Jake

I've seen it hinted that Lynch might have some sort of social anxiety disorder, which is why he dislikes talking to the media. Taking the questions seriously would make him very nervous, etc. I recall Marion Barber was very shy as well, though he came off better than Marshawn

Beckham's role on this team is totally redundant with Bonifacio unless the plan is to have one or the other start in the infield. C Flowers 1B Abreu 2B Sanchez 3B Gillaspie SS Alexei LF Melky CF Eaton RF Avisail DH LaRoche BN Backup catcher BN Bonifacio BN Backup OF BN Beckham SP Sale SP Q SP Samardzija SP Danks SP Noesi RP RP RP RP RP RP RP 7 relievers, doesn't matter who. That's 12 pitchers and then you dedicate your bench to two guys who are iffy bats but play the IF. Beckham has a worse bat, possibly worse glove, and is not remotely useful as a baserunner outside of just getting your slowest guy off the field. To me, he only makes sense if you want no rookie 2B on the roster. Then, you need a guy like Viciedo to give you some kind of bat off the bench.

It's worth noting that state support of public universities is dropping dramatically, which is a very big contributor to the rise in costs. It's not the only one, since these universities are also under intense pressure to add more and more services. Most of the day-to-day operations of a big university have little to do with education and more to do with taking care of people. That stuff costs money.

QUOTE (illinilaw08 @ Jan 28, 2015 -> 11:21 AM) You income out of the tax deduction on student loan interest pretty quickly. I haven't been able to take it in years - and I definitely consider myself squarely within the middle class. If I were changing student loan policy, I'd do the following: 1) Increase the amount of direct loans you can take in a school year. When I was in law school, the combination of subsidized and unsubsidized direct loans I could take in a given year barely covered tuition plus rent for the year - and I had a scholarship. The goal should be to continue to provide low-interest loans to students - in my experience, the private loans have higher lending costs (taking away one of the above referenced incentives from Jenks); 2) Make it easier to discharge student loans in bankruptcy after a time. Something like no discharge unless (1) you've been out of school for greater than some number of years (so students can't graduate and immediately head into bk); (2) you've made consistent payments over those years (with exceptions for hardship cases); (3) your current income falls below a certain threshold; and (4) you have made reasonable efforts during those years to find a job in your field. Almost any other debt you can make go away when circumstances change and you can't afford it anymore. Lost your job? Surrender your house in foreclosure, get rid of the giant deficiency in bankruptcy. Credit card interest killing you? Get rid of it in bankruptcy. Business gone belly up, get rid of those personal guarantees in bankruptcy. The fact that student loan debt - which is basically a necessity - is given such preferential treatment - is mind boggling. As a result, I'd be strongly in favor of a system that provided an out from under student loan debt for people who were struggling under it. Further, I don't think there would be significant abuse of the system. For me, I'd love to get rid of my student loan debt. But I wouldn't intentionally tank my career to get rid of it. To Reddy, on the income based repayment, how frequently do you have to update your income information with the feds? We could also do what governments are supposed to do - not try to profit from public programs like student loans. Do what Warren's bill proposed - lend at the same rate the Federal Reserve does to banks (0.75%) - and you have a great economic stimulus that better aligns with the purposes of the program. Last year the CBO reported that we made about 14% profit on student loans. This is a thing where it would be better to lose money than to make money. It's not a tax, it's a benefit!

QUOTE (Reddy @ Jan 27, 2015 -> 07:32 PM) I see no reason why anyone should pay a different percentage of their income than anyone else. Doesn't make sense to me. As has been mentioned, you can't look at it quite that way. Mark Cuban could lose 10% of his current take-home income and not even notice. If I lost 10% of my income, I'd have to make big changes to my lifestyle to accommodate it. There is also the vague notion that people who make more money tend to be more reliant on public goods and other people. If I'm going to, say, let Google Fiber do all kinds of digging in my town, then I think they owe society more for that use than does the person who pays Google for the Internet. Wal-Mart's business falls to shambles if we have inadequate transportation infrastructure - both in that they need to move goods from place to place AND that they need customers who can reach them. When someone uses food stamps to buy food at Wal-Mart, W-M has lucked out tremendously that the state has ensured this person can be their customer. It doesn't always work out in such black and white ways, but you get the idea. A person's wealth is not much stronger than the society it rests on, so they both need and should want to pay it back for their good fortune. Then the quibbles come down to what is enough payback, what should this payback be spent on, etc. which is just your liberal vs. conservative take on things. Side note about poor people losing chunks of their income: Over a quarter of American households have limited or no access to banking services. These people use check cashing services, prepaid debit cards, and occasionally payday lenders to access their money. Of these households, they spend more on financial service fees (like the portion of your check that a check cashing service takes from) than they do on food. These are by and large fees just to access their own money. This is why there have been murmurs of the government using USPS offices as minimal profit banks; it is estimated that a scheme that would aid the financial stability of the USPS would still save this underserved population 90% of their current financial fees costs. http://www.newrepublic.com/article/116374/...f-and-help-poor

In fairness to Derrick's effort today, I thought he made things really tough on Curry defensively. Offensively, he was clearly winding Curry too, which probably harmed Curry's offense. That Curry still had an okay offensive game is just a testament to how good he is

QUOTE (daa84 @ Jan 28, 2015 -> 01:08 AM) good god I'm forced to watch this crap on nba tv with the horrible GSW announcers. Brutal The color guy reminds me of Wimpy so much that I find him endearing

f*** you Golden State! Bulls forever!!!

This is probably the best bad game I've ever seen Derrick play

Woah, woah. The refs said Derrick was fouled. Must have been a mistake

Derrick's shot has been trending towards that result all night

One of our bigs knocked that in Yep, it was Joakim

Interesting lineup out there for defense here.

Am I wrong or did Derrick travel and/or double-dribble before dishing to Kirk there?

BEAM ME UP!!

Derrick has been shooting the three a lot better lately, but it has all the appearances of a fluke. His feet are never under him, he drifts way forward, and shoots it flat - in large part because he tends to release on his way down.

When Pau's passing game is on, man is it on

What a rotten foul call against Nikola

Derrick is starting to run Curry out of the gym. Felt like Kerr had to call that TO just to get him some wind.

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Jan 26, 2015 -> 04:22 PM) Lowering the mound might impact player safety (specifically the pitcher). I don't think the league would want to do that in this legal environment. All of a sudden, more pitchers get hit, sustain serious injuries, and lawsuits follow. Is that a player safety issue that has anything to do with lowering the mound, independent of more offense? I mean, I see how you could have some legal grievance there, but I have to think the likelihood of pitcher injury goes from miniscule to miniscule.

Yeah I was thinking that if it comes down to this ball boy, you better show him more money than Brady does

I've seen several articles mention that this would be a less disruptive change than something like lowering the mound. I totally disagree with that. Especially from a fan's standpoint, you wouldn't have to know anything had changed if the mound was lowered. There would just be a little bit more offense. QUOTE (ptatc @ Jan 26, 2015 -> 03:16 PM) That's not bad. Another one that I heard someone bring up is to have a vehicle bring in the reliever. This will speed up the slow walk from the outfield bullpens. I know it's not much but it's in this same line. The is a time saving element with every pitching switch. I would say, though, that for a lot of guys the run to the mound is a meaningful part of the warmup process.

From what I can tell, the lowest home attendance we had last year was 10,625 in the second game of the year. Can we say that that is a decent approximation of the season ticket base in 2014? If so, what's a realistic expectation for this year?

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Jan 26, 2015 -> 10:54 AM) As part of his treatment, he was told not to drink. He drank. Thus, it is illegal. If people are arrested for DUI, they can be asked to take twice-daily sobriety tests. I know a guy that had to do it for like 2-3 months, and then he was asked to stay sober beyond that too (and if found intoxicated, it could land him in hot water, though they wouldn't necessarily track him daily). When a close relative of mine had a DUI (and I volunteered to drive him to work every day so he could keep his job), he had all kinds of different sobriety-related things. For one, he had to take a course that met 3 days a week and he had to breathalyze at all of those. He also had to go check in two other times per week, on average, within 12 hours of an automated call telling him he has to do so. He was also advised that police could come to his residence and administer a random check with no suspicion. Any trace of alcohol on any of those tests and he may have had to do hard time. First-time offender, DUI did not cause a car accident. Oh, and for two years after that he had to have a breathalyzer-enabled ignition. It would also require him to blow every 10-15 minutes while driving or else it would shut off the car. If anyone blew above 0.00, it would automatically page the police. He had to pay something like $50/mo. for that in addition to $150 startup fee.

QUOTE (nitetrain8601 @ Jan 25, 2015 -> 05:08 PM) The bigger problem is, Brooks is the only guy bringing energy. No one else is. Hell, even cheering on the bench is non existent. It certainly would be nice if somebody let Thibs know that benching Pau now and then is allowed