Jake

What a terrible defense.

What a terrible defense.

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Dec 30, 2012 -> 05:51 PM) It's pretty much a lock that the rule will change in the offseason. They will keep the penalty, but the "unable to review" portion will be gone. Yep.

Stupid design of the rule.

Piece of s*** GB defense

Starting the season with Viciedo platooned would be terrible.

QUOTE (Soxfest @ Dec 30, 2012 -> 12:35 PM) Forte 3rd and short inside the 20 is just BRUTAL................he never seems to make it. Yeah, that's a huge shortcoming of his.

Are these balls slippery?

Kubel will be a sorry sight on defense.

Django was indeed awesome. I have never been in a 3 hour movie and hoped it wouldn't end so soon before.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Dec 29, 2012 -> 06:42 PM) We have a number of other proxies for temperature. They don't have the small error of a thermometer, but you can combine things together quite well, particularly if you know a bit of geology. There are many ways of measuring it, most of which agree pretty well, but the best are the ice cores. Some particularly fun ones are the records of the Royal Navy. I really like that one in fact, you've got mobile weather records, written down, going back several hundred years, taken at noon, with known equipment, covering the globe. You can reconstruct temperature from water samples, from shells that grew at the time, from plants that grew at the time, from the bodies of people from the time, etc. Thanks to those ice cores recovered from Greenland and Antarctica, we can safely say that we're at the warmest atmosphere in 120,000 years. We can also safely say that we have the highest CO2 content in the atmosphere in >800,000 years, probably >2 million although the data gets a little fuzzy past 800,000 years ago because we lose the ice core record. If we stopped emitting CO2 right now, by the time 2100 rolls around, we'd have the warmest atmosphere in 800,000 years. Thanks a ton, that's exactly what I was looking for.

Green folks, can someone tell me what the usual response to the climate change critique that we've only been recording temps since the 1800s? I assume there is one, but for the comfort of my mind I have to know how science accounts for what would otherwise seem like a big hole in the theory.

QUOTE (DukeNukeEm @ Dec 29, 2012 -> 04:34 AM) So people living in Montana and Idaho should be bent to the will of those from NYC and Chicago? The need for states' rights is greater now than its ever been with the formation of mega-cities and the increasingly disperate ways-of-life the modern era has brought. First of all, states rights are usually brought upon when one state doesn't like the expanded civil rights of another. The federal government exists to make sure these small ponds (states) don't choose to violate rights. This is why we have the Bill of Rights for the whole USA and not just for those who agree. As far as whether we should do something like dissolve the states entirely -- no, probably not. States and localities will know how to run the bureaucratic and other minor management issues in their areas. Chicago and Billings will have different ways to keep their streets clean, undertake construction projects, manage their police forces, etc. However, there are certain things that should not vary within a single country. The right to marriage, for instance. To some extent, even things like gun control. Chicago's gun ban is undermined terribly by the fact that every place near them does not have one. If you want no guns in Chicago, you are probably pretty pissed about that. While a gun ban is debatable, in my opinion the right for any two people to get married is not. Like MLK said, an injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. I also would debate your point as it pertains to disparate ways of live, at least in terms of state by state lives. Our new interconnectedness has made alternative lifestyles more viable. For instance, if I wanted to be gay in my hometown of 500 people 50 years ago, I was probably hopeless if I hoped to live a "gay lifestyle." Nowadays, I can easily connect to people like me via the internet and other means. This lets people that are like me, even in the same confined areas I'm in, to more easily make themselves known. So on one hand, more types of living are viable in our time. However, our geographic locations are becoming more and more irrelevant. This makes governance more difficult and calls for a less involved local government. The affairs of other units of government affect us more than they used to.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Dec 29, 2012 -> 05:37 PM) The Tigers were 3 games ahead of us last year, and they've added Hunter and Martinez and get a full year from Sanchez. Worst case scenario, that could make them 8+ wins better than they were last year, which means we'd have 11 games to overcome. They can also legitimately expect Peralta to have a better season than last year, possibly Avila as well. In that worst case scenario, Danks coming back and a few guys having better years is unlikely to come anywhere close to 10 wins. So that's why people say we're far behind the Tigers, and that's plausible. The other side of course, is that Hunter is 37 and unlikely to put up another 5 win season like he did last year, Martinez is coming off a serious injury, Cabrera is unlikely to win another triple crown, and yes, their bullpen is a bit of a weakness. They also still have the same defensive concerns they had last year. So, if the Sox get a performance out of Danks and their pitching staff, this isn't hopeless...but it could well be, if things go Detroit's way. I don't think them winning 8 more games than last year is their worst case scenario.

Griffey and Frank were my favorite players....and I'm white. I must be doing it wrong.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Dec 28, 2012 -> 04:39 PM) Not to pick on you since I say things like this quite often but is there ever a scenario where an NFL team sleeps on an opponent and comes unprepared? With so few games in a season I'd think every opponent is taken seriously. I think the saying only works for fans and gamblers. I suppose I should have clarified... I meant that Bears fans shouldn't just assume the win, which is what most seem to be doing. I'm with you and think that very rarely would an NFL team actually "sleep" on another squad.

PJax to coach the Bears next season?

Lions are certainly not a team to sleep on, ton of top end talent on that team.

States' rights arguments make me want to vomit.

The author of that article seems to be applying his own narrative to the events and using just as circumstantial evidence as he accuses the media and its loony followers of using...all while being forced to cite the very media that he doubts. I'm unmoved and the main lesson learned is that the media takes tips and sources from just about anyone and in the need to give quick information, a fair amount of info gets out there with very little vetting. I've been there working in smaller scale tragedies for an NBC affiliate and it is just a matter of getting info from wherever you can get it.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Dec 27, 2012 -> 10:18 PM) ? The Bears often bring out the worst in Chicagoans. Listening to the Score embodies this perfectly, even most of the personalities on there are caricature versions of our fans.

QUOTE (DukeNukeEm @ Dec 26, 2012 -> 02:26 PM) Actually this guy already ceded his 2nd amendment rights by being a convicted felon. So aside from banning guns (something you earlier said you didn't want to do) what could've stopped this? Might be interesting to see how he got the guns. Gun show? Might be fruitful to talk about private sales in terms of gun legislation. I can't sell my privately owned Vicodin, maybe it won't hurt if I have to go through an intermediary to sell my gun. I traded some stereo equipment for a Glock on Craigslist and I was shocked that that is legal. Beyond that, my biggest takeaway from this crime is that it brings into focus our punitive corrections system and how it fails to rehabilitate people like this killer who clearly had some problems. Our blood lust to punish interferes with our ability to reintegrate these folks and try to make them productive members of society.

I research on a regular basis for academic purposes and I've gotta say that I only gain from the status quo. I can't always access what I need from my laptop, but I can find out that things exist that I'd otherwise never have known. In my bedroom I can look at everything that has ever even mentioned my desired topic, read much of these things online, perhaps stimulate the economy by buying the ebook, and at worst place an electronic order for an inter-library loan. In the span of a day, I can construct a publish-ready draft/concept on a film I've never even seen before. With some googling, I can discover some low budget film from an obscure market, download it, overlay subtitles in VLC player, then access the full breadth of discourse about the film and/or pertinent subjects. I can't wait for the time when almost all the book length academic research is available in ebook form and I can make it completely feasible to have zero unproductive waiting time in my research and drafting.

Sometimes I'm ashamed to be a Bears fan.

We're tricking out my dad's home theater. Replacing old receiver plus replacing Samsung 47 inch LCD w/ 50 inch Vizio LED Smart TV. $699-$100 gift card is a steal for that TV.