Balta1701

QUOTE(Tony82087 @ Nov 15, 2007 -> 10:04 AM) That would be an awful idea. Lowell lived off the green monster, and is valuable because of the D he brings at 3rd. The Yanks obviously would have to outbid the Sox, which means a deal he doesn't deserve, and he would certainly not live up to the numbers he put up in Boston, offensively or defensively. The Yankees have enough money, esp. with a couple young guys coming up and guys like Pavano, Giambi et al. coming off the books, that if they wanted to, they could spend money not necessarily to make their team better, but instead to make other teams worse.

No idea exactly what it will mean, but politically, it's probably worth noting that the 3 states currently hardest hit by the surge in foreclosures happen to be 1. the state with the most people and, 2-3: the 2 states that have decided the last 2 Presidential elections. California, Ohio, and Florida right now are out in front leading the country in the foreclosure mess. That's an interesting set of states, to be sure.

QUOTE(knightni @ Nov 15, 2007 -> 09:50 AM) Story's been retracted as false. As I posted...yesterday.

QUOTE(RockRaines @ Nov 15, 2007 -> 09:23 AM) Ya, Soriano is brutal in LF, and his arm isnt even that great but he has one of the quicker releases in baseball which fools alot of third base coaches. Also the contracts are ridiculous. Even for bullpen help. How about a flier on Matt Herges who is only look for about 2 million. I suggested Herges a couple days ago. I think he'd be an ideal addition to our bullpen. We'd still probably want to carry 12 pitchers, esp. if we move a starter and go with the 2 kids...but that's exactly the kind of guy I want to add. Older, experienced, maybe cheaper than other guys, doesn't cost a draft pick, short term contract, might mesh well with the kids, and would still leave us room to try out either Masset, Aardsma, or sign one of the Japanese guys if we though they were worth the $.

QUOTE(jackie hayes @ Nov 15, 2007 -> 09:25 AM) What makes you think nobody else would have offered more than $180 mil total? I'm not totally sure. But there's, well...sanity.

QUOTE(YASNY @ Nov 15, 2007 -> 09:08 AM) You are a very trusting soul. I for one don't believe that most organic ingestibles are as organic as you are lead to believe. Also, from what I have read is most bottled water is ... you ready? ... tap water. Then you get the plastic bottles that are being sold by the billions because they can sell tap water for $1.29 a bottle filling our landfills. When will those biodegrade? Oh yeah, the bottles also happen to be a petroleum based product. So, what is being pumped into the air as those plastic bottles are being produced? Both Aquafina and Dasani, owned respectively by Pepsi and Coke, are filtered tap water. There are some that are actually pumped out of the ground or from mountain springs or something like that...but that alone means very little to me (seriously, anyone who wants to take a drive up to Owens Valley, look for the Crystal Geyser water bottling plant right along the shores of Owens Dry Lake. It's located in one of the worst environmental areas on the planet). And the major food companies have been lobbying basically as far as I can tell since the word "Organic" was invented for looser standards on what qualifies as organic so that they could label their products as such without having to change their production processes much. For reference, I'll just include the first example that pops up on the Google.

At least they're still talking about Stone. That's a start.

Freaking juicer.

QUOTE(Vance Law @ Nov 15, 2007 -> 08:27 AM) No I don't buy that. Damage to Rod's reputation. Damage to Borass' reputation. And the Yanks are decreasing their offer by the $21 million that would have come from the Rangers. But the Yankees never offered him the equivalent of 10 years, $300 million. Even if he just goes 10/$280, and says "oh you have your $21 million back now", then the Yankees still have massively increased their total offer, and are probably, just like the Rangers, over $100 million above what any other team in baseball might have offered.

Rap lyrics re-interpreted involving Microsoft Excel.

QUOTE(DBAH0 @ Nov 14, 2007 -> 07:34 PM) Going to be halting production at a lot of Copper Mines. I imagine the price of Copper will be going back up quite a bit after this. Bloomberg

QUOTE(farmteam @ Nov 14, 2007 -> 07:26 PM) There would be relatively few deaths because, in addition to the fact that it occurred in the middle of nowhere, damage from an earthquake depends largely on the types of buildings it hits. Buildings made out of stone and such are very susceptible to the seismic waves produced by the earthquake; wood frame building are much sturdier. In short: lots of people die if the earthquake hits areas that have buildings that are poorly constructed and/or made out of masonry, but relatively few people are affected if the buildings are made out of more "earthquake proof" materials. Well, one of the things also worth noting is that there tends to be a correlation between the economic well-being of an area and how earthquake proof an area is, especially in Earthquake prone regions. In most earthquake prone regions I can think of, large forests of the sort that one would need to supply wood for housing are pretty much absent. In the U.S., wood is imported to areas like CA from other growing regions, but thinking of areas like South America, India/Asia, etc., the building materials we see in the U.S. aren't always as common. In this region, I'm not totally certain, but this is a high mountain plateau, and therefore I wouldn't expect a lot of building wood to be available. I could be wrong of course, just guessing since I don't know the climate. Beyond wood though, in general, it's a lot more expensive to make a building out of steel reinforced concrete than it is to make it out of brick or out of something like assemblies of the local rock. Which is one of the reasons smaller earthquakes, like the one in Bam, Iran a few years ago, do an awful lot of damage; they destroy pretty much every building in the area where they hit.

How stupid would the Yankees be to bid against themselves for ARod?

Some interesting notes about this year's NFL game: Just found those to be interesting offensive trends.

QUOTE(BaseballNick @ Nov 14, 2007 -> 06:56 PM) I don't buy that because good pitchers will get outs no matter where they pitch. How many of Linebrink's outs were 399ft fly outs to the gap? Now, I didn't follow the Padres all that closely, but I'm willing to say his success wasn't exclusively due to pitching half his games at Petco. I don't even care for Linebrink all that much, I'm just saying a good pitcher will get outs, and you have to look past his home park because in the end, it's a pretty minor detail. I wouldn't mind taking a chance on the Japanese set-up man we've been linked to: Yasuhiko Yabuta. Yabuta Heck, even Shingo was effective for a while. I'm more than happy right now, esp. for a Type A Free Agent, to look at his numbers with the Brewers last year compared to those with the Pads. Batting against jumped from .240 to .276. OPS jumped from .742 to .767. K/BB went from 1.79 to 2.27. Perhaps more interestingly, those numbers were also huge jumps, on both teams, from what he put up in 06, where opponents put up a .678 OPS against him. If we weren't having to give up a draft pick, I'd be interested in him. But a big money setup guy who costs us a 2nd rounder is just too much for me to bear.

D-Wade back for the Heat

Link QUOTE(NorthSideSox72 @ Nov 14, 2007 -> 09:26 AM) Magnitude is one of a few factors that dictate the amount of damage caused. Another key one is depth. This earthquake occured 37 miles beneath the surface - which seems awfully deep to me. But maybe one of our resident scientists can say just how deep that is, relatively. Another factor is terrain. Mountainous areas can often mean the damage dissipates in a much shorter distance around the epicenter. Like transferring force through a pile of bricks, as opposed to a bucket of sand. Because of the gaps and cracks, it dissipates quicker in the bricks, so the damage radius is smaller. See what happens when I don't read every thread? I miss questions for me. In a subduction environment (in Chile, the oceanic Nazca plate is sliding underneath the South American plate and heading down to the mantle) a distance of 37 miles, or about 60 kilometers, is really not that deep at all. Usually, the feature that cuts off the seismic part of the earth is temperature; when rocks get too hot, they're able to flow and don't fracture. But in a subduction zone, the plate going down is fairly cold, and is able to fracture seismically to much greater depths. For an example, here's a transect across the Sumatran subduction zone showing earthquake depths (in kilometers on the Vertical axis) versus horizontal distance across the subduction zone. In that zone, earthquakes can be resolved down to 700 kilometers depth, or something in the range of 400 miles deep. Link

QUOTE(Lemon_44 @ Nov 14, 2007 -> 04:58 PM) To me, Bill Hall for Garland would an absolutely horrible trade. Garland would/should bring alot more than that assuming he's healthy. There are too many teams looking for a quality SP,like Garland, that will drive up his value. His value is already pretty high as is. Bill Hall ????????? what does he even bring to the table? I would just as soon stick with Owens than give a player up for Hall. Big deal what he did in 2005.The Sox won it all in 2005.It has about as much relevance. I tend to think if Hall was already on the Sox, people would be saying the Sox couldn't get anything for him. Switch it around.If Hall was on the Sox and Garland on the Brewers, you would make the Hall for Garland trade in a second. The whole reason people bring up Hall as an option is that he seems like a solid upgrade from Uribe at SS even in his bad years. No one wants to put Hall in CF for us. But I do agree with you that Hall is not enough to ask for Garland.

On a different subject, a BBC reporter spent some time collecting objections to current thinking on anthropogenic climate change from a group of about 15 or so skeptics, and collected responses on their opinions from people within the IPCC group. I found it interesting.

QUOTE(bigruss22 @ Nov 14, 2007 -> 04:14 PM) Then why dont the Marlins just wait that half year or so to trade him to a desperate team? As much as I would like him to come to the Sox, he ain't. Its a fantasy, the Dodgers or Angels just need to give up a small fraction of their loaded farm system for him while we would have to give up basically our whole system. I would put it at 95% that the Sox wont get him. I think the reality is...just look at what the Rangers got for Tex...if a team has control over a guy for more than 1 year, they'll give up a lot more than they will 2 months before he's a FA. You don't sell out your entire farm system for a guy who could walk in 8 weeks if you don't make the playoffs. You want at least a couple chances.

A detailed, worth-your-time piece on medical innovation and how it would react to a single payer health care system.

QUOTE(DBAH0 @ Nov 14, 2007 -> 02:46 PM) I think they Colts signed Simeon Rice as a replacement though. Still Freeney's a big loss. And here's a question I'll throw out there, is the Packers defense better than the Bears defense right now? GB's Defense is #10 in yards given up per game, the Bears are #20, giving up 34 more YPG. GB's Defense is #3 in Points per game, the Bears are #16. Maybe if Mike Brown wasn't always injured, or the Cornerbacks hadn't both gone down early, or if the D-Line wasn't depleted, it's a different story. But for the teams on the field this season, the numbers speak for themselves.

A high level Romney Supporter is alleging in the Washington Times that the Thompson campaign paid off the National Right to Life committee in exchange for its endorsement.

QUOTE(kapkomet @ Nov 14, 2007 -> 01:36 PM) Yea, there's not a lot of danger of Lake Michigan drying up any time soon. Sorry, couldn't resist.

For anyone other than me suffering from Daily Show withdrawal, here's a strike related bit by a bunch of their writers. Guest starring John Oliver.