Balta1701

Oh, I don't know if others missed this since the U.S. refused to confirm it, but a high-level official in France came forwards and said that one of the bombs was 17 minutes away from detonation when it was disarmed.

QUOTE (lostfan @ Nov 5, 2010 -> 05:58 PM) I doubt this has any effect on his career. I'm somewhat surprised that MSNBC would even go so far as to temporarily suspend their highest rated program over this, as opposed to a private admonition, if there wasn't something else going on behind the scenes. Much like the Juan Williams case; I wonder if they weren't wanting to discipline him for something else, and this gave them their opportunity.

Massive surges in Dem voting at the end of vote-counting is incredibly, incredibly common...because urban areas in a lot of states tend to be the last ones to report, and urban areas tend to give you a lot of Democrat votes. In the governor's race in Oregon, for example, even though there was a 1000 vote lead for the former NBA player, everyone did the math and said "There are several thousand votes remaining to be counted from an area that typically goes 80/20 Democrat". It was easy to predict in that instance. I can personally recall watching the early returns on Indiana in the 2008 election and insisting to a co-worker "don't worry, Obama's only down 8 points, that's insanely good, look at the counties that haven't reported yet, Indianapolis and Gary are sitting there with 1% reporting".

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Nov 5, 2010 -> 05:12 PM) He could have done the same thing years before, when his future shot a big payday was smaller. Why now? What was Gavin Floyd's contract worth? $15 million? $15 million versus probably $40 million if he signed today?

Arbitration does not need to be offered until the beginning of December. There is little reason to do so early; you can wait and see what other teams are offering guys before you decide to offer arb or not. AJ may well not be offered arbitration anyway, because he would likely accept, and the Sox wouldn't want to pay him the amount he'd get in arbitration.

F*** snow.

Balderdash, work doesn't stop until after sundown.

QUOTE (Athomeboy_2000 @ Nov 5, 2010 -> 04:41 PM) DAMN IT! You should clearly finish reading before defecating.

QUOTE (Jerksticks @ Nov 5, 2010 -> 04:57 PM) Sarcasm? Anyway, in 2 years he can write his ticket anywhere. Why give up that opportunity and that flexibility? For a couple extra million this year and next? I just don't see the pressure on his side to complete an extension. The answer to that is really simple...it's insurance. You sign a 4 year deal right now, you give up maybe $5-$10 million total, but you guarantee that you're walking out of baseball with $40-50 million.

QUOTE (Jerksticks @ Nov 5, 2010 -> 04:39 PM) And if you're Danks, would you commit to a team that continually puts no run support behind you? He could easily have 15-20 more wins since he broke in. Why should he care?

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Nov 5, 2010 -> 04:36 PM) Yet not at all surprising. You're not allowed to comment on this one after the millions of dollars Newscorp gave to Republicans this cycle.

QUOTE (bucket-of-suck @ Nov 5, 2010 -> 04:32 PM) 7. Victor Martinez, Red Sox C. Superb offensive player (.296, 18, 73) Boston hopes to bring back, though their initial two-year offer was rejected. Some teams don't like him as a catcher, but a few do, including Boston. Executive: $48 million, four years. Agent 1: $60 million, 4 years. Me: $36 million, three years. "(.296, 18, 73)" is not "superb" if he's not a catcher. It's decent or even average as a 1B which is what I'd sign him as and it might even be below average as a DH. 3/$30M is more than a decent offer starting point. The question is what position does he want to play? That's gonna be a factor. Right now the Sox can offer him an everyday role as 1B, C, or DH. Not every team can. I know the big money teams don't all need catchers right now (well, maybe the Red Sox), but the more I think about what will actually happen, the more I'm going to bet that some team will overpay him because they want him to be a serious bat in the catcher's role, rather than an adequate bat at another position.

By the way, the contrast between this suspension after giving money to a person immediately after they'd appeared on your show and these statements from a couple years ago is quite stark.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Nov 5, 2010 -> 04:07 PM) Ah, so the "55 million year event" was the warming event of 10-100k years that occured approximately 55 million years ago? Either way, we're still dumping carbon into the system at a rate that's several orders of magnitude faster. Yes. You are correct on both of those statements. (Was this comprehensible eventually? Communicating science to people who don't know the field is obviously a skill I could use).

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Nov 5, 2010 -> 03:59 PM) I think the "55 million year event" is similar to "100 year flood". It doesn't mean it endured for that long, it means a periodic event time. No, it also is not periodic. That was a 1 time event. It is cited in this discussion because it is the largest, carbon-related climate catastrophe that we have in the recent geologic record.

OK, now I get why you're misunderstanding it. The 55 million year old event was in itself a fairly rapid event. The phrase is the "Paleocene/Eocene Thermal Maximum". It was in itself a (geologically speaking) rapid event. Within a period of 10,000-100,000 years a substantial amount of carbon was released to the atmosphere. That carbon probably was stored in fossil form, most people would guess stored in some sort of methane ices. It was released geologically rapidly, and it was a huge event in climate. The correct way to say it would be we're on the verge of releasing the same amount of carbon in 200 years that were released in 10,000 years at the PETM, and that much carbon at the PETM shifted ocean currents, caused extinctions of creatures, formed large scale deserts, and prevented formation of long-lived ice caps for 20 million years.

WS Games were on average 25 minutes shorter this year than last year.

Merkin has a big Jared Mitchell piece up.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Nov 5, 2010 -> 03:47 PM) We're going to emit 55 millions years worth of CO2 in a couple of centuries, and somehow it's still inconceivable for some people that this will impact the climate. That's not what that statement says at all. We'd be pushing CO2 levels to the point that they have not been since 55 million years ago. Actually a big difference. There are constant, large fluxes of CO2 into sediment and out of the atmosphere, and there are large fluxes of CO2 to the atmosphere from volcanic sources and from decay of organic material. This makes it possible for their to be rapid (10,000 year scale) shifts in atmospheric CO2 due to release (i.e. of methane stored in ices), or for there to be large amounts of organic carbon buried during certain time-periods (much of the U.S.'s coal comes from the period about 300 million years ago or so).

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Nov 5, 2010 -> 03:31 PM) How about someone covering all three spots? Problem is...he's not exactly great at any of them. Yeah, if you put him on your roster as the full time DH you in essence have an extra backup catcher, but you're still carrying 2 other catchers because you don't want to take him out of the DH spot, but you don't want to play him full time at catcher either. If you put him at 1b, you ought to pay him like an average, switch-hitting 1b, because if you want to move him around, you need to have an extra 1b on your roster who can play there a good chunk of the time. If I wanted to pick which guy to give $12 mil a season to be my 1b, would I rather have the guy who can be my 3rd catcher and gives me a .844 OPS or the guy who only plays 1b but put up a .977 OPS last year?

THe Red Sox apparently did that with Felipe Lopez last year.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Nov 5, 2010 -> 03:14 PM) Yeah, I was guessing in the $12 million a year range. Obviously I wouldn't take any of those numbers as gospel. I think the real question is...what position do you think Martinez fills for you? If you think he's a DH, you're not paying that much. If you don't mind the opposition having an unstoppable running game, Martinez put up the 5th highest OPS of any catcher in the bigs last year (Mauer, Posey, Soto, and Carlos Ruiz). If you look at him as a pure 1b, his OPS would have been 13th (Right behind Teixeira), which is good but not spectacular. At DH, he'd have had the #3 OPS at that position, but $12 million for an .850-ish OPS out of the DH spot is a lot. The Red Sox spent quite a while hesitating on $12 million for a .900 OPS DH.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Nov 5, 2010 -> 03:04 PM) Or for those who think the money can be spent elsewhere on better production. That is the key question. Thank you for phrasing that so succinctly; I couldn't figure out how I wanted to say that.

QUOTE (Athomeboy_2000 @ Nov 5, 2010 -> 02:52 PM) I'm not sure I;d want to disclose that I donated to a Dem if I worked for Fox News. Then you better give $199 or less, because more than that and it becomes part of the public record.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Nov 5, 2010 -> 02:50 PM) I wouldn't mind if they had to disclose it, but the "beforehand" part bothers me, because it suggests the possibility of reaction by the company. I understand he violated his contract, but really, its a contract that could probably be successfully overturned in court. Of course, that might void the entire contract, so its not likely he'd go down that road. if he had donated and followed the rule, if MSNBC tried to take any action as a result whatsoever, I think that would be terrible. Pat Buchanan, for example, has a long history of donations to Republican candidates while working for NBC. Presumably there's a standard procedure established there that Olbermann chose not to follow.