Jake

Honestly, this is one of the reasons it can be difficult to figure out what's going on in the organization. Were drafts bad because: -scouts were bad, recommending bad players -GM is bad, overruling good scout recommendations -owner is cheap, overruling the choices of GM/scouts due to cost -player development is great, making up for iffy drafts -player development is terrible, making good drafts look bad We are finding out that it was the owner to a great extent for the Sox recently, but it can be pretty damn difficult to know which variables are true at any given moment

I remain more excited about Turner than anyone else.

QUOTE (bmags @ Feb 15, 2014 -> 09:38 AM) Sigh, i know this is going to end up being the USB. That happened to me. Was dicking around forever and switched USB cords, making it work right away. Also, uninstall any others Android devices' drivers if you have those installed

Marginal player probably isn't the right way to describe it. There are some who see serious star potential and others who see a nice talent with no position. It isn't like your average "not sure if this guy is good enough"

Yeah, I don't see Martin at fault at all here. He was like prey and was trying to deflect until they went away. They never did. He could have been fine in most locker rooms. The worst is that he did have the courage to confide in everyone that he was having a problem and that only accelerated the harassment.

With Herm around, Nomar would be doing a Jeter "circle jerk around baseball career finale" right about now

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Feb 14, 2014 -> 08:26 AM) Im curious why you guys are ok with it because he really believes in what he is saying? Multiple people on this site have reported his comments as offensive, racist, and sexist, and have gotten into long and terrible arguments with him. Now that he is gone, its ok because he really believed in what he was saying? That is an interesting position to take I'm not okay with blatantly inappropriate stuff under any circumstance -- it's that I'd prefer Duke say "poor people should die hungry because that's the way the system works" or something rather than somebody posting that just because it would piss a bunch of people off

Yeah, I've never seen a conservative take a joke well

This is sad. More than being mad at Incognito, this whole situation makes me feel bad for Martin. Incognito fined himself in kangaroo court for "breaking" Martin....Martin was clearly broken. He was already in a bad place. Here is a pros-cons (they're not in any special order) list he shared with a non-NFL friend:

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Feb 14, 2014 -> 10:21 AM) Jon Heyman ‏@JonHeymanCBS 17m Teheran gets $32.4M for 6 yrs. 1 option year. #braves @Ken_Rosenthal had 1st Teheran option for 2020 is for $12M with $1M buyout. #braves Chris Sale signed five year extension for $32M and option years of $12.5M and $13.5M

hmm

I kinda understand how when you're a psychopathic bully asshole, you might think that all of this stuff was not being taken the wrong way. And some people probably can deal with it and tune it out. Martin had clinical depression. His brain doesn't work that way. He was going to be sensitive. He was afraid to stand up for himself and he shouldn't have had to stand up for himself. Not for that stuff. This isn't the kind of thing that should be self-regulated. It shouldn't be there. This is 2014 America and that locker room is filled with grown men. Grow the f*** up. You can have fun and still treat your workplace like a god damned workplace.

I feel differently about a person posting offbeat opinions just because they are an offbeat person that I do about a person who is posting crazy stuff just get a rise out of everyone.

The thing is, I'm not convinced that Duke was a troll. Maybe. I think it's just as possible that those are his actual opinions at this point in his life.

Reading the text of the law leads me to believe that any kind of service in which the provider knows about the client's sexuality can be denied. The only slight hole is that the law asks the organization to try to find someone without such religious convictions to provide the service if it doesn't cause "undue harm" to the provider.

It would be very interesting to see a team with healthy Rose and Melo on it. I think Melo throughout his career has not typically done a good job of making his teammates better, though he has started to develop in that regard. With an MVP-ish point guard on his team, that might affect both of their styles of play. A strong-headed coach like Thibs could command the respect of all actors as well. It is certainly an experiment worth doing and honestly we become at least a top 3 team in the East if you add Melo without gutting the entire roster (I'm talking this year, no Rose). If you can have a starting lineup of Rose-Butler-Melo-Taj-Noah at some point, that looks like a truly great team if you have absolutely anything behind those 5.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Feb 13, 2014 -> 08:24 AM) FWIW the AP Associated Press for Liberals style guide says that relevance should determine whether or not you include party affiliation. FTFY

QUOTE (The Ultimate Champion @ Feb 12, 2014 -> 10:18 PM) http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2014/02/dodg...e-to-terms.html One of the recent defectors, a no-hit SS without speed. 23 & needs significant time in the minors. Scouts wonder if he can post a .220 BA or .300 OBP in MLB. Sounds a lot like a poor man's Leury to me. Not that we would want to but we could probably buy out Leury's 3 arb & 1-2 FA years for about half that amount. Sounds a lot like Jose Iglesias to me

Microsoft's stuff is probably sufficient, but is no longer best. Your best free option is Avast, though I admit they soured me when they made it a huge pain in the ass to cancel the auto-renewal for a free trial.

What we're seeing with Danksy is the other side of long term deals, which is that $15M is worth a very different amount of production by the end of the contract than it is when the deal is inked.

The IBTimes piece seems to be quoting an article from Hoops-Hype, which is affiliated with YardBarker. The author of the article is their lead editor but doesn't show much credentials-wise beyond being a "big Pacers fan."

Best comment from Deadspin re:Bynum jacking up shots

It's so strange since he was starting, playing the maximum doctors would allow, etc. What was there to b**** about? Why cost yourself so much money?

The best a third party can do at this point, and it is clearly something that happens, is make its voice loud enough that one or both parties start adopting key tenets of its platform. We see it with the Tea Party, we saw it the Progressive Party a century ago. Of course, the pipe dream of old is that third party would replace one of the two parties. Still a two party system, but a new party.

QUOTE (raBBit @ Feb 12, 2014 -> 12:24 PM) What did they do recently that has put them in such a negative light? I think they had a scandal of some sorts? They wrote an article that dealt with some transgender issues in a very clumsy way -- and obviously when I say clumsy, many others say it was abhorrent.