Jake

I don't know why anyone would think to compare Robin Ventura and Dusty Baker, short of the fact that they both have managed Chicago baseball teams

Not sure if anyone will know him, but tomorrow I will be eating lunch with conservative philosopher Roger Scruton. I'm pretty excited.

I think it is fair to cheer for opposing kicker when he's on your fantasy team

Nobody -- QB, OL, RB -- knew he was coming

Forte....

Call me crazy, but I'm starting Phillip Rivers over Cam Newton

I think we need to toss out the binary of failure or success. She clearly is not an example of a success of the mental health system or a full-on success of the criminal justice system (we didn't REALLY want to kill her if we didn't have to). That doesn't mean that it was a failure by either of those institutions. We should be able to look for improvement without assuming there is something bad about the thing we are hoping to improve.

QUOTE (Tex @ Oct 6, 2013 -> 07:14 AM) BTW, those students assisting professors on patent-able research projects, and the professors, also have made billions for universities. me! me! we do that because we get a degree at the end.

I'm an Illini fan so I guess I mostly make sense. I used to be a big Duke fan for bball, and I still like them, and my reasoning was that I liked an elite academic school being so good in athletics. Now I just don't really care that much, it's not like the team is filled with Rhodes scholars

QUOTE (HickoryHuskers @ Oct 5, 2013 -> 12:25 PM) OK, Notre Dame haters, I'm going to serve one up on a platter for you: One discussion board I belong to is a professional board for ND alums. I've been getting hammered on there for blaming the Republican House for the shutdown. I pointed out that my family was without 100% of our income and one of the irreversible effects is having to 'furlough' our babysitter during the shutdown. One response: "You're lying. If you need a babysitter then your wife is working and you aren't losing 100% of your income. If your wife isn't working then you don't need a babysitter." I'm guessing Soxtalk can outsmart the ND alum and figure out at least one circumstance where my wife is neither gainfully employed nor available to take care of the kids. You talked it about it earlier -

I still think we're seriously undervaluing what it means to go to college for free. I'm happy to make some tweaks, increase some benefits, but I don't think they should be getting compensated like professionals. They are getting a tremendous benefit already. I think we should make sure they can make the most of the value of being in college, but I'm not particularly fond of turning college students into a college's highest paid employees. I think it harms the student community. People often don't like the special privileges given to athletes, but knowing that the athletes are doing something that ends up benefiting the school in general usually evens things out. Turning college students into free market assets is not what college is about, IMO.

People from within the system during Kenny's time as GM have talked about the problems - they not only had to identify the best players, they had to find the best ones they could afford. Mix that in with the normal high probability that guys don't work out, and stuff probably won't work out. Kenny has never been highly involved in scouting as GM, though, especially in terms of amateur talent.

Policemen are highly and continuously trained and still occasionally make mistakes (though I have no reason to believe this is one). This is, in part, why I hate the idea that we should be able to carry guns around. Nothing happens in a vacuum and a person using their gun "properly" may still put themself in harm's way because it is pretty damn hard to tell that you're shooting that guy because he tried to harm you or if you are the bad guy who is shooting people. Given that reasonable people may misinterpret the situation, imagine people that aren't reasonable in these circumstances that defy lengthy, logical reasoning

QUOTE (mr_genius @ Oct 4, 2013 -> 01:12 PM) ...whoa You can find pictures of procedures like this on the internet, but I'm told that they "saved" it. What they do is attach it to a stable blood source (like your arm) until the groin area is ready for reattachment. I have since decided that medicine is not really my thing

QUOTE (chw42 @ Oct 4, 2013 -> 10:49 AM) Except in the case of the guy who's trading you Julio Jones, his WRs besides Julio and James Jones are bad. It's not like he's loaded at WR and only needed a good TE to succeed. I don't know what he's doing, but it appears he's just making wild trade offers to people. If I were you, I'd be happy I got Giovanni Bernard for Alshon Jeffrey. You laugh, but it is now inevitable that Bernard will tear an ACL while Alshon racks up 100 catches

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Oct 4, 2013 -> 12:23 PM) If only. You can head to the ER if you have a sliver. Or a cold. Or a runny nose. I see you've never been to a f***ing ER to have even said this ridiculous nonsense. I have been and of course our system also makes people feel compelled to go to the emergency room for minor problems. Unfortunately, the horrible emergency room that you are thinking of also drives these people to ignore these things because it is so time-consuming and inconvenient to bother. I have volunteered at "The MED" in Memphis which is downtown and is pretty much the place people who don't have insurance go to. Let's just say I saw a guy walk in there with his dismembered penis in his hand. Some people might think sitting through that s*** is worth it to get some cough medicine, but many decide that it isn't worth it

What happened to the murmurs of a potential (not quite grand) bargain that would restore some sequestration cuts, implement chained CPI, and raise the debt limit?

I certainly believe in "clutch" - we know physiologically that you can use adrenaline to drastically increase strength, improve vision, think quickly. With that said, I think "clutch" is incredibly hard to measure. Baseball requires large sample sizes because some guys get very lucky, some get unlucky. Beyond that, there are other variables than clutchness that can affect a player's clutch statistics. Maybe the way people pitch in the playoffs, or the way relievers pitch, or what happens with a man on first base vs not, etc etc can explain good or bad performance in the clutch. Imagine Conor Gillaspie - he could have a super-awesome clutch ability, but that might make his OPS against LHP only go from .350 to .600 in clutch situations

Lack of access to healthcare is a lifetime problem. Just because people w/o insurance can head to the emergency room when they are near death to prevent that death, this does not change the fact that they are systematically prevented from good health. Go speak to some homeless people and see how many of them have developed physical disabilities. I have to wonder how many people become homeless because they were unable to treat conditions that prevented them from working.

Of course, we're talking about the 58 o-rank player for the 25 o-rank player one being in a much thinner position than the other. Not nearly as obviously bad. Seems like the point of having great players is that you can afford to overpay for players you need

QUOTE (chw42 @ Oct 3, 2013 -> 09:36 PM) It's an unfair trade... If Gonzalez didn't have that monster game last week, it'd be an awful trade. Easy for you to say! I honestly don't know what normal protocol is for vetoing trades as I've never seen it happen outside of the obvious circumstance pointed out earlier

My Jones for Gonzalez trade was vetoed by the league. I've never seen that happen before except in a league where a guy was quitting and trading his guys for nothing to his friends

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Oct 3, 2013 -> 04:38 PM) Recently in New York, police shot and killed an unarmed person and wounded two bystanders. Something similar happened either early this year or last year. This is why we need more armed citizens

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Oct 2, 2013 -> 07:14 PM) I was thinking vastly improved funding of state schools. At a bare minimum, restoring the huge cuts. Not giving money to Harvard. Of course, you could also give money to people. As far as all that goes though, it was much, much cheaper for me to go to Harvard than UIUC. My parents made almost double the median income of the USA and that was the case. I didn't end up going to Harvard since an undergrad education there is a borderline scam, but the LAC that I ended up attending was always much cheaper. I also love how I had earned a Robert C. Byrd Honors Scholarship from the federal government...then Robert C. Byrd died and it was mere months before that was defunded. Thanks, I'm glad we can build some more tanks now

In closed door meeting, Cruz reveals he has no plan for ending shutdown nor knows how to implement a potential defunding of ACA...remains unwilling to back down