I'm reading through these posts, and there's a common thread among both the atheists and the believere: you both use your belief or lack thereof to divide people into two groups, and, of course, yours is better.

For example, let's take Taliesan, who says: "And while the MIT graduate atheist may seem to have things easy" I'm not sure if this person is jealous about not going to MIT (some of us are that lucky) but to presume that someone else's life is harder or easier than another is nothing but pure hubris.

And then there's this juicy gem: "a lack of faith is a firing offence". This person makes the other mistake of conflating faith and organized religion. The fact is that people can and do believe anything that they want to, it's how they wear their religion on their sleeve that other people care about. It's easy enough to pretend you're pious, if it's what you need to do to get about. Ask any pedophile priest.

The question is a trap. There is no answer. You'll just bicker and fight and draw distinctions and call each other names all day, and in the end you'll be right back where you started. And some of the more horrible people in the world like it that way, because you are spending your time on useless drivel instead of dealing with the questions that really matter to the survival of the human species.

It doesn't matter if there is a God or not.

If there were a God, do you really think he would be impressed by prayer or any other forms of worship? He would be able to go right into your head and know what you think.

We have a word, 'religion', and it means two different things: one is what YOU believe in YOUR head, and the other is an organization of people who collectively believe something. The two are tangled together, so people think they can't have one without the other.

The whole faith thing is the first step towards being indoctrinated into this culture. If you believe that there's a God, and that He had/has representatives here on this planet who are closer to him than you are, then you've made the first step down that road of denial. You've accepted the concepts of class and status, and are ready to perceive everything in terms of these concepts. You've proven yourself as having a pliable mind, and you're ready to accept the other principles of our sick culture.

As we run out of food, water, and energy, mankind will still be arguing over whose God is the better one, or if there is one at all, and after we are all gone, it will be as true as it ever was, that: it doesn't matter.

What military force are they going to use to accomplish this goal?

The current US military force has been squeezed out like an old lemon. There's no juice left. The troops are running on fumes, nobody wants to sign up, nobody wants to reenlist, the equipment is all chewed up by the desert sand, we're even running out of bullets.

They can't even take care of business with what was supposed to be a slam dunk, and they expect to go after others? And they expect us to go along?

This web site is hard hitting, insightful, and detail-oriented. Relevant issues are explored, lies are exposed, people who are part of the story are interviewed and quoted. Every subject but sports.

I can't speak for everyone, but it's my impression that there are a lot of local fans who read this page. When it's playoff time, fans become a lot more interested in the other teams besides theirs, they want to find out what the upcoming series is going to be like, whether it looks like there's going to be a pitcher's duel or a slugfest. I am not talking about box scores or play-by-play, I am talking about trends and circumstances.

For example, on the radar gun story, it would have been slightly interesting to hear what other radar guns were reporting. How about an expert opinion who can tell us if the TBS radar gun is set up incorrectly or is getting radio interference or what.

The story about how Okajima looks at the ground while he's pitching is interesting; why not ask his manager and pitching coach about it? They have some rather interesting and odd viewpoints on it, they've been marvelling at it all year. If you're looking for another pitcher who worked like this, try Luis Tiant.

The beatpath thing is actually sort of interesting, you can analyze further and determine a statistical weight for each of the arrows, typically represented by making the line darker or wider. You need to do this if you want to anything with the graph besides look at it. I played with this sort of stuff a lot when I was a kid and I discovered computer programming. If you want to try to predict future outcomes, you'll need to also look at scores if you want to get reasonable results. My football predictor program used to work really well, but only toward the end of the season. Individual performances and matchups are also very interesting for prediction, but working it into your analysis is really tedious. Baseball is interesting because there is just a sea of statistical data to work with; there's an fascinating book about left-handedness (can't remember the title) that draws many conclusions from looking at baseball statistics.

Okay, you do have some interesting stuff here, but I still think you should dig into your stories a little more. The whole web site should be Pulitzer-worthy!

I just have to dash to the Apple Store and buy the latest gadget, without reading the contract, doing any homework, or engaging in any type of thought at all. And when the thing I buy isn't what I thought it is, well, I'll just sue.