Balta1701

QUOTE (bigruss22 @ Feb 5, 2013 -> 03:01 PM) There would be national security concerns with a vast dependence on solar as a primary energy source with that little of a backup (think the Matrix haha). Compare that to the national security concerns of a vast dependence on fossil fuels which are found overseas in highly unstable areas?

QUOTE (iamshack @ Feb 5, 2013 -> 02:59 PM) I'm not sure about that...it would take a hell of a lot of planned storage if that is the case. Yup. I just compare that to the costs of Sandy + Katrina and say...well...that $200 billion would have been a great downpayment on it.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Feb 5, 2013 -> 02:46 PM) I really wonder if they can do anything about those guys anyway. The only "proof" is their names on the guy's notes. How does anyone know for sure that what was given in the notes was actually given and if the MLB players mentioned in the notes were actually the people given the juice. If anything, wouldn't someone use an assumed name when going to these types of places? Especially with as much to lose as an MLB player? Think about the other things you'd be doing at the same time though...in order to have your name unaffiliated, you'd have to have the distributor agree to it, you'd have to have a way of paying the distributor without a direct financial record being generated (which is going to start bordering on money laundering really quick), you have to find a way to have people other than the distributor deliver the injections and supplies to you...you have to involve multiple people so there's not one person always traveling to your location from the clinic... Now you're talking about a conspiracy. You're talking about a web of people who might know enough to realize...they can go to the press and get a payday by revealing what they know, and they can trade what they know for legal immunity.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Feb 5, 2013 -> 02:38 PM) Obviously this varies by season and location. For most locations, there is a peak in the morning when most people wake up and start stirring, businesses start opening, etc. Then the demand gradually rises as more people filter into work later in the day. Then in the early to late afternoon, demand generally drops off a bit as businesses start closing and people start heading home from school and work. Then usually around 5-7 pm there is another peak (the largest peak) where folks get home and begin cooking and watching tv and people head into bars and bowling alleys. As far as I know, as a general rule, almost everyone has their highest demand during the evening peak. Here's a summer version of the graph from Dallas, TX. Also worth noting...in a city, you also have to consider the urban heat island effect, so a city takes longer to cool off in the evening anyway.

QUOTE (farmteam @ Feb 5, 2013 -> 02:32 PM) Probably the best comparison, though the torture memo isn't as cut-and-dry as the media wants people to think. This probably isn't either... Which means the proper response would be legislation to fix those loopholes. I could even tolerate something like the FISA court existing for this type of case, where I don't even have to see it or know about it unless I'm put on that list for some reason. But the reality is...Congress isn't going to react to protect the rights of accused terrorists. They're evil, and that's the standard. It's not getting as much press coverage as it should either...same reason. It's old news. The administration is killing a bunch of people with flying machines of death, some of them are occasionally bad people, and so it's ok.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Feb 5, 2013 -> 02:21 PM) ok, perhaps i'm wrong. I didn't see it on any news coverage this morning on TV and it's not on cnn.com right now. NBC was actually the ones who uncovered the white paper, and I'll happily applaud them. They did a good journalistic service here. It'd be very nice if there was actually some bit of public discussion on this, I think the lack of judicial review is appalling. But I know when I say those same things about the U.S. actually killing a legit terrorist, I hear crickets. Even if you note the huge number of collateral casualties, which the US DOD simply denies exist in one of the sickest jokes around.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Feb 5, 2013 -> 02:16 PM) aren't peak loads during the day, at least where solar is practical, because of A/C loads? Somewhat...but the suns intensity starts declining after noon, while heat continues. ACs and heat often continue throughout the evening and through the night as well. The real problem is that you have to have something that can match the max capacity at each hour. If the sun has lost most of its intensity by 7 p.m. (say it's declined 90%), but power consumption has only declined 10%, then you have an 80% gap to make up. That gap will narrow as AC loads decrease, but your infrastructure has to be able to fill that entire gap at its largest point. Worse, it isn't a zero-sum game to turn a power plant on and off. A coal plant, for example, takes a lot of energy to heat up to the point where it can generate electricity. It's horribly inefficient to operate a plant like that for 3 hours a day. There are ways to do that. A smart nationwide grid could do it. Solar combined with integrated storage systems can do so. Combining solar and wind can help. Solar, Wind, and a small gas backup system, with planned storage...could do it...probably right now...but now you're back to talking about a major, national investment to pull it off.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Feb 5, 2013 -> 02:11 PM) Something tells me that if a Republican administration (and a President with a last name rhyming with "push") concluded this, the media would have caved in on themselves. But Obama? Nothing to see here, move along. http://openchannel.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/...-americans?lite It's also showed up on basically every website I read, with words like chilling, murder applied to it. If you're genuinely outraged by it I'm happy to note agreement with that...yet somehow I'm skeptical that it's even worth my time.

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Feb 5, 2013 -> 12:40 PM) I just realized that could totally screw over the White Sox playoff chances, along with the other AL Central/East teams. Oakland/Anaheim/Texas/Seattle all get 18-19 games against a AAA roster, while the Sox only get 7 games vs. Houston. That's a huge advantage in the wild card race. We get what, 36-38 games against Minnesota and Cleveland?

QUOTE (bigruss22 @ Feb 5, 2013 -> 12:25 PM) That's great to see, how does that compare to other renewable sources and non-renewable resources? The biggest problem with Solar continues to be that it's not a baseload power source. If you can use the solar power immediately, in much of the country it's actually cheaper per KWH than coal to generate...but it doesn't always work. There's no great storage capacity, clouds do happen, and there's a requirement to continue having power generated during the evening after the sun has gone down...all of which require additional infrastructure...and that infrastructure is where the cost is.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Feb 5, 2013 -> 11:02 AM) Cooper's biggest fix was Thornton and it had nothing to do with dialing back on his fastball. In fact, when it is down 1 or 2 MPH, people complain. In fact, I think people thinking dialing back on the fastball as something Cooper stresses is as much a fallacy as the Greg Walker lift and pull. He really stresses a consistant delivery. I added an extra clause there about trying to overthrow being one of the issues with Thornton. He wasn't really gaining anything velocity-wise by doing so, but Cooper got him into that incredibly smooth motion where it doesn't seem at all like he's trying to throw that hard.

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Feb 5, 2013 -> 10:09 AM) Plus, the Justin Verlander factor gives them such an advantage. When you have a SP who is all but guaranteed to give you 225+ innings of Cy Young caliber pitching, that is huge. The amazing thing is, Chris Sale has a legit shot at outpitching him. High quality stuff...from the left hand side. The difference is...Verlander's done the innings before. If the Sox hadn't put Sale in the bullpen for a season and hung another 150 innings on his arm in 2011, where last year's load wasn't such a huge jump, I could be thinking the other way.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Feb 5, 2013 -> 10:05 AM) Likely Reckling. Moskos went from pure power to essentially a junk pitcher, and those types just don't have a lot of success. Brackman has a ton of potential but also has a bit of Andy Sisco syndrome. Reckling's problems seem largely correctable and he could turn into a back of the rotation starter in time. The odds really of any of them doing much is still incredibly small. One thing I'd keep in mind is how "Coops fixem" technique works. Generally, he seems like he has guys dial back on the fastball as a tradeoff for improved control, or at least dial back on the wildness/tendency to overthrow the fastball. That's what I think of when I think of Floyd, that's what I think of with Thornton, Freddy Garcia, Jon Garland, Humber, etc. He also has had people do things like "Get rid of the cut fastball if that's causing you problems (Humber)". The guy who strikes me as a candidate to succeed doing those type of things is Brackman. He sounds like a guy who struggles with command but still has the fastball...so he has some room to dial it down into the low to mid 90's in exchange for some control.

This graphic from the Guardian shows how every team in the NFL has used its cap space, broken down by offense/defense and by position. One could waste a coupel hours in this. Bears spent the 5th most on their offense in the league.

QUOTE (God Loves The Infantry @ Feb 5, 2013 -> 03:47 AM) Twice I’ve typed this stupid thing up, and twice this stupid government computer has deleted it. So the explanation gets shorter each time. I can’t find the chart I used last time. But basically, I took the common numbers of 310 million guns owned by 80 million people. I took the FBI’s 2009 statistics, where the violent crimes committed with firearms added up to roughly 307,000. You do the math and the ratio comes out to 260 to 1, not 280 as I previously stated. The FBI does not compile weapons use statistics when it comes to rape, which is tragically underreported anyway. But even if you assume that all 94,000 or so of 2009’s rapes were committed with a gun, which is obviously not even close to true, the ratio only drops to 200 to 1. Now, we could even throw in accidental non-lethal shootings (roughly 23,000) and suicides (roughly 19,000). Do the math again, from our number of 307,000, and it comes out to 229 to 1. If you do it to include our bloated rape assumption, it comes out to 180 to 1. There are things I can’t account for. Not every violent crime is reported. Not every gun criminal is counted as one of my 80 million gun owners (Chris Kyle’s killer, as a recent example). Some criminals steal guns; should the people the guns were stolen from be counted as “bad gun owners” for allowing it to happen? Also, not every one of these 300-400 thousand violent gun crimes is committed by a different person. So the numbers are not perfect. But I think it’s an absolutely fair point to say that overarching gun laws will end up punishing a lot of people who had never done an indecent thing with their weapons. SO it's 1 out of 180 per year? So over say, a 45 year period known as a lifetime...the average comes down to 1 in 4?

QUOTE (ScottyDo @ Feb 4, 2013 -> 11:21 PM) I was pretty much with him until he said the Tigers had the best rotation in the division "by a long shot". You can argue that their rotation is better than the Sox', but not by a whole lot. I'll give him that, at least on paper. The Sox have a ton more question marks in their rotation when you count durability. The Tigers top 3 have a much longer history of reliability.

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Feb 4, 2013 -> 10:18 PM) Once they settle their pre-arb cases, the Astros payroll is gonna be $25 million. $5 million of that is for Wandy Rodriguez, who pitches for the Pirates. Didn't the union get some ability to file a grievance against teams that do this? And anyway...this is clearly the rebuilding path the Chisox need to follow.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Feb 4, 2013 -> 06:13 PM) Yeah Teague and Butler are polar opposites. Jimmy was a low ceiling high floor guy who spent four years in college. Teague is a high ceiling low floor guy who spent only one year in college. He's doing an impressive job for a low ceiling guy.

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Feb 4, 2013 -> 05:44 PM) Funny, I bought a gun at an auction and had to wait 3 days to get it while they did yet another background check on me, then had to have it sent to a FFL before I could pick it up, had to show 2 forms of ID as well and pay yet more fees. Which is exactly how it should be. That's the case if you go to a licensed dealer. But by most estimates, about 40% of gun purchases are not conducted that way, they go through the "Gun show loophole" where no license is necessary. The Congress kept that loophole open under the excuse of not wanting to regulate a guy selling his gun to his neighbor, but the end result is that a substantial fraction of gun purchases go through nothing like what you went through.

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Feb 4, 2013 -> 05:39 PM) And nobody anywhere ever said we should allow 'unlimited sales'. You just threw that in there to be absurd and over the top like usual. Effectively this is the case right now though. Thanks to the gun show loophole, anyone who has money can buy a gun from a private seller without a background check. Anyone. It doesn't have to be legal for that person to do so. There is literally no way of enforcing the rules on who can buy a gun when this loophole sits there. There's a website version of Craigslist that effectively does just that, for crying out loud. Anyone who wants to avoid being background checked can go there and find a private seller in an organized way.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Feb 4, 2013 -> 05:14 PM) Creating legislation that would negatively impact tens of millions of people for the sake of literally a single digit number of people is pretty much the definition of failing the strict scrutiny test. Your sole example of a negative impact upon you was that it's more fun at the shooting range to have a large magazine. You're willing to trade the life of a single 9 year old girl for that?

QUOTE (farmteam @ Feb 4, 2013 -> 05:05 PM) I'm imagining a big, giant-like body in an Uncle Sam hat, with a steel arm that has "God Loves the Infantry" imprinted on it.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Feb 4, 2013 -> 05:05 PM) First off, my scenario would be that when I go to the range I'd rather not change clips multiple times. So there's your scenario. Second, this is not OUR burden here, it's yours. Like it or not, guns are a constitutionally protected right, so you need to provide a pretty good reason, narrowly tailored, to curb that right. Your fear of being a victim of cross-fire in a fantasy world where every gun owner is a Rambo wannabe doesn't work. Great. So if I can cite specific examples of people who'd be alive today if those had been banned, and no one can cite an actual situation other than "it's fun!" for why they should be legal, they should be banned? The arizona shooting spree is a great one. The shooter was stopped when he stopped to reload. That gave the people nearby their chance to go at him. The 9 year old girl was one of the last ones hit before he had to reload.

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Feb 4, 2013 -> 04:37 PM) So because I have yet to need 10 shots, I don't need 10 shots. That seems to be what you are saying there. Guess you can also predict the future. Frankly, yes. The worst situation you can imagine, multiple people coming at you, by your own admission, you might have gotten 2 or 3 of them before they started shooting back. So by the time you're getting off that 10th shot, the 4-5 of them still standing have each opened fire in response, repeatedly. The only situation where those last 7 shots, or 20 shots, whatever...would be useful, is if they're not shooting back. In other words, a massacre.

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Feb 4, 2013 -> 04:32 PM) Well in your world simply because I HAD the gun I should have turned all Rambo and jumped out there guns ablazin' trying to take them all out with my movie-style never-ending clip. The gun was my last resort, which I take seriously. otherwise I could have shot first, probably got 2 or 3 before they started running and firing back. guess that eeeevil gun didn't manage to take me over that day. Just to note again...this entire topic came up because I asked if you'd had any situation where you used 10+ shots.