Lobowolf

Donnie Darko

If you're new to Hofstadter, I'd recommend "Godel Escher Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid" as an interesting, fun, and unusual read.

Yeah - The Needle Match is at the Newport Beach public library but thats the only copy I've seen in years. The Tough Game was lent to me by a bridge partner a few years ago. Hard to give that one back to him. All great stuff. I got a copy of the Needle Match on Ebay a couple of years ago.

Only the people on the bottom. If you're in the Northern Hemisphere, you'd be fine.

THAT'S what I'm talkin' about! J-Freakin'-Lall!!! I always kind of think of the alphabet as a base-27 number system. At red lights, if I'm bored, I see if I can make an equation from the three letters of the license plate ahead of me (using only the remainders). So if it's, e.g. IBF---, IxF=B, i.e. 9x6=54, minus a couple of 26es is 2. Yeah, I know that's way TM F'ing I. And my undergrad major was English. Go figure.

I remember a chilling interview with G. Gordon Liddy where he talked about previous discussions he'd had to kill Jack Anderson of the Post "if it became necessary". I think Liddy discussed it at trial too, possibly. From what I've read about Nixon, I'd be surprised if that was something he wasn't aware of at the very least. Really chilling. Great interview; it was Liddy and Timothy Leary, simultaneously.

I'd go with F, myself.

Reminds me of Get Smart...when Max was captured by KAOS in one episode, Siegfried tells him he can choose his method of death...Max requests "Old age."

! I double. Redouble! Let me know if you have any So. Cal. regionals on your horizon.

Sorry, but vegan anything doesn't sound very attractive to me... Cooking is part of our culture, and denying the best 99% of it just feels wrong. Besides, the point of choosing a "last meal" was to choose something you really enjoy eating. With respect to cooking being a part of our culture, vegan meals are cooked, too. Vegan options vary a lot depending upon where you are. Vegan pizza is pretty clearly distinguishable from the alternative, mostly due to the "meltiness" of the cheese (although Daiya non-dairy cheese has bridged the gap considerably). However, many other vegan meals are indistinguishable from their non-vegan counterparts. There are certainly vegan meals and items that omnivores would not be able to distinguish, including fake meatball sandwiches, tacos, and baked desserts (cheesecake, cupcakes, etc.) I certainly "really enjoy" many vegan meals (as do some of my omni friends who have eaten at some of L.A.'s great vegan restaurants with me). Of course, for some of us, the primary issue is moral, not aesthetic. The animal-based food industry causes a great deal of suffering to sentient beings; "It tastes good," or "I've always done it" is not a sufficient reason for me to want to contribute to that, even in a small way, whether it's my next meal or my last.

Once I was playing chess and I made the same move a grandmaster would have. I explained my reasoning to him and he was like lol. And I was like...but we came to the same conclusion so my thought process must have been good! 1. e4?

Half of Mr1303's pizza & cheesecake. Actually, I'd go for some vegan tacos from Hugo's, and vegan cupcakes from Yummy Cupcakes, maybe with Whole Foods Market's vegan chicken curry salad on the side, and about 44 ounces of ice-cold Coke Zero.

Interestingly, with respect to bridge, the metric of pool size is at odds with the metric of "accumulated theoretical knowledge." i.e. we assume that the bigger pool creates better top players, but in bridge, we have a smaller pool than in the past. However, that is counterbalanced by the increased knowledge base available to all. With respect to almost any predominantly physical sport, I suspect that training and evolution are as much to credit as pool size. They're just generally bigger, stronger, faster (though obviously this is mitigated somewhat in sports with weight classes).

I think you've been watching too much Jack Bauer. First off, this individual has only been accused...big word...of any criminal wrongdoing. Second, the "proof" of criminal wrongdoing comes from our crackerjack intelligence agencies, who brought you that dynamite analysis of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, nuclear ambitions, and ties to al-Qaeda. And you really want to allow the President...without any hearing or court justification....to order the death of a citizen based on the same intelligence gathering that brought you the Iraq war....REALLY??? It's different now. If Obama wants to do it, I'm sure he has a good reason.

Let him be your hero anyway. Grace in defeat. Very Hemingway. Or Rocky (the original).

John Carpenter's The Thing (as was just proven to me this morning).

An economist specializing in game theory is in the woods with a friend. They see a bear charging them. The theorist opens up a laptop and starts to compute an optimal escape strategy. His friend cries out, "Run! There's no time!" "Don't worry," says the theorist, "the bear has to work it out, too."

Me Tarzan you Jane -attitude will do nothing good to your chances to do well in the event. To say nothing of your chances to do well after the event.

Jaime Escalante, the Garfield High School (East L.A.) math teacher immortalized by Edward James Olmos in the movie Stand and Deliver, died yesterday at the age of 79. Wikipedia has a good bio: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaime_Escalante

. That would certainly seem to fit in well with the Alice-in-Wonderland concept that words mean exactly what I want them to mean when I say them and nothing else. I don't want to be the only one accused of self-righteousness so I will expand the definition to fit the actions. Funny, but I used the same idea for reworking the definition of asshole. :lol: I'm not alone anymore - welcome aboard! :P "confident of one's own righteousness, esp. when smugly moralistic and intolerant of the opinions and behavior of others." www.dictionary.com, taken from Random House, actually, not Alice. Nothing at all in there about the source of that smug moralism. Perhaps you incorporate it into your definition so that it doesn't fit you? By your definition, by the way, I'd be immune from accusations of self-righteousness, as I am not a theist.

In my experience, it's closer to tautological by the same definition. Perhaps you are mistaking arrogance as self-righteousness? There is no doubt that unbridled arrogance can be as smug-acting as self-righteousness. I simply see them as different because the root cause of the belief is different - one sees himself as intellectually superior while the other finds himself to be morally superior based upon his understanding of an infallible god being. I'm not speaking of intellectual arrogance. I'm speaking of a belief in one's own moral superiority, granted, albeit, that in atheists this belief is not based upon one's understanding of an infallible god being. However, I don't think the source of the belief in one's own moral superiority is a necessary component of self-righteousness.

And here I thought a "dubious stopper" was something like JTx.

I think of the game Risk, in which it's one of only 4 South American countries (and the gateway to North America). I also think of Coke Zero being unavailable.

In my experience, it's closer to tautological by the same definition.

Pairs, both red. ♠ x ♥ Axx ♦ AKQJ ♣ Axxxx 1♣ - 2♥* ?? *5+ to 9-, 5(+) spades, 4(+) hearts