Jake

Nothing is really more unprecedented about our current polarization than this. Our Congress acts extremely polarized, pretty much as polarized as any other time before, but not more than any other time. But the way we feel about the opposing parties? Yuck, and the feeling is mutual. Then there's this, which is interesting. Republicans will have elevated trust in the government when there is a Republican president while it drops noticeably when there is a D in there. Democrats, according to the researchers, who produced this graph, simply don't really identify the government with the President the way Republicans do. They are optimistic that the government can do right when there is an R president in a way that the inverse is not true.

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Feb 5, 2014 -> 08:54 PM) 'enhanced freedom' on the government dime. Yes. I see freedom maximization as one of the primary functions of the government

QUOTE (bmags @ Feb 6, 2014 -> 09:25 AM) They should. And in the East, having Luol Deng as your second best player doesn't mean you are a bad team. Contrary to Bulls fans opinions of every single player on their team, Luol is actually good! They have more than enough to win, and it's the coach that gets the axe. Look at the bobcats, less talent, imo, but same squandering lack of identity. They finally get a coach who demands they play the way he wants and suddenly they are a playoff team with Al Jefferson as their #1. I've never particularly disliked Mike Brown, but I would be for firing him now too. That team direly needs leadership. My sense is that the problem is actually Kyrie Irving, to a great extent, but I can't fire him just yet...so I'll hire a coach and hope things can get right.

QUOTE (Joxer_Daly @ Feb 6, 2014 -> 05:32 AM) Just had a look at the second video there. Interesting stuff alright. I think I'll have a look at The Righteous Mind, as recommended by your good self. It's pretty great and while he himself is an academic, it doesn't really read like an academic book. He starts by explaining the history of moral psychology, as learned by himself, in a way that is easy to get and is more of a narrative - he explains it as he learned it. Then he moves on to the interesting experiments he did. He then explains his own Moral Foundations Theory that came forth from that...followed by where he realized he was wrong/incomplete and the new things he did to make that right. Each chapter has a nice little wrap-up at the end, basically a sentence to a paragraph that recaps the bare bones things to remember. One of the most personally beneficial parts of reading the book for me, which is what he would have intended, is it helped me to understand why it is that people don't agree with me about political things. In another thread, Alpha Dog is not happy with the idea of people leaving the work force because they are being given something for nothing, in his eyes. If I am to think of him in some ways morally similar to conservatives, I can see that he invests a lot of moral importance in parts of morality that I don't. Haidt finds generally that of his six moral foundations (Care/harm, Fairness/cheating, Liberty/oppression, Loyalty/betrayal, Authority/subversion, Sanctity/degradation), conservatives tend to distribute their moral importance across all six of them. Left-liberals tend to be invested in only the first three, with a particular interest in Care/harm and Liberty/oppression. I'm guessing that Alpha Dog is much more sensitive to the notion of cheating the system than I am, which makes it less likely that he sees it as more a black-and-white Care/harm and Liberty/oppression problem as I do. On another topic, you can see the Sanctity/degradation, something he also just calls Purity, area as crucial to many divisive discussions. This speaks to being conservative, in many ways. Gay marriage is "disgusting" in that it is too different to be comfortable. Conservatives, generally having this strong sense of Sanctity/degradation, will always react negatively to strong cultural change, particularly when it is unprecedented change. Liberals are hardly worried about degradation of society. Of interest, libertarians generally register practically nothing on the Sanctity/degradation area, which constitutes a key difference between them and conservatives and explains why they sometimes agree with left-liberals. What is interesting to me is that his current job is at Columbia's business school, where he is trying to teach business ethics.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jan 25, 2014 -> 01:21 PM) Hell, the savings the White Sox got in their top few rounds last year allowed them the money it took to sign a guy like Trey Michalczewski later on, and they wound up having more than a couple guys who had 3rd round talent out of it. FWIW, Jacob May was the first player taken that many assumed was chosen for the purpose of his signability. He became a top 10 prospect in our system by the end of the season, per some lists.

Just remember, we're talking about the same guy who ridiculed us as a losing franchise for not signing Josh Hamilton last offseason. Marty's turning into the voice of the generic disgruntled fan, perpetually pissed about not spending money while simultaneously being pissed about every expenditure of money

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Feb 6, 2014 -> 08:43 AM) Probably got a really low quality one, or one with a flaw during its forging process...shouldn't break very easily at all. On the bright side, the jeweler replaced it free of charge. I'm still interested, I really like how they look and the idea that I can't accidentally break them

QUOTE (Harry Chappas @ Jan 29, 2014 -> 09:41 AM) The Crawford deal was more of a necessity while Bickell was a turd[ (or fourth) line winger that got hot at the right time. FTFY

It seems to me that Cleveland is a team where the inmates are running the asylum. I think they should be better than this

A good friend of mine got a tungsten ring, was boasting of its unbreakableness, then dropped it onto their tile floor as we all watched it shatter. I don't know if he got jipped or what

It takes somebody doing something very right to get a bunch of kids to live in s***holes like Tuscaloosa and Baton Rouge. Even crazier that black kids are flocking to those places. When I was working for the news, we reported on a (admittedly small) group of Ole Miss students burning Obama in effigy and chanting the n-word after the 2012 election was decided. How do you gloss over that s***? Maybe it's $$$

QUOTE (farmteam @ Feb 5, 2014 -> 10:36 PM) This is really interesting, what sort of studies have there been on this? This comes most generally from the field of moral psychology. That isn't my field of expertise, so I can't speak to the absolute agreement of that field, but one of its most esteemed researchers is a man whose work I am quite familiar with. His name is Jonathan Haidt and if you're interested in a book, The Righteous Mind is what you're looking for. There are many good YouTube videos out there, including a TED talk, where he lays things out pretty accessibly. Bear in mind that he has had some new developments since his TED talk though, even though the core is largely the same. He has begun to tease out libertarians as a tertiary group to study beyond the more vague "liberal vs. conservative" binary. Another fun place to go is YourMorals.org where you can take some of a whole bunch of surveys to see how you rank among your peers in this, that, and the other thing. By answering a few questions about your age, gender, and political beliefs (a couple of other things I can't remember too) you are also anonymously contributing to ongoing research. It is run by the same man, Haidt, and some other researchers. I think you can browse results without actually taking them too.

I think the MLB at its best had individuals with more appeal than basically anyone in today's game. Ken Griffey Jr. had notoriety that so far exceeds anyone playing right now that it isn't even worth bringing up a player to compare to. Big Frank was internationally known. McGwire/Sosa was a larger than life time for the sport. You had pitchers like Randy Johnson that everybody knew. How many people are out there that could tell you everything about Griffey, Frank Thomas, and the McGwire record but not have a clue who the hell Clayton Kershaw is? I think it is an astonishing amount. Puig is a guy who generated a lot of buzz but this time it never felt like it had a ton of merit. It was a lot more Linsanity-esque than anything else, like ESPN was bored and needed something to talk about while baseball was the only game in town. We need people that are really likable and give fans, average and otherwise, the sense that they are watching something really great. I think the steroid era to some extent is responsible for this. We like teams, but investing your emotions/fandom in a particular player feels like an easy way to get burned by a positive test later on.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Feb 5, 2014 -> 12:47 PM) The evolution/creation "culture war" seems to have peaked around 2005/Dover. I've watched a bit of the debate, but I can't say I really understand the point of it. I guess I could classify myself as an atheist, but people who make atheism a big part of their identity or essentially replace their previous religious fundamentalism with new atheist fundamentalism annoy the hell out of me. PZ Myers, Richard Dawkins and the whole atheist 'movement' is generally pretty awful. Yeah, I think that is why folks are trying to reach for other "names" like humanists, secularists, etc. because some atheists are such pricks. Of course, this is just how humans are. We have an evolutionary predilection for groupishness under certain circumstances, which is for instance why some of us become devout fans of a sports team. Similarly, some people will find that in religious or irreligious groups. Groups tend to be good at self-sustenance, but often suck at relating to people outside the group. Interestingly, people who are politically left-liberal tend to test low on the personality traits that predict that sort of groupishness. Instead, they more often think in global terms, feeling a less intense fellowship with everyone instead of intense fellowship with a narrower group of people. This is why some say the Democratic party seems ineffectual or dispassionate compared to the right as well as why there are a lot fewer crazy atheists than there are atheists.

Conor Gillaspie would be at the upper range of prices I'm willing to pay

FWIW, in terms of Nye v Ham, I don't think you have to be an atheist to disagree w/ Ken Ham

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Feb 5, 2014 -> 12:41 PM) My mother taught middle school for >25 years. In her early 60's when she was not eligible for Medicare, she had a knee replaced after several years of it causing a lot of problems. After the replacement, she could barely walk correctly for a couple years and frankly she should have retired. But she couldn't, because she couldn't get health care on the individual market, so she basically taught her class from a chair for the next couple years until she became eligible. Please call more people like this lazy asses to their faces. Please. I await this morphing into a "this is why teacher's unions are evil!" discussion

Look at all the f***s MJ gives about life

After seeing all the attention the Nye vs. Ham debate had, I wondered if there is a community here for this kind of catch-all. Normally this stuff has turned into useless arguments on Soxtalk, not entirely unlike the Nye vs Ham, but with its own thread we can talk about this, that, or the other thing without bothering our religious friends. It's possible we've had something like this before and it didn't work out, in which case feel free to delete! I'll start with a picture from last night (an artist's rendering):

QUOTE (Jake @ Feb 4, 2014 -> 12:54 PM) Apparently W8.1 can do this through command prompt and I apparently have hardware that supports it. I've been getting BSOD as soon as any device tries to connect to it, indicating a driver error. When I get time, I'll look into whether a tweak to that driver will remedy the issue Bleck, I got it to quit blue screening me but it still doesn't work. Think I might get this: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007PTCFF...=A2F6E975V906X0

Sounds like "as soon as I can get rid of Keppinger or get decent value for Conor, Davidson will be playing Chicago"

Yeah, I'm not particularly persuaded by the "nobody picked him up on waivers" argument. GMs do dumb stuff all the time. It is common practice in August to put people on waivers to see if the other GMs don't notice. People weren't on the ball. It's all good. He's a nice player so long as he is healthy. He's been better than Dylan Axelrod in every way and for good reason. He's more Barry Zito than Mark Buehrle. Is he going to be good? I'm not sure. Is he one of the best prospects ready to pitch on the MLB staff? Absolutely.

MJ was in the middle of a legitimate defensive play in which the only appropriate thing to do is 1. take a charge or 2. get the f*** out of the way. Jordan did both. LBJ flops in the middle of a f***ing fight for Christ's sake. It may or may not affect whether one or the other is GOAT, but it sure as hell makes me like LBJ less

I'm so inept at steering a riding lawnmower that I just used a push one in my old, complicated-shape yard