Balta1701

Well, i guess the good news is we don't have to worry about facing Nathan in a save situation to start the 9th. They may still put him in just to kill us.

Jesus Christ, what the Hell happened to Neal? My God, this is almost as bad as the dropoff we saw in Koch. Does neal have a skin disease?

QUOTE(Tony82087 @ Aug 20, 2006 -> 01:42 PM) I still think it was the right call. Eh, could have gone either way, but I think I'd rather have the more powerful guy in there in Uribe, just in case he connected. Especially since Ozzie's PH made the Twins take the pitcher who was struggling out of the game.

Man, thank God we pinch hit for Uribe...

QUOTE(CWSOX45 @ Aug 20, 2006 -> 01:39 PM) We threatened against him last time we faced the Twinks at the cell....at least I thought we did... He's still never blown a save against us. We've scored 4 runs off of him in his career, 3 of them this season.

Their is what, 1 closer in the AL of any quality that we have not yet beaten this year? Street, Rivera, Papelboner, Ray, Jones, etc.? He'll get used today.

Aw hell, now Ozzie starts bringing in the pinch hitters. Come on Alexi.

Ole!

QUOTE(fathom @ Aug 20, 2006 -> 01:36 PM) Haven't they won at a pace over .667 over their last 65 games? Something like that probably...but you're still covering up their recent weakness by lumping it in with their hottest stretch of the year.

QUOTE(fathom @ Aug 20, 2006 -> 01:34 PM) Except the Twins The Twins have been playing like "crap" against everyone except us. This was their longest homestand of the season, and they need a win today to salvage a .500 record on the homestand.

QUOTE(G&T @ Aug 20, 2006 -> 01:26 PM) According to the Twins broadcast, that's who Ozzie compared him to...and it didn't seem like a joke. Ozzie yesterday called the guys like Punto, Bartlett, Rivas, Castillo...etc., the slap hitters, his word for them was "Pirahnas"

Great, we're playing so poorly that Rincon is now coming in to actually get some work.

Damn, this F***ing game is still on? I was hoping this mess would be over by now.

Israel launched a commando raid inside Lebanon yesterday. One Israeli soldier was killed and 2 were wounded when Hezbollah set up an ambush for them...the Israelis tried to pass through a Hezbollah checkpoint in trucks, messed up the arabic greeting, and the Hez guys got suspicious. They let them pass and set up an ambush at the next checkpoint. Israel says it was interdicting to try to stop a shipment of weapons coming across from Syria. This of course seems to make no sense, because there's no good reason to risk men to stop a shipment of weapons when you can stop any truck or vehicle from above with a bomb. This was an attempt to capture something or someone. That's the only reason it makes sense to risk men on the ground. The Lebanese gov't has called this a violation of the cease fire.

QUOTE(CrimsonWeltall @ Aug 19, 2006 -> 11:10 AM) I didn't say all of the modern phyla appeared. I said "mad of the animal phyla make their first appearance there". "Mad" was supposed to be "many". True, i was slightly off, but it's still worth noting that the appearance of "Many of the animal phyla", which is one of the things people talk about happening in the Cambrian, actually happened over something like 50-100 million years, from the latter Ediacaran to basically the whole Cambrian.

QUOTE(vandy125 @ Aug 18, 2006 -> 08:33 PM) I had always been under the impression that the fossil record was not very conclusive as far as showing macroevolution taking place. If it was, then there probably would not be a debate between a graduated evolution occuring (small steps) vs the punctualistic evolution occurring (big steps all at once). From what I have understood, we do not yet have enough evidence to declare either way, and I am not sure what type of evidence there would be to say that it was graduated.Here's the interesting thing though, if I'm talking about evolution bringing significant changes to a population, to the point of the splitting of 1 species into 2, punctuated events are exactly what I'd expect to see in the fossil record. As we've been discussing, the best way for significant changes to happen, and for mutations to be able to pile up, is for reproductive isolation to happen within a small group. In a large group, i.e. a whole population of a species, the odds of a mutation, however beneficial, becoming dominant are very low just because of inertia...it's hard to have every single member of a species of millions adopt a trait that only has a limited start. However, if I have a population of a few hundreds, because a group has been cut off from the main body of a population, it is far more likely that innovative new traits will be adopted by the whole group. So the most likely thing we're going to see in the fossil record is going to be fairly sudden appearances of moderately changed species, because the odds of us finding the specific group where the mutation arose is very low, but as the new group expands to more areas due to its new selective advantage from the accumulated mutations, it will become more likely that it will be preserved. Several points on the Cambrian. The most important change that happened at the Cambrian was only 1 evolutionary development: the development of "Hard parts". In other words, shells, or skeletal material of some sort. So the big difference from the Precambrian to the Cambrian was the sudden increase in the likelihood of preserving fossil material...since suddenly there were hard parts to preserve. Contrary to the suggestion of the previous poster, in fact, all of the modern phyla did not appear at the beginning of the Cambrian. In fact, we have evidence in the fossil record of most of the phyla that are talked about by creationist/ID folks as appearing suddenly at the beginning of the Cambrian actually appeared gradually, during the last few tens of millions of years of the Precambrian (we call that period the Ediacaran) and during the first 20 million years of the Cambrian itself. The big, interesting thing of the Cambrian is more due to the Burgess Shale fauna than anything else. This is one particular unit from Canada with a wide variety of different, spiny creatures from it. But the other noteworthy thing about it is that most of those odd shapes never really amounted to anything, and most of them fall within a very limited number of phyla. Basically, there was a decent amount of radiation within a few small groups that had developed the ability to use hard parts, and they left some really funny shapes in that deposit. For more on the Cambrian Explosion itself, i'll fire to one random paper by a prof at Kansas State, who can give you a slightly better explanation than me. Ok, what you should think about it as is this. 3 genes, ABC. Double each of those genes. Now you have AABBCC. So you can claim if you wish that no information has been generated there, I don't believe that because a duplication is an increase in information to my eyes, but now, allow evolution to change any of those genes. Suddenly, we have AABBC1C2. Now we have 4 genes in 6 slots, whereas we started with only 3. We have gained information, because the original C gene is still there (and hence we haven't lost anything), but there is also a new C gene which functions in a different way. At this point, since it seems I am unable to convince you, I'm going to turn to a much more detailed source on the issue. If you want as much data as humanly possible on this topic, I'd suggest you peruse this page. "29+ Evidences for Macroevolution: The Scientific Case for Common Descent"

QUOTE(Punch and Judy Garland @ Aug 19, 2006 -> 09:58 AM) The Fields point is a good one but I see no reason he can't spend 07 in the minors again. I know he's probably ready for the bigs but sometimes guys (i.e. Ryan Howard) spend more time in AAA than they want to and they turn out ok. Plus with Crede in doubt for our 08 plans, keeeping Fields at third in 07 might be the shrewdest move Joe Crede is under White Sox control until the end of the 2008 season.

QUOTE(WhiteSoxfan1986 @ Aug 16, 2006 -> 11:05 PM) The astros were really creeping into the wild card race and the central race, then they get swept by the cubs at home. Somehow, the Cubs are 7-5 against Cinci, 10-3 against the Cardinals, and 7-8 against the Astros.

QUOTE(Rex Kicka** @ Aug 18, 2006 -> 03:00 PM) One car should be SNAKE. The other PLANE. If you could park one on top of the other, you could yell out "I am sick of these mother f***ing snakes on this mother f***ing plane".

QUOTE(Al Lopez @ Aug 18, 2006 -> 03:45 PM) Did anybody hear the distance? About 435 feet IIRC.

QUOTE(Texsox @ Aug 18, 2006 -> 02:42 PM) In the end, it really doesn't matter a whole lot. Every single starting pitcher on this team has proven they can win big games. We are talking percentage points of difference in the chances of one over the other. In a month, the race will be about over, we'll see how much flex Ozzie has in the rotation to "set things up" but I really am not worried about the game one pitcher. We'll see who has the hot arm in late September. Javy? Seriously? He's proven that to you? He hasn't convinced me of that at all.

QUOTE(fathom @ Aug 18, 2006 -> 02:36 PM) I have a feeling that if we don't win at least one of the first two games of this series, this place will be in full meltdown mode. Santana going on sunday with a chance to put us out of the WC Lead? Yeah, that would be nasty. Oh, and it wouldn't just be Soxtalk that would be in full meltdown mode, it'd be the 2006 white sox as well.

St. Louis wins its first game in the city of Chicago this year.

QUOTE(fathom @ Aug 18, 2006 -> 01:33 PM) Here's my pessimistic prediction for the wknd....one of our outfielders will lose a ball in the ceiling of the dome. Mackowiak.

QUOTE(The Critic @ Aug 18, 2006 -> 01:17 PM) Yep, he has a couple hits today for the Redbirds, including a LONG home run. Good pickup for them. Good pickup for them only because their outfield has been so weak offensively.