Jake

If you think the coaches are the only problem, you are very wrong. When you play this badly, the problems are very, very widespread. I'd look to the team leaders on offense and defense - likely Cutler and Briggs - as tremendous failures in their positions as well. Of course, the largest problem is that the players aren't good enough.

I'm ready to say that Pau is worse defensively than Boozer. The blocks Pau gets don't make up for his atrocious feet and laziness nor his awful rebounding. I don't know if he's just struggling with the workload or what, but he absolutely kills us on D

There are few things more disturbing than reading the stuff college freshmen turn in for a first-year writing class. Good god, are they awful at writing. And this is at a relatively selective school: the 25th-75th percentile ACT scores are 27-31, 95% were in top quarter of HS class, 65% were in top ten percent of HS class.

Jimmy looks unreal. He's Kawhi Leonard with more MPG now.

FWIW, Danish was reportedly often reported as hitting 95 pre-draft. I know Perfect Game got him at 94 multiple times. So, he might hit 95 again. Togh to say the cause of the velo decrease - laying off, mechanics, skills decrease, making the sinker more sinkery, etc

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Nov 7, 2014 -> 01:13 PM) Well that's good to hear. I was hoping it wasn't as brutal as "relearn all of undergrad and then some." I really need to knock the GRE out of the park because my undergrad GPA isn't exactly stellar. I got 163V/161Q/5AW with only moderate prep. I basically invested no time in prepping for the verbal part. At the time, I had taken nothing remotely mathematics-related since HS so I devoted some time relearning some pre-calculus to prepare for the quant portion. Spending a couple of hours learning about what they look for on the writing would be worthwhile. My feeling on the verbal is beyond familiarizing yourself with the sort of question format they have, you can't really prepare. You're not going to study your way into meaningfully improving your reading comprehension. Trying to improve your vocabulary is not going to pay off for the time required to do so. What I'd suggest as a starting point is to utilize one or more of the free practice tests provided by ETS online to assess where you're at. If you're close to your desired score on those tests, you definitely don't need to freak out. If you're a little sub-standard, you might want to buy a prep book (preferably one that comes with practice tests so you can retest and continue to assess where you are).

The turnout figure I posted is not at all based on registrations. It is based on the voting-eligible population, which includes both registered and non-registered voters. They use data from census research, American Community Survey (to determine the amount of non-citizens), and prison records (to determine number of incarcerated and felons). A quick look at state-by-state data: Top - Maine, 59% Wisconsin, 56% Alaska, 55% Oregon, 52% Colorado, 52% Bottom - Indiana, 28% Texas, 28% Utah, 29% New York, 29% Tennessee, 29% Mississippi, 29% Oklahoma, 29% Even disregarding explanations, it's sickening to think that we are effectively ruled by such small portions of our citizenry. There's an extent to which we try to keep people from voting, there's an extent to which people's lives are too hard to really think about politics, some people just suck, some people are careless, the entire institution is rather unsupported structurally....whatever the reason, it hardly feels like living in a democracy when only a third of the people who can decide who governs end up deciding who governs. The portion of people old enough to vote who cannot legally vote has also increased in the past 30-40 years due to the rising felon population. While I get pissed at the Republican Party for what I believe are voter suppression tactics, the Democrats that have control in various places in the USA hardly over-extend trying to use their power to get more people to the polls. The goal of both parties ought to be to get as many people to vote as possible with as little fraud as possible. One party is just focused on the fraud and the other party isn't focused on anything. You couldn't spend too much money on trying to make sure your country gives a voice to as many people as possible. What's most difficult to account for is the possibly disenfranchising effect of geography. I live in Ohio, which is supposed to be super swing state. Despite living right smack dab in liberal Columbus, I live in an uncompetitive Republican congressional district. In statewide elections, it was clear long before the elections that Republicans would win everything easily. Several city-wide positions were uncontested. I voted, but I feel that the main thing of consequence that I did was cast votes for the local Green Party who needs them to get ballot access back (state government had no problem using bipartisan cooperation to pass laws removing third parties from the ballot unless they meet new, onerous requirements).

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Nov 7, 2014 -> 11:43 AM) Could anyone who's taken the GRE give me a rough prep time estimate? Is 3 months adequate? Depends where you're starting from, of course. With that said, I'd say regardless of starting point, after 3 months you're looking at seriously diminishing returns. Feel free to PM me if you want any other thoughts/advice

Pop is probably cognizant of the fact that in these primetime rivalry matchups, the guys won't possibly take it easy on themselves. He might also know that he'll have a hard time keeping them on the bench after meeting a minutes limit in these games.

Bosh, his last year in TOR: 24 ppg, 11 rpg Bosh, first year in MIA: 19 ppg, 8 rpg Bosh, this year: 24 ppg, 11 rpg Love, last year: 26 ppg, 12.5 rpg Love, this year: 18 ppg, 12 rpg

Lowest voter turnout since the 1940s, if not of all time, according to collected data. Gotta love voter suppression, er, fraud prevention strategies!

Before LBJ came to Cleveland, I said that Cleveland would be best off if they just got rid of Kyrie. I really think he's actively harmful for a team that intends to win. Wouldn't blow my mind if the conflict with LBJ could end with Kyrie going out of town for some more useful role player types

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Nov 6, 2014 -> 09:21 AM) There was a report that came out that suggested Lebron is letting this team sink, letting them learn the hard way that they arent what they think they are. Interesting strategy The Theo Epstein strategy - if we're losing, everything is going according to plan. If we're winning, everything is going according to the plan. No matter what, I'm doing a good job

Kyrie: 0 AST

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Nov 5, 2014 -> 10:38 PM) Rose started slow but he really popped right before halftime and played well for the rest of the game. Watch your words...

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Nov 5, 2014 -> 02:40 PM) So all a bunch of BS. Anyone can pick a number out of a hat and say, those are the probabilities, although they may be wrong. There is no way to really confirm any accuracy. He was pretty accurate with the electoral college last Presidential election. FWIW, Wang (Princeton) is trying to improve certainty (not just being right is better, but being right with higher probability). Nate Silver has tried to take an approach where it's okay that he gives relatively weak probability to his predictions.

Jimmy looks just unreal, though. I can't wait to pay him all the millions

The second Rose steps back onto the court, Thibs is working him too hard and it will be our downfall.

I'd like to keep Beli, but not for that price. Non-tendering him makes us unable to re-sign him, right?

I don't know if it's wishful thinking or what, but I've had this dream that Republicans act less awful once they feel like they are in control

Now looking like an almost complete blood bath for Republicans. Will be interesting. They will be gaining some control right as the country is relatively crisis-free, all the favorite indicators improving. Will Obama be credited with those things the same way he was blamed back when they were worse? POTUS election in 2016 looking exceedingly meaningful as it will be hard for Dems to get Congressional control

Remember how we hoped the margins in the first two Senate elections would clue us in as to how the error in polling was? Well, they're in opposite directions. We thought McConnell would win by about 7%, but it looks like it will be in excess of 10%. We thought Shaheen would win by about 2.5%, but it looks like it will be in excess of 5%.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Nov 4, 2014 -> 02:44 PM) It's not an easy thing, even at the state level. That's partly why so few run, in either party. Think about the impacts: --Dragging your family and potentially others into the media spotlight to no fault of their own --Time demands are pretty huge, especially during campaign season --It is nearly impossible to keep up a "regular" job while serving --You are away from home and family a substantial part of the year --Even if you do your best to do the job well, you will be constantly criticized all over --You're forced into fundraising, which is something many people are not comfortable doing --You are pulled into the games That's a lot to take on, especially for people who are older and have families (and really, there aren't many 20-somethings who could make a legit run anyway). That's a hard choice. This is why we have to offer a decent salary to elected officials. This gig has to compare favorably with "regular" jobs or there's no way "regular" people can consider doing it. As for me, beyond not wanting to derail my career aspirations, I don't know that I'd ever be up to asking all kinds of people for money, over and over.

Some essential knowledge for tracking the returns tonight - http://election.princeton.edu/2014/11/02/l...ses/#more-12161 http://election.princeton.edu/2014/10/31/h...-midterm-polls/ Basically, expect the average of the polls to be off in the same direction for nearly all races. There's no telling what direction it will be, so you'll have a good grasp of the results across the board by watching how the returns differ from the polling averages. The more polling that occurred within a given area, the better here - lots of congressional districts and even some states (Alaska) aren't polled often or well so don't read into those results too terribly much.

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Nov 3, 2014 -> 06:01 PM) Never happen. Could win by 15% and it wouldn't be a mandate, it would just be 'voters throwing a tantrum'. Of course, we would know that more voters are Democratic than are Republican, which casts doubt on what conclusions we should take from the outcome of congressional elections. According to data from the Princeton Election Consortium, Democrats would have to win by about 4.5% to have a 1-seat majority in the House. FWIW, the same forecasts (from Princeton Election Consortium) have control of the Senate being, essentially, a coin flip. Pollsters struggle with the natural selection biases that make opinion polling look more Republican than they are really are. That is, Republicans are more likely to have landlines and respond to these calls than Democrats. They all apply adjustments, but they all still leaned Republican in 2012 because they underestimated the voter turnout of Democrats. In mid-terms, traditionally there is a 2-3 point bias one way or the other. And it is not due to an intentional bias on the part of pollsters, but rather unforeseen changes in the electorate mixed with less polling data. Polls are actually getting worse year after year as well, since there aren't really as many universal ways to reach people like there was in the day of near-universal landlines.