Jake

Injury was weird. Not like Melton's where it was an innocent movement and it didn't look like an injury. It was a completely benign movement and the thing just went wiggly. Very weird.

Hope you enjoy your time away from the city. It isn't for everyone, and it is always going to be tough to love your home if you haven't tried somewhere else. I've done the opposite, gone from the rural to city. Love it, though there are certainly things about home I miss. Now it's about the city being in the right place geographically...I miss winter so much

QUOTE (greg775 @ Sep 22, 2013 -> 10:31 PM) I'm not going by advanced stats, just the eye test, and want to say that I don't understand why many of you are so high on Santiago. I think Q is a much much much better starting pitching prospect. I'm sick of us trotting stiffs out there in the lefthanded relief role and why not just make Santiago an EFFECTIVE lefty reliever the rest of his career? The Royals switched on Hochevar and he helped that team a lot. Why don't we do that with Santiago. I believe Q has earned the starting slot but Hector could be a bullpen guy for years to come. If we are ever going to start contending again, we'll need some lefty relievers that can, uh, get people out. Hector does not profile to be a good lefty reliever. First of all, he has a significantly higher walk rate as a reliever than as a starter. He has remarked that he simply struggles getting loose on short notice. Secondly, Hector's weakness is getting lefties out. As a reliever, we would be bringing him in against lefties. He has struggled to make his curveball into a usable pitch and this is what would make him a left-handed reliever. Beyond that, he's been successful as a starter. He's not super consistent and has some things to work on, but he is very talented and is just not a guy you give up on. He has top of the rotation potential. We see him get by with a fastball alone at at times; imagine if he starts to really utilize his offspeed arsenal as he gets more experience and a full season as a starter? And Luke Hochevar was a dreadful starter. He threw almost 700 innings in which his best season was a 4.68 ERA. He just wasn't very good and proved it over a very long time period. If we give Hector four seasons as a starter and he struggles to keep his ERA below 5, I'll be all for shoving him in the bullpen.

QUOTE (Quinarvy @ Sep 22, 2013 -> 10:47 PM) I have hopes that the defense will improve. It's the offense I was unsure of and they're doing fine. Well, offense went dormant for a while - that didn't make things easier for the D either

The run for first down where Cutler f***ed up the DB is the marquee play of the game IMO.

Cutler is becoming an absolute winner

You don't trade Q or Santiago to make room for Rienzo. You trade to get an equally proficient offensive player because you know you have a competent pitcher to replace Q/Santiago, but don't have a competent hitter at virtually any position.

May have seen the last of Melton as a Bear

Looking like absolute s***. Good coaching by Pitt as well

Was choosing between Carolina DEF and NYG DEF. Picked Carolina. Yeeeuss

s***, Pittsburgh is practically in Ohio!

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Sep 22, 2013 -> 10:46 AM) When society as a whole is paying for it, there is still a finite supply. If it takes 25% of the available supply to keep him healthy, and that same 25% can keep 100 other people health, who gets the care? Do you tell the 100 people that they can't get what they need because his care is so extreme and expensive that he has used it all up? Because it will happen. There is only so much money, time and facilities to go around, and those may be shrinking as less people decide to become doctors. For one, more people are deciding to become doctors by every measure. More apply, more enroll, more matriculate. Your market-based approach doesn't make sense because there isn't a finite supply of healthcare in the American context. We have the resources to care for everyone for as much as they need. This is evidenced by the fact that we spend more per person on healthcare than anywhere else in the world. Letting the free markets run wild has, of course, led to a horrifying inefficiency in our expenditures...but we could start to take care of that too. If you're really worried about doctors...we could also start to prioritize our education spending and make the process of becoming a doctor (or college educated in general) much less expensive. I was shocked when I applied to a Canadian college and was offered a $12k/year scholarship; I thought this was a complete non-starter, I'd never be able to afford it. Woops! That actually covers all costs for an international student at a top-rated university! And yes, that even includes housing. The best part is that if I decide to go there (why oh why did I decide to study American politics? It appears Canadians don't give a s*** about my specialty) I also get in on that free healthcare. Why should Canada do better than us on this stuff? They're not even the only ones...we're pretty much the worst in the Western world. Ideology is holding us back from everyone having a better, healthier, happier life.

This is why so many countries with the means don't like to leave healthcare to the markets. The markets don't have morals, for better and for worse. A greater overall economic good can be achieved by stringing kids like this along, allowing them to die if he strains things too much. Only public policy interventions can prevent the injustice that is leaving healthcare (which should be seen as an inalienable right) to market conditions. Of course, even in the most benign of circumstances, the cornerstone of market philosophy is that our desire for a thing is measured by how much we're willing to pay for it. So, in market theory, this young man doesn't want life enough as evidenced by his not paying for it.

LOL, I'm confused Do you really think the only appeal of living in Chicago is evading death and/or working at McDonald's? There's one very simple advantage to living in a city staring you in the face: why do you think we are all gathered here on Soxtalk.com?

The Tigers are about to be in some deep s*** salary-wise. If they somehow got Cano, that would be a tacit admission that Scherzer, VMart, AJax, and possibly even Miguel are on the way out once they need to get paid.

It wouldn't blow my mind if we brought Jesse back on a 1-year deal to help him get his stock up. That would probably be only because he really liked it here, though. He'd probably rather do that on a contending team otherwise.

If I'm just some guy selling my gun, I'm not responsible to find the background of the person buying it from me.

In Duke's defense, we just talked about what you're accusing him of not too long ago re:police. He said that police are an example of the necessary functions of government. When I'm arguing with people, I like to establish where we are on common ground. Duke and I agree that there should be government. The devil is in the details.

QUOTE (DukeNukeEm @ Sep 19, 2013 -> 06:10 PM) It sounds like you have a bit of a problem with cars? Don't like the civilized world where we have nice things like cars that allow to make those kinda of trip? Rather live ina country where that isn't even an option? Great! Africa will take you I'm sure. You'll live a nice progressive lifestyle until you're burned alive for being a witch. Not really - I think access to cars is really important, which is why I hesitate to endorse too many hurdles to full licensing. Cars are one of the 20th century's greatest innovations in terms of the way it democratized travel and access. If I can just get a car...my possibilities for employment, residence, and knowledge are much expanded. My response to your post is meant to say that while the many ways to get to many places is mind boggling and in most cases will require travel by car, those myriad possibilities are not what make us drive more miles than our international peers. It is because, even when population density is equal, we choose travel by car instead of public transport for everyday, largely short-distance, activities. Where I'm living now, Memphis, is a great example. There are 1 million people here. There is public transport available, though I'd imagine the average city of 1 million people in Europe has more accessible and functional options. Nobody uses that public transport, though. It isn't the cost, not really the convenience, it is just force of habit and culture. In this town, there is a racial aspect to why people don't use public transport. The people on the buses are black. The people in the cars are white. If we could increase the use of public transport, we'd increase the safety on the roads and reduce the environmental impact. Likewise, we'd probably improve race relations while the increased use of public transport would spur more development of the public transit system.

QUOTE (DukeNukeEm @ Sep 19, 2013 -> 05:37 PM) A big place that is almost entirely populated has near infinite possibilities for travel. How many cities with 100,000 or more people are there within a day drive from Chicago? Rockford, Gary (NW Indiana), Aurora, Naperville, Milwaukee, Madison, Springfield, Peoria, Bloomington-Normal, Champaign-Urbana, Joliet, Indianapolis, Fort Wayne, South Bend, Grand Rapids, Quad Cities. And from those places individually how many 100,000 pop cities are there within a days drive? Let's pick Indianapolis (and we wont even repeat cities from the first list): Evansville, Louisville, Lexington, Frankfort, Cincinnati, Dayton, Columbus, Springfield OH, Toledo. So let's say you've gotta make a two stop trip from Chicago, there are 144 possible routes ONLY COUNTING MAJOR CITIES. And that is one sub region, of one region, of one half of the USA. Yea, I doubt trains or bicycles can cover those kinds of travel needs. Of course, people driving everywhere they can think of to and from Chicago don't make up the majority of miles driven. It's just people going to work.

I think it's a horrible trade for the Colts

I added a swipe to my phone in light of this thread. Did facial recognition for a bit, it worked really well, but I don't feel like looking myself in the eye every time I unlock my phone

My impression of the gripes by these app developers is that they cannot "develop" their way through the problems because there are insurmountable (to anyone but Apple) problems with the OS.

The whole problem is acting like the state of Illinois is the entity to do this. State governments are f***ing stupid in the 21st century and work much worse than federal governments. They consistently f*** up every responsibility that they have, while nobody knows why they have those responsibilities (education standards, healthcare) instead of other entities (local governments? federal government?). Their means of collecting the money to fix these things are meager and without fail are regressive and harmful to the lower earners of the states. We have a high amount of agreement in the USA that progressive taxation is a good and fair thing while the norm in state governance is a flat tax. There's no way I want state governments running new mental health services when they can't do anything already. No state governments are working well. We need to reduce the responsibilities given to them, not increase them.

I'm interested in your support of police, Duke, since many people I know to have largely similar political beliefs to you generally are highly ANTI-police and see them as being used as part of a general police state. They seem to both dislike the institution and the people in it (I know their beliefs so well because I have several friends who are constantly posting examples of cop-induced violence on my Facebook news feed). On a totally unrelated note, you should be aware that "the true intent" as basis for legal or political thought regarding the Constitution is a hotly debated subject. There are endless discussions about this; whether it should be considered, if it should supercede "the text" or only apply when the text is unclear, etc. The founders were addressing a completely different set of problems (ie, the need for a huge expansion of federal power at the time) and could not have foreseen many of the different things that would affect us politically and otherwise. It's always funny how scholars/judges/laymen will agree on the previous point but not on how that should inform our interpretation of the Constitution.