed the options a bit to match general bandwidth grades in the poll though the previous votes should still be correct.

Jerry is 2K Dan ... more than excellent. ... which makes your 3K Tom in the signature also ok.