J Larsen

No, it is a valid point. Look, you want to believe muscle mass makes you a great ballplayer, knock yourself out, OK? I prefer to believe skill, talent and vision make you great....the HOF will prove me out, too. What are you, man? The Karl Rove of steroids? Your debate style is to respond to an obviously flawed argument that isn't being made!

Fair points - as with many people as they age, it may be that I miss something that isn't worth missing...

Sorry, 'roid rage acting up again.

But no one said any different - so it is a bait and switch.

Right - he was such a weak lardass that the legend that he picked up a piano and threw it into a river was plausible in his own time. Since strength has absolutely nothing to do with one's ability to hit homeruns the dimensions of little league parks obviously ought to be extended from 200 feet to 400 feet, since one's ability to hit a ball a far distance is entirely a matter of hand-eye coordination and has nothing to do with strength. Uh-huh. And pitchers didn't throw split-finger fastballs or baseballs which reached 100 mph. It's hard to say how fast a guy like Walter Johnson or Joe Woods threw, but it is generally believed to have been up there. Anyway, Ruth really DID suck, but ain't that a bait and switch?

Not quite, but when my ETD is acting up, certain sounds, especially in the upper frequencies, become distorted. Certain sounds, like a clarinet playing high notes or the sound of a paper bag being cumpled, are actually physically painful. Fortunately it hasn't been much of an issue lately, though.

Right - he was such a weak lardass that the legend that he picked up a piano and threw it into a river was plausible in his own time. Since strength has absolutely nothing to do with one's ability to hit homeruns the dimensions of little league parks obviously ought to be extended from 200 feet to 400 feet, since one's ability to hit a ball a far distance is entirely a matter of hand-eye coordination and has nothing to do with strength.

And muscle mass has absolutely nothing to do with one's ability to hit homeruns, which is why the scrawniest MLB players have historically hit them just as proficiently as the most well-built players.

Yep, with some nice flute playing by Spaulding.

The question is whether there is a digital output on the iPod. I don't know the answer, but if there is one it obviously has to be via the UBS slot on the bottom.

8 songs total - I only recognized Blue Spirits and Red Clay, which was an encore to the first set. There was one sort of lousy ballad that went on waayyyy too long, but the rest was uptempo hardbop. One of the songs I didn't know was a tribute to Charlie Parker that Hubbard had written. Not very, but they were well executed. Pretty bad-ass, more so on the sax than on the flute. I think Spaulding was all four nights, but Curtis was only the first two nights and Chambers was only the last two nights.

I agree with that - in ways I miss the times when you had to run around town in search of the 7" you were looking for, you couldn't log on to a website that would tell you what 100 records you should be listening to, and when you got a record you LIVED with it. Now everything comes out so fast, is so easy to download, and is so quickly identified on the web as a good/cool/square/crappy record, and so much of it can be carried around in your pocket that I really feel like contemporary listening standards have fallen, and the connection to the music isn't the same as it used to be. But I'm still keeping an ipod at work.

Absolutely. The difference is the health benefits of these medicines is generally believed to outweigh their detriments, and therefore there is no ethical quandry involved in creating an environment where you have to take this things as needed in order to keep up. As for your other point, if you were offered the choice between a totally scrawny dude and well-built man for your team, are you honestly saying you'd flip a coin? Do you really think that a 12 year old kid with incredible vision and hand eye coordination could hit home runs in a major league park proficiently? Why do you think women don't compete with men in baseball?

I have to agree with this. I never listen to it at home because of sound quality issues, but if I'm paying close enough attention at the office to care that it sounds like a second generation tape, then I'm not doing my job very well. Besides, it's not like listening to cds through the computer speakers at work sounds any better than the iPod, and lugging the discs back and forth is a pain.

Yeah, but I'm not. Guy Regardless of whether you are or not, I think this is inconsistent with your position that it is Bonds' (or anyone else's) sole business whether they want to risk the consequences of steriods, greenies or whatever else they are using. There are only so many major league roster spots, after all (1200?) and even fewer starting jobs. No, I meant that all those health risks were Bonds's sole business. Guy Not the way I see it. Once you have one user, there is pressure on all others to use in order to keep up. Frankly, I'm really not all that interested in sports anymore and this issue concerns me only slightly more than static cling, but I do believe that steroid usage on anybody's part is unfair to all the players. I would not feel this way if there were no ill health effects.

Yeah, but I'm not. Guy Regardless of whether you are or not, I think this is inconsistent with your position that it is Bonds' (or anyone else's) sole business whether they want to risk the consequences of steriods, greenies or whatever else they are using. There are only so many major league roster spots, after all (1200?) and even fewer starting jobs.

Just got back from tonight's gig, where I met up with Bertrand and one of his buds - it was a really great show; far better than I expected. Everyone involved was in top form. Spaulding and Chambers were particularly impressive, but Cables, Hubbard and the rest were no slouches. Great night!

If you were taking an exam where only the top x students would pass (by design) and half the people in the room were cheating, wouldn't you care?

I second that! Those things are awesome! The first time I wore them was at a Zorn/Laswell show and I swore they weren't doing anything because everything sounded normal. So I took them out and was shocked at how loud the music was! It was still loud with them in, they just took the volume down enough that it wasn't brutal.

I passed by Regis and his wife on Broadway in the UWS once. I also recently passed by Steven Tyler in Hell's Kitchen - he was dressed just like on stage. I did a bit of a double take and he smiled and raised his hand to me. I think my earliest "brush with fame" was when Thurston Moore stepped on my foot at a show at the Warfield in SF in about 1989 or 1990. He turned around and apologized profusely.

Usually just another minimum. But at a recent show (maybe Braxton) they charged a $10 "music fee" plus another minimum. Maybe they had a few more people in line than normal for the second set that night and they were just looking to scare a couple folks off. I'm 80% sure that I'm going tomorrow night - just have to manage a work emergency.

I recently learned that my tinnitus is due to an apparently untreatable Eustachian tube disorder. Sometimes it is barely there at all, and sometimes it's as loud as an alarm clock. When it is loud, then there are certain sounds that bother me, and certainly any very lound sounds bother me.

Almost always. It is often $10 plus another minimum.

Another of my physics colleagues used to be the science guy on Letterman.

My dissertation adviser was (and I would assume still is) a close friend of Henry Kissinger (no, I was not proud).