Jon in Pasadena

What about it? I'm sure there's xxx% probability of getting hit by something massive enough to seriously fug us up, but why would that risk be "ever-increasing"? Based on the number of recorded impact events on the moon, it looks like, in general, there's much less large crap flying around now than in the distant past. If anything, it appears to me that for the first time ever in the history of the Earth, we might almost be at the brink of developing technologies capable of dealing with some of those rocks. Wouldn't that mean the risk (of life-altering/destroying event) is (or will soon be) actually *decreasing* in time ?

Poetic license.

In a related story, Kelly Holcomb was reportedly seen running around giving chest-bumps and shouting "Oh yeah, baby, who da man! Who da MAN!" after rocketing one that came very close to reaching the line of scrimmage.

Well, although I have attended several of Dr. Hawking's technical lectures on quantum mechanics and cosmology in which he meandered off on anthropic principles and such, I haven't heard him speak specifically to the point of biospheric disaster. With the caveat that I (obviously!) don't know the full context, and I could, perhaps, be convinced if he supplied a lot of strong references, this remark strikes me as rather stupid on the face of it: "Life on Earth is at the ever-increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster, such as sudden global warming, nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus or other dangers we have not yet thought of." Who, exactly, has unambiguously quantified the risk of all life being wiped out, much less provided an unassailable model that guarantees that risk to be a monotonically increasing function of time? No one I'm familiar with, I'm sure. Seems like a "pull that argument out of your butt" type of statement to me.

This post is dead-nuts right on. For a first bike, get something small and used and trash the hell out of it; learn how to start, stop, turn, steer with brakes, do wheelies, brakies, burn-outs, speed-shift, go uphill, downhill, on dirt, sand, gravel, mud, slush, water, ice, snow, horse-turds, fall down without getting hurt, and THEN get yourself a friggin' Hayabusa, or whatever. My first bike was a Suzuki GS 550E, and I likely would have killed myself on anything much bigger (OK, admittedly, when I got it, it was already set up for racing, with rear-sets, reverse shifter, hot cams, and all that crap, but at least the thought was there. ) By the time I was riding GSXR's I knew how to control my vehicle, and equally importantly, how to anticipate when/where others couldn't/wouldn't, and as a result, avoided countless bad situations where I could have "Roethlisbergered" myself.

Sorry, I didn't check the board again until today. Which opinion, exactly, are you referencing? Assuming it's my contention that a LARGE %age of motorcyle/car accidents are caused by car drivers, here is my response: First, it's worth noting that your contention, that "most motorcycle accidents are caused by motocyclists acting like idiots" is pretty much non-sequitar to my post, since I was referring specifically to "bike/car interactions" i.e., a bike hits a car, or vice versa., while "motorcycle accidents" as used by you would include pretty much everything that results in falling down - many of which do not involve cars (although I hear a surprising number do involve Bambi). Second, even if we use the more restrictive crash set, it's still quite possible for both statements to be true simultaneously. If, for example, 51% of bike/car crashes were due to squids (moron motorcyclists) and 49% were due to moron cagers, then both your statement and mine would be true, assuming you'll concede that 49% is a LARGE percentage. (If you don't think 49% is very large, then we have a fundamental disagreement on the meaning of "LARGE".) As it turns out, I did look up the NHTSA statistics years ago, when I lived in NorCal, and although I do not have the #'s anymore (and they'd be somewhat out of date if I did), my recollection is that by far the most common proximate cause of bike/car crashes was failure to yield by the driver of the automobile while attempting a left turn. Anecdotally, this is also true in my experience, as both of my bike crashes happened that way. The (distant) second most common cause was loss of control due to excessive speed by the motorcyclist, I *think*. In conclusion - yes there are a lot of terrible motorcycle drivers out there. Most of them way too immature and inexperienced on bikes way too fast for their skill level. And there are also a lot of terrible car drivers that are unaware of anything on the road smaller than a tractor-trailer.

With all the nonsense being bandied about regarding bikes being "pointless" to ride and so forth, and with all due respect to the LARGE percentage of bike/car interactions being caused by moron cagers (car drivers), let's not lose sight of the real danger lurking on the highways: these sneaky bastages

The struggling Berber taxi driver I hired in friggin' Ourzazate spoke five languages fluently. Including English. And he could hold his own in about 4-5 others. And he didn't learn 'em in any school, either. He learned by asking his customers to teach him, constant practice, getting people (including me) to donate dictionaries, phrase books, etc., and most importantly, by being motivated to learn to improve his situation. The reason illegal immigrants in the U.S. don't learn English is very simple: They don't give a damn. They know that enough Americans will be guilted/intimidated/browbeaten by the professional race-baiters into providing them with a nice big taxpayer-funded bilingual security blanket, so that they can just coast on through without putting out any effort whatsoever.

Thank you, Tom, for letting us know. I suspected something might be amiss. Paul and I had just recently started up an email dialogue and I truly enjoyed our brief interaction. He was always extremely courteous to me in our exchanges. I was looking forward to meeting him in person, some day. Damn.

I prefer to phrase it as "The average person is much stupider than a crap-throwing monkey".

They have their genetic future incorporated in their pets?

Wow, they hated Krumrie so much, they released him twice!

You're one perceptive beatnik. I've never met CTM but from posting history alone, I've always envisioned him as being similar in many ways to the calsci football guy. It would be fun to see the two of them in an argument. Now that would be a nerd-slapfest of Tri-Lambdian proportions.

Hey! I was at a bar watching the game yesterday with 5 or 6 other Sabres fans! And I'm gonna be there again today, and this time KTFBD is gonna be there too! So there!

I know the guy who runs that site. Smart dude. Interpersonal skills somewhat lacking, however.

Maybe I'm just an !@#$, but the first thing I thought of when I read the article was that if a terrorist group was really on the ball, they would have had a golden opportunity to cause some mayhem last weekend after all the 9-1-1 operators were presumably briefed to ignore calls about mysterious electronic "six inch long, two-and-a-half inch wide red plastic boxes -- connected to activator switches on the news rack doors". Yeah, I know, the word "Maybe" was redundant in that sentence.

Thomas is gone.

Who dreams up this crap? I especially love the last sentence.

Kjhjskri is a very difficult language.

Why, it's right here: smack in the middle of the 'Zarks Don't think they have the population base to support an NFL team, though. Unless ghosts like football.

Where you gonna play her? Tight End or Defensive End?

As the husband of a LEGAL immigrant, who was made to jump through innumerable hoops in order to obtain her green card, here's how I'll feel if amnesty is granted to illegal immigrants: like the bulldog in those old Tom and Jerry cartoons, where he sees a thought bubble of himself transmogrifying into an ass (donkey). We did everything by the book, spent uncountable hours waiting in line at INS, drove downtown multiple times at 4:00 a.m. to be sure and get there in time to get processed before the hard-working bureaucrats took their mid-morning/cigarette/coffee/bathroom/lunch/telephone-breaks, etc., and they still left us dangling for nearly three YEARS before finally issuing the permanent resident card. I will also mention that the fact that my wife is NOT hispanic meant that we were repeatedly shafted during our encounters with L.A.'s INS offices. Announcements given only in Spanish, preferential treatment/scheduling given to spanish-speakers who cut the lines and had rapid-fire exchanges with the (coincidentally?) spanish-speaking clerks, having our application forms mysteriously "disappear" only to be magically found after all the other (spanish-speaking) applicants got processed, and on and on. All of which we gritted our teeth and endured. But if it turns out that all we had to do was breed a lot and loudly complain about racism, then we really missed out on some fun times by wasting all that time and money playing fair. And IF that turns out to be the case, well maybe I ought to smarten up and start ignoring whatever laws might cramp my style in future.

Sure. The Polk was one of our SSNB's (Polaris/Poseidon missile subs)

Non-proliferation goes the way of the Dodo

750K doesn't get you all that much house out here.