Balta1701

- Official Sox facebook posting.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Jul 31, 2009 -> 01:35 PM) Torres spot start? Is Lillibridge still in Chicago?

Who the Hell is pitching tonight?

Huh?

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jul 31, 2009 -> 10:17 AM) You can attempt to carbon-date anything but you'll get meaningless results if there's not carbon in the thing you're dating. You can date rock using various other radiometric dating techniques that don't involve carbon. edit: also, 12-15k years still doubles your timescale. Carbon-dating in particular is also a very, very difficult task, even today. Especially if you're attempting it on something with very low amounts of carbon, like a silicified bone. You can get a mixture between modern carbon and any fossilized carbon in the the actual sample just by touching it, or by exposing it to the atmosphere, or by wearing perfume, especially if you aren't ridiculously careful in how you collect and prepare your sample. Especially if you go back to a measurement that gives 15kyr (that's 3 half lives of C-14 - that means 12.5% of the original C-14 would still be remaining). And the worst part is...the assumption that C-14 is constant in the atmosphere is routinely violated. It goes up and down. Back to about 2000 years ago or so we can calibrate what the atmosphere was doing because we have actual samples that we can date through other ways (annual bands in tree rings or corals). Before that, your age winds up being very dependent on your model for what the atmosphere was doing at the time.

QUOTE (Athomeboy_2000 @ Jul 31, 2009 -> 10:08 AM) See, here is the problem with the argument that comes from the scientific world. They say "science shows this to be true, therefor it is true". But that's assuming development over millions of years. Creationist say "it was made that way". Here's my biggest problem with that argument; it requires that the deity is very, very mean-spirited. Because basically, it requires that the deity decided to create everything 6000 years ago, but also decided to set it up in such a way that everything in the universe fits well with a progression from a 14 billion year ago beginning of the universe through the modern day. Basically, the deity is required to play a huge joke on everyone. I can't rule out that the Universe flashes in to being sometime in 1979 exactly as it is. But whatever reason it flashed in to existence then, it requires someone to be deliberately trying to convince me that it didn't.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jul 31, 2009 -> 10:07 AM) You count timescales based on the genealogies (x begat y begat z etc.) and take the 6 days of creation in Genesis literally. There's obviously some estimating going on there so you end up with ranges between 5-12k years from what I've seen. The earth began on Sunday, October 23rd, 4004 B.C.

QUOTE (Princess Dye @ Jul 31, 2009 -> 10:05 AM) Will FAs come to the Sox though? That's my one worry. the managers poll was a little scary to me. and then you have the whole Torii Hunter thing, where in the end we had to overpay in a trade to get anyone here. We're not going to offer matt Holliday $5/100. We're not going to get in to a bidding war with stupid money against the Yankees. That doesn't work for any team, doesn't even work well for the Yankees. But I think we'll be players for just about anyone this offseason, and until someone offers stupid money, we'll have a shot.

QUOTE (Athomeboy_2000 @ Jul 31, 2009 -> 09:59 AM) Not at all. Plate tectonics is the process by which earth's plates move around. Just because they are moving away from each other, doesnt prove they were once connected. There is actually a real contradiction here; the plates don't just wander aimlessly for no reason, there's actually a driving force, and the driving force takes time to develop. The thing that pulls plates around relates to subduction and 2 temperature related processes. When oceanic crust gets really old (200+ million years old) it gets really cold (compared to the rest of the earth), and cold things are dense (thermal expansion). Thus, there is a driving force for oceanic plates to sink. Once those sinking plates get put under pressure, because of their chemical composition, they convert to phases that are dominated by garnet and pyroxene, which are about 10% more dense on average than the rest of the mantle minerals around them. Thus, as they go down, they stay cold for a time (thus are dense) and they convert to different mineral assemblages (and thus are dense) and they are dragged downwards deeper in to the mantle until they find a level of neutral buoyancy. The reason there's a contradiction there is that the driving force behind plate tectonics requires significant time. The plates don't just saunter around aimlessly; they move specifically because of processes that take time to happen.

QUOTE (Princess Dye @ Jul 31, 2009 -> 09:34 AM) KW apparently loves his best prospects right now. Rightly so. In the current climate the best move may be to put a bunch of young players together with some FAs in the coming year or two. KW has a ridiculous amount of salary flexibility this coming offseason to trade people and to sign to fill holes. He ought to be holding on Flowers right now because we need a catcher soon, he ought to hold on D2: the mighty Danks because of his brother, and he probably ought to hold on Viciedo unless he gets a spectacular offer. Other than that, if I were in his chair, I'd be looking at this offseason and drooling, between teams looking to shed salary and actually making plays for FA's, he's got a ton of balls in his court.

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Jul 31, 2009 -> 09:32 AM) Technically no one knows what comp level he will be. His current salary is $9.8 million for this season. He'll be 35 in 2 weeks. Would you offer him arbitration?

47% of Republicans do not believe in Plate Tectonics.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Jul 31, 2009 -> 09:01 AM) That is an exaggeration. Name one that would have survived. Seriously, just look at the numbers. The Federal Reserve has expanded its balance sheet by something like $2 trillion dollars buying up pieces of big s*&tpile from these banks. That's the scale of the bailout they've gotten. AIG has been another what, $200 billion payouts? And then there's the nearly infinite guarantees given out. The numbers are staggering. There wouldn't be a top 10 bank/financial firm left if they had to hold the paper they wrote.

The important detail being left out is; TARP is by no means anywhere close to the only government bailout that these banks received. The guarantees on their debts, AIG bailouts, and Federal Reserve "Cash for clunkers" program were much, much larger than the TARP bailouts, and frankly, without those, all of those firms would be gone.

QUOTE (kwolf68 @ Jul 31, 2009 -> 08:44 AM) They are 8 out. It's been a nice season for them, but they aren't making the playoffs. Bedard being injured all the time helped doom them, Morrow hasn't developed as fast as they wanted either...But Aardsma has been a find in the closers role and Washburn has been virtually unhittable for much of this year. We know the reasons why Seattle is selling. I don't think that's the weird part. The weird part is that they also gave up good pieces to get a SS from the Pirates. So they're both selling and buying.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Jul 31, 2009 -> 08:27 AM) There really aren't a lot of .300/25 guys at ANY skill infield position. If Alexei could get his head out of his tail, we could have 2 of them.

If Becks had made the team out of ST...he'd hit FA one full year earlier.

Gotta retain top talent.

Hahahahahaha.

QUOTE (fathom @ Jul 30, 2009 -> 07:59 PM) To be honest, why did we even acquire him? He's not very good, and the Red Sox gave up on him. Because.

QUOTE (fathom @ Jul 30, 2009 -> 07:56 PM) Already made right away yesterday. DAllen and I have already said he's going to get way too many at bats. Really though...who would we be benching to give him those AB's? The hurting Quentin? Dewayne Wise? Podsednik?

Come on, somehow get that run in.

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Jul 30, 2009 -> 06:44 PM) Name one team with a better front four than Halladay, Buehrle, Danks, Floyd. I don't care what the Sox record is, if you make the post-season you can contend for a title. I take it you want the club to sell or don't think the Sox have what it takes? Up until this mini skid the Sox have played pretty darn solid baseball the past 5-6 weeks. Counterpoint: this mini skid is coming, once again from the bats. The pitching hasn't been the problem aside from the closer. Adding a starting pitcher doesn't make the bats wake up unless it's Micah Owings. Adding a starting pitcher doesn't get Jenks back in a groove.

QUOTE (flavum @ Jul 30, 2009 -> 07:05 PM) So when does the Bacon nickname go away quietly in the night? When the Hawk gives him one.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jul 30, 2009 -> 06:02 PM) The best part is that a lot of people are just trading in their old 12 MPG SUV's for new 14 or 15 MPG SUV's. Chrysler's ad for this features nothing but SUV's and Jeeps. I saw a Tesla on the road today. The guy wanted to race me. He had a good license plate: "SIN GAS" (I'm guessing he's using the Spanish 'sin') See, this is where using "Miles per gallon" isn't actually the most helpful way to look at it. If you flip that over, to gallons used per number of miles, you see something striking; that is a huge cut in oil consumption. A car getting 12 mpg uses up 1000 gallons of gas to go 12000 miles (Average year). A car getting 14 mpg uses 857 gallons of gas to go that far. That's 143 fewer gallons used For comparison...there is a 144 gallon difference over 12000 miles between a car getting 26 mpg and a car getting 40 mpg. Going from 12 to 15 mpg saves as much gas per year as going from 24 to 40 mpg.