Jake

I have a friend who works in a national park in the northwest and she was irate about the Budweiser dog commercial. Apparently wolves are on the brink of extinction because of the false belief that they prey on humans and their pets when they rarely do anything of the sort. She figures portrayals like that will only harm the effort to gain support and stop wolf hunting. Supposedly the near-elimination of wolves in many areas has led to huge deforestation because their main prey (deer) have their populations go relatively unchecked and they just eat all the plant life. QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Feb 2, 2015 -> 01:21 PM) The Budweiser dog one was good, but their commercial making fun of beer "snobs" (people tasting and smelling beer) and basically declaring that "We only want people who like to drink beer to drink our beer!" (or something) was a total turn off. It's OK if people like drinking craft style beers because that is good. People don't need to force piss-swill down their throat to be a TRUE BEER DRINKER. You can tell they're afraid of craft beer, which makes up about 10% of the overall beer market. I think it's smart marketing though. They want to stop the converts by saying that's not better beer, that's beer for fussy assholes. Of course, their policy is a bit confused because they're buying up every craft brewer who will agree. What is crazy, though, is how many craft brewers refuse lucrative buyouts because that's just not why they're in the game. This is an industry where Sam Adams (the biggest craft brewer by far) sold their reserves of hops to small brewers when a drought caused a national shortage of hops that could have put many out of business. My opinion is that the average craft beer drinker's taste is what will put a cap on the industry. Well over a quarter of all craft beer sold are IPAs, and it just isn't a universally appealing beer style. A huge portion of people trying a craft beer for the first time are likely to make it their last if they get a big IPA on that first try.

The shark on the left is killing me <script src="https://platform.vine.co/static/scripts/embed.js">

After a Friday forecast of 8 inches, we got less than an inch in Columbus. Stayed too warm.

My opinion is that Brady is actually a big dork and that's why I kinda like him

QUOTE (thxfrthmmrs @ Jan 31, 2015 -> 09:31 PM) I don't think you will see him playing more athletic than he does now, and we can agree that he's not the athlete he once was. 80-85% perhaps. And at 85%, is he good enough to help this team win? We got plenty of great athletes in the league nowadays, especially at his position. For a player who used to get by with athleticism, having his athleticism reduced to closer to the par of the league is the reason why he struggles to score at times. At the end of the day, he needs to learn to play smarter, not harder. If he still relies on his athleticism to get by, he will hurt this team as much as he help this team. He's always one of those players that you wonder how his game will transform as he ages and loses a step. That point has come for him earlier than he or we would like, now we will see how he cope with his game. I don't really see any deficit in athleticism. It's just a matter of putting it all together, being a basketball player.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jan 29, 2015 -> 03:29 PM) Eh, I don't buy it. 1) He's done taped segments before (e.g., Kenny Mayne). He wasn't to obligated to do that. 2) his media stunts draw more attention to him. If you really have a disorder you're doing everything in your power to lessen the attention. I don't know 100% if it's true, but it is definitely plausible. For a person with social phobia, standing in front of a ton of reporters with no advance notice of their questions and knowing they may even be broadcasting live is very different than doing a sit-down interview with somebody. Social phobia tends to manifest in situations where the person doesn't know how the social interaction is going to go. He has also stated previously that he worried about how the things he says to the media would make his teammates feel - he said something to the effect that it is hard to take questions from the media without coming off like you're taking the credit for success. In HS and college, he always had teammates step in and take postgame questions from the media on his behalf.

Ug. I don't feel comfortable committing a lot of years to this guy

We have all the tools to inform people, but those same tools can misinform. While some people used to be underinformed, now they have all the information and then some - and choose wrongly. I research communication and science/risk communication is one of the field's biggest growing areas.

Having the basketball IQ to understand what's going on out there while you're hurt is a lot different than doing the right things at game speed. I'm okay with how Rose is doing. There is undeniably a dropoff, but he's playable and we often see flashes of that raw talent that made him special. He still does some stuff getting to and finishing around the hoop that keeps me hopeful that we'll be seeing the awesome version of him at some point in the future.

Belisario has had all kinds of monkey business with immigration and getting to ST on time. Wouldn't shock me if there are more problems along those lines

I only use it when there's breaking news and there's no other choice

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Jan 30, 2015 -> 02:07 PM) I'm not saying I care, but this would slow the games down, and it doesn't seem like they're gonna do stuff that slows the game down for a while. This was my first thought as well. More players inevitably means more substitutions, which will degrade watchability further. They can look into tweaking the rules regarding call-ups and what have you if they think more flexibility is necessary.

I try not to make whether the players are motivated against bad teams a top criteria for evaluating a coach. There's only so much the guy can do and he might sacrifice whatever other positive influence he can have by going too hard after the small stuff

If there really is a big problem with Thibs and the FO and/or players (which I'm not fully convinced of), it's not an obvious decision how to resolve it. You can't just fire Thibs; he's one of the very best coaches in the league. You can't start canning people in the FO - they've put together a truly excellent roster and have demonstrated a really steady, patient hand that has kept the team consistently good with a lot of young talent. It will be even harder to try to divine which players might be too blame for the disconnect.

Someone has to figure out how Poppovich has maintained such success

The main thing with Rose tonight was that he let the refereeing get to him. He had several spurts where he looked great but he got hosed a few times and never regained his temper

I've gotta say it feels like the refs are trolling Derrick Rose

This team is GOAT!

Jimmy Butler is so damn good

Rose is at the scorer's table waiting to come in. We better feed Jimmy either way

Rose grabbing the knee

Pau is very, very bad on defense.

I thought most projection systems use arithmetic mean, which is typically best when searching for expected value.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Jan 29, 2015 -> 02:15 PM) That Peavy trade just keeps amazing. Avisail Garcia, Frank Montas, Cleuluis Rondon and JB Wendelken in exchange for 1.5 years of Peavy when the team was rebuilding anyway. Sure looks like a steal right now. The Tigers are the big loser in that trade, which is what sane people have said since it happened

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jan 28, 2015 -> 04:22 PM) Well I've pointed out the main reasons - private lenders versus the government, and re-payment options. The government also can't selectively choose who it loans money to. The only requirement, that i'm aware of, is whether the person is going to school. A person could be dirt poor with no prospect of paying it back and the government is still giving them money. Private lenders can appreciate that risk and build it into the loan and/or their business. Same with credit card companies. The government can't. Bear in mind that "being in college" is supposed to be a bar that is cleared that makes the person somewhat likely to pay back. This is part of the reason there has been some push towards stopping public loans to for-profit colleges and other particularly unsuccessful institutions. The government is also making money on these loans, so as it is they've built enough risk into the disbursement of them that they aren't being gamed on a large scale. Still, I don't think it should be a program based primarily on whether the government can break even on the loans. The outcome for society - more education, economic stimulus, etc. - should be the goal and the costs just have to be reasonable given those goals. This is opposed to we must have some arbitrary cost with little regard for the level of benefit derived from it.