Balta1701

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Jan 7, 2013 -> 08:44 AM) Not very well? He blew out his ACL once in college, and was very vague in his postgame comments on whether he thought he did it again. I can't believe he'd have been walking around on the sidelines if he had a torn ACL. If nothing else I have to figure they'd immobilize it and be icing it, particularly in preparation for the surgery.

QUOTE (SOXOBAMA @ Jan 6, 2013 -> 07:21 PM) All 4 games next week should be exciting to watch. Seahawks, 49ers, Pats and Broncos will all win. No body will be saying the NFC West is weak anymore Again, I'll take the Packers. Manning Brady in the AFC, rematch of the "Replacement Ref" showdown in the NFC.

QUOTE (Buehrle>Wood @ Jan 6, 2013 -> 07:16 PM) He should not have been out there but looks like his leg just happen to bend aka Rose. Manning the sidelines now, maybe he's miraculously all right. It looked bad. Rose, I don't recall anything happening other than him landing and then going to the ground. If RG3 legitimately twisted his knee, that's a sprain, but not necessarily a tear. Andrews himself is on the sideline. If he'd torn anything, he wouldn't be walking.

QUOTE (lord chas @ Jan 6, 2013 -> 07:10 PM) Pencil the Redskins in for last place next year He's just walking around on the sideline. If it was that serious, he would not be doing so. Probably re-sprained the joint. Recovery time on the order of weeks, maybe a couple months.

QUOTE (SOXOBAMA @ Jan 6, 2013 -> 07:13 PM) Nick Friedell ‏@NickFriedell If people thought Thibs got crushed for leaving DRose in the game late wait til they see what happens to Mike Shanahan after this one. At least here the game wasn't over...

QUOTE (zenryan @ Jan 6, 2013 -> 07:11 PM) Shanahan should be ashamed of himself. I feel he just didn't want to take the blame for taking him out if he was able to still walk.

QUOTE (Buehrle>Wood @ Jan 6, 2013 -> 07:10 PM) RG3 just snapped his knee. Brutal. Didn't have really much to do with his previous injuries though. Just no way the 2nd part of that is true. When you're playing on 1 and a half legs, you're stressing that thing in all sorts of weird ways. My right knee definitely agrees with that.

QUOTE (Rowand44 @ Jan 6, 2013 -> 07:08 PM) RGIII is game over. I respect the hell out of him but I would have went Cousins here in the 4th, he's hurting big time. Yeah, by the 3rd quarter it was clear he just couldn't help them out there. They were going with him because he's the starter, but they were hurting their chances at winning by keeping him in there...and then that.

QUOTE (SOXOBAMA @ Jan 6, 2013 -> 06:26 PM) That I am not to sure of.. I might have missed the news http://www.tomahawknation.com/2013/1/3/383...enior-nfl-draft

QUOTE (SOXOBAMA @ Jan 6, 2013 -> 05:31 PM) 99% of the NFL teams would love to have the Niners D. So every team in the NFL except for 1/3 of the 49ers would love to have their D?

QUOTE (SOXOBAMA @ Jan 6, 2013 -> 05:11 PM) They should take out RG3. Cousins can finish off the S'Hawks Dr. James Andrews is actually on the Redskins sidelines examining Griffin.

Hey, I finally found this article randomly today. I kept wanting to find this, because I think it's a fascinating statistic. It's quite well established that crime in general has been dropping in this country since about 1990, even in places like Chicago that are quite messy these days. At the same time, homicides by guns have been dropping, and the number of guns owned by people have been increasing. The increasing gun ownership and decreasing homicides might well have been something people would argue is a sign that more guns = a safer country. Turns out there's one more element buried in there; emergency care. The number of people shot in this country, per year, has skyrocketed by 50% as the number of guns has gone up. Basically, more guns and more people carrying them = more people getting shot, and the fewer deaths has been almost entirely due to improved emergency health care. Of course, it's hard to track the numbers exactly since the government has banned anyone from tracking them, so they had to go to hospital stats to get those numbers (ridiculous again), but 10,000 more people hospitalized from gunshots per year is a huge signal. Found that to be fairly startling.

Even though it doesn't change anything....nice Tackle Luck!

What a half for Boldin

QUOTE (Heads22 @ Jan 6, 2013 -> 01:56 PM) The first one's probably not going to be. Pretty solid so far.

QUOTE (SOXOBAMA @ Jan 6, 2013 -> 01:42 PM) Obama should just use the 14th amm. Terrible idea. First, attempting it leaves the entire effort rapidly vulnerable to a court challenge, which could declare the actions illegal afterwards, throwing the world into chaos in response (same argument I made against the coin thing). This one is worse though, because you have to consider the reaction of the financial markets. If the treasury attempted to print treasury bonds past that limit, someone would still have to buy those bonds. However, you're trying to sell bonds that are at best of questionable legality and most likely subject to ongoing court cases. Its difficult to see how those would be well received on an open market.

QUOTE (2nd_city_saint787 @ Jan 5, 2013 -> 09:38 PM) Berkman to the Rangers per ESPN. Took me a few minutes to remember that Michael Young was traded so their DH spot is open.

Ok CBS, I know you need to make your money, but "right after a turnover on what appears to be a questionable call when it'd be really nice to see 8 replays" is not the time.

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Jan 6, 2013 -> 12:37 PM) Haha. Bruce Arians won't coach today. Clyde Christensen to coach. Arians hospitalized with flu. NBC described it as "An episode" a moment ago rather than the flu, included talk of severe headaches, which is at the very least concerning.

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Jan 5, 2013 -> 08:07 PM) The Texans better find that extra gear, because the Patriots will tear them apart next week if they play like that again. Cincinnati's defense was #6 on the year in yards given up, behind the #5 Bears and ahead of the #7 Texans. It's not supposed to be easy to move the ball against them. The Patriots are the 25th defense in yards given up. The Texans will be able to move the ball easier next week, they'd hope.

The NBC Pregame crew has left me wondering why Ponder even starts if having Joe Webb in makes the Vikings this much more dangerous.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Jan 5, 2013 -> 06:39 PM) Thank you for this, I find this fascinating. Let me ask you a question...and bare with me, I've been drinking a little, so these might be rapid fire questions. Being that the New Madrid, albeit very stable at the moment, has produced very huge quakes in the past and suddenly went dormant (didn't it reverse the course of the Mississippi it hit so hard at one point?), why don't we take extra precautions on our Nuclear Power Plants to defend them from such a recurrence of a quake? It's my understanding, that in comparison to an equal Richter scale quake that once hit the Candlestick Park area of California (I'd like to say San Andreas?), if the same sized quake hit the New Madrid, wouldn't it's area of affect be absolutely massive in comparison? As I understand it, the Nuclear Power Plants in our area would actually be hit and possibly go into meltdown because of a similar quake. Why are scientists THAT convinced it won't happen? Is it because of the lack of rock formations at New Madrid that keep it contained? Or have I simply been massively misinformed on this? The one that hit the 1989 world series was actually on one of the faults close to the San Andreas, like the Hector Mine and Landers ones I referred to earlier. The stresses that are absorbed by the rocks surrounding the San Andreas have built the hills/coast ranges in California, with various faults running through them. One of those faults broke in 1989, producing a magnitude ~7 earthquake. The San Andreas in that area breaking again would be a repeat of 1906, a magnitude 8 event that would do an enormous amount of damage. In terms of New Madrid itself, when you go to the map, there's actually a pretty wide berth around the epicenter of the 1811-1812 quakes and any nuclear plants (look at the Missouri bootheel, that's basically the heart of the damage zone from those, it literally wound up in Missouri because the damage from those quakes made that land cheap and a Missouri businessman got his hands on it). Western-Central Arkansas, Eastern/Central Tennessee, a couple in the heart of IL and MO. So that's at least something. But honestly, in the event of a magnitude 8 event on New Madrid, the safety of those in southern IL and MO might well rely on the safety systems in the plants. If you recall the East Coast quake 2 years ago...that one was large enough that it was beyond the safety limits for the closest nuclear plant, if only slightly. It didn't take serious damage, but the fact that they only had that thing rigged for a magnitude ~5.8 event was fairly disheartening. Hopefully if they've built those things in that area, they've got them up to snuff to sustain a magnitude 7+ event, but if I can be pessimistic for a minute...Fukushima was supposed to be safe from the quake, and we saw quite readily what simply disabling the pumping systems did to that plant. There are also a couple nuclear plants within the potential damage zones of faults, including the San Andreas, in California, one of which (San Onofre) is already shut down because of excessive mechanical failures. People have been worried about how those reactors would react to a well positioned earthquake for years, and although they say they're built to sustain those ground motions...I'll still call myself worried because of all of the interdependent systems. Simply knocking off the piping to the backup pumps was enough to cause a meltdown in Japan. The question for all of these then is how reliable the Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensing is, because that's what we're counting on to ensure survivability.

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Jan 5, 2013 -> 04:56 PM) Really? Is Ponder officially out? I read the word bursitis on him a bit ago, but this writer still seems to be saying he'll start.

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Jan 5, 2013 -> 04:54 PM) Not me. Got the game on with no issues. Just fine for me also

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Jan 4, 2013 -> 01:31 PM) Shouldn't say "not prone" but "less prone". The problem is, and most people seem to ignore this, is that I guarantee it's infinity cheaper for me to insure my home in Chicago, than is for someone to insure a home of equal value in one of these disaster zones. The New Madrid fault is probably the most dangerous fault line in the US, however, it's SO dormant, it baffles scientists as to why it hardly moves anymore. Average fault lines move like 1-2 inches a year...the new Madrid moves like 0.14 inches, which is uncommon. My numbers could be off on that, because I'm repeating from memory, but they're probably not far off. The New Madrid is so dormant, insurance companies don't even consider it a risk at this point. Ok. Lotsa issues to deal with here. First, use centimeters, it's so much nicer. Anyway, you're correct in several important ways, but fault systems like New Madrid are so complex its hard to say exactly what things matter. The San Andreas fault moves along at about 3-4 centimeters per year. It's a very well defined system along a plate boundary. Generally, if you do the same math you do here and say "how long does it take about 5 meters to build up", you get an answer of about 100 years, which would give you a 100 year recurrence interval. (By the way, 1906...107 years ago, and 1857 was the last quake on the middle section of the San Andreas just north of L.A.). Unfortunately, the Earth never works this way, even when it seems to be simple. Give you a few examples. The Southern Section of the San Andreas, down by San Diego, hasn't broken in over 300 years. Honestly, it doesn't make sense why it hasn't. There should have been enough motion on that section to produce several large earthquakes. A good rule of thumb in geology, I've found, is that once you calculate a recurrence interval for a fault...you'll find that the fault is overdue by a factor of 4. The other complicated thing that happens...not all the motion between the 2 plates happens on the San Andreas. About 20% of the motion winds up absorbed by North America. It's created a series of faults around L.A. and out through the Mojave desert, that are on their own capable of producing large earthquakes. 2 of them happened in the 1990's, Landers and Hector mine, both magnitude ~7 earthquakes. So, when things are moving, they don't necessarily move simply. You can build up stress on many different faults close in next to each other, and that motion can be released in complicated patterns that are impossible to predict. So, to New Madrid. Its not at a plate boundary, so right away we have a problem, because that means the motion is much harder to figure out. It's probably being driven by the rocks nearby relaxing after the last ice sheet's weight was removed (think of it like a pillow on your couch popping back up after you stand up). Everything's trying to move upwards, but some parts have to move upwards more than others. In a couch cushion that's easy, in real rocks, it's hard, because rocks are hard to break. If we do that same math, 1 cm a year, gives a recurrence interval of 500 years for a 5 meter displacement. That actually doesn't work that badly, there's good evidence for earthquakes at abour 1450, 900, and 300 a.d. (give or take 50-100 years on the dates). Prior to that though, we lose some of the record, but everyone seems to find a big swarm at around 2350 b.c. But think about this...if the Southern San Andreas is 3x overdue, then doesn't that mean there would need to be 2-3 quakes, at some point, to make up the difference? These systems are messy. It's been 200 years since the last swarm. It could be another day, it could be another 200 years. The best way to talk about these winds up being in terms of probability. The numbers I see say, for example, the southern San Andreas ought to go within 50 years, so there's about a 2% chance per year of it being the year. New Madrid ought to go within the next 500 years, so maybe there's a 0.1-0.5% chance of it going per year, if things work that way. That means it's 1/4-1/20 as likely to go as the southern san andreas. That's still a fairly substantial risk...and it's hard to do that math better. Since we don't have a complete record of every quake, there could have been a 2000 year gap in there that we haven't been able to measure. Or, movement could be particularly fast right now because of how the surface is adjusting to the ice removal. In terms of the insurance though, the area itself is much worse than L.A. The area around New Madrid is flat and old crust. Remember how that small East Coast earthquake was felt in canada, 1000's of km away? Old, slow crust translates energy through it much easier than broken up materials like L.A. So, a New Madrid quake will cause damage over a much larger area. Furthermore, the material around those sites (St. Louis, Memphis) is all river sediments. River sediments are terribly weak under earthquake stresses (they're the materials that undergo liquefaction). They shift all over the place and lose their strength. L.A. has other problems, but Structure collapse will be a much more major issue if the New Madrid area goes. Roads, buildings, infrastructure will take a major hit over a very wide area. That's in addition to the fact that L.A. has simply built their buildings to a higher standard than New Madrid. So yeah, there's still a substantial earthquake risk in the heart of this country. It's probably comparable to the risk facing Seattle or Portland. L.A. is more likely, Seattle/Portland would be more powerful at the source but weaker once it hit the cities, New Madrid would be particularly devastating to structures because of what the area is made of.