BlueSoxSWJ

I hope it snows again tomorrow. Currently it's supposed to be light snow until about 11AM, then partly cloudy and about 35 degrees for the game. For a while it looked like it might rain; that would've sucked.

I'm a Bruins season ticket holder, so I'll be in Fenway for the Winter Classic against the Flyers on Friday. I'm hoping the wind chill won't quite be as bad as the current -6.

I was starting to get really excited about the upcoming winter classic, but now I'm not so sure sitting outside for 3 hours is gonna be so much fun:

(best version I could find; they defend their copyright aggressively.)

For all that many current religions reject science, and for all the bad rap Christianity gets for rejecting the Copernican model of the Solar System (which is mostly false), religion actually used to be the driving force behind most natural sciences, especially astronomy, as they tried to better understand God's work in order to better understand God.

I think it's in Jack's sig, since every time he posts it turns the rest of the page italic

The prevailing theory is that there's a gene (or combination of several) that increases desire for sex with men. The evolutionary benefits of having the tendency in women (lots more babies) outweigh the occasional drawback (a gay son). However, even assuming the theory is dead on, it still only explains about 1/10 to 1/7 of male homosexuality, so it's not very prevalent.

You should make a don't know option for the last one for those of us who happen to be adopted ...

I'm looking for the article I read recently, but the following are the highlights that I remember: - A son's chance of being gay goes up approximately 4% for each prior son from the same mother. - The above fact is voided if the child is left-handed. - There is a statistically significant correlation between sexuality and ambidexterity (gays are more likely to be ambidextrous). - Gay men have more relatives on their mother's side on average than straight men.

In High School Musical 2 there's a pretty implicit hook-up between Chad Danforth (Corbin Bleu) and Ryan Evans (Lucas Grabeel) - in the scene after the song "I Don't Dance" (check out the lyrics and tell me that's not a metaphor for being bi-curious), the two characters have exchanged outfits. Disney movies in general can sometimes abound with implicitly gay characters - my fraternity watched the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy with "implicit gay couple" as a drinking rule, and it was one of the most common ones called.

I do love the stories here, and while some stories have a typo here and there, so does most published literature. The current author I'm reading uses insure (to provide financial collateral against loss) in place of ensure (to make certain; guarantee) and uses the word quite frequently. While much rarer, confusion of loose (not tight, rhymes with "moose") and lose (not win, rhymes with "choose") comes up occasionally as well. Certainly in comparison to non-professional sources of e-fiction, GA has one of the highest standards around. edit: typo (oh, the irony)

I checked this out because I read the book a few years ago and was wondering how they'd handle the fact that the premise of the book (based on the Solar Neutrino Problem) has since been invalidated. They've mostly erased the overall plotline of the book and kept the individual storylines - in the book, how the flashforward happens is known immediately (an accident involving the LHC), and the jump is several decades instead of 6 months. Instead the show has made the "how" part of the central plotline, and kept individual aspects (a marriage falling apart, no vision = will be dead, is it fixed or can the future be changed?, the mosaic website, etc.).

Note that the article never once uses the term "gay," instead always "homosexual" or "sexual orientation." This is a common subtle practice by homophobes to keep the readers' minds subconsciously on the sex aspect of homosexuality.

18, of which 14 were for English classes ranging from 5th (The Call of the Wild) through 12th (As I Lay Dying) grades.

I'm surprised we've gotten this far without anyone mentioning the one news program still worth watching - The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. It's sad, but a comedy program is currently the most reliable source of information - From 2004 to 2007 (the latest study I could find quickly), The Daily Show viewers were always the best informed about current events (and, surprise, viewers of Fox News were the least). Particularly when the guest is a conservative (but one who can hold his/her own like Mike Huckabee or Bill Kristol, not one that falls to pieces like Betsy McCaughey), it tends to be a rarely seen forum where the two sides don't degenerate to ad hominem attacks, but instead actually exchange ideas and explore the fundamental differences of opinion that lead to the disagreement.

Who reads a specific chapter's discussion thread (not the original post, but the whole thread) before reading it? I doubt anyone, so I have no problem spoiling the contents of that chapter. However, if I speculate about future content, and think there's a high likelihood that I'm correct (i.e. if I catch the subtle clues CJ likes to leave in his stories), I'll throw on spoiler tags. Finally, I use them for really long stuff just to keep the length of a post reasonable.

Huh, the site lists three churches in my hometown, but conspicuously omits the church in the center that drives the Historical Society insane by flying a giant rainbow flag. [Not because the Historical Society is against gays, but because I live in Lexington, MA, and they try to keep the battle green and surrounding houses/buildings looking like they did in 1776.]

Thanks to XKCD, a proof that there are an infinite number of primes: Top prime's divisors' Product (plus one)'s factors are ..? Q.E.D. bitches! http://xkcd.com/622/

And I just burned through Sunborn in two afternoons ... so I've finally moved on from nine years of waiting for book four, to ... waiting for book five.

The Colbert Report - Tip/Wag

Skimmed the thread and didn't see anything about the Baen Free Library. Over 100 books available online for free I've read: 1632 (Eric Flint) / 1633 (Eric Flint and David Weber) (and have a couple more books in the series) - I liked them, but each book after 1632 is a collaborative work with a different co-author, so be prepared for the style to change drastically from book to book. I got through 1634: The Ram Rebellion but couldn't motivate myself to finish 1634: The Galileo Affair. A Hymn Before Battle (John Ringo) - I got through it but haven't had the energy to go after the sequel yet. On Basilisk Station and The Honor of the Queen (Weber) - I love this series, and just finished book 3, awaiting more books' arrivals. Neptune Crossing, Strange Attractors, and The Infinite Sea (Jeffrey Carver) - The ultimate tease, book four in this series (Sunborn) was due out in 2001, but kept getting pushed back while Carver finished Eternity's End. Book four is now FINALLY out and available for free for a limited time on Carver's website (along with the aforementioned Eternity's End) at starrigger.net. I bought the first four books as a freshman in high school (in 2000!) and have been waiting for Sunborn for nine years now - just have to reread the first three to get back into the series. (Maybe I'm beginning to understand how Davey Jones felt about Episode III in the Do Over series? ) Mutineer's Moon (Weber) is the first book in one of my favorite trilogies ever.

Glad you're okay, and welcome to GA, though there are certainly better ways to find out about this site!

Hope you're feeling better and not too bored stuck in the hospital. Hopefully this site helps!

Call me crazy, but I'm gonna go out on a limb and predict that despite everything going on, the most important foreshadowing in this story will still end up being:

I think CJ is withholding the cliffs until after the voting. I think he's afraid that otherwise we'll vote him the GOAT* of Cliffs. *Greatest Of All Time Edit: 6/7 on the lateral thinking problems. The one about the girl opening the cellar door isn't a good question. (Reason in spoilers.)