Controlled Chaos

I've been drinking the black and white kool-aid and although it's colorless, it packs a powerful punch and has left me with a vivid representation of the season to come. Sox win the central 96-66 We catch a bit of a scare in the opening round of the playoffs going 5 games with Anaheim. We dispose of Boston in 4, who was coming off a 5 game series of their own with Cleveland. (sidenote: With Boston out of contention and NY failing to make the playoffs, ESPN cancels it's baseball coverage.) We beat Philly in 6 for the championship!! Not quite an 11-1 post season run, but a dramatic World Series nonetheless. Some good story lines emerge with the trades between these two teams the last couple of years. Freddy isn't "Big Game" in his 2 starts against the Sox. Thome, on the other hand, comes up huge to claim his first world series championship. Combine that with his 500th homer, which he will also get this year, and he has earned his ticket to the hall.

QUOTE(ptatc @ Mar 1, 2007 -> 09:05 AM) The only way to get through "tightness" is to throw and loosen it up. No amount of stretching will totally take care of it. As a MLB pitcher when you throw you routinely put your shoulder through 160-200 degrees of external rotation. This is equivalent to while standing with your arm out to the side, rotate your arm backward so the thumb is pointing straight down to the ground. Most normal people can't do this. But this is the range pitcher's need. So throwing until the arm lossens up is the best way to do this. Rest is not the correct option to correct this. This doesn't need to and probably shouldn't be done in a game situation. They probably just wanted to test him out and will now have him throw on the side until it improves. As you saud earlier you don't want to add stress to other parts of the arm. A shoulder problem can easily add stress to the elbow or visa versa. I hope it's not an elbow problem which is causing the weird mechanics he is describing which is causing an alteration of shoulder motion. Anybody else try the thumb test above and then look at ptatc's avatar and go "Oh s***!!" anyway, informative post dude. thanks!

QUOTE(SoxFan101 @ Mar 1, 2007 -> 11:35 AM) I dont think the media was blowing it out of proportion so much as the Bears felt the pressure to make a deal happen. Also according to Lovie's agent Smith said he wanted to get the deal done because he didnt want the bears continuing to look bad. Lovies contract all year has been blown out of proportion. The Bears were not talked about on any pregame show without it being mentioned that Lovie was the leagues lowest paid coach. It was harped on over and over. I just didn't get it. It was like the were trying to insinuate he wasn't being paid cause he was black. If he was white, I don't think we would have even heard half of this contract talk. It was a contract for a first year head coach. WTF? Why should they have restructured after 2 years? One being a 5-11 season and the other being an ass whoopiong in the divisional round of the playoffs. He had one bad year and one good year...lets give him a raise?? I have no problem at all how the Bears handled it. I agree Lovie received what he deserved and the extension was the right thing for the Bears to do. I just don't see what the hoopla was about all year and why every sportscaster had to point out Lovie's salary.

QUOTE(tonyho7476 @ Mar 1, 2007 -> 10:37 AM) That's hot! Here ya go. Bondage Teacher

Prison b****es

Is anyone even going to ask why the teacher had to do this? ss2k5 you just nailed the big difference between when we were kids and the kids now. When we were kids, at least in my case...the teacher was always right. My parents wouldn't fall for me saying "oh the teacher made MY test harder cause she doesn't like me" or "the teacher is just picking on me", but my sister, who is a teacher, has parents coming in accusing her of that all the time. It's like are you kidding me?? If I did something wrong in class and was punished or I had bad grades and messed up, my parents never blamed my teachers. They blamed me and they were right, cause it was always me..no matter what I would say about my teacher. I could just imagine coming home and telling my parents the teacher taped me to the chair. First thing out of their mouths would be "What did you do to make her do that? Now it's "what did that abusive teacher do to my poor baby"

Teaching these kids to brush their teeth would have helped, but the damn government probably dropped the ball on that too.

Is this 16"??

QUOTE(hitlesswonder @ Feb 26, 2007 -> 12:40 AM) In my opinion, Anderson's defense is overrated. Both Scott Gregor and Greg Couch wrote articles saying that people assumed Anderson had good defense just because he couldn't hit. Gregor specifically mentioned Anderson had difficulty going back on balls straight at him. I trust a beat writer's opinion on that, since he saw way more games in person than I did. I admit, I thought Anderson looked good in the field, but I'm no scout and I think it's possible BA just looked good to me in comparison to Mack. And for those of a statistical bent, Chris Dial's defensive metrics had Anderson as a plus defender before the ASB and an exactly average one after the ASB. As more data accumulated, Anderson's defensive stats continued to go down. I've heard it really takes 2 years of data for Dial's metric to give meaningful results. I wouldn't be surprised if Anderson's defensive ranking continues to decline. Anyway, the point is probably moot, since I'm pretty sure the CF combo will be Erstad and Terrero. I didn't assume Anderson had good defense, I saw it with my own eyes. He has ridiculous range cause his jumps are so good. He saves hits. He saves runs and he will only get better. Every center fielder has difficulty with balls hit right at them. With Brian's positioning he makes way more plays in front of him, then balls that will be hit right at him over his head.

QUOTE(NorthSideSox72 @ Feb 26, 2007 -> 06:15 AM) I think Letters from Iwo Jima was a far better film than The Departed. But, we had to make Martin feel better. Its unfortunate, because really, he's not such a great director in my view. Probably the most overrated one, though. And Whitaker's performance in Last King of Scotland was truly amazing. Name cachet or not, he deserved it for that performance, which is what it should be about anyway. I haven't seen the film yet, but anyone who goes to the lenghts Whitaker did for this film is all deserving in my opinion. He gained 50lbs for the role. He fricken learned Swahili. Congrats! This tells a little about his character study.

I was thinking of a game with a group of adults. It used to be we'd have some friends over and getting a little f***ed up was enough. Apparently, the wives/girlfriends would like a little more substance to our get togethers. So I was just looking for something fun. We have played "scene it" before, but the girls don't have a chance against the guys in that. In fact, nobody has a chance against me in that game, yeah I'm callin you out!!! QUOTE(Balta1701 @ Feb 22, 2007 -> 03:49 PM) I can't bring myself to take it out of the wrapper.

QUOTE(Kid Gleason @ Feb 22, 2007 -> 03:26 PM) Every Cranium game is great! We have a bunch of them. It started as the one game, but it became so big they expanded into a bunch of games. The Kids Cranium is probably more fun that the original. Balderdash is also great. I wish I could remember all of the ones we play, but we change it up so often I forget which ones I really enjoy. As far as simple "strategy" games go, I love Mancala. Anyone ever play Brain Chain?? http://www.rateitall.com/t-672-board-games.aspx

Anyone ever play Cranium? Somebody told me that was pretty good. I don't even know what games are out there, except for the old staples.

Anyone know any new fun board games or what old ones are your favorites?

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Feb 22, 2007 -> 02:14 PM) I think we all know what happened... Someone asked on the PA for the father of Anna Nicole Smith's baby to come forward... Considering the crime in New Orleans...next year can be bad!

The Spanish Connection What the 9/11 Commission didn't consider. BY EDWARD JAY EPSTEIN Thursday, February 22, 2007 12:01 a.m. EST The 9/11 Commission relied on information derived from two captured al Qaeda perpetrators for much of its picture of the conspiracy leading up to the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The interrogations of these men--Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, or "KSM," who masterminded the plot and got Osama bin Laden to finance it, and Ramzi Binalshibh, who acted as KSM's liaison with lead suicide terrorist Mohamed Atta--were performed by the CIA at secret locations. KSM claimed that he left almost all the tactical details to Atta, and therefore could not say where Atta went, or whom he visited, in the final months of the plot. Binalshibh claimed he was Atta's only contact with al Qaeda during this period and that, other than himself, Atta never met with anyone on his trips abroad in 2001. If these accounts are true, it follows that the conspiracy was a contained one, and the 9/11 Commission could preclude outside collaborators, including the participation of foreign countries. Thus, although the CIA was unable to trace the origin of the money supplied to Atta, the commission deemed this gap "of little practical significance" since the CIA's prisoners established that no one else was involved in the plot. Thus, too, when the CIA found that Iran had "apparently facilitated" the travel of eight of the 9/11 muscle hijackers in flights to and from Afghanistan (by not putting the required stamps on their passports, and by having a top Hezbollah official accompany their flights in and out of Iran), the commission could nevertheless rule out the possibility Iran or Hezbollah were "aware of the planning." The basis for this conclusion was the information provided by KSM and Binalshibh. But what if these CIA prisoners--who after all are diehard jihadists--were lying? Enter Judge Baltazar Garzon, Spain's terrorism magistrate, who has been for many years investigating the links between al Qaeda and a Spanish Islamic cell headed by one Imad Eddin Barakat Yarkas (who Mr. Garzon arrested in November 2001 and is currently in prison on a conspiracy conviction). The Spanish security service secretly had this cell under scrutiny since the mid-1990s; Mr. Garzon was thus able to draw on wiretaps, surveillance reports and other intelligence, as well as his own interrogations of suspects and captured documents from Afghanistan. Mr. Garzon has produced a 697-page investigative report for Madrid's central court in September 2003, which charges that the Spanish cell--through its connections to Mohamed Atta's Hamburg cell and some of the pilots it recruited--helped plan, finance and support the 9/11 attacks. In an interview, Mr. Garzon explained to me through an interpreter that the support of the Spanish cell began in the early days of the plot and continued up until the attack. He described evidence that ranged from video tapes that Spanish police had confiscated from the home of one of the Spanish conspirators, which methodically surveyed the twin towers of the World Trade Center from five different angles in the late 1990s, to a phone call intercepted by Spanish intelligence in August 2001 (at a time when the hijackers were buying tickets on the planes they planned to commandeer), in which an operative in London informed Yarkas that associates in "classes" had now "entered the aviation field," and were beheading "the bird." After drawing a diagram for me on a blackboard of how the Spanish cell connected to Atta's and Binalshibh's recruiters in Germany, he said it was "supporting the operation at every level." Consider the unexplained activities of Atta and Binalshibh in Spain in 2001. Atta made two trips to Madrid, paid for with al Qaeda funds at critical points in the plot. The first one was in January, just after he finished his flight training classes in Florida and qualified as a pilot. The second one was just after most of the contingent of muscle hijackers had arrived in Florida in July. During that second trip, July 7 to July 19, Atta clocked 1,908 kilometers on his rented Hyundai and changed hotels frequently--except for five nights, where he vanished from all hotel registries. Atta's 9/11 co-conspirator, Binalshibh, also made two trips to Spain: The first, July 9 to July 16, was to the Terragona resort region near Barcelona, where he met up with Atta and then, during the same period, also vanished from the hotel registries. Binalshibh's second trip, Sept. 5 to Sept. 7, was to Madrid, where he obtained a bogus passport which he used to fly to Pakistan and make his escape to Afghanistan. Why did Atta and Binalshibh make these trips? The 9/11 Commission turned to the CIA, which reported that Binalshibh (captured in 2002) said in his interrogation that neither he nor Atta had contacted anyone else in Spain. Thus the commission stated, "According to Binalshibh, they did not meet with anyone else while in Spain." The problem here is that Atta and Binalshibh made independent trips to Spain. Atta went to Madrid in January when Binalshibh was in Germany; Binalshibh went to Madrid in September when Atta was in America. And when Atta arrived in Madrid on July 8, Binalshibh was in Hamburg. They were never in Madrid at the same time. On July 9, Atta did meet up with Binalshibh in the resort area of Terragona, but Atta then stayed in Spain three days after Binalshibh returned to Hamburg. Presumably, they made separate trips because they had separate business, but the critical fact is this: Binalshibh was not in a position to know whom Atta did (or didn't) contact in Madrid or during his final three days in Spain. Mr. Garzon argues that his extensive investigation of the Spanish cell directly contradicts Binalshibh's story that he and Atta had seen no one else. Take, for example, the week they were together, July 9 to July 16. Both Atta and Binalshibh dropped from sight, leaving no hotel records, cellphone logs or credit-card receipts. Mr. Garzon reasons that someone organized a safe house for them to conduct their business. That person, according to Mr. Garzon, is Mohamed Belfatmi, aka "Mohamed the Algerian," a man who had worked closely with the Spanish cell in getting its operatives in and out of Afghanistan for terrorist training. About a month before Atta's arrival in Spain, Belfatmi rented a house in Terragona very near to where Atta's rented car was last seen parked. Mr. Garzon says that Belfatmi's house was used for the 9/11 "final planning sessions." From telephone intercepts, Mr. Garzon has established that Binalshibh was in contact with Belfatmi after the latter had returned to Germany. And in a brief call Belfatmi made to Yarkas on Sept. 1, Yarkas, correctly suspecting that his phone was being tapped, abruptly cut Belfatmi off, telling him not to continue with "that theme." Later that week, Belfatmi flew to Karachi with Binalshibh's and Atta's Hamburg roommate and fellow al Qaeda cell member Said Bahaji, staying with him at the same hotel. Binalshibh arrived in Karachi on a separate flight. So did other members of the Hamburg cell, who along with Belfatmi and Bahaji escaped to Afghanistan (and have not been yet apprehended). Mr. Garzon concluded that Binalshibh knew both Yarkas--whose private number he had in his address book--and Belfatmi. According to Mr. Garzon, Binalshibh "was clearly lying to the CIA to protect those he and Atta saw in Spain." Baltazar Garzon, known for his prosecutorial zeal, is a controversial figure in Spain, having investigated everything from Basque terrorism to the Madrid bombing investigation whose alleged perpetrators are currently on trial in Madrid. But even many who don't agree with his methods--or his politics--agree he is on solid ground in his relentless pursuit of the connections between the Spanish cell and al Qaeda. Yet if Mr. Garzon is correct about the Spanish connection to 9/11, it is not only the effectiveness of the CIA's interrogation of its al Qaeda prisoners that is called into question. The information from Binalshibh, KSM and other detainees was used to fill in the missing pieces of the jigsaw, and those gaps concerned the contacts the 9/11 conspirators might have had with others wishing to harm America. By saying that no one else was involved--not in Spain, Iran, Hezbollah, Malaysia, Iraq, the Czech Republic or Pakistan--these detainees allowed the 9/11 Commission to complete its picture of al Qaeda as a solitary entity. Yet to come to its conclusion on this most fundamental issue, the commission was prohibited from seeing any of the detainees whose accounts it relied on. Nor was it allowed even to question the CIA interrogators to determine the way that information was obtained. The commission's joint chairmen themselves later acknowledged that they "had no way of evaluating the credibility of detainee information." So when Judge Garzon comes up with evidence that runs counter to detainees' claims, cracks begin to emerge in the entire picture.

Haven't watched the show, but just came across this reading an article on ratings. In cable, Fox News Channel's foray into intended comedy, The Half-Hour News Hour (1.5 million), was almost as big as Comedy Central's biggest Daily Show (1.6 million for a Thursday-night airing).

QUOTE(Tony82087 @ Feb 22, 2007 -> 08:30 AM) It would be very possible. However, if had to make a prediction, I would say Joe and Mark would be on the table, with Dye and Gooch being harder to acquire. Once again, I just don't see how Gooch moves. This team isn't going with Pedro Lopez at 2b, and thats pretty much all we got. I also think the Sox being out of it by July is very unlikely, but I understand you were just brining up a hypothetical. Gooch having another consistent year, just jacks his price up even more. I don't think he has to improve much on his last two seasons to get a big pay day. I think he has to just remain consisitent and he'll get it. I'm not sure why Kenny didn't want to work things out with Gooch this offseason, but I'm hoping he has something up his sleeve and I'm really hoping that something isn't Lopez.

IF for some god for saken ridiculous set of circumstances we are not competing at the trade deadline. Does anyone here foresee a fire sale?? Crede, Buehrle, Dye, Gooch?? It seems Kenny has the Sox in the position of, if the pitching holds up we can make a run at it. Maybe pick someone up at the deadline to fill a hole for the championship run. However, if we're not in the running, we could net some big time players for that group above. It seems Kenny decided a while ago that he would not try to work out any deals with these guys before the season. I think his plan is, if for some reason, be it injury or other, the Sox are not in a position to make the playoffs teams have been overpaying big time at the deadline and thats his best chance at replinishing the farm. It seems we're in a pretty good situation, win or lose so to speak.

QUOTE(Rex Hudler @ Feb 20, 2007 -> 04:36 PM) Who is the guy that they showed on the previews for next week? Not having seen previous seasons, I don't know anything about him. Can anyone give me some quick background? This is a recap of season 5. You could prolly skip every few hours and get the gist of it. http://www.fox.com/24/episodes/season5/7am.htm

QUOTE(SoxFan562004 @ Feb 21, 2007 -> 07:56 AM) Someone made the point earlier, make sure the TV isn't too big for the space you're going to use it. I've had friends get really nice TVs, but they are way too big for their tiny apartments. They would have been much better off getting a TV that fits their space. A TV that's too big?? no such thing!!

I want to see pretty much everything listed. "Knocked Up" is with that 40 yr Old Virgin dude. "you plant the seed and you wait for it to grow into a plant and then you f*** the plant."

Have one on me... Happy Birthday

QUOTE(NorthSideSox72 @ Feb 19, 2007 -> 01:43 PM) I agree with your first two sentences here. And the article does attempt that, to an extent, before eventually devolving into bashing of the liberals. But your last line is the same old trap that BushCo has been using to polarize the scene and neutralize any sort of discussion of the issue. It says "you are with us or against us", and further, says that if you don't support the war, you don't support our troops. That is political B.S., and playing chicken with American lives. This is why I am tired of seeing the Democrats in Congress pass these silly resolutions, and now this re-casting of the war authorization bill to exempt civil war interdiction (a bill many of those same Dems passed in its original form), just as much as I'm tired of hearing the GOP as noted above and their politically convenient argument. The best thing I've seen so far to address this mess of a war was Murtha's suggestion that a bill be passed, stating that no troops can go to war without being properly and fully equiped. This would force all new deployments to actually have the right gear, as well as force Congress to see the REAL costs of the way, as they sky-rocket to meet that requirement. Sunlight is a great disinfectant. Those last comments are not mine. They are the authors.

QUOTE(Gene Honda Civic @ Feb 15, 2007 -> 05:28 PM) Metal Skool For some reason, you're a bigger star in LA if you cover crappy songs than those that actually wrote and performed them in the first place. We have our own version here in Chicago http://www.loungepuppets.com/ and I actually saw a pretty cool 80's cover band in Tucson for ST last year. http://www.metalheadrocks.com/index.html