Link: http://talkorigins.org/origins/postmonth/jul05.html

..where it is explained that the distinction "cold-blooded" vs. "warm-blooded" is an artificial simplification to explain a whole continuum of temperature management approaches in animals.

Link: http://www.wfs.org/chernow05.htm

written by the futurist Michael Chernow.

Unlike last weekend, where I ended up not watching a great deal of football, primarily because of housework, this weekend will see some interesting stories unfold. Several of them involve quarterbacks.
1. Can Chris Simms recover from what was clearly a stinker of a performance and play a decent game for the Bucs, or will Tim Rattay suddenly find himself starting for a team on the other side of the country?
2. How will Kurt Warner fare on his return to the starting position for the Cardinals? 3. And, most intruigingly, how will Joey Harrington fare now that Jeff Garcia is banged-up and unable to play this weekend?

We also get to see Cody Pickett make his first full start for the 49'ers.
Elsewhere, the Big Game will be the Colts-Patriots clash. I am sure that Peyton Manning would like nothing better than to take part in a whipping of his nemesis team.
At this point in the season, teams either have to perform up to their potential, or get left behind, and a number of teams heavily favoured at the start of the season all have to start winning. The Chargers, Vikings and Raiders were all heavily fancied, but all three teams are stuttering, for different reasons. Also heading in the wrong direction are the New Orleans Saints, who are performance and venue-challenged right now. Meanwhile the Dolphins splutter along, turning in uneven performances.
And of course, we get to watch the Ever-Popular Terrell Owens Show as our star attempts to extract his foot from his mouth yet another time...
I can't wait.

Link: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9928490/

...with some of the Vikings players now threatening to boycott a local TV station after the station aired a follow-up news segment about the boat party, with evidence apparently recovered from the trash bins of several Vikings players.
It seems that the Vikings organization, and more particularly the coach and some of the players just do not understand some basic realities. If a group of highly-paid high-profile professional athletes go out on the town and behave like a bunch of out-of-control rampaging sex maniacs (which is what appears to have happened), and news of this "event" gets into the public domain, those athletes are in deep doo-doo. Like it or not they are public figures. The amount of money they are being paid assures that. They are also playing under contracts which always contain clauses obliging them to adhere to certain defined standards of behaviour on and off the field of play. Failure to adhere to those standards can be cause for termination of their contracts.
The first law of holes says "stop digging".
The word "accountability" also comes to mind.
So let's see what has been said by Vikings management thus far:

1. The Vikings said they were prepared to cut any player who had brought the club into disrepute.
2. Mike Tice said he would bench any players found to have misbehaved.
3. Mike Tice said he was considering reducing playing time for players found to have been involved

Do you see a pattern here? Three specific promises of action were made concerning the intent to discipline players found to have misbehaved. None of those actions, as far as I can tell, has been taken. You will also notice that very few Vikings players will discuss the incident, and there have been no real public expressions of regret or contrition.
The impression that is now reaching the public (and the media) is that the Vikings players involved obviously do not feel that they owe the public any form of confession, apology or contrition, and the club is unable or unwilling to discipline them. The effects are already being felt locally; a local Best Buy cancelled a signing session by several Vikings players last month.
The best analysis of the situation was provided by Vikings center Matt Birk, who is currently on injured reserve. In an interview with Sports Illustrated, Birk eloquently expressed his amazement and irritation with the events. Here's an extract from what he said:

"I'm not going to sit here and tell people morally what they should do. But there are basic principles of human decency at play here, as well as the law, and it's not too tough to figure out that if you're going to engage in that type of behavior, it's something that absolutely should happen in private.
Things like this just wear you out. It's frustrating because every two months we seem to have a scandal around here, and then the people involved decide they won't talk to the media. That leaves the rest of us, who aren't involved, to have to answer for them publicly, and it's not a whole lot of fun. But, hey, some guys are just selfish. They don't think about anybody else."

It appears that Daunte Culpepper does not understand or accept Birk's point of view, because they subsequently had an exchange in the Vikings locker room where Culpepper asserted that Birk should mind his own business. What Culpepper clearly does not understand, and Matt Birk does, is that if you become involved in an incident of the type alleged to have occurred, and it becomes public, it is no longer just your business, It just became a public incident, and as a public figure, you cannot run away and hide from that.
Since the players involved will not fess up, the result is that neither they or the club are able to draw a line under the incident and move on. Nobody will accept accountability, and so the media are digging into the incident further, probably working on the hypothesis that the real truth must be far worse than the rumours and information so far available because nobody will talk about it.
Threatening a media boycott won't get the players anywhere. That is merely a petulant, childish response to a media intrusion.
The players need to wise up, banish the lawyers from their discussions, collectively own up to the indiscretions, and take a punishment on the chin. If they do not do that, they will continue to be regarded as a bunch of whining, cowardly weasels, and they can expect more media investigation of what really happened in on that boat trip, and continuing negative impacts on their reputation and that of the Vikings. Given that NFL contracts are not guaranteed, they might also want to start talking more frequently to their agents just in case they are invited to go play somewhere else in the not-too-distant future.
I am damned sure that a coach like Bill Parcells or Bill Belichick would have already sorted out the fallout from the incident, probably by a combination of actions involving depth chart demotions, lightening of wallets and a significant amount of invective. If Mike Tice wants to show that he is capable of continuing as a leader of men, he should be twisting arms right now to get players to own up.

Link: http://www.gladwell.com/pdf/sports.pdf

...in which a Canadian of African descent, himself a former top-flight junior runner, discusses the myriad ways in which the stereotypes about the athletic ability of blacks can be distorted, and the interesting impact that has on perceptions of athletes of all different skin hues.

Earlier this week, the Senate held a closed session to debate the evidence for waging war in Iraq. The session was forced by the Democratic minority.
What struck me when reading accounts of this event in the media was how nearly all of the mass media accounts fixated on criticism and commentary about the move by Republican politicians and media commentators. Hardly any of the reports spent any significant amount of time discussing why the closed session had been forced, what the outcome of the session might be etc.
We have a real problem in this country when the media decides that reaction to an event is more newsworthy than the event itself. This represents a dysfunctional obsession with personalities and verbal gymnastics at the expense of substance.
How can I put this...I can't be subtle. Right now, many of our media outlets are behaving like a bunch of dozy fuckwits.
Time to wake up and actually start reporting and analyzing real news, folks!

Link: http://truthout.org/docs_02/021403A.htm

In 2003, when the Senate held a debate on a resolution to give the President authority to wage war in Iraq, Senator Robert Byrd gave this speech opposing the resolution. He was one of only 22 senators that opposed the resolution. He was, of course, roundly excoriated at the time. Reading the speech today, you are struck by how eloquent and well-argued it is, but also by how horribly prescient he was.

Link: http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/11/02/polygamous.judge.ap/index.html

...in which a judge is under pressure to step down following the rather awkward revelation that he currently has 3 wives, which is a felony under current Federal and State anti-bigamy laws.
My favourite part of the article is this:

"You can't have it both ways," said Colin Winchester, the executive director of the state's Judicial Conduct Commission.

It seems to me that the judge has actually been having it three ways...what amazes me is why nobody in the legal system in Utah will actually bust this guy for bigamy. Can they not read the law? Or is this proof that parts of the USA are really a banana republic?

Link: http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-op-initiative30oct30,1,2275766.story?coll=la-news-comment

Here in Texas, we have a state ballot on November 8th at which a motley collection of initiatives will be subjected to a popular vote.
In California, the voters, using the same mechanism, have been busy limiting the ability of elected representatives to govern for many years. This article explains why this governance process, originally intended as a measure of last resort to counter lack of responsiveness by elected representatives, is now being abused, and is actually worsening the problem that it was supposed to solve.
Part of the underlying problem is that electorates are still unwilling to vote representatives out of office. The number of truly contested electoral races at State and Federal level is actually quite small. Some races are actually uncontested, while in other districts, the electoral math results in one of the major party candidates winning by a country mile, almost by default.
Add to that the stifling effect of a two-party system where third party candidates are the exception, the overall result is that most politicians of the two major parties, determining that they are unlikely to be punished for not being responsive to their constituents, can (and often do) ignore them.
The frustrated electorates, rather than turn them out of office, instead take refuge in passing ballot initiatives. This further reduces the power of the elected representatives, which then causes more ballot initiatives...you get the picture.
This is a vicious spiral which can only be addressed properly if electorates are prepared to become more visionary, by

(a) voting for third parties where the major party candidates have nothing new to offer,
(b) being more intolerant of political malfeasance by elected officials

Indulgence of political chicanery by electors only encourages more chicanery.
The bottom line is that the California issue has the electorate as its root cause, and the electorate therefore has the solution in its own hands. Continually voting to restrict the power of elected officials diminishes the effectiveness of representative democracy, rather than improving it.
As an elector, you can address issues with the effectiveness of elected officials - you elected them, you can un-elect them. If you don't do that, and instead attempt to finagle a solution by other means, then don't be surprised if matters don't improve.

Those of us who have followed Formula 1 for some time know that Ron Dennis, the CEO of McLaren-Mercedes, occasionally resorts to pretentious-sounding phraseology that sounds like it was lifted from a consultant's handbook. This form of communication has been known for some time as "Ronspeak".
Courtesy of the fine folks at PitPass, you can now convert some of your favourite F1 words and phrases to RonSpeak.... Scroll down to the bottom of the page for the Ronspeak generator.