anonemouse

Your police officers have radios and cars, do they not?

But the loud, unexpected noise will probably scare off a burglar because they generally rely on the occupant being asleep when they enter. And I don't know about you, but I generally check to make sure things are all right if my neighbor's alarm starts going off and isn't shut off immediately. Alarms draw attention, even if it is just people glancing, like you said, to make sure that nothing is suspicious. If a car alarm is going off somewhere around me, I do look to see if something is going on. That, I feel, is why most burglers would run from a building if an alarm starts going off. They do draw attention, and in the case of building alarms, the cops (if they aren't shut off). If you are wanting to do something that takes a little time, like ransacking and robbing a home or raping the occupants, I would imagine that you would have second thoughts about it if a very loud, attention-drawing, cop-magnet alarm was going off.

I am a firm believer in alarm systems. I think that in many of the situations that are cited by gun-rights enthusiasts, the home invaders would have been as easily scared off by an alarm as a gun. I mean, are invaders likely to continue doing something that generally requires stealthiness and silence if a shrieking alarm is likely waking the neighbors up and bringing the cops down on their heads? And if someone attacks you while you are by yourself, are you going to tell him, "wait while I rummage through my purse to get my gun" or "stop dragging me from my car by my hair long enough for me to get my gun out of the glove compartment, get the safety off, and shoot you"? I would imagine that both those cases hinge on surprise. And if you are surprised, are you really likely to be able to get out your gun in time to defend yourself?

Well, I'm not going to Virginia for the internship. I talked to my advisor yesterday, and he wants me to do some more fieldwork this summer, to try and increase my sample size. So far, he's had people taping shrikes for three summers (I did it this past summer), but we've only got data on 6 nests. With numbers that low, any little bit helps, even if we can only get data on a couple of nests this summer.

Kyethra, I hope they find out what's wrong soon. In the mean time, try to stay strong! Just think, only a couple of weeks until your classes are out!

I love the new look, but I do miss having the newly updated posts at the top of the main page. Now, I have to go to "New Posts" and then go back to the main page, refresh it, and then go back to "New Posts" to get that page to show the newest posts.

I definitely agree. Kids that are at risk of becoming violent are identifiable, if people care enough to open their eyes and look. It may require mandatory yearly psychological evaluations by school counsellors, and identification of targets of harassing and bullying behavior, but it is possible.

That's why I qualified my statement by saying "romantic love". I'm just guessing here, but I doubt you love your kids romantically.

Or there would have been a lot more people killed. It's really easy to look back and say, "Well, if this had happened or if I was able to do this, I would have done that." For all that guy knows, he might have gotten in a shoot-out with the gunman and gotten a lot of other people killed. Heck, he could have gotten killed himself and really pissed the gunman off to the point where he shot a whole lot more people. And personally? I would rather risk having one nutcase come to my campus and kill a lot of people than have a thousand people on campus carrying weapons. Especially in a place like Virginia, where just about anyone who wanted a gun could buy one.

I am honestly not sure if real romantic love exists. I think there are feelings out there that we classify as "love" when we feel them, but an actual emotion called "love"? I don't know. I think that lust exists, and infatuation, and friendship and comfort, and I think that if we experience all those at once toward a certain person, we call it "love", but I really don't think that any of us have a "true love" out there.

Still haven't heard anything from the surgeon's office. I am probably going to email the office manager today, since it's been a while since I've heard from them.

Twelve hours from now, I will have started my thesis seminar presentation. And I still have to finish the introduction and conclusions/discussion sections. I'm up to about 42 slides, so as long as I present at a rate of about 1 slide/minute, I should be fine. Now to finish this damn thing....:faint:

Since there is an exclusion in the plan, I don't think you'll have any luck wrangling with insurance. There's always Mexico, though, or some of the cheaper US surgeons, like Dr. Kirschenbaum (or however you spell it) in Denver.

What is your favorite comfort food? It doesn't have to be healthy or bandter-friendly, but simply the food you think of as the ultimate comfort food. I have a few. French onion soup, homemade mashed potatoes, brocolli casserole.

If I haven't been able to convert them since November, I'd say they're safe. At least for a couple more weeks, anyway.

Eh. I'm a wildlife biologist, not an entomologist. I have a bit of a phobia about bugs, actually, so I say let 'em burn. Smokey the Bear has really screwed the fire regime in these areas up. Like I said, a natural fire does wonders for some ecosystems. The problem is that with all this anti-forest fire crap, we've prevented the natural fires from taking place, causing a build-up of highly flammable fuel, which then causes massive wildfires. If the idiots would just let the ecosystems burn naturally, there wouldn't be much of a problem. Of course, many of the yuppies won't hear of letting their land burn naturally every so often.

Actually, I'll be the first to admit that the current Smokey Bear campaign is crap. And any wildlife biologist worth their salt would, too. As I am sure you are aware of, there are a lot of people out there that don't know a heck of a lot about what they are protesting against, no matter what they are protesting against. Sometimes, I think it is considered to be "cool" to be an environmental protester. Fire is good for an ecosystem. Not an out of control fire, of course, but a nice regular burn does wonders. Unfortunately, lots of yuppies like to build their homes right in the ecosystems that have naturally depended on fire. Personally, I think they get what they deserve when their house burns down. You build in a fire-prone area, and guess what, your house burns. Many wildlife biologists and ecologists think some of the worst things to happen to environmentalism were Bambi (anti-fire and anti-hunting) and Smokey the Bear.

Yeah, that's a great endorsement of him, "He's never intentionally killed anyone." The problem with that statement is that the Iraqi people never signed up to die for us. And yeat again, Iraq had NOTHING to do with 9/11. Afganistan DID, and everyone here supported the war in Afganistan. We should have kept it there.

From the same site:

From http://scienceblogs.com/aetiology/2006/02/post_3.php:

Actually, here is the table of contents to the entire book review. I haven't looked through it all yet, but it seems interesting.

He doesn't deny AIDS, but he does deny that HIV causes AIDS. Plus, he actually denies that there is an AIDS epidemic in Africa. Here's a review of the AIDS chapter in his book.

Leatha, if you read the Snopes article, it states where it all started and where it started wasn't a reputable source. The fact remains that this is an internet rumor.

No, Leatha. Your complaining about being contradicted and proved wrong and basically saying that "others can do it, so why can't I" is passive-aggressive. To get the "right" information, I generally go to reputable sources. I try not to rely on hackish conspiracy theories to try and place suspicion on someone. I try to research the authors and see who the sources are. And when it's something that even the researchers at Snopes.com can find fault with, I know it's probably not the best stuff to use in a debate.

I don't want to be the queen of the thread, damn it. I just expect people to stop acting passive-aggressively when the crap they post is rightfully shot down. Hell, I learned a long time ago that if I didn't want to get smacked, to stop doing things that got me smacked. I'm pretty sure we all learned that lesson. So if you don't want to be told that you're wrong, make sure you're not wrong. It makes things a hell of a lot easier on all of us. Come on, we're all adults here. We should all be acting like it.