J Larsen

They're a bit of a frustrating team at the moment. In past years they've been a team that was "just one solid player away". Now they're a team that's three solid players away. They need a clutch hitter in the lineup, they need a innings-eater in the rotation (the inability of four of their starters to ever go past the sixth is getting to be a bigger and bigger problem) and they need a high-quality arm in the bullpen. Of course, a lot of tems would be good if they could have all three f those things.

I'm not too knowledgable about boxing, but my girlfriend is a big fan. When the fight was called she screamed "Those %&$#ing crooks" about three times. She watches a lot of boxing and she thought it was a terrible call and even went so far as to say she thought the doctor was slipped some cash. So, as bad as it may look to some of us who don't follow the sport closely, it seems that it might not been that bad of a cut as far as boxing goes.

Some dude on a SF Giants board I check from time to time keeps insisting that they're called "trollers" and that a "troll" is a post meant to upset and bait one into an argument. When anyone refers to a so-called "troller" as a "troll", he gets very upset and snippity. I guess he's just a troll.

The screenplay I linked above must have been one WB decided to pass on - why else would it be on the net? Let's hope my theory is correct. I highly doubt that the duo that brought us "The Mask of Zorro" could do justice to Sandman. Just one thing confuses me: I would assume that WB owns the copyright on any script that it commissions. Does it not seem strange that these guys would be able to post their script on their website? I'm convinced that the script is legit. The website looks 100% legit and it too elaborate to be a hoax (not to mention that the real writers would have had it shut down by now if it were a hoax). Plus the existance of a Sandscript by these two guys is confirmed by the site to which Mny posted a link.

I take back the "highly questionable authenticity" bit. I was skeptical at first, as a Google link took me directly to the script and it looked like something anyone could have posted to the web. Now that I've looked around on their homepage, it looks legit.

Here's a link (of HIGHLY questionable authenticity) to a Sandman movie script supposedly commissioned by Warner Brothers: http://www.wordplayer.com/archives/SANDMAN.cover.html

If two guys want to pummel each other for a hefty check, or even just for kicks, far be it from me to stop them. BTW, I'm pretty sure boxing gloves are only designed to protect the knuckles of the puncher (if you connect with more than just your first two knuckles wothout gloves you're likely to break knuckles). I don't think they soften the blow for the guy on the receiving end to any significant extent.

k-hd, I don't understand the graphics you posted. What is on the x and y axes? Is this some sort of Fourier spectrum, or are we simply looking at volume level vs. time? If it's the later, I'm not sure what the graphics prove. I'm not trying to come across as confrontational, I'm just honestly confused.

!!! We'll have to agree to disagree on that one!

I've been re-discovering The Band lately. I liked them when I was very young, and I am finding that I still really like their albums. I might have to pick up some of the remasters. I just got a King Oliver cd in the mail. It's my first exposure to his music. I'm not in a big rush to get a lot more, but I really like having this disc in my collection. I also finally heard a Stefon Harris-led date (Black Action Figures). I really expected to like it, and I really didn't. I found it a little too easy on the ears for my tastes - not "smooth" per se, but a little on the bland side. I also just picked up "Mysterious Traveler". So far (I've only listened to it twice) I like it about 10000000000 times more than Heavy Weather, but it's still not really my favorite thing in the world (10000000000 times a very small number is still pretty small). I do, however, have a feeling that this album might grow on me, and when I have that feeling I'm usually right.

Doesn't it seem that a Sandman movie would be feasible and, if done properly, fairly succesful?

I try to avoid piling on, but I have to say this movie looks like it's going to be about as good as The Phantom.

If your kids show no drive, you really should show concern. Simply smiling and patting them on the back would be poor parenting, IMO.

I actually relate to what Mny has been saying and I'm a little surprised by the reactions he's elicited. My chosen field is extremely competitive, as is Mny's. My colleagues and I are always competing for the same (very finite) funding, access to the same data, the same positions, etc. It was the same story in my brief stint as a financial consultant (which was done SOLEY for the VERY serious need of $$$s.) I'd much rather be a "driver A", but if I am, in fact, a "driver B" I could probably learn to live with it (although I'd fighting like hell to get at least one win).

Then I think this is probably as good a choice as any. Get a Nokia phone, and you might be able to sell it when you're finished with it. Hell, maybe you can even find it at a large electronics store with a 30-day return policy! (Make sure you deactivate the phone with your service provider before you get rid of it, though!)

Are you looking for a no-contract phone because you only want to use it for a short period of time, or are you going to continue using it after you get back from vacation? If you're planning to use it long-term, TracFone is very expensive. I get 600 anytime minutes plus 5400 evening/weekend minutes for about what they charge for 200 minutes. If you only want to use it for a couple weeks, this type of service makes sense. With the larger companies you can normally get no-contract service, but then you don't get subsidized phones and you don't get as good of rates. BTW, if you do go with TracFone, get a Nokia phone rather than Motorola. Motorola is thought of as a better brand, but the people I know who own Motorola phones are generally unhappy with them. Evidently they don't get great reception and the batteries don't have very long lifespans compared to other brands.

With Macs running UNIX now (the main reason I've stuck with them), who's going to buy Sun workstations after these come out? Sure, if you buy the fully loaded model you'll be spending about $5000, but Sun Ultra Creators are about ten times that for similar performace to what I expect from these new Macs based on the specs. EDIT: I've just been informed that Sun Workstations have already come down in price dramatically. Evidently you can get a very good workstation for $15,000 now. I remember my Ultra Creator 15 that was ordered for a project I was working on in 1999 costing around $40,000.

I was trying to wait for MRAM to come out before upgrading my laptop, but as that keeps getting pushed back I will probably pick one of these up sometime next year. The PowerBook I bought in early 2000 (the firewire model) is increasingly limiting for me. As mentioned above, it's not wise to buy one of these too soon after their release. The early releases of Apple hardware are almost invariably problematic. The earliest G4s were not as fast or reliable as the final G3s.

I find a lot of his music to be a little "light" for my tastes. I sort of like Bug Music, but that's his throwback New Orleans jazz album, so if you're looking for something modern it doesn't quite fit the bill. One album I recommend avoiding is "A Fine Line". I don't know how others feel about this album, but it sounds a little too close to smooth jazz for my tastes.

Fats Waller, Chucho Valdes, Jason Moran, Stefon Harris. Basically anything I can get cheaply at BMG, I'm discovering.

By any chance does this opinion have to do with the fact that you are currently 171 posts behind AfricaBrass?

Which team was the "team of the 90s" in baseball? The Braves made the playoffs every year (or did they miss once?) but only won one WS. The Yanks won three WS but had less playoff appearances. I believe the popular opinion is that the Yanks were the team of the 90s (as painful as it is for me to say it). Personally, I believe in winning big and losing big. I wouldn't want to be a perpetual also-ran.

It's not dead in the sense that it's been proven wrong, but almost no progress has been made for several years now.

Hey Mny - I'm not working in unification at all anymore. It's a tough road to take. There is very little progress being made, the leading stars of the field are all frustrated and depressed (and nasty to be around), and there's no funding available for it anymore. I may well return to it someday, but for now I'm working in low-energy QM, looking at mesoscopic phenomina in particular (where classical and quantum physics meet). The field has a lot of advantages: there are many experiments being done, there is, relatively speaking, a lot of funding available, and there is a lot of commercial interest. In addition to M and F theories, some ex-string people are working in large extra-dimension brane-world theories. Dvali is a big name in that field (he invented it, actually). One fascinating aspect of that field is that, in principle, experiments can be done, as these theories predict deviations from Newtonian gravity on millimeter scales. Of course, measuring deviations from Newton on scales that small is a monsterous challenge. Witten's last couple of talks have been on particle cosmology, with only passing reference to brane theories. Just to keep things on track, Driver A is still the superior racer.

In a sense, yes. Einstein thought that QM was accurate but incomplete. More specifically, he recognized that quantum mechanics gave accurate statistical predictions, but he thought that there existed a set of hidden variables that were necessary to complete the theory. He thought that once these variables had been identified, you'd have a new, fully deterministic theory (i.e. no more random variables). When he said "God does not play dice", this is what he was talking about. In a separate paper, the (in)famous EPR paper, he ridiculed QM for prediciting non-local interactions between particles (i.e. a measurement on a particle in New York could conceivably affect the outcome of a measurement of a particle on the moon, where the second measurement is outside the light-cone of the first). Bell showed that Einstein couldn't have it both ways. He showed that any local hidden-variable theory is inconsistent with the predictions of quantum mechanics, and he derived a set of experimentally accessable inequalities to decide the question of locality. The experiments have been repeated many times with breathtaking precision. Non-local quantum mechanics wins decisively. It is still possible (though extremely unlikely) that Einstein was right about the existance of hidden-variables, but any hidden-variable theory must admit non-locality. That's all from me until tomorrow night. I hope this is intellegible. I'm a sleep-deprived zombie at the moment. If there's any desire for me to write this in a clearer fashion, I can try to do so tomorrow. Sorry for derailing the thread!