1) Do birds pee?

2) This is still the funniest political cartoon I have ever seen:



3) Does anyone else think Steve Blake shudders every time he sees the video of those White Sox fans that came out of the stands to attack that first base coach?

4) I used to like Bill Simmons. Now he is nothing more than a glorified Patriots beat writer for ESPN.com. He wrote <a href="http://espn.go.com/page2/s/simmons/020924.html" target="_blank">this</a> article for yesterday about the Red Sox season and still couldn't avoid referencing the Pats at least twice. I wonder if Brian Billick has nicknamed this guy kneepads yet.

5) I got suckered into seeing "Ballistic" at the movies this weekend. If this movie were an ACC team last year it would be UNC. It was so bad I have considered moving "Battlefield Earth" out of my slot for worst movie of all time. If any of you have a desire to see this movie I suggest you do the following: put 7 dollars on the ground and light it on fire.

6) Does anyone else hope for a stiff breeze whenever they see Melissa Stark on the sidelines?

and this one for the crew who still checks out ACCBoards

7) Words THINMAN prays daily that he never hears:

"Daddy, my new boyfriend's name is Shelden."

And today's musing on hypocritical political bidness:

Martha Stewart is being investigated by the SEC for making a few calls to an executive before dumping a couple hundred thousand dollars worth of company stock. Secretary of the Army(and former Enron Exec) Thomas White made more than 70 calls to executives before dumping millions in Enron stock. Why isn't the SEC all up in his jock?

<small>[ September 25, 2002, 09:37 AM: Message edited by: Liquid Karma ]</small>

Dear Straight Dope:

After coming out of a store and finding our car splattered with bird doo-doo, my wife and I engaged in a heated and absurd debate. I bet her a nickel that birds urinate and she swears this is not so. So who gets a nickel? --Alex

SDSTAFF Colibri replies:

At the Straight Dope we like to broaden our readers' horizons, Alex. Today we're going to introduce you to the concept of Too Much Information.

Anyway, you win the nickel. Birds urinate, it's just that their urine is semisolid rather than liquid.

Birds excrete their nitrogenous wastes, derived mostly from the breakdown of proteins, in the form of uric acid rather than urea as mammals do. Unlike urea, uric acid is almost insoluble in water, and is excreted in the form of crystals that form a semisolid white paste. Not needing to store liquid wastes, birds lack a bladder. Instead urine passes from the ureters into the cloaca, a common chamber for the passage of digestive and urinary wastes, as well as for reproductive products. A bird dropping usually contains both white uric acid crystals, and a concentrated mass of digestive wastes such as insect cuticle or seeds.

Most aquatic vertebrates excrete nitrogenous wastes in the form of ammonia, which is highly toxic but very soluble and easily gotten rid of if water is in ample supply. Uric acid excretion may have first developed in the first vertebrates to evolve shelled, fully terrestrial eggs. Such eggs must retain the waste products produced by embryonic metabolism within the shell until hatching. Toxic, soluble ammonia would soon poison a developing embryo, while non-toxic, insoluble uric acid can simply be stored inside the shell as long as necessary. In developing live birth, mammals may have switched to back to a more soluble compound, urea, so that embryonic waste products could be diffused into the blood stream of the mother and thus excreted.

--SDSTAFF Colibri
Straight Dope Science Advisory Board

I love that cartoon. I think every politician in this country should have it on their office wall. So damn afraid of pissing off somone if they speak their mind!! <img border="0" title="" alt="[Roll Eyes]" src="rolleyes.gif" />

3) Does anyone else think Steve Blake shudders every time he sees the video of those White Sox fans that came out of the stands to attack that first base coach?

Do we need a separated by birth entry here?? <img border="0" alt="[laugh]" title="" src="graemlins/laughing.gif" />

4) I used to like Bill Simmons. Now he is nothing more than a glorified Patriots beat writer for ESPN.com. He wrote this article for yesterday about the Red Sox season and still couldn't avoid referencing the Pats at least twice. I wonder if Brian Billick has nicknamed this guy kneepads yet.

Never read him. Guess I am not missing much

5) I got suckered into seeing "Ballistic" at the movies this weekend. If this movie were an ACC team last year it would be UNC. It was so bad I have considered moving "Battlefield Earth" out of my slot for worst movie of all time. If any of you have a desire to see this movie I suggest you do the following: put 7 dollars on the ground and light it on fire.

6) Does anyone else hope for a stiff breeze whenever they see Melissa Stark on the sidelines?

"In addition to updating key developments during the game, Stark's duties also include interviewing players, which makes me wonder... Do you think players ever hit on her while being interviewed? It would seem an appropriate time to pull out the always popular,

My point was not that they are all dirty, it was that they are not treated equally with respect to their dirtiness.

Wait until the next dem administration..amazing how quickly those sorts of things can resurface.