shepp

^ Speaking as a stumbling geriatic case in my 50s, may I remind you, Junior, that if it weren't for the stupid use of drugs, the Rolling Stones almost certainly wouldn't be where they are today? (Which, depressingly, turns out to be somewhere named "Petco Park.")

Since my last post in the thread... This afternoon I went to a local club, 12 Galaxies, to see kids from the S.F. School of Rock performing a few dozen David Bowie songs. Amazing. Unless you've seen a bunch of 8-to-12-year-olds doing "Suffragette City," "Fame," and "Jean Genie," you don't know what rock 'n roll's really all about.

Hmm... DD has an incredible queue, no doubt about it. The ride, though, is minimally themed - train design, castle wall, and that's about it. And some rides - ROTM, maybe BTMR - seem like themed rides with coaster elements added. I'm really fond of BBW's themeing. It adds immeasurably to what otherwise is just another suspended coaster - the ride through the village really adds to the kinetic experience. Alpengeist's snow trenches and skis-in-the-chalet-roof not only carry through the theme in a ride-enhancing way, they're even kinda witty. And I'm surprised that RnRC hasn't gotten more votes - the queue and the ride itself interact to tell a full story, sorta.

I work p/t at a local rock venue, so I end up seeing all kinds of stuff. Last three shows: the Yeah Yeah Yeahs (tonight, actually), Rob Zombie, and James Blunt. Go figure. Last coupla non-job-related shows: '80s Brit New Waver Wreckless Eric and Gypsy punks Gogol Bordello, both of which were great.

There's a general consensus that newer B&Ms are generally less intense. Is that the parks' doing, or the company's, and how does he feel about that?

Interesting you said the Hulk. I mean, I love that coaster, but doesn't it usually get slammed for its lack of forces?

Joining the masses - out of a couple of dozen: DD: Fire (the back row was almost too intense, and I kinda prefer Ice), B:TR, and Kumba (tho it was down, dammit, when I was at BGT last time, so that's based on fading memories...but the back row of Montu, brakes or no, is still nonstop fun). But then, for me, sheer intensity isn't the most important factor in "great," especially when it comes to B&M. While, sure, S:UF is, pretzel and all, pretty much a snooze, I'd take comfy ol' Nitro over B:TR every time.

^ Well, here's an example of what I mean. I like younger guys. Now, it's not something I willed or planned on. It Just Happened. Is that because I'm trying to regain my lost youth, or because few guys my age get excited about riding Tatsu? (Pretty much the same thing, come to think of it.) Or is there a hard-wired factor in play? Evolutionarily, it's wise for men of a certain age to seek out younger, more fertile females, and for those females to mate with genetically-proven, older alpha males. (I know that progeny isn't an issue in this case, but stick with me here.) On the other hand, many of the young guys I've been with have had Issues around their own biological fathers, and so may be seeking perceived strength, wisdom, and comfort from geezers like me. On the still other hand, I had a pretty weak, emotionally absent father myself, but I never sought out older men when I was young. My only male cousins, two brothers, turned out gay, too, so score one for genetics...unless you want to credit my grandmother with turning us all queer. And homosexual behavior in over 400 animal species suggest that neither a domineering mom nor Satan is to "blame." So I'm thinking that it all depends. One of the things that irritates me so about fundamentalists and the whole "reparative therapy" thing is that it's so damn simplistic and reductive. But then, that's true for fundamentalism of whatever sort - simple-minded answers absolve one of the heavy burden of thinking for oneself, eh? Oh, and coastercub, if you're ever in San Francisco...

^ More interesting still - since all sorts of things like chronic depression or certain medications can decrease sexual drive - is whether Jesus gave Spike an attraction to women that's equal to or greater than his previous attraction to men. One would assume that Someone who could revivify the dead could easily do that little thing. But - wherever he is - Spike hasn't seen fit to share. And as far as the nature vs. nurture debate - I think it's complex, in many or most case a combination of genetics and environment in varying degrees. There may even be some people who can in some sense "choose" their balance (as they themselves perceive it), the same as we may, with experimentation and experience, find certain previously unappealing sexual paractices to be, well, hot. But though the answer is irrelevant to human rights - after all, such protected categories as religion and political beliefs are hardly genetic - I, for one, find research on the subject quite fascinating...

Wow, I don't know where to begin. Yes, in early 2002 Saddam was still refusing to admit UN inspectors. But by November of that year, he allowed inspections without conditions. By January of '03, chief inspector Hans Blix stated "Iraq has on the whole cooperated rather well so far with UNMOVIC in this field. The most important point to make is that access has been provided to all sites we have wanted to inspect and with one exception it has been prompt....In the past two months during which we have built-up our presence in Iraq, we have conducted about 300 inspections to more than 230 different sites. Of these, more than 20 were sites that had not been inspected before." And in March, just before the U.S. invasion, he enumerated unanswered questions but then said, "How much time would it take to resolve the key remaining disarmament tasks? It would not take years, nor weeks, but months." Those months he would not have, of course. The U.S. warned the many inspectors in Iraq to leave because of our immanent invasion. But since Saddam had allowed inspectors in his country for months before the invasion, don't you think that your skipping merrily from 5/02 to 3/03 and implying that inspectors were never allowed back into Iraq is just a wee bit...disingenuous? After the war, Blix stated: "I don't buy the argument the war was legalized by the Iraqi violation of earlier resolutions." And if the UN-cooperation figleaf is so important, how come the U.S. refused to let a single UN inspector into postwar Iraq? As for the rest...I'm gobsmacked. The absence of WMDs does not, sure thing, demonstrate the obvious - that they don't exist. It just proves how wily Saddam was in burying them or shipping them to Syria or lending them to Valdemort or whatever. Of course, considering the magnitude of the task, one might have expected at least an inkling of an iota of the truth to leak out...at least squealing by one disgruntled warhead-burying soldier? No? No problem...it still must be true BECAUSE WE WANT IT TO BE. No proven ties with Al Qaeda, and the Prague story proven to be a steaming pile of lies? No problem...we know what Saddam is thinking, and so he must personally have cooperated with Al Qaeda. No evidence? No problem...IT COULD BE TRUE. OK, the Sept 11 Commission said that 1996 contacts between Saddam and Al Qaeda "do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship. Two senior bin Laden associates have adamantly denied that any ties existed between al Qaeda and Iraq. We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States." But they were all bamboozled, right? Saddam after all, hated the U.S, right? Despite our cooperation with him during the Iran/Iraq War? Despite meeting with the US Ambassador before invading Kuwait and assuming she gave the go-ahead? Sure, Saddam may have been a secularist, technocratic megalomaniac, while Al Qaeda is a bunch of anti-modernist religious fanatics (with proven ties to Bush-friendly Saudi Arabia, BTW), but when Halliburton's fortunes are at stake, the hell with the small distinctions. After all, the Taliban and Saddam had at least one thing in common...they were both supported by Republican administrations. After all...anything could be true. And Saddam was the sort of leader who'd invade a foreign country on trumped-up charges. So let's start a war.

No...actually, I was just getting tired in participating in what other posters accurately described as the endless around-and-around...but since you asked, I'll graciously respond. First, I'd be interested in the "conclusive evidence" that Saddam possessed WMDs, that he'd reconstituted a nuclear program, or that he was connected to 9/11. If any of that was posted here, I must have missed it. Please do point it out for me, ok? Second, lest I be accused of unsupported ranting, let me merely supply an example or four. WMDs? The International Atomic Energy Agency report of 3/7/03 stated, "After three months of intrusive inspections, we have, to date, found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapons program in Iraq." Nine days later, Cheney said on Meet the Press, "We believe (Saddam) has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons." Yellowcake? In early 2002, Joe Wilson told the CIA the allegtions were "bogus and unrealistic." A year later, after Bush repeated the BS in the notorious "16 words" in his State of the Union address, the IAEA - finally granted access to the supposedly incriminating documents - announced they were obvious forgeries. Cheney's response? The IAEA was "frankly, wrong." The centrifuge tubes? There was something of a valid internal debate pon that, but the State Department's internal intel agency and the Department of Energy believed that they were inappropriate for nuclear programs. "In INR's view, Iraq's efforts to acquire aluminum tubes is central to the argument that Baghdad is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program, but INR...accepts the judgment of technical experts at the Department of Energy that the tubes Iraq seeks to aquire are poorly suited for use in gas centrifuges and finds unpersuasive the arguments advanced by others to make the case that they are intended for that purpose." Several months later, though, Bush categorically stated, "Iraq has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes and other equipment needed for gas centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons." Al Qaeda? According to Bob Woodward's book, four days after 9/11, Colin Powell said that nobody could look at Iraq and say Iraq was responsible. "Keep the Iraqi options open if you get the linkages...but I doubt you'll get the linkages." In that famous aircraft carrier speech, though, Bush crowed, "We have removed an ally of Al Qaeda," though all the supposed evidence had proven utterly unreliable. Like the Atta-in-Prague story. Long before the war, the Czech President told the White House that Czech intelligence said there was no such evidence of such a meeting, but after trumpeting the story, the Bushies kept falling back on what turned out to be baloney. And there is still no reliable evidence of a Saddam/al Qaeda link. The one countervailing argument I agree with is that the craven Democrats in Congress, fed slanted pseudoevidence, almost universally caved in to Bush. But, as my father never tired of telling me, two wrongs don't make a right. OK, hindsight is 20/20, but we all know haow things turned out, don't we, it would appear that the Bushies' foresight was consistently, lamentably wrong. Sorry to go on at length, but since I was accused of flouncing out because I was "conclusively" proven wrong, I figured I'd back up my statements...

A moment of silence for Joe Strummer, please. I was glad I got to see him on the last Mescaleros tour.

^ I suppose you do, you sodding bugger...but do you have a fag afterwards?

^ Having survived 5 months of traveling through India, let me assure you that the charred remains of wrecked autos and overturned buses adorn the roadsides with frightening regularity.

^ I know we can go around on this, but in general - not just re: Iraq - the Bush administration is proving itself the most ideologically blinkered administration in memory. It's all faith-based to them, and whenever the facts are inconvenient, they're ignored. Evolution? The jury is still out, and the Earth might be 5000 years old. Global warming? Pay no attention to that drowning polar bear over there. Medical marijuana? The big scientific study of a few years back is meaningless 'cause the DEA says so. Katrina? Bush said no one expected the flooding...though years before it happened, even I read an article in the New Yorker predicting just such a flood. The morning after pill? Ignore the advice of the scientific panel recommending its approval. Abortion and breast cancer? Post incorrect scare stories on the government Website because Jesus don't like no abortions. Toxic chemcals? Let the chemical companies decide...it's the Miracle of the Market. And on it goes. It's well-known that under Bush, dissident views are ignored, and dissidents purged. On the other hand, the big mucky-mucks in the intel community, who supposedly bumbled this country into war, are still in place or have resigned with honor. After all, they did "a heckuva job." Listen, BEFORE Bush gave the yellowcake speech, there was evidence the whole thing was a hoax. BEFORE Colin Powell waved the aluminum tubes at the UN, experts warned there was no way they would work in uranium centrifuges. BEFORE Bush pointed to the two non-mobile-weapons-labs as the WMD we supposedly found, experts doubted they were any such thing. And BEFORE we went to war, UN weapons inspectors contradicted much of what Bush's chickenhawks were screaming about WMD. I know this has veered OT, and I'm quittin' this thread, but the reason I joined it in the first place is because the OP seemed to me to exemplify what was wrong with Bush's rush to war: emotionalism trumping sober judgment, and an inability to tell the difference between an Islamic fundamentalist movement and a rigorously secular dictator. Not to mention the fact that a 14-year-old Australian boy is as unlikely to see action in Iraq as Jenna Bush. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna go feed my pet dinosaur.

Yeah, well - based on the disinformation fed them by the Bush administration, the American Public wanted the US to destroy Saddam's (nonexistent) WMDs, destroy Saddam's (nonexistent) burgeoning nuclear weapons program, and sever his (nonexistent) ties to Al Qaeda. Mission - as they say - accomplished. Too bad there was no real mission to start with. If we're talking about Saddam's diddling with UN sanctions, let's not forget that there were UN weapons inspectors on the ground who said (quite correctly) that they couldn't find WMDs and that to the best of their knowledge the WMDs that had once been there had been destroyed, and asking for a bit more time to complete their work before Bush invaded a sovereign nation. Bush, of course, countered with the smoking gun/mushroom cloud scare tactics (despite evidence from experts countering the yellowcake and centrifuge tubes nonsense) and marched right in, as - it's well-established - was planned by the Bushies long before 9/11. But hey, since Bush is so responsive to the public will, and since a vast majority of the American Public now wants him to either radically change his policies or get the hell out of the White House...

I keep hearing that, and it puzzles me. When was SFMW not first and foremost a family park? There's a grand total of three top-tier thrill rides (all of which have been indifferently operated and spottily maintained, and the newest of which is 5 years old), one SBNO mistake, a Boomerang and an SLC, and that's about it. The rest of the blend is relentlessly family-friendly...whale show, aviary, tiger show, bird show, pet the dolphins, Looney Tunes Seaport, a family coaster near Medusa, lots of family-suitable flats throughout, and the last expansion was the stingray-and-dolphin area. What this does is make the park more toddler-friendly. When the Jungleland protoype opened at SFGAdv, it accompanied the opening of Kingda Ka. When Tava's Jungleland opens at SFMW, it will be accompanied by nothing more thrilling than a 50% hike in parking fees...

Yep, the Frisbee. The perfect alignment of rotation and G-shifts to make my gorge rise. Just the thought of it makes me queasy.

^ Well, there are only two dedicated kiddie areas, but the whole park - with the exception of the coasters near the gate - is pretty much a kid's area, really. There are family-friendly rides throughout, there's feed-the-giraffes, ride-the-elephants, and pet-the-rays, and all the shows are firmly pitched toward the 5th-grader mentality. I know I'm an old grouch, but...the SFMW crowd has always been more mixed, age-wise, than its range of attractions has been, and it shows. When I've gone with my grade-school friend, the kid's coaster near Medusa has always been a walk-on, even when the Medusa queue was endless. And, though I only go on weekdays, I've never noticed the Looney Tunes area being at all crowded, partly because there's so much else to for kids to do everywhere in the park. Head-corporate must have decided that the teenage-and-above market, not to mention those of us fogies who don't need a babysitter, just wasn't worth pursuing, so they're (metaphorically) expanding Fantasyland while letting Tomorrowland rot. And I'm looking at switching my SF pass to PGA next season...

The Sopranos - more now than ever. The subtitle of one book calls it "television's greatest series," and I'd have to agree. On Demand recently provided the opportunity to watch the entire saga from the beginning, and I was knocked out by its consistent excellence over 60-something shows. I love Deadwood and Real Time with Bill Maher (despite its unevenness), miss Six Feet Under and Carnivale, when it comes to pay cable, I like The Shield and nip/tuck, and on broadcast, 24 provides a guilty pleasure. And I do miss Buffy. But hey, there's television, and then there's HBO...

^ Yeah, well, with all due respect to the quagmire...invading a sovereign nation because they hate and fear us, and because they theoretically might do something to us someday is a damn slippery slope (not to mention in contravention of established international law). After all, we hate and fear the Iranian regime, and there's fairly well-documented evidence that we have plans in place to nuke Iran...and, unlike the case of Iraq, there's no doubt we possess WMDs...so wouldn't Iran be justified in declaring war on us???

^ Our Brit friends should keep in mind that the common American synonym for "hobo" is "bum."

^Yeah, it's just too bad that Iraq had nothing - nothing, nothing, nothing at all - to do with 9/11, huh?

OK, Wes, I promise not to respond to any of the unwarranted religious proselytization surrounding the above-quoted gem...but...since this thread IS about sexual orientation, and since that's such a lovely blanket statement, perhaps you (Crazy4Coasters) could, oh I don't know, present some reputable evidence (beyond wishful thinking) to back that up? I mean, do you think you could volitionally change YOUR orientation? Assuming you're straight (I don't have the patience to research that out) just when did you decide to be a het? Or is only homosexuality volitional and heterosexuality some mythic State of Nature? If so, perhaps you could explain just what it is about homosexuality that's so attractive that, in every age and every society (and, in the non-human world, a sizable number of animal species), a notable minority choose to go queer? Is it our fashion sense? Our talents in the musical theater? And just where do bisexuals fit in your worldview? Come to think of it, just what are your bona fides in the study of human sexuality?