Balta1701

QUOTE(greasywheels121 @ Jul 8, 2005 -> 09:43 AM) http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1505406/0...?headlines=true This is literally them learning their lesson. Hell, this article was in my LAT yesterday. link

Francona doesn't know how to use Podsednik? Ok...Jesus Christ...this absolutely f***ing blows my mind. I mean...I could understand just about any other manager in the big leagues saying this. Any one of them except Ozzie. But Jesus Christ...Francona said this? This absolutely is beyond me. Why in particular am I so pissed about Francona saying this? 3 words. DAVE f***ING ROBERTS Hmmm...can anyone else remember a point last year when having a fast guy on the bench worked to Francona's advantage? A particular stolen base for example? Jesus H. Christ.

Pixies...Where is my mind. Think "End of Fight Club".

The one thing I think the Bulls need more than anything else is a defensive minded guard who can cover people like Hamilton, Wade, and maybe slow them down (not stop them) come playoff time. Think along the lines of Bruce Bowen. Finley doesn't fit that mold for me...Dallas isn't exactly known for their defense. We don't need to get bigger...we have 2 big guys (if we keep both and both stay healthy) who can clog up and dominate a lane on both defense and offense. We have a good perimeter player in Deng, a good guard in Hinrich, a great shooter in Gordon...we're just missing a defensive piece who can rotate in for Gordon or Hinrich to slow down the other team when they make a run.

QUOTE(Texsox @ Jul 8, 2005 -> 07:17 AM) The family Sutherland. Donald and Kiefer. Oh Come on...Jack Bauer????!!!???!!!! I'll let him know you posted this. That'll be the end of you

QUOTE(JUGGERNAUT @ Jul 7, 2005 -> 09:10 AM) It is not just the Caspian Sea itself. There are rich oil deposits surrounding the sea. My guess is it was a Dinosaur haven at one time (even though Everett refuses to believe that. Has any one ever asked him where he thinks oil came from?). In any case I've read reports it might be the richest oil region on the planet. China is investing billions in refineries & pipelines for that entire region. Including the -stan republics in between. Couple notes....first of all...oil doesn't actually come from dinosaurs themselves. Virtually all oil originally comes from a source rock known as an "Oil shale". What is this rock? This rock is a very fine grained carbon rich rock. Very fine grained meaning particles so small you can't see them without a microscope...the technical term is "clay" sized. How is it generated? Well, to create an oil shale you need several things. First, you have to be in an environment where the small particles aren't overwhelmed by an influx of larger silty or sandy particles. For example, if I'm near a beach, or if there is an active river system depositing sediment immediately on top of where i'm sitting, the sand grains will overwhelm the smaller particles and you will wind up with an impure sandstone. Where do we get fine grained particles accumulating on their own? Very simple; quiet water. You can accomplish this in places far out to sea, away from sediment sources...in inland bodies of water (think the Hudson bay) where the area is a basin restricted from the ocean, or you can get it to a limited extent in places like lagoons and bogs. Now the second question; where do we get the organic material (the word for it is kerogen)? The organic material comes from life, clearly. It has to come from photosynthesis at some point. It can't really come from an actual dinosaur, because an actual dinosaur is almost never going to be deposited in an area that would generate a high enough concentration of organic material. No, what you really need is an area with high productivity from photosynthetic organisms and an easy method for depositing that material. This is preciesly what happened during the Cretaceous period - the last era during which the dinosaurs were alive. There was an amazing sequence of geologic events which gave rise to our current oil reserves. First of all...there was some sort of event in the mantle which caused mid ocean ridges to accelerate several times. This gave rise to a plume of younger, more buoyant oceanic crust, which thereby displaced parts of the ocean onto the land...creating gigantic inland seas (picture the U.S. flooded from the edge of the Rockies to the edge of the Appalachians). These inland seas had several noteworthy elements to them. First, they were restricted - there wasn't a huge amount of wave activity that could wash away organic particles. Second, they were large, so there wasn't a huge input of outside sediment. And third, they were anoxic - meaning there was no oxygen left dissolved in the water, so that unlike today, when an organism died, its body was able to settle to the ocean floor without reacting with available oxygen and generating CO2. If you want to see evidence of this...there's a wonderful unit found in the western U.S...known at least in 1 place as the Pierre shale (great exposures just outside of Pierre south dakota). The stuff is pure black, except for the occasional ash bed. When you take this stuff, that you've deposited with huge amounts of carbon, bury it, and heat it...the end result is you generate oil. The reason Saudi Arabia has so much oil? Well, in the late Cretaceous, inbetween Africa and Asia there was a large restricted seaway known as Tethys. This was bascially the perfect environment to deposit an oil shale; even larger than the seaways in teh U.S., more long lasting, more restricted. It is this unit which has given rise to the Saudi and Middle East oil fields. In terms of the Caspian...well, let's just say that Ronald Reagan once said there was more oil in Alaska than in Saudi Arabia, and he was wrong too. The Caspian reserves are substantial in the way Alaska's reserves are substantial...there are large amounts of oil there, but the oil is not nearly as high quality as the stuff from Saudi Arabia (and hence it costs far more to get it out of the ground), and more importantly, there is just far, far more oil in the Middle East. Drilling activity in the whole Caspian Region has been done heavily, and has for the most part been disappointing. The current estimate of that area's total reserves are on the order of 40 billion barrels...not exactly a drop in the bucket, but still less than 20% of what was in Saudi Arabia. There has been significant disappointment associated with several of the fields out there. Steven Mann, director of the U.S. State Department Office for Caspian Energy, had this to say at a conference a few years ago "Caspian Oil represents 4 percent of the world's reserves. It will never dominate the world's markets..." The EIA (Energy Information Agency) has also dramatically dropped its estimates of Caspian reserves...from calling hte area another Saudi Arabia a few years ago to now comparing it to the North Sea. Several Oil companies have made noteworthy pullouts from Caspian investments. Chevron/Texaco pulled out of 1 field it had invested in because the oil simply had proven very unprofitable even at these prices...the sulfur content was very high (15%+) and the oil was difficult to extract. BP pulled out of another major oil field in Azerbaijan. Exxonmobil announced in 2002 that it was closing 1 of its major projects drilling offshore in 1 area of the Caspian. The simple fact is that the Caspian oil is like the oil in Alaska...it is not light crude in many cases, it takes a lot of effort to get it out of the ground, it is not near easy transportation which makes extraction difficult, it costs a lot to refine it, and there just isn't as much there as was hoped.

QUOTE(NUKE_CLEVELAND @ Jul 8, 2005 -> 07:54 AM) You're probably right. Facts don't seem to have any effect on people who continue to defend vicious murderers. There was a time when one of the things that made America so great, that made America a nation that others wanted to emulate, was that America would take the most obvious, vicious murderer and treat him exactly the same as a person wrongfully accused of a crime. An America where everyone was treated fairly. An America based on justice.

QUOTE(NUKE_CLEVELAND @ Jul 7, 2005 -> 08:50 PM) There may well have been cases where someone was detained after being "sold" by some tribal leader out in the badlands but there's no way to accurately quantify how many actually fall under this circumstance. It could be 2 or 3 guys or 2 or 3 dozen for all anyone really knows. Well...we do know that the number of people released from Gitmo without ever having been charged with anything numbers in the hundreds...several hundred.

QUOTE(Winnin Ugly @ Jul 7, 2005 -> 08:35 PM) I think Patterson needs a change of scenery. Baker has play head games with him the last few years... I wouldnt mind Patterson coming off the bench anything to get Timo off the team Ross Gload should get that roster spot, and I think the entire Sox community realizes it.

For those who are interesting...Schilling made his first bullpen appearance tonight at AAA...gave up a pair of runs in 1 inning.

QUOTE(Heads22 @ Jul 7, 2005 -> 08:31 PM) We are 11-10 versus the West.1 Soon to be 14-10.

QUOTE(Winnin Ugly @ Jul 7, 2005 -> 08:27 PM) How about we trade a prospect for Corey Patterson and released Timo Hmmm...Timo or Corey Patterson...you know...I think it's a tossup. Seriously though...You couldn't make me give the Cubs anything for Corey Patterson. Not a damn thing. I'd have to be a Cub fan before I thought it was a good idea to trade Mr. "AAA" to the Sox for something. You know...I might trade him for Timo...straight up...but that's just about it.

QUOTE(LDF @ Jul 7, 2005 -> 08:26 PM) the season is going great so far, but with the playoff on the horizon, what is it going to take to beat oak??? what is our record there in the last 24 games, 4 wins and 20 that we lost. Beating Oakland...in Oakland...will take an offday before we get there (just so our guys aren't jet lagged)...and some damn luck going our way. I mean come on...when a near gold-glove pitcher throws away a double play ball and then falls apart...what else can you do? I think we're ready for those bastages this weekend. After that team came together with its fans to push Pods onto the All Star team...we're fired up and I think we want Oakland now...I think we're ready to teach them a lesson.

QUOTE(JDsDirtySox @ Jul 7, 2005 -> 08:20 PM) Patterson and Dubois sent down. Dubois is a scrub, it doesn't surprise me... but this Patterson crap is nuts. What are the Cubs doing? Why Now??? If they are this low on him... why didn't they trade him 2 months ago when people were asking about his availability? Because trading him would make it seem too much like the Cubs were giving up on this season, and they absolutely couldn't have that...fewer people might come out to Wrigley if they couldn't keep saying "here we go. we're gonna take this thing this time"

Walk to Costa...bases loaded...Still Noooooooobody out.

7-3...2 runs score on a base hit by Buck, first and third...still Noooooobody out.

I said this in an earlier thread...I'll say it again. Bobby Cox has his team on a roll with a bundle of rookies and Andruw Jones. If you gave Bobby Cox and Leo Mazzone Derek Lee, Aramis Ramirez, Mark Prior, Kerry Wood, Carlos Zambrano, and Greg Maddux...do you think that team would be 40-44? I think it's absolutely amazing how little they're achieving with the talent on that team. Hell, they got their 2 "best" pitchers back and promptly went on an 8 game losing skid...they got hot when Prior got hurt.

Thank you Angel Berroa! 5-3 Royals...still nobody out in the 7th, 1st and 2nd, Twinkies bringing in J.C. Romero to face Teahan.

Now this is why I'm glad Scott Skiles has ink on a new piece of paper.

More interesting stat...the Royals are up 4-3 on the Twins in the 7th.

You know, I can't help but wonder when I sit here looking at the Around the Horn page why we don't have an official "Cubs suck" thread to go along with the Twinkies one. Anywho.. The Chicago Cubs are in kalapse mode. They went into the 8th inning with a 4-3 lead, and decided to bring in Roberto Novoa. He promptly gave up a triple and a bomb to Andruw Jones, giving the Braves a 5-4 lead. After a hit to Larouche, the Cubs brought in Rusch, only to see him give up a hit on an attempted bunt and then a 3 run homer to Jeff Francoeur. This team is completely falling apart. This will be the 8th game the Cubs have lost in a row. Dempster came in after a double was given up to Pete Orr...followed by a base hit by Marcus Giles. It's now 9-4, and a 6 run inning for the Braves. Not that I'm gloating of course...

QUOTE(chi-guy2 @ Jul 7, 2005 -> 05:28 PM) i saw that, no shocker, the only contending manager for the manager of year to this point would have to be frank robinson Do they give an award in each league or overall?

The Douchebag of liberty also has thrown his name into the hat on this topic.

QUOTE(Gene Honda Civic @ Jul 7, 2005 -> 05:25 PM) Ask yourself this, Would Podsednik deserve to be in the ASG with his current .289/.363/.337 and 41 SB with the Sox 5 games under .500? Ask yourself this...would you say a guy is an all star starter if he's hitting .259/.317/.430 with 9 home runs and 36 RBIs?

QUOTE(NUKE_CLEVELAND @ Jul 7, 2005 -> 04:43 PM) I don't know why he stayed on this long being that he's sick with cancer. There's at least been some suggestion that Rehnquist might be interested in a record...the longest serving court in history without any changes or vacancies ran something like 11 years or so...I believe that this group would hit that number this September if they stayed together. (O'Connor's resignation takes effect when her replacement is confirmed, not immediately or upon nomination, so there's still a shot it could happen)