Jake

Even in the absence of injury, I've always felt there's less to be gained by playing youth football than any other sport. If you start out in high school, you'll be fine if you're a good enough athlete. If you're a QB, I might suggest starting a year before high school on technique. There's always flag football too for those things. QUOTE (ptatc @ Dec 20, 2013 -> 04:54 PM) Not necessarily. Repeated micro trauma to muscles make the muscles stronger. We don't know that micro trauma to the brain causes problems. I agree that it is important not to jump to conclusions, but the theorized link between micro trauma to the brain is much more credible than micro trauma to the muscles.

Privileges of the well-insured

QUOTE (Springfield SoxFan @ Dec 20, 2013 -> 07:32 AM) This is a great signing because of the short term commitment. If for some reason the Sox are not in playoff contention next year and Downs is pitching well (and does not have a lingering injury), he will bring more assets in a trade with a contending team. THIS WAS YOUR ONE CHANCE!!!!

QUOTE (GreenSox @ Dec 19, 2013 -> 10:49 PM) North, considering that organizations have 100+ prospects (or at least players) in the minors, how do these organizations (like BA) or persons (Keith Law) really evaluate the strength of an organization. Do they look at the top 10, top 20 or do they purport to look at the entire system? And then I think about players like Semien, Webb and Erik Johnson...these guys are valuable to the Sox, near ML ready, yet aren't top 100 prospects by any ranking system. Do the higher ranked organizations have 5 or 10 Semiens? I'd say they're mostly thinking about your top 20 versus everyone else's. They'll also have an impression of each of your recent drafts, though, which will certainly overlap with some of your top 20 but they may also like guys from your recent drafts that haven't yet made a name enough to crack the top XX list. Erik Johnson is a top 100 prospect -- someone even mentioned that he probably gets too little love due to BNS (Boring Name Syndrome). Better organizations would have several guys in a given year that look just like Semien. Guys who didn't have any great tools, but really broke out and took a pretty good performance to really really good levels. Some of those guys don't pan out. For us, we need our guy like that to pan out.

My plan was extended at a huge increase in rate, but I then went to the exchange where a 10 dollar increase on my old monthly premium gets me a much better plan, including half the cost on my monthly prescriptions and zero dollars for generics. Lower deductible too.

There...have....been rumors about Deng -- Deng/Waiters rumor has been rather persistent

Heard in every Bulls game lately - "it seems like they should be losing by 20, but it's just a 1-2 possession game"

Peavy was much more of a groundball pitcher pre-White Sox. His sinker really quit sinking post-surgery.

QUOTE (Rowand44 @ Dec 19, 2013 -> 11:24 AM) Agreed. Her I enjoy very much. QUOTE (Athomeboy_2000 @ Dec 19, 2013 -> 11:28 AM) I... um... excuse me.... I need a moment to myself. *grabs the lube* Wow....she KNOWS she's bad. Seal of approval from me. If J4L approves, I think this means the world is unanimous

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Dec 19, 2013 -> 02:36 PM) I guess while I was driving this was answered. However I still think they have one more pen guy for the mix and most likely still looking to deal a player or two. I still cant believe we havent gotten a vet bat for the IF. People are really, really down on this guy, but I'd love to have Brandon Phillips play 2B for us. Oh my defense would that be good up the middle.

I hope my kid likes baseball. I gave a shoulder and a bunch of teeth to baseball. If my kid isn't a pitcher, he probably won't tear up his shoulder or take a line drive to the mouth and can have even more fun with it. Basketball would be great too. Really popular with girls too. I like to run and I'll encourage my kids to do that too. Would have to do some research as to how much running is appropriate for a pre-pubescent child as I have personally witnessed a lot of girls in particular not even start their periods until late high school/early college because they were such intense runners. They can look into other stuff too, but I have a feeling my and my partner's likes and dislikes will unintentionally influence child's likes and dislikes. In my dream scenario my kid is basically conceived at US Cellular Field so baseball should be very important

Yeah, I'm rooting for them. I hope they win every night. I'd look to trade Deng, but until then I hope he leads us to victory. I don't root against my teams. My expectations are low though, so I don't mind if we lose. We're banged up and starting our fifth string point guard. My biggest fear at this point is that we're running Thibs out of town. He is quite literally the best thing about this franchise right now. We have some nice young talent, a lottery ticket named Derrick, but nothing more valuable than Thibs.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Dec 19, 2013 -> 04:59 PM) You know what, f*** it, I've had holocaust references thrown at me so often, here's one back at people. "I didn't see any Jews getting murdered where I was". This is actually essentially a cultural meme in Germany. They had some serious issues coming to terms with what they all allowed to happen and pretended they didn't know about. There's a movie called The Nasty Girl that details the true story of the borderline murderous persecution a young girl faced when trying to learn about the Holocaust-era history of her hometown.

When Phil Robertson thinks of sin, the first thing that comes to his mind is gay people. That's not being religious, that's wanting an outlet to vent your hate. Homosexual behavior is so far outside of the main aims (and there are sound arguments to be made that it is completely outside the purview of Christian theology) of Christianity that this quote is utterly ridiculous. He doesn't want everyone "to love each other and love God," he wants everyone to think alike.

QUOTE (chw42 @ Dec 18, 2013 -> 06:48 PM) Jeffery is an uncommon last name? The fact that professional broadcasters are screwing up his name is unacceptable. It's not like his last name is Saltalamacchia. Thought it was Saltalamacchias

LeBron didn't need the Heat to win with the way he's playing. The other guys on the Heat aren't very good. It's still the case that Lebron-led Bulls would beat Lebron-led Heat

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Dec 18, 2013 -> 09:28 AM) That's not really true. Prime still has probably 10% of what Netflix has (even though Netflix isn't the greatest either). You really have to get both depending on what you want to watch. I wouldn't get just Prime if they're never going to take advantage of the 2 day shipping. Not enough content to justify the cost unless you have a few specific shows you want to catch up on (Downton Abbey, Justified, etc.) Ended up buying my wife a laptop last night at Sams. About $830 for an ASUS N550JA-SB71T. 15.6" full HD touch screen, Intel Core i7-4700MQ, 8GB Memory, 1TB Hard Drive, backlight keyboard, and some other standard stuff (cd/dvd drive, webcam, SD card reader, 3 USB 3.0 ports, an HDMI port, etc). Pretty good price I think. I was going to get her the Acer S7-392, supposedly one of the best ultrabooks available, but couldn't really justify an extra 3 hours of battery time and maybe a pound or two for 4-500 bucks. Especially since she will probably only use it at home to surf the web and do some work on the weekends. I've been really playing up the "we don't need a laptop" card the last week or two, so she's going to be really surprised. 15" laptops have become the best deals. If the only portability you're going for is from room to room in your house, I think you made a great buy. Going smaller, thinner, lighter, longer battery life only begins to matter as your portability needs go up.

I wouldn't let my son play football. Definitely not until until high school, if ever. A lot of the damage racks up while they're children, because their heads outgrow their necks and youth leagues are horrible at preventing unnecessary contact in non-game settings. By high school, I'm being my son will have other hobbies or sports to be interested in. If not, I'll evaluate the program and see what kind of shop they run. I know my team did a lot more hitting in practice than anywhere else, which led to all kinds of chronic injuries. The savvier programs will only have one day of "full" contact each week nowadays. Of course, on the track we're on public schools probably won't have sports anymore by the time I have kids.

They've been learning that for many of these cases, it isn't the concussions. It is the accumulation of sub-concussive blows. I went to a seminar put on by the leading CTE researchers from Boston and they're saying the picture is rather bleak. However, most (roughly three quarters) of these damaging, sub-concussive blows are occurring in practice. That, we can reduce drastically. They said youth football leagues are typically the worst offenders due to lack of training and care.

I enjoy Waddle and Silvy

Something about the White Sox, guys underperforming, and personal issues....

I don't mind the pet being featured prominently. I love pets. They mean a lot to loving families

I'm not going to crown Lillard until he gets his FG% safely above 40% -- it's .394 for now

There's nothing left for Davidson to prove in AAA and he already played 30 games in MLB and looked rather competent. As for Dunn, you keep him unless you come across a trade that costs you in little money and/or brings in real talent. He serves an important role on this team, which is being a useful hitter that hits left-handed and can keep those three righties from being slayed by RHP late in the game. While we're not going to blow our wad trying to win in 2014, you don't actively make the team worse for no particular reason.

Robin had nothing to do with the late collapse in 2012. Starting pitchers had little to do with it. The entire offense shut down in the final two weeks.