confused04

Graduation!Class of 2008 The Gang!

Happy Birthday Lilbrownsuga5! WOOOOO Happy Birthday to all those who have birthdays today as well

My smile is not creepy! Chrissy, help!

Us before reaching the city.... So we sang journey....... to the MAX!! Just a handful of Biology majors!! Lets go class of 2008! Another 80's song WOoo! And.... Being a bio nerd rocks sometimes

Here's my desktop... I know its slightly messy but I had a lot of data analysis and papers to right as well as some Ipod modifications. My resume is on there too Edit: Upon further look, you can tell I'm ADD-tastic cause I have 8 programs on my task bar, 3 of which are messaging, a bunch of install files, new text documents galore and just no organization whatsoever.

Whats the difference between A1 and A2 versus A and B, it just seems as though you're substituting labels... and when does A1 become A2? Evolution never theorizes that a species of bird turns into bats.... if thats what you're getting at. I presume you're not so why can't a common ancestor of apes and humans evolve into what we see today. Cant you say that "Common Ancester A" evolved into "Humans" as in "A1 into A2". Sorry, I'm just a biologist and i'm struggling to understand you're point of view so that I can effectively discuss it.

posted by jjune4991 i dont discredit evolution, just evolution through different species. thats why i used the south park example. i only believe in interspecies evolution, not one to another to another. quote> I'm just trying to figure out exactly what this sentence means cause to me, it makes no sense. Like, I'm trying to even come up with scenarios that make sense, but I can't. Are you saying "interspecies evolution" is the adaptation of lets say... the snow leopard into another form, but its still a "snow leopard", which even then makes no sense because if a snow leopard continues to change, it in fact is no longer a snow leopard, it'll become a new species. If you just meant adaptation (a species changing slightly just to fit into an environment and dealing with just small amount of change, fine). Really to be fair, our definition of species is rather arbitrary. Some "species" can interbreed and still produce fertile offspring and we only designate a species as such from our brief human observation. At what point is an adaptation to a stimulus lead to a new species. Thats why we've never "seen" a "species" evolve directly into another "species". We defined a species pretty broadly. Some would argue that some dog breeds are new "species" as many of these dogs cannot breed with others due to physical limitations (i.e. Great Dane and tiny tiny dogs). Because we lack coherent boundaries of species, we will unlikely see a species such as D. mendotae directly morph into another species. Is it when cyclic parthenogenesis delays by one month? The morphological changes in the tail? Is it only when the species lack the ability to breed or have viable offspring (say that to female tigons and ligers). Anyway... species evolution acts more on a spectrum than a non-continuous stepwise function. We only label a species for clarity reasons. Some people would say "oh that tiger isn't evolving, its only adapting to eat grass" while others say "a fundamental change in diet is good enough to declare it another species of tiger". Thats the problem, because biology relies on human definitions, we can always argue that our human definitions are insufficient and discount evolution, which it shouldn't. In all reality, any change in allele frequency is evolution, whether it be genetic drift or natural selection. So really, a species of cat v 1.0 today is really a species of cat v. 1.01 in the next generation, but we don't and can't label species in that matter because we are reluctant to define what a cat 2.0 is or if it should even be called a cat.

Originally posted by: DanWalker8 So i calculated my GPA very precisely today. Pending a 4.0 this semester i will graduate college with a ........... 3.499989 that's one one hundred- ten-thousandth short of cum laude. Anyone think they'll round ?quote> Class of 2008!!!!!!!!!! I graduate May 17! Holy crap! Exciting and bizarre with all sorts of emotions crammed in. Although I can't wait to come home and say "I don't have an essay to do!!!!" Congratulations to all members of the Class of 2008! (all like... 3 of us)

I'm half Filipino. My mom is a filipino immigrant from Angeles city. I'm proud of my heritage (espcially in terms of eggrolls )

in regards to the 1,000 bottles of wine puzzle..... Realistically, the answer is more than ten cause can you imagine taking 1,000 sips of wine :\ if thats just a meager 5 mL per sip, thats 5 litres of wine per person.... these prisoners better have a high tolerance otherwise if all of them die.... not gonna help . Assuming that all the bottles are 1 L, you'd automatically lose 50 bottles to just testing. What kind of celebration has 950 bottles of wine!

I've never found navigating grids very difficult at all. In fact, I live in a heavily gridded neighborhood in a gridded city (MSP, MN). I think many people are assuming that all streets in a grid carry equal weight and diffuse the traffic to keep it "even" which is definitely not the case. Most grids have primary grid lines (much like a graph where every tenth line is bold) which carries most of the traffic to an even greater road (much like the X and Y axis). I never find one square to look much like the previous at all. I had a friend from England come over here and he learned to navigate it very quickly. What makes it particularly easy is describing a destination as an intersection, such as "Randolph and Victoria". Which makes carrying directions typically unnecessary if you're even remotely familiar with the area. Gridded roads are littered with landmarks as well to aid in navigation. If a grid is disrupted, you know how to get back on to the road you're on. If the grid is still intact over all, then you can just take the border roads that outline the "disruption" and get back on course. If you are unfamiliar with the area that doesn't have grids and you get lost and might not be able to find your way back onto the right path. Human brains are programmed to follow and recognize patterns (the mind will even find patterns if you hit random notes on a piano). By definition, irregular roads lack such a pattern and could lead people astray. Grids are also quite efficient. Just because roads intersect, it doesn't mean they have traffic lights and traffic patterns will be easily predictable. Earlier it was state that grids are failures and I don't think there's anyway to call it a "failure".

I'll take the "who gives a hoot" route. I don't care what people use to measure over seas and they probably don't care what we use. This is a cultural thing. But at the same time, most of the scientific community uses metric already and conversions aren't that hard. Let people do what they want to do. If I use cups to make a cake, someone uses mL, someone uses "fistfuls" , whatever, thats their choice. I'm not a huge fun of suggesting any system is superior. If it was so naturally superior, we wouldn't be having this discussion. I readily convert into both units. But if you live in the US, work within the US, and have no contact with metric users, then why bother switching over. There's no real necessity. There are bigger problems...

Minnesota lost 5- 1 against Colorado who probably paid the refs off. Minnesota was given an outstanding 24 penalties and many misconducts while Colorado received just 13 penalties. There were some obviously bad calls....two of the hooking calls against Minnesota when the sticks made no contact on the player. Even though CO received 13 power plays, the were only able to score twice so take that CO.

GO Minnesota Wild! This series is BY FAR the best series on television at the moment. 3 OT games ending in 3-2 in a row! If you go back to 2003, its 5 games in a row The Wild are playing well for the most part and hold on to the puck for the vast majority of the game but they hesitate costing them so many scoring chances. At least they lead 2-1 in the series. Such a heart stopping series.

What is amazing about statistics is the INABILITY to establish CAUSATION. We can pull out billions of stats and claim anything we want regarding whats being taught and done in schools. Amazingly, some studies claim "there actually is no problem", others claim "its all about money" and even more say "its how we spend that money". But amazingly, we all know there is a problem and also that throwing money at crap doesn't work well (especially since we spend a lot more per student than most countries). Some nontraditional studies tried to study the impact of having "broken" families, particularly where the father is no present and it turns out that this type of situation is common enough and detrimental enough to explain the achievement gaps, particularly in urban and rural poor. Its often the case that suburbia can compete very well or even excel over other nations, but thats balanced by having significant portions of or youth living in conditions that are unrelated to the education system. Minneapolis also had an abysmal graduation rate of 60% but when taken into account social factors, its not surprising. Dallas has a much higher minority population than Minneapolis and recorded and even lower graduation rates. Given that minorities are unfortunately victims of inequalities of transformative wealth, this is where much of the achievement gap occurs. Another social factor that plays into this problem is that younger age groups tend to have more minorities (i.e. differences in reproductive rates tends to create greater minority populations in schools than in general society). As poor minorities who come from broken families go to school, this is going to have a significant and profound effect on statistics. Curing social ills is the only way to attack the education lapses. This is not to say that there are some improvements that could be made throughout our education system, but I do feel its taking a bad rap for conditions FAR outside their control. The US certainly needs to change its strategy in terms of education a videophilic culture and there are some schools with ridiculous amounts of students in a class room. BUT like crime, differences in educational achievement can be directly attributed to social inequities. Education is NOT a cause, its a symptom of a greater problem.

Foreign investment does not hurt the dollar, it instead does the opposite. When foreign companies enter a market, there is a demand for that markets currency. The US dollar is falling for plenty of other reasons. When there is high demand for investment, that currency rises generally, when there is low desire for investment such as Zimbabwe, the currency tanks. Foreign companies have been getting involved in the US markets when our dollar was also at its strongest. Our dollar fell mainly due to lower interest rates which decrease demand for our currency because investments don't return as much.

Yay!

Well, being the anti-organized religion guy that I am, I do think the Bible surely is up to interpretation and being Christian isn't strictly defined by following a specific doctrine. There are indeed gray areas allowing for different denominations and beliefs. There are many teachings that some Christians put more emphasis on than others. Some put more emphasis of tolerance and loving thy neighbor than condemning homosexuals. If being "Christian" was to follow the teachings of a specific interpretation than what denomination should be determined as "the true Christian denomination". I'm sure that'll be easy to work out :\ You certainly can call yourself a Christian if you believe in the general happenings of the New Testament but choose to ignore/pass over/lessen the importance of other lines. Just because you don't particularly adhere to one sentence in one paragraph in one testament, it doesn't mean you aren't a Christian. Certainly if you reject Jesus as the savior, then you aren't. But if you do and disagree on some issues, you are still a Christian. Its all interpretation. Certainly, denying the literal interpretation of Creationism does not suddenly make you "not a Christian." You can always read the Bible figuratively like I believe its supposed to be. Figurative speech wasn't the invention of the Renaissance, its been around for far longer. From the little bit of Presbyterian Sunday school I did have, we had entire lessons on the "metaphorical meaning" of passages, and these passages had to have a metaphorical meaning to even have any semblance of purpose. The Creation story, in my opinion, was meant to be read figuratively. I don't need to take that bit of the Bible literally to believe in the omnipotence of a God, i think the whole resurrection bit, talking as a burning bush and stuff kinda does the job. Oh, and I can't forget the so called world wide flood. There is no doubt in my mind that the Bible is not the direct word of God and has been altered for a variety of reasons. There are translations, misinterpretations, editing (choosing of books) and such for whatever reasons, be it political or religious. Evolution and the story of creation aren't mutually exclusive. I see no problem with saying "God defines the laws of Science" You can always say God determines that water forms ice at 0 C, or God determines the speed of light, or God guides natural selection. If God is the omnipotent power that he is, then we should be impressed by the laws of nature that he has created.

Just wanted to say..... 1) Just because there have been a few, successful busts of terrorist cells in Europe, it only takes ONE to do the damage necessary to kill thousands. Many of the terror cells are ill-equipped home grown, disgruntled and marginalized secondary or tertiary generation Muslims. Even the US has had a lot of success in cracking down terrorists in cities such as Buffalo and in California. Successfully shutting down 20 cells out of X number can be either 100% or 0.0001% Don't get too confident. What irks me a lot are people in BOTH Europe and the United States are claiming "We haven't had an attack since_____" or "We've never had an attack..." and ALL it takes to negate that statement is an attack. As people have pointed out 10 years is not a long time for sleeper cells. 2) Lets not claim the CIA or MI5 / MI 6 are any better than each other because they share information. Its like saying, Joe is better at taking tests than Bob although they cheat off each other and submit the same answers. CIA got a bad wrap for Iraq although they had actually said many times that the connection between Al Qaeda and Iraq was tenuous or non existent. The CIA had protested many times prior, during, and after the 2003 Iraq Invasion for a lack of evidence indicating the presence of terror cells in the country. It was Bush, Powell, and Condeleeza Rice who had control over the information and played up the data that supported their case. The CIA has been very successful and the scary thing is that we will likely NEVER know the true successes of any clandestine organization as we will only know their failures. 3) There is little connection between the economic crisis stemming from the mortgage crisis and the War on Terror. Lending practices do not reflect fear of terrorists. This would likely have happened regardless if we were at war. The US has been in a lot of plastic debt since the 1980's. Some economic analysts argue that war spending helped make the 2001-2002 recession short and easy by pumping billions in defense spending. Naturally, you can argue the effects of 200 billion dollars a year going into Iraq to pay for this war, but just don't connect the sup prime mortgage crisis to the war. Thats just a bunch of irresponsible lenders and lendees screwing up.

- saved on Thu Mar 20 2008 00:08:34 GMT-0500 (Central Daylight Time) - RealChat Enterprise Edition 5.0, Build #643 Welcome to Simtropolis Chat! There are 2 people in 5 rooms. You entered Social Lobby. Room topic is: Open Casual Chat. confused04 hey managerjosh throws a cat at fuzzy. confused04 wassup confused04 's dog eats the cat managerjosh sets fuzzy on fire. managerjosh: don't torture the innocent brown kitten! confused04 's dog eats the fire confused04 oops confused04 's dog eats the fire confused04 I just got back from the Bon Jovi concert managerjosh: why most you torture the most innocent brown kitten possible!?!? confused04 cause confused04 is evil managerjosh: managerjosh casts a chi spell on fuzzy confused04 lol managerjosh: Yu Mo Gwai Gwaai Fai Di Zao managerjosh: Yu Mo Gwai Gwaai Fai Di Zao managerjosh: Yu Mo Gwai Gwaai Fai Di Zao! managerjosh keeps chanting Yu Mo Gwai Gwaai Fai Di Zao on Fuzzy. confused04 i dont' even know what that means managerjosh: rough translation is evil spirit/evil demon quickly go away confused04 lol 33 people got busted with alcohol in a city near us cause they posted the info on facebook! confused04 wild scored! confused04 OMG! confused04 woooooo!!!!! managerjosh: Yu Mo Gwai Gwaai Fai Di Zao confused04 Daugthry was good confused04 I love how disconnected our convos are managerjosh: Hot Cha!!!

In Maryland, you had to take the following tests to graduate... Functional Writing Test Functional Math Test Functional Reading Test Maryland Assessments of Geometry, Civics, english, and something else On top of the other tests that pre-college students are encouraged to take such as ACT SAT Various AP tests I took 9 AP tests, all of the required tests, 1 ACT and 2 SAT tests... its a lot of testing in Maryland.

One of the weekends I met football_fever out on the town... T'was a fun night, got a bit blurry later. Night of the big dance... sorry, no pics of the dance itself, I left my camera in a friends hotel room. Governator of Maryland, 2016!!! Get out and vote you ST peeps! if you all move to maryland in 2016, (and me by 2012), I can get a huge head start with 100,000 votes This is from way back in February when it was FREEZING outside, but it was fun! Well, that'll hold you guys over.

Maybe its just me, but I've never really thought about this much... Live and let live... Let bygones be bygones etc... I don't care if people follow fads, I don't care if people don't follow fads. I certainly fall into both categories. Yes I own an iPod and I like it. No I don't keep up with the latest fashion trends... Nowadays people are assuming that following fads and "being yourself" are mutually exclusive and they are not. I CHOOSE to follow a fad or I CHOOSE not to. Thats being myself, even if I look like a sheep. I wonder why people assume that following a fad is like you are some how not fulfilling your aspirations and are not yourself. Fads are fads because people like them, when people like things, they follow them. In terms of "the unfairness" of life, maybe 10 years ago I may have agreed with the ST choir here proclaiming that I am treated unfairly. But at 21, I COMPLETELY see why adults label youth as they do, because youth tend to quite frankly be obnoxious and inconsiderate. There are of course exceptions. But I can't help but feel like I need a cane and say "get out of here you young whipper snappers." I find highschoolers rather repulsive and I always wondered if I was the same because if I was, I'm glad that I'm not that way. As much as you would like to think that your brief journey of less than two decades has somehow given you enough to become wise and intelligent, think again. I know full well that I'm not as wise as I could be, not as intelligent as I can be, and probably not as mature as I want to be. Teenagers more often than not think that are super capable and they aren't. For some reason they forsake the previous generations wisdom and experience for "undeniable logic and idealism" of their own. Again... not every teenager is like this, but dang, I can't say that I wouldn't be surprised that if I ACTUALLY knew some of you, I might only reaffirm what I believe. Life sucks, be glad you have whatever freedom you do. Walk on, if you're truly mature, you'll except that you are not as mature as you can be. You will work on your shortcomings and not blame society. And most importantly, try not to keep telling yourself your the exception, that can easily just be denial. Edit: let me clarify myself... I find groups to teenagers in public to be "obnoxious and inconsiderate". I have no problem conversing with teens one on one.

Unfortunately, I can't quite say that the reputations of teenagers are not unwarranted. It is afterall true that teenagers commit the vast majority of petty crimes such as vandalism. Rebellious youth isn't exactly a lie either. Look at it from an elders perspective. Youth tend to be less,... socially astute, and many think they are prepared to be accepted as adults despite their rather obnoxious demeanor. But look around at your own schools and tell me that there is a significant presence if idiot no-gooders. Its unfortunate that those of us who are responsible are treated the same as those who aren't. I don't blame society for treating us that way because... well, they have to be cautious. Its society's goal to mold us into productive harmonious citizens so they have to discourage such rampant behavior and unfortunately still, it takes some youth a bit longer to learn how to behave. Youths also tend to be quite self-centered (and even if you don't think you are, you probably are more than you think), so they are unaware of the consequences of their actions. Gentle fun is sometimes not so innocent. Tomfoolery in a store might be a hassle for janitors for example. The general public has a right to be wary of teenagers. No matter what your personal actions are like, there are many idiotic youth out there and they have to protect property (and in far too many instances, safety). I've never had a problem with people treating me different as youth and even if they did think I was a chav/thug/yob or whatever, I know it doesn't describe me so I just shrug it off. No big deal. From my own experience, if you behave properly, you will be treated accordingly. I don't exactly see what the fuss is about. Its just one of those "life isn't fair" things. Again... something that teenagers tend to complain about the most.

Originally posted by: wir3d Originally posted by: fukuda Originally posted by: wir3d Well i just know that you guys have been in the school system an haven't exposed a lot to other things, like creation. But all i know is that which one takes more faith to believe in: someone or something creating the universe or that it magically happened.quote> Oh yes, creation is discussed, where it belongs to be discussed, in the philosophy or religion (optional) classes, there's no place for creation in biology classes, as creation is not part of biology. Believeing in something that is highly counter-intuitive, fails at the second logical sentence, fails at objectivity, universality, lack of progress and consistence needs way more faith.quote> Do you know why there is no creation is biology class? Because some rebels took god out of the picture of schools. In the 70s you were allowed to pray and bring a bible to class. But know some democrates did not like this and wanted God out of the picture. That's why we don't hear about creation in biology class. Oh and there was just a recent discovery about the Red Sea. If you guys know the story of Moses you will hear that God told Moses to take the Isarelites out of Egypt. And they crossed the Red sea right. But the Egyptians rode in chariots and did not get across and drowned. So as i was saying there are chariot remains from the Egyptians. And if you ask why you did not hear this is because the media does want people to hear this. They want to keep it on the low down. So if you say that this is fake then why would the media want to stop it from getting out?quote> Biblical, judeo-christian faith has no place in biology class. I mean, how long could that chapter be. "God mad stuff"... "Chapter Two: the other, longer theory that has a bit more evidence". And then we'd have to teach EVERY creation story on Earth. What makes the Judeo-Christian creation story any more accurate than the Native American one? Is it because they are in power and have nukes? A bit of scrolls in the Dead Sea doesn't prove creation. Secondly, Moses and the Egyptian chariots are completely unrelated to evolution. You can't link the two at all. Parts of the bible are historically accurate, thats not completely in dispute. The Bible is one of the most important historical texts ever. Doesn't prove creationism at all. The problem with "missing link" fossils is that doubters will continue to ask for a link. For example... Link A with Z okay, I found H find the link between A and H then I found B Okay, find the link between A and B.... uh... then find the link of the link....and so on. Doubters will NEVER except that two fossils are directly link and will continue to demand more linkages. It follows the principle that decimals are infinite as well. there are infinite numbers between 0. and 0.01 just by adding another place holder.