memebag

memebag, yes it's got both real wood, and fake wood panelling. It's all going though. As a matter of fact, this whole wall is going:

That makes my heart hurt. I bet those beautiful cabinets are going, too. You've got a hard job, Flipper.

Is there a mix of really nice and really bad paneling?

Comcast is supposed to be adding a bunch of HD channels soon. I noticed last night that TCM was just black for several hours.

I have too much work to do today to play high school debate team pendant with you.

Can we play Hungry Hungry Hippos?

Uh, I don't know who that is, but that's not my god.

That's Alanis Morissette from "Dogma". She played God (along with Bud Cort).

If you can't participate in this discussion in a respectful manner, you will be removed from this discussion.

Then I don't understand what you mean by "respect". The term "wacko" was taken from Highway6's post, and used to demonstrate that not every Christian shares his view. I meant no disrespect, and didn't realize I had disrespected anyone.

Regardless, you just proved my point... even for those Christians that believe literally your passage above, when was the last time one stood up and said "follow me, time to kill gay people" .....and it actually worked.

I don't know. I know a lot of them say the Bible is the literal word of God and they are obliged to obey it. It seems inconsistent for them not to kill gay people on a regular basis.

Are there any Christians out there who can tell us what is stopping you?

Very James Bond super-villain.

Our favorite Mambo is at Hillcroft and Bellaire. On a breezy afternoon it feels like Cancun...

It's better than Cancun. There aren't drunk girls throwing up on your shoes.

If someone went on the air and claimed God told him gay marriage is of the devil and that all gay people should be burned at the stake..... you'd probably be pretty darn glad the world, Christian and others, would dismiss him as a wacko.

Really? Because some wacko wrote that in the Bible. See Leviticus 20:13:

"If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads."

A lot of Christians believe that isn't the word of just any wacko, but the literal word of their god.

Luckily, I stopped smoking about 10 years ago. I wonder what 10 years of nicotine gum does to someone?

So yeah, used to do it, but decided that I don't want to contribute to the problem anymore and resolved not to do it again.

Thank you for doing your part to increase decency. I'm a super-sanguine, easy going fella, but rude drivers are one of the few things that raise my ire. It's selfish, mean and counter-productive. There was a recent news article about the traffic patterns of ants. Someone figured out that ants make better time than people even when their paths are more congested because they are patient and give up the right of way more often.

We went Sunday and I hated it. The park is way too popular now. All of these improvements have brought out the worst sort of people, the kind that breathe and move about and park. Four or five years ago we could go on a nice Sunday afternoon and there were 1/3rd the number of humans there. The bridge was ugly and we saw a duck commit murder. My wife was upset by it, but we don't know the whole story. The dead duck could have killed the other duck's father, for all we know.

Oh, and if you're going to look at the zoo's red panda ("The Cutest Animal In The World!"), don't bother. It's just a raccoon.

It's not logically inconsistent that GM make cars, SUVs, hybrids, electric cars, race cars, commercial trucks and fork lifts. They have the same basic functions yet are all built differently and have one maker. It's their prerogative to make different kinds of things.

It's logically inconsistent to say that both consistency and inconsistency in biological forms are evidence for a single creator, unless that creator is a prankster.

It isn't logical to say that whale fingers show the consistency of a single creator, but squid eyes show the inconsistency of an all powerful creator. If inconsistency is evidence for a creator then consistency isn't. You can't have it both ways.

Competition is unavoidable. All life is in competition with all other life because resources are limited. If I eat that cabbage then no one else can eat it.

If a bird has two offspring and they aren't identical, then one of them will have a slightly better chance at survival and reproduction, increasing that childs genes' chances to multiply. Over multiple generations you see the genes that get themselves copied the most thrive, while the other genes fail.

There is no "need" to evolve. It's just the inevitable outcome of the math and physics. As long as there is replication, variation and limited resources, evolution happens.

If the designer was all powerful and all knowing, he's wasn't limited to one design. It's prerogative, beauty, intelligence. He's not an assembly line. He's not limited in his abilities and creativity. If he had all these attributes maybe the question is not why, but why not?

You can't have it both ways. Either whale fingers are evidence for a creator and squid eyes are evidence against it, or vice versa. If you're going to say that the creator makes everything the same way except when he doesn't, you really haven't provided any evidence for a creator.

I've actually checked out one of those books that was referenced the other day, so maybe I'll find the answer in there. But why didn't evolution produce just one single thing and then simply reproduce it over and over? I understand that things evolved according to their environment, right? Well, if they were all in the same environment, why did they change so drastically from each other? I guess they wondered off into different parts of the world? If there was a logical answer, I guess that's it?

Geography has a lot to do with it. So does the living part of the environment, i.e. the other individuals trying to survive in the same area.

Haha...no. What I'm saying is that if there is one designer, it might be logical that all of his creation would have similar features.

If all of his creations had similar features that might make sense, but they don't. Compound, camera-like eyes, for instance, seem to have evolved at least twice. Why wouldn't the designer just use the same eye design for all eyes?

From a different point of view, if one was to believe in a single creator, they could also attribute this to the fact that there was one designer. Right? I don't think it's illogical for one to think that from that point of view.

Why would a single designer explain whale fingers? Or are you saying that the single designer is a real prankster and wants to trick us by filling biology with evidence for evolution?

But whales have five fingers, too. The bones are there, within their fins. Certainly they don't need five fingers. But the whale, and other mammals, have a common point of origin in the distant past. Hence, we all have five fingers. This is the kind of thing I love about evolutionary theory... it is so elegant.

And without evolution's elegance, biology is just confusing. If you get rid of evolution you're left with a multitude of unanswered questions. That's why it inspires so much passion in its defenders. There's so much evidence pointing directly at evolution that it seems obvious now, like we should have figured this out long before Darwin.

ok when you read this sentence and don't remember the thread you're in...my does one's mind wander.

I thought the exact same thing when I read that post. I think it says more about you and me than it does about TheNiche, though.

edit: one reason Christians might think some scientists are out to prove there is no god is because many top scientists don't believe in a god. And, consciencly or not, they're going to do their science according to their world view. That's where they'll get their presuppositions, premises, logic and hypothesis' from.

Unless they stopped believing in god(s) because of what they found via science, which is frequently the case. I was raised as a Christian and believed wholeheartedly until I was 14, when I realized I couldn't reconcile what I had learned from science with what I had been told to believe since I was born. I didn't set out to impose a godless world view on anything; I accepted a godless worldview because it makes more sense.

And the intention of the scientist doesn't really matter in the long run. A scientist can set out to prove or disprove the existence of gods, and if the theories can be tested and the experiements reproduced, then they are scientifically valid. The author's intention is of no importance at all.

I'm definitely a beer nerd and somehow hadn't heard of Shiner Black until last week, you're the third person to mention it. Now I really want to find some. I never see it at Kroger, haven't been to the Gingerman in a long time, haven't brewed in 3 years, and had a baby last year, so my exploration of new beers in the past few years has been very limited. Poor excuses, I know. I plan to brew in 2 weekends, I will try to find some for that event.

I had a few Shiner Blacks a couple of weeks ago. They had them at the Randall's at the corner of Westheimer and Shepherd. Very tasty.

On the dark vs light thing, I like good beer, no matter what color it is. Guinness Extra Stout or Asahi Super Dry, if it's yummy I'll drink it.

Why not simply state that in the text book? State - it is widely viewed by scientist that humans evolved from __________. Why not also state that religious people do not share this belief, and believe _________. Then the school has taken no stand at all, and has introduced the students to both.

But the school has taken a stand if it only singles out this theory and those believers. You can find people around the planet who will disagree with vast chunks of scientific knowledge. That's a good thing to know, but it isn't germane to a biology class. You could fill a semester or two of comparative religion just studying the way religions diverge from science.

Later in life, when the student is older they can decide what they believe and what they want to pursue. If they are intrigued by evolution, they can go that route in college. It should not be up to the schools to decide what Theory to believe - they need to present all popular theories and allow the student to decide.

But there's only one popular theory right now. Belief in a literal Genesis isn't a theory, and it isn't even very popular.

I for one would absolutely oppose any teachings of global warming to my children (if I had any) b/c its not a fact, and its not proven. So why not allow Christians to make the same decision about evolution?

How can a school stop a Christian from making a decision?

For whom??? This is a bad assumption to make. GenXers may not prefer sprawl as they get older, and the economy may not be able to support it anymore anyway. How quickly we forget last summer...some families in our metro were stretched to their absolute limit b/c of gas prices. They were shopping at second hand stores and going to food pantries just so they could afford the drive to work and their mortgage in the same month. Do we really think that gas prices have "returned to normal"?? Sprawl growth may be the preference today, but I'm of the belief that people's minds may chnge out of necessity in the next 10-20 years. And unless the Katy area is planning on growing enough to establish its own metro, this current growth pattern is dangerous and unsustainable.

I don't understand why you question my statement. If the economy can't support it, then sprawl will stop. The price of gas isn't the only factor in that equation. New transportation and/or communication technology can quickly make the price of gas irrelevant.

I'm not saying peoples' minds won't change, just that they haven't, on average, and I don't see them changing any time soon. And I'm not convinced of the "danger".

Who's reality and what time period??? This is fully dependent on the trends of the NEXT generation... and they may not be so willing to sprawl.

Correct. They could be diametrically opposed to their parents. Stranger things have happened. But why not let them set their own policy?

Guess I'm to ignorant to know the difference. How would you know? Couldn't an article be both?

It seems to have been dictated by "Stephen J. Ewbank, executive vice president of Planned Community Developers, Town Square's developer". That's a big clue that it's a press release.

Article in Chronicle about Sugar Land Town Square.

chronicle

Article or press release?