Balta1701

The rest of his story.

I have difficulty seeing the technology not evolving in surprising directions within the next 10 years, if not the next 20.

QUOTE (knightni @ Feb 28, 2009 -> 01:25 PM) How about a longer school day in high school? 7am to 3:30pm. Just like a real job. Ugh. We always started at like 7:30 and that was just too bloody early, even given that I was coming in for practices before school. Your brain just doesn't wake up that easy when you're a kid. Now I have coffee to help with that.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Feb 28, 2009 -> 02:23 PM) And to think, once upon a time, Russell and Wasserman looked like future contributors to our bullpen. They still could be. It's February for crying out loud. People can be disasters in spring training and just be working on something, or having bad days, or having arm troubles, or not ready, or who knows. The Sox have put up a losing record, fairly badly, in ST every year since what, 2004?

At least he didn't go to the Twins.

QUOTE (kapkomet @ Feb 28, 2009 -> 01:06 PM) My point more is there's a large amount of people, including some on here, who voted for Obama because they thought he'd "govern from the center"... and there's people honestly surprised that he's MUCH further left then they thought he was. Well, DUH! As I said, he's doing exactly what he said he would. I don't know why people are surprised at a $2T deficit on top of what's already there. Furthermore, to SS's post about the polls - my god, we've been listening to this s*** for 8 years... then when Obama goes down, meh, no big deal, it doesn't mean anything... that's hypocritical considering we've put up with the plethera of vomit for the last 8 years. How many times does Balta get to say "God those last 8 years sucked" and he gets a free pass? Hee, hee, that's SO funny! You want the truth? This whole forum is a cesspool of "payback" and "gotcha", myself included. There's about 2% good discussion and 98% elephant dung in here now. It's almost to the point where it just needs to go away. Balta's posts, as an example, are well thought out talking points from the liberal perspective (read: blogs). He's never, ever going to change his mind about what he thinks. The whole back and forth with SS, while interesting, will change neither minds, and in fact, it's almost cockiness to "prove" one's policy or thought is better then the other. There's a lot of veiled hyperbole (damn near every post, actually), from just about everyone. We all know who will say what, and it just gets posted in different words, over and over. I don't mean to pick on Balta, you, SS, or anyone else personally, rather the screen name that associates the thoughts here. With this, I just need to stop posting in here, because I understand you're sick of my stupid posts, and even I'm getting sick of myself. I'm out. Just want to say something about why I post here in response to this. Can I be grating sometimes? of course. But then again, do you think that no one on the other side winds up grating on me? When one spends time debating politics, or hell, Baseball, whatever you want, there's going to be people who disagree with positions you take. You're going to get annoyed with it sometimes. You'll read something and say "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard". You'll think someone is totally wrong. But sometimes, you actually learn something. I'll be the first to admit that not only have I learned things in discussions with 2k5 that I didn't know/didn't understand before, my own thinking has been altered in ways that I feel allow me to understand the discussion better. So no, I'm probably not going to agree with 2k5 ever on the financial situation. And I'll have a fundamentally different interpretation of polling data than you guys will. And I'll cite different sources than you. But that doesn't mean I don't find it valuable. At points, yes, it certainly can get frustrating. I gave up running my own blog and just dropped off the face of the internets in 2004 after GWB won his 2nd term because I just couldn't deal with it and it was just frustrating as all Hell. You guys are on the outs now, and I remember exactly how that felt. But here's the interesting thing...I'd still be happy to sit down with any of y'all and drink a beer. Or catch a Sox game. Whatever. Because people are going to look at the world in different ways. People look at data in different ways. If things get on a person's nerves too much, or if its no longer entertaining or educational, then it can reach a point where it's not worth it to keep up the discussion. For me, it's not personal. People can have honest disagreements, people can get on each other's nerves, people can piss other people off, but it's only worth what you feel like you get out of it. I enjoy posting here, I enjoy these debates, and I enjoy presenting opinions, having them challenged, and then having someone else fire back. That's why I'm still here, and I think that's why we put this as a separate forum in the first place.

QUOTE (Cknolls @ Feb 28, 2009 -> 01:13 PM) My point is, at some point Kennedy will not even know what he is voting for or against. And my point is, he wouldn't be the first.

QUOTE (Athomeboy_2000 @ Feb 28, 2009 -> 08:05 AM) Via Wikipedia: Sounds Shovel-ready to me!

Didn't he deal with an arm injury around the time the Twins grabbed him in the rule 5?

QUOTE (djcollie03 @ Feb 28, 2009 -> 11:55 AM) I've read the board for a while but, this is my first official topic. I expect that those of you who are stat-mongers will have some insight into this but, why haven't we heard about the possibility of Alexei in the lead off role. He has great bat control and his speed is more than ample for 25-30 stolen bases. I don't know what his OBP was last year but, there was NO ONE on the Sox who saw more pitches after going down 0-2 than Ramirez - it seemed he would foul off pitch after pitch. He can tag the fast ball so pitcher beware a quick 1-0 start to a game. I guess I'm hesitant to put Owens or any of our 2nd base prospects in the position considering none of them have seen that much playing time. Thoughts? Actually, I'm afraid I have to disagree with your main point here, the stats don't back you up. Unless Alexei went down 0-2 an awful lot, there's no way he can be judged as a patient hitter. He's about as aggressive of a swinger as there is in the major leagues. His OBP last year was .317, with a batting average of .290. .350 is usually my goal for a roughly adequate OBP for a leadoff hitter. Alexei just doesn't take a walk. Furthermore, many sites actually keep track of the # of pitches seen per plate appearance. It's a useful tool for telling whether or not you're looking at an aggressive hitter or patient hitter. Out of qualifying batters in MLB last year (3.3 at bats per game), Alexei was the 4th lowest P/PA in baseball. He's as free of a swinger as there is; the guys right in front of him in that list are AJ Pierzynski and Vlad Guerrero. That doesn't make him a bad hitter or anything, it just means his style of hitting isn't well suited to leadoff. On the other hand, I still think he'd be an excellent #2 hitter since he makes contact so often.

QUOTE (mr_genius @ Feb 27, 2009 -> 07:07 PM) who do you think would win? Stephen.

QUOTE (Cknolls @ Feb 27, 2009 -> 07:15 PM) Let's be realistic here, how many votes is Kennedy actually going to cast this year. I know from personal experience how this type of tumor ravages a body and I believe Kennedy is pretty much done. I am not trying to be Debbie Downer or wish any harm on him, but I know how a person's mental capacity and faculties decline from this disease. It isn't pretty and I wish him the best. If they can keep Strom Thurmond voting as long as he did, then Kennedy's going to be voting until either he wins or the cancer wins.

QUOTE (mr_genius @ Feb 27, 2009 -> 06:44 PM) he should rap battle Obama. If the President would accept, I'm sure he would. If the President kept spouting out the foolishness that Steele keeps doing, I'm sure he'd invite.

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ Feb 27, 2009 -> 05:51 PM) Thank you. And did anybody know Frank Omiyale even existed before today? I'll take any information I can get. So far I know Jerry Angelo likes him. The end. He fits the role of "Backup O-Lineman assuming St. Clair walks and the Bears get someone else". Can play guard and tackle, only has 1 start in Carolina. He just turned 27, compared to St. Clair who will turn 32 before this season starts. He covers the depth the Bears needed at that position. Now they need someone on the front lines.

For the first Twit I've ever linked to anywhere...Michael Steele has accepted a rap-battle with Dr. Stephen T. Colbert, DFA.

On a different topic, I'm not sure what to say about it except the losses on these CDO's are staggering. A triple a rating, and a 95% loss rate.

QUOTE (Flash Tizzle @ Feb 27, 2009 -> 11:58 AM) Jesus, imagine how much sunlight that building would reflect. I'd hate to be working across the street. When they opened the Disney Concert Hall here in Los Angeles a few years ago, it reflected so much light that the neighbors complained. They literally had to go over the metallic surface and make it more rough so that it reflected less light. That building should always be black. Would you repaint the Golden Gate Bridge? 80 years of one color too long?

QUOTE (lostfan @ Feb 27, 2009 -> 04:47 PM) God Gordon is just having a brutal game tonight, why is Rose not in? Because everyone knows the best way to teach rookies the game of basketball is to bench them.

QUOTE (MurcieOne @ Feb 27, 2009 -> 04:07 PM) Bulls about to tip off against the Wizards in DC. Obama sitting courtside for the first half. It's a road game that we absolutely win, this Wizards team is pretty miserable. And on this day...the Bulls really, really ought to dominate. Just for the guys.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Feb 27, 2009 -> 02:59 PM) http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/26/us/politics/26budget.html This administration is moving more and more in the direction I rolled my eyes at when Republicans kept whining during the campaign. Soaking the rich in taxes is not going to fix this mess, and reducing incentives to give to charity only compounds it. Of course, if the estate tax goes back up, then you're trading off one method of supporting charities with the tax code for another, because the estate tax cut/elimination was a big hit on charity donations as well.

QUOTE (Texsox @ Feb 27, 2009 -> 03:02 PM) Care to explain? How does keeping land from being developed, or left natural instead of being planted, harm the environment? A number of ways. First of all, assume the world has a constant demand for food. A plot of land can produce a certain amount of food at a certain cost. But, if you raise the price, that plot of land can produce more food because you dump energy in to it in the form of fertilizers, chemicals, etc. This serves to waste a number of things. First, it wastes energy, because it takes an awful lot of energy to produce the fertilizers that let you get to higher production amounts. Second, it wastes money, because had the subsidy not been there, people in other countries could easily produce the necessary amount of food at lower costs (this is why the West's agriculture subsidies keep being the single most important issue derailing trade summit talks). And third, the environmental impact of high intensity farming is much greater than that of lower intensity farming, especially if its concentrated. By far the greatest example of this is the rapidly growing, gigantic Dead Zone in the Gulf of Mexico. Farmers throughout the heartland use a ton of fertilizer and various other chemicals. Those chemicals flush down the Mississippi river and in to the gulf. When they hit the gulf waters, they provide nutrients to areas that typically weren't growing a lot, and those fertilzer runoffs produce gigantic algal blooms that suck all of the oxygen out of the water, to the point that no animal life can survive within it (Fish swim in and suffocate.) Oh, and on top of that, pumping every single bit of farm production out of a parcel of land is just on principle bad for the land (see: the Dust Bowl) and can in the long term leave things in terrible shape. So the environmental costs are; massive expenditures of energy in pumping up the production of the land, when the same amount of food could be produced without the subsidies, massive external pollution, and massive damage to the local ecosystems.

QUOTE (kapkomet @ Feb 27, 2009 -> 02:52 PM) I should have said that I don't necessarily agree with the $4B being sent to the banks for this. They should have to compete just like every other market... and not be handed money. The only reason that they were handed this money was because no one wanted to lend, remember, and so the only way they would is if the government backed it. Saw your edit: I so much agree on corn/ethanol. What a colossal waste. Well, the issue with saying "they should have to compete" is that there's a reason why the federal government started the student loan program. The federal government decided, I believe rightly, that there was a tangible benefit to society to having more people and people of lesser means able to complete college, and they couldn't do so with typical loan repayment terms and schedules. Thus, the Feds started off a program to force lending to happen at lower rates and under more reasonable repayment terms, so that we could have more college grads, more doctors, and that people who deserve a chance at a degree could find a way to do it. Thus, the Federal government was deliberately undercutting the normal loans that people could otherwise have gotten. But, the program got reworked to give more money to the banks to do it, because banks have good lobbyists.

QUOTE (kapkomet @ Feb 27, 2009 -> 02:48 PM) Let's stop all subsidies. Farm, banks, the whole nine yards, if it's so "wasteful". Oh wait, because then a whole buch of constituents would get pissed off because there's no more handouts. As long as the "handout" is for what you support, it's ok. In a lot of cases, I'm game for that. In some cases, I'm not. Our farm subsidy system is an absolute debacle of the highest order. It makes us all less healthy and wastes $100's of billions and is an environmental killer. On the other hand...I'm strongly in favor of subsidies for alternative energy. The concept of subsidies/the government deliberately distorting the market for public benefit is not something I have a problem with. My issue is what we wind up subsidizing. But even with alternative energy, there's major problems...like 90% of the alternative energy subsidies going to corn ethanol production (before the stimulus package of course, that may well change the numbers).

QUOTE (Heads22 @ Feb 26, 2009 -> 10:40 PM) Wasn't a tube driveup. This driveup is one of those things right at the window. I can see how my 17 coins would overload them. It's not a dumptruck.

Here's a classic example of how our system works. In the student loan game, there is no reason why the Government can't lend directly to students. They have the funds to do so and the means to do so. However, a Congressional requirement forces the student loan program to be run through private companies. This is done entirely to benefit the private banks that get the loans, and it costs the Federal Government roughly $4 billion a year over what it would cost if the government just ran the darn program itself. Basically, it's a $4 billion a year banking subsidy. Obama's budget wants to eliminate this subsidy. The deficit hawk Republicans, of course, are livid. Because deficits don't count when you give the money to corporations.