agilen

Ah, gotcha. In that case....I don't see any problem at all with listening to music while working. In the professional world, she'll probably have a job where that is fine (and even helpful in drowning out office noise). Sometimes I wish schools did a better job of developing skills instead of developing kids abilities to follow orders...

Don't mean to nitpick, but I think this may be saying something about the state of education.... How is it that the teacher had a say in how your daughter did her homework? Are kids doing their homework in class these days? I'm by no means an old guy (graduated HS under 10 years ago), but homework was done....at home. Can you clarify what you meant here?

Thats why they want to change it to 18...so that people don't binge drink themselves to death. Underage people will drink more out-of-control because its something they aren't allowed to do. If they were allowed to, the binge drinking will hopefully subside. They were talking about this on NPR last night. One of the proponents of lowering the age made the point that the entire reason its 21 in the first place is because of drinking and driving, and that completely ignores the fact that there are issues around the drinking that have nothing to do with cars. So, why don't they just make zero-tolerance laws for people under 21? If you have a drop of alcohol and you get caught, your license is gone until you are 21. Otherwise, enjoy yourself responsibly at 18.

Nah, I heard an interview with him about this not too long ago....the words don't mean anything, he just thought they sounded cool. There are tons of theories about it, but they aren't true. Incidentally, for whatever reason this song is in the warmup music for almost every NFL team.

CHS == elitist? I think you should pay a visit to our friends over at Amherst and Colvin... Great to see some positive news from my alma mater...so far this year we've only heard about famous alumni passing on.

But was that him on the Steelers long TD pass who just let the guy catch it? He could have either 1) gone for the ball, or 2) put his shoulders squarely into the numbers of the receiver. I know it is preseason and nobody wants to get hurt, but that was a hospital pass and the receiver should have paid for it.

Well, to be fair, they are currently tied for last place...

Make sure you have 2 paddles in the boat.... Once I was stranded (engine died, and I haven't the foggiest idea how to fix it). It was almost dark and there was nobody within earshot. Only 1 paddle means you have to pass it to your buddy on the other side of the boat every couple of strokes. I always make sure there are 2 now. On a related note....Keep your wallet open. Boats are a money pit! The more informed you are about how your boat works, the less likely you are to break it and need to dump another few thousand bucks into it.

NPR had a story yesterday (or maybe Monday?) about why all the records are being broken. Basically, the gist of it is that records are made to be broken, so they always will...but there are some good reasons why it is happening now. The new swimsuits supposedly can shave 2% off a swimmer's time, which is over a second for every minute they swim. Also, the pool in Beijing is 3m deep, where as olympic standards are 2m. So, there is much more water to absorb the turbulence created by a pool full of swimmers, so the water is much calmer than in past olympic pools. They didn't quantify the difference this makes, but they seemed to imply that this made an even bigger difference than the swimsuits, hence we are seeing records broken by 4-5 seconds. Now, Phelps is swimming in the same pool in the same suit as the other guys _right now_, and beating them, so yes, he is the best swimmer there is right now. But breaking world records with the above factors is probably somewhat expected during these olympics.

I think the problem is the huge number of medals available to a swimmer as compared to another athlete. Phelps may be one of the best swimmers ever, I have no doubt about that. But 11 medals in 2 olympics are only available to a select few sports, and the media has utterly and completely gotten on the "how many shiny things can we look at at once" bandwagon. Say there was olympic golf, for arguments sake. I'm going to bet that Tiger Woods would dominate that, because he is easily one of the greatest athletes in the history of sports. But, he'd still just win 1 gold medal, and to people who count the medals they'd say Phelps is a superior athlete. Make no mistake about it, the hype around Phelps is because of medal count. Other athletes could be just as dominant in their sport, but if they were only able to win 1, they wouldn't get the coverage.

We were in the airport on Friday, and my girlfriend saw two girls who had just got off a plane wearing winter coats. Its gonna be perfect weather for the next few days...the "lake effect rain" that we had seems to have moved on.

Yes, in _France_. You have much higher population densities, less land, less highway infrastructure, and higher fuel costs. Trains in Europe have always been feasible and efficient because of that. America is too big and spread out for trains to work in all but the highest density population areas (upstate NY is not one of them). Like a poster said above, flying is cheaper than taking the train. As for the stadium location....I had never really thought of Grand Island, but thats not a bad idea. The only way for that to work, however, is to get rid of the tolls on the bridges. It would look great on TV to get a shot of the stadium and the mist of the falls in the background. Also, the weather on the north end of grand island is far better than Orchard Park, so those late December games would be more bearable for those fans who don't like the bitter cold games.

I'm gonna bet that they _have_ been shopping JP all offseason. If the Bears or someone were interested, they'd have already made a deal. Now, if a starting QB gets hurt in training camp, then maybe the situation will change. But for now, I don't think there is a market for JP.

I live in Buffalo now, but I used to live in SW CT. When I was there, a trip from Stamford to Boston cost around 2x on the Acela vs. the standard amtrak, and got you there a whopping 20 minutes faster. Which means the far more cost conscious people in upstate NY and Ohio aren't going to bother. Sure, it'd be great to take a 150mph train from the stadium to Toronto or Albany after the game. But I'd have a hard time believing that the economics will ever come close to supporting it.

Huh? Who is going to take these trains? The Acela hasn't exactly been a resounding success in the highest population density region of the country. The thruway and other roads do a fine job moving people between the cities you mentioned.

I don't know how long it would take you to get there (might need a car+ferry), but Port Townsend is a pretty cool town. It fits the "Unique and/or quirky places to walk around or shop." Also, if you are really able to take a longer trip, check out Victoria, BC. I think there is a ferry from Seattle to Victoria, but its probably a long ride. I haven't been to Seattle itself, so I can't help too much, but those were the two cities that we liked when we were in the area.

I tend to use middle-click in Firefox to open the article in a new tab. I can't remember if that was an option I set up or not, but click on that cool little round button in the middle of your mouse, and voila...article opens in a new tab.

Don't forget, for those of you in Buffalo... The frontrunner for the 2008 olympics was Toronto, and by all accounts their bid was the best. The IOC thought it had some political say or something, and decided to give it to Beijing so that they would stop pulling BS like censoring journalists and what not. No matter how you feel about TO, it would be really cool to have the Olympics in our backyard. At least one venue I know of was going to be in St. Catherines...it never would have gotten closer to us here.

We don't really know much of anything about it: http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=495

Yeah, I agree. I've never seen Evans catch a deep ball. I wish that the Bills could score 70-yard touchdowns. http://www.nfl.com/stats/categorystats?arc...mp;d-447263-p=1 http://www.nfl.com/stats/categorystats?arc...mp;d-447263-p=1 http://www.nfl.com/stats/categorystats?arc...mp;d-447263-p=1 http://www.nfl.com/stats/categorystats?arc...mp;d-447263-p=1

Just don't misspell it by flipping the i and the l around.... (NSFW, try it at your own risk...)

Can the NFL really keep up that policy forever? It seems to me like the value of NFL franchises has risen much faster than the pool of possible owners. Its already at the point where being a billionaire does not mean you could really afford to buy a team outright. At some point I would expect the current owners to realize that their franchises would be much more valuable if corporate entities (who have much more money than individuals) were allowed to purchase them.

Do you have a natural fade with your irons? You might just have the wrong flex for your driver....a natural fade + too stiff of a driver would lead to some nasty results. I have the opposite problem, a natural draw, but the only driver I own is too flexible, resulting in an awful duckhook. I've tried a few with a stiffer flex and they work well, but I don't play golf enough to justify the big $$ for a new driver. You don't really want to have to change your swing for only one club, so you should probably go to a range, spend some time hitting with your best clubs, then demo several drivers with different flexes. Buying any club without trying it probably isn't too good an idea.

Because he is still under contract with the Packers. If you were allowed to "retire" then talk to any team about coming back, all guys who weren't happy with their team would "retire" instead of hold out, and just sign with whoever they wanted.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,380143,00.html Do you think they like their coffee "black"? Or is that racist too?