Balta1701

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Apr 10, 2013 -> 04:04 PM) He was never really going to go to Indiana. And apparently he was never really going to go to Notre Dame. And he's really going to Cincinnati?

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Apr 10, 2013 -> 04:10 PM) Depends on if his arm blows up again or not. Josh Hamilton might serve as an interesting example of what can happen if you have some pretty large questions surrounding your long term viability as a baseball player. I wonder if Straus runs into the same thing in a few years? If he stays healthy through his arb years, at that point people will assume the injury is behind him. AJ Burnett and Adam Wainright got big paydays several years after TJS, each closing in on $100 million. Neither of them seems to have wound up with much of a "Post TJS discount" in their contracts; Burnett in particular was huge money given his performance level.

QUOTE (ChiSox_Sonix @ Apr 10, 2013 -> 03:48 PM) Gunner Kiel transferring to Cincinnati. Big get for that program For the next 2 months until he transfers again.

QUOTE (illinilaw08 @ Apr 10, 2013 -> 01:47 PM) Anybody on here cycle? I'm looking to pick up a road bike and add cycling as low impact cross training to running. There's a bike shop near my house I'm going to check out tonight. Any thoughts? Cycling is an enjoyable way to get around. What sort of thoughts are you looking for?

Full column-length piece at ESPN basically featuring "Paul Konerko talking about hitting".

QUOTE (Iwritecode @ Apr 10, 2013 -> 01:34 PM) It is reality though. Look at the attendance from 2005 and 2006. Guess which one is higher? But since they didn't do anything in 2006 it went down in 2007. The previous season absolutely matters. Don't forget how important it is to be able to package the next year's season tickets along with playoff tickets. 2006 the season tickets were sold along with 2005 playoff tickets.

Warm out today. Warm yesterday. Even warmer today. Floyd weather.

QUOTE (Athomeboy_2000 @ Apr 9, 2013 -> 09:51 PM) This weeks episode of Revolution jumped the shark for me. THAT/THOSE are what caused the blackout? seriously?? You know, I could actually buy that explanation, but going with the other plot element , that's just so overdone.

QUOTE (Quinarvy @ Apr 9, 2013 -> 11:09 PM) Every time I see this I just die inside a little Bears are godless killing machines. Hairless bears obviously would be more effective killing machines since they'll have less drag.

QUOTE (Benchwarmerjim @ Apr 9, 2013 -> 09:57 PM) Escobar hit a HR. to the power alley. opposite field. where did that come from? a stiff 20 mph wind to LF blowing in KC Eduardo? (Seriously, this is MLB, you can't just use "Escobar".)

Harrell ought to fit somewhere on that list, even if he only is with the Stros.

The Nats announcer totally called that pitch

QUOTE (Harry Chappas @ Apr 9, 2013 -> 04:45 PM) Agreed the pitch was not that bad. Mlbn made a huge issue about it as well. God I hope they do not turn into ESPN. Did the game involve the Yankees or Red Sox?

QUOTE (bigruss22 @ Apr 9, 2013 -> 04:25 PM) Almost anything digitally delivered is going to have good margins, it's typically the physical hardware that makes little money to actually losing money in some cases. The one thing Im not sure about is ebooks, while you would assume they are making a killing off of them, I haven't seen a drastic decrease in price for the actual ebook downloads. This either means the publisher is charging the same/more, or Amazon is keeping the extra profits. Even a year ago in college, the books I bought straight from the publisher that were ebook rentals, were just as much a typical text book (around $100). Or the ebook distributors are colluding to keep prices high.

QUOTE (Jake @ Apr 9, 2013 -> 04:20 PM) How do you the think the margins are in ebooks? Do they do any of their own publishing? Seems like only a matter of time before they would. I assume the Kindle has nice margins as well, but that will have constant and cutthroat competition as well -- especially given it doesn't have a strong argument as better product. Yes, they do some publsihing.

QUOTE (lostfan @ Apr 9, 2013 -> 03:57 PM) Rubio's situation is different because he came back at more like 80% and used the playing as rehab to get to 100%. Which is what you see players do, most of the time. Of course, it's also worth noting that it may be impossible to come back at >80% because it takes time for anyone recovering from that style of injury to get the feel of game action and get their cardio caught up with the rest of the league.

QUOTE (lostfan @ Apr 9, 2013 -> 02:49 PM) There's literally no better time to take on a project like that. While people are more or less paying you to hold their money. Which is why we're doing the exact opposite (Sequester yeah!)

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Apr 9, 2013 -> 02:44 PM) That chart shows that they didn't cross 20 until about 98. (I coudln't read the scale that easily myself so I downloaded the spreadsheet). You can clearly see in the data that it starts taking off in 1995 and doesn't look back. By1997 it was in "unusual" territory and we went from there. The average P/E ratio through 1996 and the first half of 1997 was 33.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Apr 9, 2013 -> 02:41 PM) It wasn't until 1998 where PE ratios were rocketing above 20. Below 20 is average, even now. You say that like I didn't download the data. P/E ratios crossed 30 in early 1997.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Apr 9, 2013 -> 02:36 PM) Nothing. It was going to pop one way or another, and all they did to "control it" did absolutely nothing, if not make things even worse. The .com bubble lasted all of 2 years. People make it sound like something that spanned decades. Control was an illusion, and all they did with the interest rates made it even worse on the fall as when the bubble popped we were stuck with massively inflated interest rates for quarters to come. The only thing that stops any kind of bubble is conservative investing, something most people don't do, because fad investing is the cool thing to do. I'd actually say it was about a 5-6 year bubble if you look at P/E ratios: PE ratios cross 20 at the start of 1995 and continually rose until the peak (with one notch associated with the asian economic crisis and the LTCM bailout)

QUOTE (lostfan @ Apr 9, 2013 -> 02:28 PM) Go back in time. Advise Greenspan's father to take a cold shower, give him condoms. Give Greenspan's mother birth control pills. You know, there was one thing Greenspan did that actually helped a whole lot of people. There was enormous pressure on him around 1996 to start raising interest rates because there was a generally believed rule that anything under 5% unemployment rates would rapidly lead to inflation surges. Greenspan didn't listen to those folks, and as a consequence we wound up with unemployment rates closing in on 3% and the only period in the last 35 years where there has been actual wage growth for anyone but the investor class.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Apr 9, 2013 -> 02:25 PM) Yea, can't say I'm a fan of his either. I remember that douche trying to "control the .com economy" by inflating interest rates on what seemed like a weekly basis back then. He was one of those that were arrogant enough to actually believe he [they] had control of it in the first place. Serious Q in reply: what should have been done in 2000 then? There was an enormous, unsupported, multi-trillion dollar asset bubble sitting there (with a few hundred billion in fraud thrown in for good measure). Should they have continued to let it grow? Somehow attempt to pop it more slowly? The right answer ought to be to have regulations and actions that prevent the development of such an asset bubble, but by 2000 that ship had sailed, so what do you do?

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Apr 9, 2013 -> 02:00 PM) Are you guys seriously contending that the idea that government will back a risky mortgage doesn't play into the thought process of a lender? That the government creating a program back in the 40's or whatever it was to lend to low and middle class people didn't change the risk tolerance of lenders? You don't think it created a shift in lending practices when I no longer accept 20% down but can now accept 5%? We've heard this sort of reaction before...but really there's one statement missing from this which is totally implied throughout it: everyone in the entire financial industry is an idiot. And you know what, I'm not sure its wrong. For this logic to follow, it implies that the entire financial industry has absolutely no idea how to assess risk. They see that 1 loan in 1 place makes money and therefore assume that all loans must make money and dump tens of trillions of dollars into it with no assessment of the actual risks or reasons why that one particular loan made money. Basically it paints the entire financial industry as a bunch of lemmings jumping over a cliff faster than the one before.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Apr 9, 2013 -> 01:37 PM) I agree with what you're saying generally, but the counter to that argument is that had the government not meddled with the private mortgage business over the last 50 years the housing bubble would have never burst. There would have been no government backing mortgages, there would have been no forcing banks to loan to people who shouldn't have purchased homes, down payment requirements would have been higher, etc. The result would be that banks wouldn't have been so risky with their money and they would have loaned at much more reasonable level. You can't really blame it on the no-rules free market when that free market doesn't exist. Virtually none of that is true, just so it's said. The number of loans banks were "forced" to make was tiny and those didn't fail nearly as often as the ones they made by choice. Virtually none of the "Sub prime market" or the Alt-A market were forced upon banks; they did that entirely by choice. If the government did something that allowed banks to be risky with their money, it was allowing them to grow to a scale where they realized they had an implicit guarantee beyond what their own assets provided.

QUOTE (lostfan @ Apr 9, 2013 -> 01:32 PM) The main thing you need to succeed under Thibs is discipline (basketball-related, that is). For as much as I've dogged Rose the past few weeks, he's always had this in spades. Rose happens to be exceptionally talented, so it works out. But look at a guy like Joakim Noah. Dude was a god damn clown when they drafted him and to some extent he still is. However he was willing to be pushed and do what it takes to win, as corny as that sounds, and Thibs will push you hard. Of course you need talent but you've got to be able to put in work or else you become Tyrus Thomas. I've wondered for the last couple years what would have become of a guy like Thomas if he'd come into the league and had Thibs as his coach. He seems to be a lot better at getting the point across to guys than Skiles ever was, and he's much more deserving of employment than VDN, so who knows.