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  1. This story explains what the youtube clip on the first page of this thread is about: Ichiro matches wits on own TV show http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/spor...ichirotv21.html
  2. Delurking to say that Ichiro is great. I didn't see any good quotes about the shoving match, but here are some others I've found: http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/columns/stor...&id=2928938 http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/s...ichiro0325.html http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/baseball/320207_mbok18.html http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/spor...90_stone10.html http://www.usatoday.com/sports/baseball/al...er-ichiro_N.htm Edited to add: Lot of other good quotes in the USAToday article, too.
  3. QUOTE(Flash Tizzle @ Feb 22, 2007 -> 07:53 PM) Some time, I want to guess around 1990-1992, there was a boardgame which centered around the idea of a plastic, cone shaped object (representing a Tornado) following a path once you spun it. I may be missing up certain elements of the game, but I recall the board was created to resemble mountains. Anyone know the title? Ask on boardgamegeek.com and someone will know the game.
  4. This site might give you some ideas, especially if you're looking for something out of the ordinary: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/wiki/page/Board_Game_Gift_Guide Boardgamegeek is a forum for board game fanatics. I discovered the site one day while looking up old board games from my childhood, like Bonkers!, Run Yourself Ragged, and The MAD Magazine game. Just about every board game you can think of is on the site. http://boardgamegeek.com/game/15987
  5. Judging from the "Reinsdorf speaks" thread, everyone must know about this except me. Someone please enlighten me. Why was MB wearing a Cardinals cap?
  6. This system was agreed to by MLB and NPB, but not the Japanese players' union, IIRC. Their players' union is weak. Robert Whiting has written that some people in the MLB players' union believe that this system is illegal under US law. The union would supposedly be willing to help a Japanese player challenge the sytstem, if they could find someone willing.
  7. QUOTE(Brian @ Oct 10, 2006 -> 10:15 PM) I think all these Japanese guys should go straight to the draft. Just my opinion. And I think for anyone who is entering the league for the first time. DRAFT! The guys who go through the posting system are still under contract to their Japanese teams. MLB and the Japanese leagues have had a few disputes (Hideo Nomo, some guy in the 60s) over the years about Japanese players still under contract wanting to go play in the US. That's why this system exists today.
  8. QUOTE(Texsox @ Sep 12, 2006 -> 10:42 AM) Side note: I really dislike the phrase suicide bomber. Murders, murder bombers, bombers, etc work better. While they are committing suicide that isn't their intent. It gives a bad name to those who end their own lives for their own reasons without murdering anyone in the process. Fox News likes to use the term "homicide bomber." I don't like this term (or ones like it) because it's confusing to me. In my mind, a homicide bomber would be someone like the Unabomber -- he plants a bomb and then runs away before it explodes. At least "suicide bomber" tells me how the dirty deed was done. Still, I see what you are saying. Maybe "kamikaze bomber" would be better?
  9. QUOTE(jackie hayes @ Sep 11, 2006 -> 01:15 PM) Link. From the Tribune article: None of the Sonics in Wichita, KS, that I've been to have roller-skating carhops. How common is this, really?
  10. Maybe the Royals will bring up 3B Alex Gordon to replace Teahen. He's done well in AA Wichita this year. G 130 AB 486 R 111 H 158 2B 39 3B 1 HR 29 RBI 101 BB 72 SO 113 OBP .427 SLG .588 AVG .325 OPS 1.016 E 16 Wichita is in the Texas League championships this week, but they should be over before KC gets to the Det and Min series. Finally, I'll have a reason to root for the Royals!
  11. QUOTE(Texsox @ Sep 2, 2006 -> 07:13 AM) Of the regrets of things I haven't done, which fortunately is a lot longer than the list of things I regret doing, the PC is one of them. It wasn't until I was entrenched in a career that I realized the opportunities I had passed up and never considered. Is the Peace Corp in need of volunteers, or, as your last post implies, is there more applicants than positions? I t doesn't seem like the PC advertise too much. I haven't kept up with Peace Corps news much since I got back, so I can't say for sure what it's like now. But I do remember Bush promoting the Peace Corps in one of his speeches after 9/11. You might remember him talking about the "Freedom Corps" which I got the impression was supposed to be some kind of umbrella organization for the Peace Corps, Crisis Corps (3rd world disaster relief, I think), AmeriCorps and one or two other programs. I also vaguely remember Bush saying at about that time that he wanted to double Peace Corps' size. Since Peace Corps is pretty popular with both parties, I'm sure it did get additional funding. I recently read somewhere that the Peace Corps is at a 30 year high in terms of volunteers in the field. So if you are interested, I would say go ahead and apply. If you're qualified, I would guess that they'd accept you and that you'd get an assignment as long as you're willing to wait. Of course, you have to meet the Peace Corps definition of being "qualified" which means demonstrating you have a skill or education in some field that they're interested in. It also helps a lot to have some experience volunteering elsewhere, and being able to show that you're interested in other cultures. When I applied, they had some literature listing skills and majors that were in demand. There was also a Peace Corps recruiter who was at my college campus to make a presentation and answer questions about Peace Corps. I got an application from him and interviewed with him later on. I'm sure they still have recruiters out there somewhere, but these days, the Peace Corps web site is probably the best place to start. In my volunteer training group, not all of us were straight out of college. There were a few individuals in their 50s or 60s, as well as a married couple and some middle aged volunteers. Not all of them stayed for the entire two year commitment, but then again neither did all of the recent college grads. I think the Peace Corps actually liked having a mix of Volunteers of different backgrounds firstly for the Volunteers' own mutual support but secondly also to project a more well rounded image of Americans to the host country.
  12. QUOTE(Texsox @ Sep 1, 2006 -> 08:05 AM) Not bored at all. What was your host family like? How do you think the experience changed you, if at all? Did you have a choice of countries? As I remember it, when I filled out my application there was a section asking me to list my assignment preferences. I chose not to list anything. It was partly out of a sense of adventure, to see what random place in the world I might end up. Also, I felt that I was a just-above-borderline candidate and wanted to maximize my chances of getting accepted. The whole application process from the time I picked up the forms to the time I was formally accepted took six to nine months. Even after I was accepted, I had to wait while the Peace Corps found a suitable assignment for me. First they told me they were considering me for some place in west Africa, then later they changed their mind and sent me to the DR instead. It was probably about three months after I was accepted that they told me I was going to the DR, and it would be about another 3 months before I actually did leave. I suppose I could have turned down the assignment or tried to negotiate for a different one if I really wanted to, but I was impatient to get going and had no objections to the DR. I had graduated a few months back and didn't want to be in a perpetual holding pattern. I had basically two host families while I was there. I stayed with one family in the capital during the 3 month training period, and then when I moved to the country for my assignment I lived next door to another family. The host family in the capital were nice to me. They were an older couple with a 20ish son living with them. They had hosted other volunteers before during previous training cycles. They were somewhat more well off than most others in the barrio where I stayed. They had a nice cinderblock house (with the second story still under construction). They also had electricity and running water and even a phone. They were nice to me, but at the time I didn't feel like I had connected with them (probably a combination of me being shy and some culture shock), so I never went back and visited them after training was over. In the DR, personal relationships are important, so I feel bad to this day about kind of dissing them though that's not how I thought about it at the time. My host family in the country was again somewhat better off than most others in the village, but of course rural village standards are much lower. They had a small wooden house with a tin or zinc roof. They were a middle aged couple taking care of three kids and two grandkids. The grandkids' mother had gone to the city to work in one of those free trade zone factories. They were basically good people but sometimes they had a temper. There was no electricity anywhere near us, but years back the village had installed an aqueduct system that brought water to most houses in the village. There wasn't a lot of water so the aqueduct usually only ran for a couple of hours a day. I think a previous PCV had been involved in getting the aqueduct built, but I'm not sure. Even though there was no electricity, the father owned a small (maybe 10 inches or so) black and white TV. When they wanted to watch TV, they would hook it up to a car battery and watch for maybe an hour. This didn't happen too often because the battery had to be recharged in town, which I think cost money. I'm sure the whole experience has changed me, but it's hard to say exactly how. I have a lot more life experience now, and maybe gained a bit more maturity than I would have if I hadn't gone. When I first came home after the Peace Corps, I did feel some culture shock. For example, I came back in June, and Independence Day came soon after. I was shocked to see that virtually all of the stores in my parents' town were all open. Even Supercuts was open, I couldn't believe it. In the DR, almost every business is closed on every national holiday. It's like part of my brain turned Dominican, and I could see and interpret everything I saw in the US the same way a Dominican would (the ones I knew, at least), even as the rest of my brain was processing things like an American. I still feel that way occasionally, but not nearly as much. Other changes: I can speak Spanish. I've also learned to appreciate a good plate of Dominican rice and beans, and other foods like plantains. I like merengue and salsa and bachata music and can dance to them. I pay a little more attention to Dominican ballplayers when I read about them in the news. I like to play dominoes (Dominican rules, of course), but I don't get the chance to do so very often. I got a kick out of watching the dominoes tournament on ESPN2 awhile back. I also appreciate more all that we have here in the US.
  13. QUOTE(Texsox @ Aug 31, 2006 -> 09:34 PM) You can't drop that without telling more. When, where, who, come on, spill the details Gee, where do I begin.... First let me say that your original note was about disaster relief and disaster recovery. International development is very different from those two, although I think there is a fuzzy line between it and disaster recovery. So, sorry to bring this thread somewhat OT. Also, "Two Ears of Corn" was written for the individual, on-the-scene development worker. It's not intended to be a policy discussion, but you could take away policy lessons if you were interested in that. Anyway, on to the Peace Corps. Keep in mind that all my comments about the Peace Corps only apply to my experience in my host country. Other Peace Corps programs in other countries could be run very differently for all I know. I was a Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV) in the mid 90s in the Dominican Republic. I was in an agroforestry program. There were other volunteers working in other areas -- small business development, education, sanitation, and a few others. I didn't have an agricultural background. Other than a few geology and soil science classes in college and helping my parents with some gardening, I was your basic suburban kid. Most other PCVs in my program were like me, but I think there were a couple of us that were actually forestry majors in college. The Peace Corps has a long history and a large presence (relatively speaking, compared with other Peace Corps countries) in the DR. They've been there since the 60s and the DR was one of the first countries to receive PCVs. The Peace Corps is (or was) mostly independent of other US government agencies. When I first applied, I thought that PCVs would be assigned to work on a lot of USAID-type of projects, but this turned out not to be the case, at least in the DR. We tended to work with small in-country organizations on projects. I worked on a project that involved a local farmer's group and a local private development agency. Other PCVs worked with local chambers of commerce or the education ministry. One story I heard about the early days of the Peace Corps there was that one time during the 60s or early 70s, the DR was having an election. It was the former dictator's apprentice vs. a leftist candidate. Balaguer vs. Juan Bosch, I think. Anyway, not too surprisingly, the US government supported Balaguer (the former dictator's apprentice). Some of the PCVs thought the US government was misguided on this and I think tried to alert Washington officials and the media about what they saw from the ground. Nixon and/or Kissinger got really p.o.'d at the Peace Corps, but somehow the program stayed around in the DR. When my group and I first arrived in-country, we received 3 months of intensive training. We each lived with a host family in a poor barrio of the capital city, we had language and cultural training, and we had technical training. In my program's case, it was teaching us a lot of forestry skills -- transplanting seedlings, grafting, how to select seeds, etc. Us PCVs didn't make a lot of money. We got a stipend that was the equivalent of $200 - $300 per month, and we were expected to live off that. Most PCVs went through the money quickly. Even with this small amount, we were still better off than a majority of Dominicans. We were paid to be peers of our Dominican counterparts in the local organizations we worked with. When we came back to the US, we also got a modest readjustment allowance that was based on how many months we spent in service. When my group first arrived for training, there was a Presidential election taking place. It was fascinating to see how the whole country got wrapped up in it. There were posters of all the main cadidates everywhere -- on buses, on telephone poles, on billboards. People painted their houses to match the colors of their political party. There were radio and TV commercials, there were people wearing hats with their candidates' name. Some, probably all, of the parties also distributed food to their supporters too. Some people only ate one meal a day, so this was important to them. During training we were taught the three goals of the Peace Corps: 1) Bring the US culture to the host country, 2) Work on a development project for the host country, and 3) Bring back the host country's culture to the US. Note that only one of the goals involves doing actual work. Development work is slow, and hard. As I said, we didn't work on some USAID project. The PCVs worked with a local sponsoring group which usually didn't have much money and in some cases they themselves received grants from some other development agency (such as the UN). Our work was at first largely determined by what these local groups did. Some of these groups were hardworking, but many others seemed to exist only on paper, and with the sole purpose of receiving grants from international development agencies. This was a source of great frustration with many of the PCVs. On the other hand, we also had a lot of freedom to start our own projects. Because many of us were assigned to remote locations, we had a lot of independence. In practical terms, it would very hard for the Peace Corps to closely supervise all of us even if they wanted to. Some of us lived several hours' drive away from the capital city and at the end of poorly maintained dirt roads or on the other side of a river with no bridge to cross. Some of us lived in more easily acessible towns. In any case, it was at once a great privilege and almost terrifying to have so much freedom and trust. Sometimes some of us started our own side projects that would give us more fulfillment than our main assignments. Sometimes some of us did a lot of travelling in country, although our stipend usually limited what we could do. Sometimes PCVs just got drunk because there wasn't much to do. Usually, I think, we just hung out with our Dominican neighbors and friends and lived more or less how they did. In my case, I was just bored a lot. I lived in a small rural community of maybe 200 or so people spread out over several square miles. I basically paid a neighbor to take care of me and I ate my meals with her family. Sometimes there would only be one meal a day and that's all I would eat too. It was easy for me to feel guilty about being a rich foreigner and living in an impoverished community. I'd go into the capital city to pick up my mail or do other errands, but often it was just a relief to get away from it all. Since the Peace Corps was mostly focused on the grassroots level, most of us didn't have too much contact with other agencies. But I heard about many and even met a few. Mostly I'm not sure what they did. Ideally, we would all coordinate our projects and efforts together to provide the maximum impact. But I suppose all governments (and the relief agencies they send) have their own plans and their own political agendas. This is not meant as a criticism, just an observation that I think we'd all have different ideas and different ideas on how to implement them, and so we all end up working in our own little worlds, as it were. Japan has a Peace Corps-like agency. The UN had several agencies out there with different programs. The EU had an agency out there too. There was also Caritas, which I guess is the Spanish name for Catholic Charities, as well as Mormons and other missionaries. Sometimes some of these other groups would drive around in their SUVs or whatever. I'm sure their vehicles made it MUCH more convenient to get around (PCVs had to use local transportation -- like in the back of somebody's truck or the local bus), but I suspect it also put a class/status barrier between some of them and the people they were trying to help. On the other hand, the Peace Corps wasn't ideal either. Because we were so individually-project based, there often seemed like there was no "grand plan" that I was a part of. Then again, maybe there shouldn't be, because "grand plans" tend to come from top to down which I don't think is good in the long term either. See my comments on the book. One of the Peace Corps' slogans is "The toughest job you'll ever love". For me, it was more like "the toughest job you'll ever love and hate at the same time." I'm glad I did it, but I don't think I'd do it again in this lifetime. I don't know how the projects I worked on have turned out. I feel like I learned so much and have given back so little. They say it's a common feeling among former PCVs. Anyway, I've rambled on and probably bored you enough. If you have questions, I'll answer them. I'll be away for the weekend, but I'll respond whenever I can.
  14. Anyone interested in the field of international development should read the book "Two Ears of Corn" by Roland Bunch. The book is about 3rd world agricultural development projects that were aimed at lifting poor, rural farmers out of poverty -- how and why they succeeded or failed. The author himself has spent many years working on such projects. When I was in the Peace Corps, every volunteer received a copy of this book. It argues very convincingly why just giving away free tractors, for instance, is detrimental in the long term -- it creates dependency, subservience, discourages people from learning to solve problems themselves, it's expensive, etc. If you think of the proverb "Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, feed him for life" then you will get the essence of what the author is saying. The book is very informative, with lots of examples and specific advice. This is not to say that there shouldn't be any big money projects at all -- who doesn't think the Gates Foundation's anti-malaria campaign is a good idea, for example. Iraq is a special case because of the war, of course. The emphasis there is on rebuilding instead of development. The rebuilding seems to have been very poorly managed, but that's a separate topic. Edit: fixed grammar
  15. QUOTE(SoxFan1 @ Jun 12, 2006 -> 04:05 PM) Ok, first it was the World's Strongest Man. Then, the World Series of Poker. Then, it was Scrabble. Then, it was the Spelling Bee. But are they seriously showing the World f***ing Domino Tournament? DOMINOS!?!?!?! ESPN has lost it. I watched part of the domino tournament. Those guys are waaay too sedate. They should be drinking beer or rum, slamming down tiles, and taunting each other. That would be a lot more fun to watch.
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