Jasper is an awesome place Akh, but your Loonie goes further in AK these days...
 Bear Attacks Hit Record High in Alaska

I had to shoo off a 600lb brownie that was trying to get in my bear proof garbage cans about a month ago. I told him that was a good way to get shot. He lit out down the centerline of a gravel road, covering 100 yards to the woods in about 2.2 seconds...
Blackies have always been common around here (the only animal legal to hunt in the city limits of Seward), but brown bears (big coastal fish-eating grizzlies) are relatively new to Seward. They have expanded through the Resurrection River valley from the interior of the Kenai Peninsula and do quite well for themselves feeding on moose, blackies, loose dogs, and the occasional jogger in between salmon and hooligan runs.
Salmon Creek and Bear Creek residents give names to the bears they see most often. Having a bear in the backyard here is usually more an occasion for the video camera than for the big rifle.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ap4A2A_3WJY    (Last year in Homer, Ak)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tolJbFKJcQ0    (This year in Anchorage, Ak)

Although it's highly illegal to kill one outside of regulated hunting and strictly defined Defense of Life and Property, the old Indian name for a nuisance bear is "Rug", and out here in the country it's highly unlikely for one's neighbors to complain to the authorities for solving a problem in the middle of the night.
Not that it happens very often, our brownies haven't mauled any children or broken into any occupied houses lately, but one got a face full of pepper spray for hanging out in someone's garage last May. The home owner was late for work and couldn't get to her car with the grizzly in the garage...

Gotta love Alaska!

 

PS: Visit me out on the Karluk River during sockeye season. Guaranteed encounter with the largest brownies on the planet, if that's what you crave. 

"I watched the bear wade into the river, make a sudden lunge and drag out a flapping salmon. It carried the fish straight toward me, and just 20 yards away began to eat it. I was on edge, but the bear regarded me with as much interest as a stone. Over the next two hours I watched the bear catch and eat 10 red salmon as it slowly worked its way downstream and eventually out of sight."

What you doing this summer Abraxas?
I could probably get you a job on a salmon seiner or a tender, which would be a great education in small boats for a prospective marine architect.

You'll learn more about boats and the sea in a summer of that than 5 years on a big contship or tanker.

Who knows? You might even make some cash while you're at it.... 



 

Wazzup my brother?

 

10 years ago, I got a hookup for a lawyer in New York state where I got a ticket for doing 97 in a 65 (on top of 7 Mile Hill outside of Binghampton  )

The attorney was great, helped me reach a reasonable settlement, and I'm still friends with both him and the judge. 

My online friend Kevin, aside from being a theist and asst professor of history at Syracuse U., is one of the finest people I know. We go at it like hell over some things, but we're still loc'ed. I think he's finally gonna come up for a visit this year. That will be great. I've known him online for 11 years.

 

  --   Dr Dre


Dude, what I have to say may sound a little harsh, but....

If a girl ain't as into you as you are in her, you don't need her. As you're finding out, it's more trouble than it's worth. You deserve better.

A girl that has anything for you you will come to your house and ring doorbells, pound doors, peek into windows, and call your cell phone and listen to see if she can hear it ring through the door in the afternoon if you don't answer her calls that morning.
It ain't worth it to try chasing after a girl that won't make eye contact with you because she doesn't have the heart to tell you she ain't that hot for you...
(Believe me, when the situation is reversed and you have to cut a great girl loose, you'll understand that eye contact thing...) 


That sounds hard until you realize how subjective it is. The fact that she doesn't wanna have your babies (at present) says NOTHING about you. Nothing whatsoever.
You also have to remember, there's very Few things dumber than a 18-20 year old girl. She probably doing whatever she's doing for all the wrong reasons anyway...

The sea is full of fish!! They aren't passive little mermaids either. They're predatory. They will get you....


On another note:  Like others here have said, nothing kills love like anger and violence. You have to put yourself in her place a little to see the fear it causes. A man is bigger and stronger than a woman. She has no hope of winning a physical fight. She knows that deeply inside. Her whole psyche is wired differently because of that. Like a deer, she is highly attuned to threats to her person and is constantly aware of her vulnerability at a subconscious level. She's different  than you in that way. The worst thing you can do is to trigger her threat mechanism. Fear is the opposite of love.

Take this to your grave:
No matter who you are, you can never force someone to love you. Love is a tiny little bird you have to hold very gently if you don't want to kill it.








Suggestions:

1. Accept that your heart's a little broke. This is the first step in getting past it. It happens to all humans.
2. Don't accept less than a girl who's crazy for you, and tells you over and over.

3. Put yourself around a bunch of women in the guise of some activity. School, sports, art, job, gym - whatever (except a bar!). Make yourself fair game in a no pressure environment .
It won't take long before one or another of them will have to have you so they can brag to their buddies....   
Pretty soon, it's You who does the choosing. It's good to be clockin that grip!   


Good Luck My Friend!

 




 

"It doesn't matter how obvious the truth is if it means you'll never escape. It doesn't matter how big the lie is if it is your only hope of escape"  --  Gorky Park


I think you are appreciating the utilitarian aspects of organized religion while being a bit sanguine about the bad. It sounds like a happy medium that lets you come to terms with the beauty of the Spanish Church without feeling like a hypocrite.

 


Utilitarian value has no bearing on the truth of a religion's claims, but there's a lot of utilitarian value in religion. Hubris, for example, can get out of hand in a wealthy society and rot it to the core. Society needs an ethical value structure other than the free market, religion conveniently provides a heuristic.

The pursuit of truth and beauty, and the relief of suffering are noble goals, I think atheists just disagree with the methods of antireason, fear and superstition.

 

I debated stating it like that, but in the end I wanted to provoke someone of faith to call me on it

Yes, it is an intolerant notion, but only towards some silly ideas.

People kill each other every day over religious differences. I don't think more religion is gonna help, it hasn't in the entire history of the human race.

Religious moderates provide top cover for extremists of every stripe, time for religion to quit denying the problem.
Either that, or time for people to realize what their religions are telling them to do.

Does anyone really think that many of the problems in the Middle East would exist if two tribes didn't think that God granted them sole use of the same patch of desert?

Does anyone think that John 3:16 and the 14 Infallibles can ultimately peacefully coexist as happy neighbors?



The fact that people of faith combat the notion that they are to blame for a lot of problems is just one more symptom of the intractable mindset that religion promotes.

Time to put it to death.

Just a few of the many miracles of Satya Sai Baba. How can He not Be a living God!?...


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggexD03pIT0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAk6zIijPFQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlxlIWp6SWI

Radioactive decay has no discernible cause, other than "zero is unstable".

Professor Hawking discusses Scientific Determinism:

http://www.hawking.org.uk/text/public/dice.html

That was more punny than ironic.

 

I tend to look at the concepts mono- and polytheism as cognitive schemes, differing images of ourselves.
"Man created god in his own image" - We are social animals and are hard wired to anthropomorphize the natural world.

Polytheism - Nietzsche's perspecivism - Instead of competing "Drives"  that "Lust for power", we have "Athena", "Prometheus", "The Muses" each with their own conflicting and confounding wills to express through mortal flesh. A model based on how the mind works.

Monotheism - Rare. Holy Trinities etc. Even Islam needs an Iblis, a Darth Sidius.
Even rarer that a mono god is something other than an abstract, personal catchall to conveniently represent "Everything I don't understand, and never will". The ultimate cop out - "God is the sound man makes when he is tired of thinking."
"Opiate of the masses"


 

What? Another flawed study on MJ from Pat?

What variety of cannabis did this noxious smoke come from?
There are about 5000 varieties of cannabis. Each has discreetly different levels of chemicals in the smoke. They all smell and taste a little different. Does one variety of rose or onion have the same smell (chemical composition) as another?

Also, one variety, or even sample, may have lots of ammonia in it (or not) due to how it was cured, and how it was grown.
Temperature of the smoke when sampled may vary the concentrations of components as well. Were these factors all controlled?
Were the levels of ammonia salts similar with water pipes and vaporizers?


Let me guess, the actual paper hasn't been peer reviewed or replicated, and it costs $45 to read?





I guess it makes a good case for potent weed:  Better to smoke a hit or two of the Dank than waste your lungs smoking 4-5 hits of something with less cannabinoids to catch the same buzz.





Also, the photo editors at The Beeb need to learn what ganj looks like. That pic in the article is pathetic.

 

Saint Alphonsus' Pancake Breakfast...

Pocket