Mitchell & Ness Kids..

what else would we be doing at 10:30 on a Sunday night?





We sellin' hatZ, son!

WHOA!

Central Bearded Dragon

The Central Bearded Dragon or Inland Bearded Dragon (Pogona vitticeps) is a type of agamid lizard. Of the several species of the Pogona genus, P. vitticeps is the most commonly seen breed in pet stores throughout the world.
Adult central bearded dragons usually grow to be about two feet in length, with the tail accounting for over half of the total body length. Females are typically smaller than the males. Bearded dragons come in a wide variety of colors, including brown, gray, reddish-brown, green, and even orange. They are capable of undergoing very slight changes in the shade of their color to help regulate temperature. The specialized scales along both sides of the throat, neck, and head form many narrow spines which run down the side of the body to the tail. When feeling threatened a bearded dragon will flatten its body against the ground, puff out its spiny throat, and open its jaws to make itself appear larger. The bearded dragon is so named because of the spiny throat projections appear similar to a human beard. Males typically have a darker "beard" than females, and during mating season and courtship the "beard" will typically darken to near-black. The bearded dragon, like most agamid lizards, has strong legs which enable it to lift its body completely off the ground while it moves. This is done to reduce the heat taken in from the ground, as well as to increase the air-flow over the belly to cool itself further.

The central bearded dragon is native to the semi-arid to and arid woodlands and rocky desert regions of Central Australia. They are skilled climbers, and often spend just as much time perching on tree limbs, fenceposts, and in bushes than they do on the ground. They spend much of the morning and evening sunning themselves on top of an exposed branch or rock. They are diurnal, but like most desert animals they spend the hottest parts of the day hiding in underground burrows or any other cool hiding spot removed from direct sunlight.


Ya.. So pretty much.. This was on the back of the chair at "the apartment" today..

I think I may need a pace maker.

Conscience

The 1988 Webster's dictionary defines conscience in the modern sense as
the faculty power, or inward principle which decides as to the character of one's own actions, purposes, and affections, warning against and condemning that which is wrong, and approving and prompting to that which is right;
the moral faculty passing judgment on one's self;
the moral sense.

Conscience as society-forming instincts
The human animal has a set of instincts and drives which enable us to form societies: groups of humans without these drives, or in whom they are insufficiently strong, cannot form cohesive societies and do not reproduce their kind as successfully as those that do. They either cannot survive in nature, or are defeated in conflict with other, more cohesive groups.
Behavior destructive to a person's society (either to its structures, or to the persons it comprises) is bad or "evil". Evil or wrong acts provoke either fear or disgust/contempt. Thus, a madman who threatens us with a chainsaw and one whose sexual practices we ourselves find revolting might both be labeled "bad". Indeed, one does not necessarily need to do anything to be "bad" - a natural coward may provoke contempt, and thereby be a bad person (ie: a coward), even without actually having any occasion to flee from the enemy. And the identification of badness can be quite subtle and involve reasoning. For instance: a sheriff that shoots a gunman is not thereby bad because he is not a threat to an average member of society (as the gunman is), and hence does not provoke fear. Yet gangs of criminals can perceive law enforcement officers as bad people.
Conscience is what we call those drives that prompt us to avoid provoking fear or contempt in others. We experience the operation of conscience as guilt and shame. We feel guilt when we perceive that others might rightly fear us, and shame when we perceive that others might rightly find us disgusting or contemptible. To avoid these negative and unpleasant feelings, we modify our behavior: thus "conscience" prompts us to behave "rightly".

A requirement of conscience, then, is the capacity to see ourselves from the point of view of another person. Persons unable to do this (those suffering from psychopath, sociopathy, narcissism) therefore often act in ways which are "evil".
Another requirement is that we see ourselves and some "other" as being in a social relationship. Persons trying to resolve conflict between groups try (and sometimes succeed) to create a feeling that a social relationship exists, that the groups in conflict all belong to some larger encompassing group. Thus, nationalism is invoked to quell tribal conflict, and the notion of a brotherhood of man is invoked to quell national conflicts. There are even appeals to relationships between ourselves and the animals in society (pets, working animals, even animals grown for food), or between ourselves and nature as a whole. The goal is that once people perceive a social relationship, their conscience will begin to operate with respect to that former "other", and they will change their actions.

Ya know....