knapplc

Washington is a weird team to figure. They gave up nine more sacks than the Huskers on only 30 more pass attempts. They return a bunch of veterans on their O Line, but they're shuffling guys to different spots (I know, not unusual). For only throwing the ball 30 more times than Nebraska, they also only scored five more passing TDs than we did, and overall their offense scored less than one point per game more than ours - and we were terrible last year. Even though they return a bunch of starters, it's not like they were tremendously productive.

I'm very happy for you. You're adding years on to your life.

I can hit a one inch square target from 60 feet away with my air rifle. How do you like them apples?

Pavan - so dominant. That girl was awesome to watch.

Animals don't kill unless they have a reason to. They might attack if they feel threatened, whether they are being threatened or not. If you remove the fear of being attacked when there is obviously no threat from another animal, then you just spared that animal. Humans being animals is only one part of the equation. We are also cognitive creatures, which you failed to take into account in your response. I never proposed that a world with less ignorance and reasons to kill one another would be a utopia. In the past, humans killed each other for a variety of reasons, but I think you can say that those reasons boil down to ignorance and fear. Thousands of years ago if I saw a stranger my first thought might be to kill him out of fear. But I insist that with education, people won't feel the need to kill and harm others. It's almost as if you think wanting to kill and harm others is a fact of human nature, but my very existence denies your claim. At this moment, I don't feel the NEED to harm any other human being, let alone kill someone. So people have killed each other, but that in and of itself does not make it a need. That's like saying since people have mowed lawns in the past that it is somehow a need. It is not a need and it is only done because of the idea that a clean cut lawn looks pretty neat. I'm not sure where we got off onto the tangent that harm = kill, but that's not my contention. "Harm" can be defined any number of ways. Killing is just one of them. Nor did I say that every human wants to harm others. They have the potential to, but not all of them do so, for a variety of reasons. However, those reasons could pop up at any time, such as you walking down the street on lunch and you get pulled into an alley to be mugged. Chances are that if it's just you and the other guy, you're going to attempt to inflict some harm on him. Or if someone tries to hurt your wife, I'm guessing the "harm" part of your human nature will suddenly show up. It's endemic to every human, coded in our DNA. That's not a need, it's a fact. I never said it was a NEED. Yes, there are many reasons that people use to harm each other. But I think that some ideas are more harmful than others and not every idea has the same amount of conceivable harm as you suggest. I'll give you that some reasons to harm others are greater, or inflict greater harms. Certainly my neighbor's anger over my encroaching hibiscus and his subsequent Round-Up attack on said hibiscus (a harm) is lesser than one nation attacking another for encroaching on their borders (a greater harm). But that's to say that religion is endemically a great harm, which it is not. It does not inherently harm humans, although it obviously can be misused to harm humans, and obviously has been misused to that effect on multiple occasions. But simply because a thing can be misused does not mean that it cannot be used beneficially, nor does it mean it must be removed. I can smother a person to death with Linus' blanket - that doesn't make the blanket intrinsically harmful, it makes it a tool that can be misused.

I wrote an article for the Rag. I should have stuck with it, but I got distracted. Girls.

Clemson is a swear word? Is it because that whole Jan. 1, 1982 Orange Bowl thing??? Cause until now, I haven't even brought that up... Now you're just rubbing salt in the wound. <------ this is supposed to be the ban him motey but I can't find it because I'm bad at computers.

My stance is that, by removing some of the ideas that cause humans to harm others, then the chances of harming others lessens considerably. Here's the problem as I see it, Knapplc. Your world is one where tribalism reigns supreme and people are powerless to resist temptations of irrational mob action. My world is one in which people can learn, they can be educated and forget their tribal instincts and live in peace for the most part. Through education, people can accept their neighbors and consider them as equals. Through education, people can throw off the yoke of religion and see their neighbors as human again. Through education, people can stop seeing their neighbors as "the others" and accept their differences. You want examples of humanity becoming kinder? Just look at different parts of the world. In some places, where ignorance is rampant, people are executed for being different in a variety of ways. But in more educated parts of the world, that doesn't happen nearly as often. Look at the United States. Although it is not exactly homogeneous, people aren't running around in the streets murdering people because they're different for the most part. You will never remove those ideas, that's the problem. They are as diverse as individual humans. Further, you're talking about a complete evolutionary shift away from a competitive species, a change so utterly fundamental that it would obviate all of evolution for the last 655 million years. Life survived by competing. It's the single biggest block on which life is founded. I agree that it would be great if we could remove the need to compete from humans, but being realistic I know it's not going to happen. My world is the observed world as it stands, unvarnished by utopian hopes, realistically assessed. Not only do I live in the US that you offer as an example of humans no longer harming humans, I work at a job where, every day, I hear about those harms in graphic detail. My own anecdotal experience shows that humans are not only not getting kinder to each other, they are finding ever more diverse ways to become less kind. Not only that, but religion is among the least common reasons for that unkindness. I love where you're coming from. I want to live in that society. But it's not realistic as long as humans are animals.

Humans are animals. We have cognitive abilities, but that only separates us from the animal kingdom by one factor. We have the same lower-brain functions as animals, we just layer reason on top of those functions. Unfortunately, the ability to reason has not shown the ability to overcome those basic animal behaviors in all humans. Until that evolutionary step occurs, if it ever does, humans will still harm humans every single day. The nail doesn't have to be hammered, but the nail will be hammered, because humans feel the need to hammer. Again, this is based on observed human behavior since the dawn of recorded history. Paleontologists have found numerous examples of humans who have died at the hands of other humans before any of the world's current major religions were ever founded. There is no evidence to suggest that humans ever have lived in any kind of utopian peace with each other, and being animals such a concept runs counter to observed behaviors. Animals, including humans, compete for food, shelter, prosperity, safety, comfort... you name it. The basic things that all animals want, humans want, just in human ways. We use a variety of reasons to do this, with religion being just one of tens of thousands. I am not telling you what I want to happen. I am simply telling you what is easily observed to happen, and which has happened since before humans were truly homo sapiens sapiens. I agree that if they don't find a reason to harm others then humans won't, but those reasons to harm are as multitudinous as grains of sand on the beach. You're stepping into a weapons store with 10,000,000 weapons and saying, "If we take away that gun, less people will be harmed." I'm saying that the difference between 10,000,000 excuses to harm people and 9,999,999 reasons to harm people are statistically zero.

Religion is a reason to harm. Are you equating religion with people? Religion is an idea, not a person. People believe in ideas, but the idea is what causes the harm, not the person alone. Religion is a man-made tool. It is invented by men just like any other tool, and like any other tool, it is used by men to accomplish their desires. These desires exist with or without the tool, because they are basic human traits. WHY do humans harm other humans? It's the ideas! You act as if a human being harms people by definition, but this is not the case. Ideas are what cause people to harm others. It is the case. There has never been a single society of humans in the history of everything that did not include humans harming humans. The ideas are simply the excuses. Remove Idea A, Idea B or Idea C, and they will use Idea D to justify their actions. If Idea D doesn't exist, they'll invent it. This is what humans do. We seem to disagree on what causes harm. You insist that somehow people are biologically programmed to inflict harm on other human beings and that no matter what happens the amount of harm will always stay the same, no matter how kind humanity eventually becomes. Yes, that is exactly what I insist, based on all of recorded history's example. What evidence do you have that humanity is becoming or will become kind? I've seen none, but I'm all ears to your examples.

Humans are humans. Humans the world over do the same things, regardless of culture, technology or security. They fight, they succumb to greed, they kill, they hurt each other. This is true in the most advanced and the most stagnant societies. The removal of religion isn't going to stop these things from happening, especially when the whole point of most every major and minor world religion is peace, love, etc. Humans take these religions whose spokespersons (Buddha, Mohammad, Jesus, etc) advocate loving thy fellow man and turn them into tools for violence and hatred, the exact opposite of what they're intended for. Remove religion and people will take Winnie the Pooh and use him in the same way. Why? Because they're human, and they're looking for reasons to act on the human impulses they already have. You're saying that if we remove hammers from the world then people will no longer pound nails. I'm saying in lieu of hammers we'll use the flat sides of wrenches. Regardless, those nails will still get pounded.

I'm all ears. I'm with you so far. You're removing humans from the world? OK... Err.... no, that's not my position. My position is that humans cause harm to humans. Removing humans would eliminate harm, sure, but it would pretty much end the argument. Agreed, it is preposterous, because you're misrepresenting my stance. Nobody is going to argue that if you remove humans than harms caused by humans will go away. But nobody is advocating removing humans. Except maybe Marvin the Martian, and frankly, my money's on Bugs. Nah. The above is what you get when you don't understand knapplc's reasoning. Hopefully this helps.

Is this still the rule of thumb or is this a quaint throwback to the days of real journalism? I don't see two credible sources on a LOT of articles these days, and depending on the article, the article host, the journalist and/or the topic, often there are zero sources cited. If we're talking about the quaint old days of journalism, the journalist should have the courtesy not to bother the parents while their child is on the operating table, but I don't think we're there anymore. I don't think we're talking about the good ol' days.

Yep, overall, this plain sucks.

Maybe we could narrow it down if you told us what football (soccer) team you support. That would tell us what kind of fan base you're interested in, and what character of team appeals to you.

Eric Martin will emerge as a starter before the season is half over.

Here's to hoping this happens. It should - we have good players and good coaches and a desire to improve - you just never know what a team's going to be like year to year.

The media sells information, and the fresher the information the better it sells.

The only jersey I have is Suh's. Of course, that's the only one big enough to fit me, but whatever.

Because he's been arrested several times. He has to be unusually stupid or plain incorrigible to see that he has a future in football, a free ride at school, a possible NFL career, and yet still be dumb enough to burgle a frat house. This is not the kind of kid who's just looking for another chance, this is a guy who's had chance after chance after chance after chance, and he's screwed them up every time. It's hard not to label a guy like that. He's had many other run-ins with the coaches at Oregon than just some arrests. He really, really burned his bridges there.

He really is pretty talented.

I'm no mathematician so I won't be embarrassed when someone points out what I'm missing, but how can these numbers add up? Category Pct. of 2009 Total Rushing Yards...............100% Passing Yards...............100% Receiving Yards.............86% Total Offense Yards.......100% If we only return 86% of our receiving yards, how can we return 100% of our total offensive yards? Just a weird thing I noticed. That said, I think we're poised to be better on offense, but to beat that dead horse, nothing improves until the line improves/gets healthy. If the line has the same sputtering play as last year none of the above numbers mean anything.

What does this guy's race have anything to do with his article? And why are you using extreme right-wing labels like "race baiting bomb thrower?" Who talks like that?

Sip writes much the same article that Shatel wrote - the fans are crazy for news, it's the information age, and for Bo to believe he can completely control access to his team is unrealistic so Bo should embrace the times in which we live and make the best of it.

How can we miss you if you won't go away?