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QUOTE (Buehrle>Wood @ Dec 20, 2012 -> 06:25 PM) Uh, yeah, "downgrade". Not even the biggest Tyler Flowers backers would argue otherwise. I would it may a small downgrade. For me it's defense first and Flowers will be much better in this regard.

QUOTE (Marty34 @ Dec 20, 2012 -> 11:23 AM) You often turn it to be about the messenger as if you're above the fray. Anyway, the Sox don't have the talent level to contend and rebuild at the same time. Missing the playoffs again because of Viciedo not being able to produce against right-handers isn't worth the time spent to develop him. You can't take a guy that young and platoon him. It has a better than average chance of ruining his career.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Dec 20, 2012 -> 12:13 PM) Its going to be a complete waste of money. By all means they should completely tank this season if they were smart, however they are signing middling players which will pull them up out of the basement to the mediocre level of teams which will almost guarantee missing out on a real impact prospect. I think they saw decreasing attendance want to put on a good show of trying. I don't know the FO personally but from what people say about them, they think they are smarter than all the other teams and will find the best prospects regardless of drafting position.

QUOTE (Baron @ Dec 20, 2012 -> 11:37 AM) What does everyone think the chances are that AJ was cheating? He prides himself on hard work so I don't think he did. However, you never know.

QUOTE (bmags @ Dec 20, 2012 -> 09:50 AM) I think this is one topic we don't really need analogies for to understand, it's just convoluting the argument. I have no doubt that is the aim of a few posters right now. From a couple of pages to go, Jenks was arguing against that Heller was making it easier to restrict guns because there was no slippery slope. I tend to agree with him, however, I do believe it still left quite a bit of area for regulations on guns, especially concerning sales. I'd prefer we really dive into the new assault rifle ban so it doesn't repeat the same mistakes. I'd like a hard magazine size restriction. I'd like Colorado's law to be encouraged federally by providing matching grants. I'd like gun shows to be shut down, or force any gun show seller to get a license and be forced to follow new regulations. These are reasonable restrictions. No one needs a magazine of more than say 5 shots for semi-auto weapons. I'm not sure how you can keep guns out of people's hands and please most people. Most violent gun crimes are committed with illegally obtained weapons so it may not do too much. However, I'm all for things like this that could reduce the opportunity for mass killings.

QUOTE (Reddy @ Dec 20, 2012 -> 12:10 AM) Like what? I'm sure guns are just as necessary as your car... Protecting the chickens from the coyotes. Keeping the ground squirrels, rats and other rodents from the crops. And I never compared it to a car (reading is a skill) I merely said guns have practical uses and aren't "utterly useless."

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Dec 19, 2012 -> 11:23 PM) Many? If guns went away, what would the true impact be to society? Compare that to taking cars away. Huge difference and you know it. Compared to cars and other motor vehicles, yes. But I wasn't comparing the two. My point was that just because you don't value guns or use them doesn't mean that others don't. I just stated that guns have productive uses and aren't "utterly useless" to everyone. Not having guns would impact the society that I live in. I use them for many practical purposes.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Dec 19, 2012 -> 11:14 PM) If you make a list of the pros and cons of allowing cars in society and allowing guns, the pros for cars would be exponentially higher. As strangesox pointed out the other day, you remove cars from society and the world we know right now would be drastically altered for the worse. Guns, IMO, are a nice to have and utterly unnecessary. That's why we put up with the deaths caused by accidents. Also, cars and drivers are heavily regulated by the government, from emissions standards to annual inspections to safety features, and so forth. You can't legally drive a car that doesn't feature seatbelts, or a car that spews too much exhaust into the air. You have to take both a written and a behind-the-wheel test to get a license to operate a car. You often have to renew that license at regular intervals and, if you're older, you have to prove that you're physically capable of driving a car. You can't drive a car while drinking alcohol or impaired by other chemicals. There are thousands of police officers patrolling our roads and, as most of us have experienced at one time or another, they will penalize or arrest you for improper handling of a car -- with literally hundreds of laws to abide, and considerable penalties, ranging from fines to imprisonment to the government stripping you of your right to drive a car at all. This is the difference. You are forcing your opinion on others and want the government to enforce it. There are many productive uses for guns. Just because you don't agree with it doesn't mean the government should restrict it.

QUOTE (Reddy @ Dec 19, 2012 -> 10:51 PM) My view on guns, posted earlier in the thread: "*Regulations governing how guns are attained* Yes, I think you should be allowed to own a gun if you want to, but there needs to be a thorough background check, waiting period, psychiatric evaluation, and potentially even a registry that shows how many guns and what kind a person has/owns. Don't see what's wrong with all that - in fact, we do all of that when giving someone a driver's license, so why not with guns?" Tell me what's unreasonable about this. All of those currently exist except for the psych evaluation. The only guns not on a registry would be inherited ones. The pych eval is an interesting idea. None of those restrictions would prevent most gun violence. Take the case in Conn. None of that would have prevented it. The guns weren't his and his mother by all accounts would have/did meet all of those restrictions. It was the careless handling/storage of the weapons by the mother that allowed this to happen and I don't know what you can do about that, short of what others have said on this about getting rid of most weapons. This is an unreasonable one.

QUOTE (Reddy @ Dec 19, 2012 -> 10:43 PM) ughhhh now you're comparing manufacturing and safe work environments to gun contol? is there anything you WON'T try to equate with this topic? just ridiculous strawman arguments all around. That is a portion of the point. How much control should the government have in regulating things. There is a limit as to how much the government can control every situation while taking reasonable restrictions. In the case of firearms, making automatic weapons illegal is a reasonable restriction. However, when you just say we need less guns there needs to be a reasonable why to do it without being too restrictive. I haven't heard a reasonable one.

QUOTE (Reddy @ Dec 19, 2012 -> 10:34 PM) sure, absolutely, which is why there are laws AGAINST drinking and driving. is there a law against drinking and owning a gun? Yes. There are laws against shooting people. There are laws against using the guns in unsafe situations. There are plenty of laws against unsafe usage of guns. There are no laws against safe drinking and there are no laws against safe use of a firearm. There is no law against drinking and owning a car and there is no law against drinking and owning a gun. There are laws against drinking and using either.

QUOTE (Jake @ Dec 19, 2012 -> 10:03 PM) Alcohol requires a second step to be dangerous. A bottle of beer is not dangerous. Being drunk is not dangerous (there is a limit here, sure). Being drunk AND driving is dangerous. Being drunk AND wielding a gun is dangerous. People have been drinking beer for about as long as human civilization has existed. Guns are a relatively new invention and particularly, the modern semi-automatic weapon is new -- significantly, it post-dates our constitution. It is rather difficult, comparatively, to use a gun for mere private use. Every time you fire a weapon, there is significant risk. Nobody sits at home on the weekend and fires off their gun, there's almost no place you can live in which it makes sense for you to fire your gun in your home or on your property. This is why you have to go to a club (or Little Caesar's apparently) to shoot your gun. This is why if you go to a gun range and someone unconsciously waves their gun around, everyone in the place ducks for cover. Becoming drunk and dangerous requires a series of calculated decisions and, often, neglect on part of your peers. A gun becomes dangerous the second you're near it. This is why you have to take a class in the state of IL to legally own a firearm or hunt. One unconscious pull of a trigger can be the death of somebody. If I'm simply demented or perhaps even just angry to an unprecedented extent, I can use the gun out of malice and kill people, perhaps many people. There aren't many good uses for alcohol in that situation, save self-medication. They're both dangerous, but they're totally different. One's function is death -- it can be avoided and in most cases is, thanks to so many conscientious gun owners like myself. However, when it functions properly it kills or performs an action that would be lethal if pointed in the right place. Beer's function, primarily, is a beverage and its original use was a matter of nutrition. It was a way to eat barley. You can have too much, which is bad like most things. You can then drive, which is yet another calculated decision that is separate from your drinking too many beers. We should also add that the maximum lethality of a drunk driver is not all that impressive compared to the well-armed gunman. This is not inherently true. Guns can be used for sports, protection, food etc. Just like alcohol, guns are only dangerous in the hands of the wrong person. Nearly all people who own guns have never shot someone nor had their guns used to shoot someone. Same with drinking. Why punish all of the people who use them correctly. So what your saying is that it is the intent that is being punished. It is better to die from a drunk driver than it is by someone with a gun. The original function of each really doesn't matter. It's all in how each is used. In the hands of the wrong person each are lethal. In the hands of the proper person each is safe.

QUOTE (Reddy @ Dec 19, 2012 -> 10:30 PM) *sigh* good point. bad example. they do kill other people. the main crux of my argument remains. guns kill other people who DID NOT CHOOSE to have it happen. not so with drugs etc This is the drunk driver example. More people die at the hands of a drunk driver than with guns. All of the victims were innocent and DID NOT CHOOSE to have it happen.

QUOTE (Reddy @ Dec 19, 2012 -> 10:23 PM) ALCOHOL KILLS YOURSELF, CIGARETTES KILL YOURSELF, DRUGS KILL YOURSELF GUNS KILL OTHER PEOPLE will you stop with the ridiculous fallacious arguments??? It is not ridiculous. Alcohol kills when it impairs the driver and he hits someone. Alcohol is not a danger except in this person. Guns only kill people in the hands of the wrong person.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Dec 19, 2012 -> 09:11 PM) Yes, let's focus on the people who end up harming or killing others because of their easy access to guns.that is the point. Less guns= less gun violence, meaning you have less things to defend yourself against in first place. I'm not sure this is true. It's less guns in the hands of the wrong people=less gun violence. How we accomplish this is the real question.

QUOTE (Quinarvy @ Dec 19, 2012 -> 08:06 PM) That is waaaaay different and you know it. But I'm glad we agree. I don't think it is all that different. Alcohol related deaths outnumber gun related deaths so why is one OK and not the other?

QUOTE (Quinarvy @ Dec 19, 2012 -> 03:20 PM) Oh what the f*** man. Also, my friend put on facebook "No thanks Obama, I'll keep my AK-47." WHY THE f*** DOES A 19 YEAR OLD GIRL IN COLLEGE NEED A GODDAMN AK-47. It's the same argument about needing a beer. You don't need one but want one. How many drunk drivers kill people each year? So let's go back to prohibition to save all of the people which could possibly die in a drunk driving accident. However, I do agree that automatic weapons should be illegal, they do not serve a legal purpose.

QUOTE (JoeCoolMan24 @ Dec 19, 2012 -> 11:07 AM) It was a joke, because lacrosse players are often labeled as being annoying douchebags. Got it. Personally I love them they are the 2nd nuttiest group to work with. Second only to wrestlers. They are also one of the best athletes and extremely fun to watch.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Dec 19, 2012 -> 06:48 AM) Adopting the Chained CPI across the board would effectively be a middle-class tax increase on top of cuts to Social Security and Medicare. Write your Senators and Representatives. You're right in that this was a completely fabricated 'issue' of our own doing in the first place. And like you said, why not just go over the damn cliff if you're getting less tax increases above $250k than you wanted, having to unnecessarily cut entitlement programs and getting little or nothing in return? Obama really does seem to be terrible at negotiating with Republicans, but I'll wait until an official deal is actually presented before completely melting down. I have no problem with tax increases as long as there are spending cuts to go along with it. There is too much of a gap between how much they want to spend and the current revenue. They need to bring it closer togther.

QUOTE (JoeCoolMan24 @ Dec 19, 2012 -> 01:37 AM) Dual sport athlete. Baseball and lacrosse. How is that possible? They are played at the same time in the Spring.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Dec 18, 2012 -> 06:06 PM) Must be awful living life with such paranoia. I think alot of it is just how much control should the government have. I know it's not on the same scale but a good example is the seat belt. When the government mandated them, I remember the commercials the government put out saying "it's for the good and safety for everyone, we will never fine people for not wearing them, it's just too make everyone safer." Fast forward 30 years and there are fines for not wearing them.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Dec 18, 2012 -> 03:03 PM) they're not even subtle about the "compensating" angle Why should they be. They are using an advertising ploy to get people to buy one of their products which is legal. Don't blame a company for trying to make money legally.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Dec 17, 2012 -> 04:21 PM) Depends on your definition of "need". All of the examples you used could be solved through other methods (compound bow, fence, trap, etc.) But the gun is an effective tool. Most reasonable people recognize this. Its just there needs to be some recognition that you dont need a 30 clip magazine to effectively prevent squirrels or any other animal. A bolt loading rifle could handle many of those jobs, and unless someone has great proficiency they are unlikely to get as many shots off as they would with a semi-auto. I agree with the concept. Your other options are not as effective as a gun. I use a lever action personally. Semi-auto aren't as much fun either in my view. This is why I would not be in favor of an overall gun ban or restriction.

QUOTE (Lamar Johnson 23 @ Dec 18, 2012 -> 03:34 PM) Alejandro DeAza is no Mike Trout! Are you old enough to remember Mark "The Bird" Fidrych? Google him, look at his rookie numbers, then look what he did after. See also Kerry Wood, Dwight Gooden, Jerome Walton, Mark Prior, etc. The prime example is "Super" Joe Charbeneau. THE ROY in 1980 I think. He won the ROY and was out of baseball in just a couple of years. I doubt it happens to Trout as it doesnt happen often. However, it does happen.

QUOTE (TaylorStSox @ Dec 18, 2012 -> 04:20 PM) Pickle juice? I'm going to switch to a glass of 1% chocolate milk and a bowl of oatmeal after my morning workout and a protein shake before bed and go from there. Pickle juice is the original gatorade. It has the sodium and such that muscle need for energy. The basis of the krebs cycle is the Na and K (potassium). This is how energy is developed. It works well and many colleges use it because it's cheap (the leftovers that the cafeteria would throw away). Your routine looks good. Just make sure it's well rounded.