Jake

He played so badly, but focusing on strikeouts is misguided. Just focus on all of the hits he didn't get and walks he didn't take

Trade Rose, start Jimmer

I think a lot of politicians have altruistic aspects to them, especially as you move up the foodchain. They realize that there is a game you have to play to make a difference and figure it's better that they play it than the bad guys. They do some bulls*** with hopes of being viewed fondly by history and taking care of pet issues that mean a lot to them. The problem is your "ugh, I can't believe I just did that" threshold bumps up slowly, over decades. First, it's hiring your buddy's son/daughter/mistress/whatever. Before long, you're trumping up evidence for war

QUOTE (ptatc @ Mar 19, 2014 -> 06:05 PM) Its done on the chemical effects on the body not in a comparison of how much is smoked. I posted only studies that looked at the chemicals and their effects. I don't know about how it compares to alcohol. The effects on the cardiovascular system are different. My comment was only in relation to using money from it to bring in tax more tax dollars. Over the long term I don't think it will be much of a net gain. The decriminalization side of it rather than the tax side of it may be what benefits the state both financially and otherwise.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Mar 19, 2014 -> 04:27 PM) Its interesting to look at the law historically to try and find when exactly people gave up the right to ingest whatever they want. I doubt what I do is healthy, but who exactly is the US govt to tell me not to? People can eat bad food, they can drink things that kill them, so why do we arbitrarily draw the line. Crazy to say it, but there are likely more deaths attributed to drinking too much water in a single day than smoking too much weed in a single day. A great deal of legal and political philosophy is based on the idea that people know what is best for themselves and act somewhat rationally pursuing whatever it is that is best for them. This is why children, the extremely mentally ill, and the senile do not get this benefit of the doubt. It is also why we don't like applying those terms too liberally. The reason we ban certain things is because they put us in a state where we no longer can act for our own good. You don't just try meth - you have it once and, usually, you never get the chance to return to Earth and start wondering about the pros and cons of what you've done. This has consequences for more than just you, too. When you aren't in a mental state to decide whether what you're doing endangers me or whether you mugging me for drug money could make you go to jail, everything starts falling apart. When we craft our laws, we try to balance a concern for letting you do what you want with these concerns for your likelihood to harm others as well as the kind of self-harms that come from your activity. This is why I'm cool with legalizing marijuana, beyond the technocratic concerns like revenue, cutting prison costs, releasing a racial underclass from prison, etc. There are a million points of return with weed. Every time you smoke it could probably be the last time. When you are high on 'potenuse, you aren't much of a hazard to yourself or society. While health effects aren't great, they accumulate slowly enough that they need not be outright banned to protect you and those around you. Other public policy efforts like labeling, age restriction, etc. can act as nudges to make people tread lightly with the health concerns. There are no big "you have pretty good odds of killing yourself in the midst of use" concerns here. It's even less than alcohol, which I'd argue falls below the "it must be banned!" guideline in terms of the immediate health effects of use. The Phillip Seymour Hoffmans of the world just never have a reefer by their side when they are found. Another way to think about it: people that use meth aren't choosing to remove themselves from society, they choose to use meth once or twice before losing their ability to really make many choices at all. You might be able to think of some potheads that are unproductive citizens, but chances are they chose being unproductive citizen first and marijuana second. This is why there are lots of successful, normal people that like to blaze up sometimes (or all the time).

There are some quite interesting studies where weed smokers are less fat than non-weed smokers, even when controlling for caloric intake, etc

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Mar 19, 2014 -> 11:22 AM) The problem I see with smart watches is battery life. The last thing I need is ANOTHER device I have to charge all the time, and the more capable of the smart watches tend to have 1-2 days battery life, which is beyond abysmal for such a limited device. The Pebble is about 5 days, but it's so limited and it's screen is so suckfest that I have no interest, especially at it's over hyped price point. Until a smartwatch has 1+ week battery life, I don't think they're very viable for much. Can't even go on a camping trip and trust it to live. Which is why I stick with my jewelery watch. Unlimited battery life. The fact that my Garmin Forerunner can go 3 weeks gives me some hope. Granted, it isn't doing a whole lot when it is in standby, but maybe - the watch I have has got to be almost 10 years old by now, after all.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Mar 19, 2014 -> 11:13 AM) Has there ever been a local or statewide politician that has run on the platform of having everyone have a say on each issue by way of online vote? That would be crazy. As our resident public opinion researcher, I don't think this would work for a few different reasons. For one, nobody would do it. People don't vote for freaking President. It would also cost a good deal of money to set up an online infrastructure that would be relatively immune to being hacked/taken advantage of. Even once you've set up a system with decent integrity and access, I'm not sure what good it ultimately does. If you rely on people to give input, you'll get an awful skew of public opinion. People will go crazy about this or that issue. Most legislative issues are "AW HELL NAW" versus "yeah, we should do that thing" or vice versa. You only get the all-caps people. Then, even if you do get "turn out" for you online polls...how do you poll? Do you ask them if they are in favor of [Law X regarding the budget] or cutting pensions? Sometimes you'll love everything about a given law, but not a small thing so you vote against it in hopes that the small thing gets removed. Sometimes you don't, too, obviously. These things are hard to message. Those assholes stick the indefinite detention amendment onto the NDAA every year at the last minute and leave nobody any choice but to a. fund military and allow this provision to exist or b. risk f***ing the military out of resources or otherwise dicking up the entire agreement into a stalemate that winds up risking the integrity of the budget. Lots of them do internal polling, research, and obviously try to canvas/solicit feedback from constituents. I think the more you try to make it scientific with the "you vote!" model, the more grave your errors will be in this case. The beauty of it will be that you may very well have a candidate who votes with the real public opinion of the district every time but still gets ousted because the summary of legislative judgements doesn't amount to their holistic opinion. Might just have everybody be pissed off. QUOTE (ptatc @ Mar 19, 2014 -> 11:55 AM) There are many studies which show the adverse effects of marijuana. They are much worse the tobacco for cardiovascular risks. You can pretty much guarantee a heart attack if you smoke it regularly. I posted some articles in another thread. One of the paradoxical effects is the TCH and the anti-inflammatory capabilities. It is prescribed for some inflammatory conditions such as glaucoma for this reason. The other side is that any other injury will take much longer to heal or won't heal due to the inflammatory process not occurring. So in the short term and long term it will have an impact on your health, which in turn may have an effect on the long term health care of the state. Is this true of eaten THC as well? Asking out of ignorance.

Pat Sims got himself a +14.7 overall rating last year, which would make him our best acquisition to date from that metric. From Week 8 onward, he was about +20. 1 missed tackle all season in what they judge were 30 obvious run stop attempts. +4 of his overall was in pass rush, meaning he was somewhat productive in that regard and would have looked very good on this team. In previous years, he was not so good or consistent. Rookie - terrible, Soph - terrible. Then he was okay, several great games and several not good games for an overall neutral rating. Then bad. Then good in very little playing time. Then this season where he was great. As for Ratliff, bear in mind that Dallas always ran a 1-gap 3-4, meaning Ratliff's position was basically a 3-technique tackle. This is as opposed to a guy like Vince Wilfork, who had to chew up two gaps and therefore had to be fat and strong as hell.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Mar 19, 2014 -> 09:54 AM) He is the reason the ignore feature exists on message boards, to filter the irrational crazies. The fact its been thrown around to "cut' or send down a MLB player makes me think these are kids who dont know much about the roster rules in baseball. I think he is totally behind the idea of swallowing his salary to get him off the team ("cutting" him)

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Mar 19, 2014 -> 09:38 AM) FWIW the speed cameras have generated significantly less revenue than originally projected. I'm guessing the camera system vendor gave them a nice, fat number that justified the cost of the fancy new camera system. I like how if it "works" by reducing the breaking of the law, then we can no longer afford to have it/nobody wants to have it because it wasn't the purpose of its implementation. The commercialization of public life for you

I've always been a fan of Dan Rutherford, but I know him personally. Doesn't look like he has a chance after the "scandal." That alone makes me not want to vote for Rauner

Jesus, the Rockets getting Melo would be insane. Just the sheer amount of jostling they've done to get Harden and Howard is astounding.

Take, for instance, Jay Ratliff

It affects different people differently. For some people, it ends up not really doing much of anything for them. Others will get a huge boost, some a small boost, some get a boost via fewer injuries/faster recovery. Many of them won't know for sure how much it helped or if it did at all. We'll never know, either.

Yeah, the last polls I saw had all R gubernatorial candidates but one beating Quinn. Huge contingents of undecideds though

If anyone is interested in contributing to my blog - http://www.gettingthingstech.com/ - let me know. It's basically just for fun, so I'm not necessarily looking for a "staff writer" or anything that involves a great deal of commitment. I am especially interested in someone that can contribute content related to Apple products, but anyone with some enthusiasm would be welcome. Feel free to question me about it here or via PM.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Mar 18, 2014 -> 12:17 PM) The thing is, our phones are in our hands already. Now I have to keep it in my pocket and put a nerd watch on my wrist? No thanks. With phones getting progressively larger, this could solve one of the key problems - who wants to be picking up and fiddling with a 6" phone all the time? Now you don't have to. You can check notifications, scores, weather, maps, etc. on your wrist. I think it might catch on. If Pebble had been just a little more capable, I'd have one right now.

I wouldn't have paid him $4M. We had options with similar levels of talent and uncertainty for much less than that. Good luck in Dallas, buddy

That had to have been 450 feet

The main thing I look for from established MLB pitchers in ST is whether they've had a velocity drop. Velo drop is often indicative of a couple months of missed starts before a surgery. Not always, though. Q is good healthwise it seems, so I'm not too worried.

You're looking at a problem with Melo where the most optimistic timing for you to have a great roster is right when you would expect Melo to fall off. How many years of good Melo and good cast will you get? This is without even taking into consideration how difficult it will be to acquire new players through means other than draft with Melo pushing $30M annually by the end

He's been easier on the umpires for a couple of seasons now. It just explodes in 1-2 games a year, as opposed to coming up repeatedly like before. When he has an epic rant, that's fun, so I don't mind. Going on about umps on a day-by-day basis is more tiresome and he doesn't do that anymore

QUOTE (pettie4sox @ Mar 18, 2014 -> 09:19 AM) I'm curious but what the hell do Republicans expect Obama to do with Ukraine? Bomb someone? Escalate violence? I see all these Republicans felating Putin as a real leader but Obama as a limp wristed turd. I really don't get what the Republicans want Obama to do here. They would like him to fail in such a way that it leaves a political environment that resembles the post-Bush one

QUOTE (BigHurt3515 @ Mar 16, 2014 -> 09:35 PM) You were in my neck of the woods.. Where were you at? Drove the entire Missouri portion of 55 en route to Tennessee