DCSaints_fan

I swear by brining chicken.   I've tried it a couple times where I've not brined, and the brined is vastly superior.   Whenever I eat chicken at someone elses place, who 95% of them don't brine, it tastes bland and woody and I secrely think to myself my chicken kicks their butt six ways from Sunday.

This is the absolute truth.  I wouldn't go as far to say that I'd be out, but he is completely overrated.  He dies like a ****, too.  There's nothing badass about him.

I thought Boba Fett survived the Sarlacac pit...

Benico Del Toro:

I said he'll force choke you, force choke you for real ...

Give me the ****ing droids, you ****sucker, what the ****?

And THAT is what makes Jessica Jones so great. She's a real person.

 

She's flawed, damaged etc.

Only thing I thought that was lame about Jessica Jones is

Shouldn't be too hard to just starve them out

Please tell me the EXACT thing you would propose for a new law that won't infringe on the Constituion (and if you can't/won't, please tell us why it is OK to ignore the Constitution here and not elsewhere).

 

Thanks.

You could argue that existing laws are already unconstitutional and should be struck down.  Why is the Federal government  can prevent private citizens from buying an M249 SAW?  Or tanks with functioning main guns? 

I don't think we can tackle this issue politcally at the moment.   I think we need some good artists (books, films) to tackle this topic to change peoples opinions.  Sort of like what happened with the civil rights movment and the LGBT movement

It's funny how the economic troubles in China upset the stock market so much, when in many ways they will be beneficial to the US as a competitor of China.   In the US, employment has been on a fairly steady upswing, economic growth is good compared to the rest of the developed world, oil and gas remain cheap.  

 

Of course, the interests of American capital and of the American worker are poorly aligned.   

But do we really compete with China more than we depend on China?   The industries in which China is know for, like cheap manufacturing, electornics fabrication and don't really exist much in the US anymore.   And if the Chinese economy goes south, that means increases in prices of goods they produce which the US industries use.   For example, Apple iPhone is manufactured in China by Foxconn.  So increases in production costs in China would be bad for Apple, a US company with a large US workforce

I'm operating under the assumption that, as far as water is concerned, the earth is a closed system. water moves or changes state, but otherwise we don't magically get/lose water?

 

if water is being moved from location to another, in significant quantities, i would think it would have an affect on water temperature? especially if the rate of water temperature change is related to the volume of water we're talking about? if it's not finding its way back to the aquifers, then it must be going to the ocean?

 

i don't know, it's why i was asking

The Water cycle is mostly closed on a small time scale, but not on a geologic one.  Plants (autotrophs) consume water and oxygen to produce sugars/starches (carbohydrates), which in turn get eaten up by heterotrophs  (animals, fungi, etc.), and then expelled as CO2 and H20 But not 100% of autotrophs get consumed, some of them get buried.   So in some respects that water/CO2 is "locked in" to the carbohydrates of the dead autotrophs.   However, this effect is very small and really only apples on a geological time scale (tens of millions of years)

I think there are some complications here with methanogens, etc. so what I wrote here is probaby a grade school simplification, but its the basic idea

Also, at Earth temperatures, water exists in an solid-liquid-gas equilbrium

water vapor <-> water (liquid) <-> ice    

Warming the planet causes the equlibrium to shift towards vapor, cooling it causes it to shift towards ice

Where as CO2 at Earth temperatures and pressures, only exists as a gas.

Water vapor actually contributes to the greenhouse effect more than carbon dioxide.   However, if you could magically pump water vapor into the atmosphere ex nihilo, it would just end up precipitating out as liquid (condensing, i.e, rain) somewhere else, and not effect the climate appreciably.  Whereas with CO2, that doesn't happen because it exists only as a gas and doesn't condensee at Earth temps/pressures.  (Plants of course convert CO2 to sugars, but this takes quite a while to have an effect on CO2 levels)   CO2/Methane driven warming causes the water vapor/liquid/ice equllibrum to shift towards vapor, which amplfies the warming effect of water vapor because it drives more of it to the vapor phase (which is a green house gas).  Which, in turn, heats up the planet and caues more water to evaporate, etc..   This is an example of positive feedback loop, The reason why its not a "runaway" effect, is because, simply the feedback diminishes with each "loop", at least for small concentratons.  However, there is a point where it does become a "runaway" efffect that would boil the oceans off Earth.   However I think this point is beyond several thousands of ppm CO2 and its not really possible to reach anytime soon.   Even so, I'm not eager to find out 700 ppm CO2 Earth would look like in terms of human civilization :-|

He didn't clearly died in the lab, we just supposed he did. I understand he could manage to escape from the alien hug, but surviving a nuclear blast ?!!

Maybe there's a lead refrigerator around somewhere 

Seriously I would love for Hudson to come back, then first time he runs into an alien, he points his gun at it and says 

"Game on!"

In case anyone missed it 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCVhyrgWSBY

I can also remember learning to drive at 3

LeBron's going to Cleveland

 

If that happened, I would head to emergency room as a precautionary move, just in case I risked I dying of laughter  

My guess: if LeBron doesn't stay in Miami, he ends up with the Clippers.

Where are they going to find the cap space?

I still say if Ibaka didn't go down, OKC might have pulled this off.  SA essentially got spotted two games

I recall an episode of The Next Generation when Worf's brother, Kurn (who did not reveal himself as such at the start), took part in an Officer Exchange Program with the Federation. They could do a series with a Starfleet Officer doing the same aboard a Klingon vessel. I could see that adding an interesting dynamic as he might have to compromise some of his human principles under a Klingon captain, and you'd also see the tension between him and the Klingon crew under him taking his orders.

I always did like TNG's Klingons. They were such a bloodthursty, savage race, but at the same time were honorable. Gowron, in particular, fascinated me. He was a vicious, cut-throat Klingon with ambition who had the glare of a psychopath, but he was honorable and made for a strong leader.

Yes, perhaps a backstory could be the Klingons are at war with a faction like the Cardassian Empire, and while the Federation is officially neutral, they are providing covert support and even some of Starfleet officers volunteer to fight for the Klingons.   (This has historical parallels with for example, American pilots flying for the RAF or Chinese Air Force in WWII before the US actually entered the war).   The one thing that intrigued me about the Klingons, is the every character seems to be (or at least once was) a warrior - where do they get their engineers/doctors/technicianss (or even run of the mill like cooks/garbagemen )?  Perhaps the Starfleet officers have some special skills that the Klingons are in short supply of and due to the war going badly for them they compromise and let non-Klingons serve aboard the ship.

The only problem I forsee, is running out of themes/ideas..  Every ST series (except maybe DS9 to some extent, though I didn't watch the later seasons) had the theme of "explore new worlds and new civilizations" , the writers got pretty much a clean slate every week, there weren't many continuing plot lines except maybe some minor subplots.  With a major backstory like a Klingon war, I can see the writers perhaps getting of repeating the same themes: Initial conflict/non-acceptance between Starfleet officer(s) and Klingons?  Check.   Starfleet officer(s) "prove their street cred" somehow and some of the Klingon crew members begrudglily accept them as "one of them" Check.   Starfleet officer(s) face existential crisis in compromising their morals in order to survive in unfamiliar/hostile environement?   Check.  I can see enough for maybe a season or so, before it would get stale and they would have to take the show in an entirely different direction.

Well you could have a Klingon-centric Star Trek.

Yeah that would be a really interesitng spin on the series.   Star Trek (along with just about everything film, except maybe Disney films :-) ) are "human centered" though so I think you would have to find a way to make a human the main character.   Maybe something like when the Federation and Klingon Empire are at peace and some Starfleet officer (maybe even a small group) volunteers for a "diplomatic cruise" onboard a Klingon ship.

The Heat are done

Meh, one game.. I still say Miami wins this, probably in 6 

The NBA does have a parity/competitiveness problem and the playoffs being very predictable but its hard for them to do anything about it. In the NBA, its pretty much all about your top 3 the only thing that can derail a team like Thunder or Heat is an injury to one of those guys . Occassionally you do get some surprises like the Mavs in 2011 or the Pistons in 2004 but there are many series every year where you know who is going to win (barring an injury)  The Pacers aren't going to beat the Heat, and the Heat will probably win the title.    The Spurs/Thunder series might be close but I say the Thunder come out on top.

In the NHL, I have no clue who is getting to the next round or winning the Cup.

Currently watching The Wire.   Yes its an older show, but since it was HBO and it wasn't nearly as possible as The Sopranos (even when I had HBO, for some reason I never tuned in) I think alot of people may have missed it. 

So, basically the same thing that's going on in this country, only a bit more intense, huh ?

In some ways. The difference is our propoganda is a bit more sophisticated and its not directly controlled by the government. And dissenting voices aren't really suppressed, they're just marginalized/drowned out. As an example, I feel in some ways the average US resident who disliked Chavez probably only did because he/she has been told to by elements of the media, they can't really verbalize whats so bad about him in terms of specific policy actions.

A good read on this subject is 'Manufacturing Consent' by Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Hermann. Its an older book (circa 1988 if my memory is right), mostly about the the US media's treatment of the Vietnam war and certain incidents involving the Soviet Union and Latin America, but the points they make are in many ways still relevant today.

I don't know much about boxing but as soon as I saw Klitschko I immediately thought "Ivan Drago" and in real life Drago would kick Rocky's ass.