Balta1701

QUOTE(Kalapse @ Oct 25, 2007 -> 09:38 PM) That's an interesting piece of information someone should look up the contract and post the details in this thread. Am I the only one who knows how to use the Google here?

"OUT! OUT! IT'S A WHITE SOX WINNER, AND A WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP! THE WHITE SOX HAVE WON THE WORLD SERIES, AND THEY'RE MOBBING EACH OTHER ON THE FIELD!"

Now that's a sign that the Rockies time may have run out.

It'll probably work, but anyone else think this is just too early to take Schilling out, even with the offday tomorrow?

Thanks to Jacoby Ellsbury stealing a base in the 4th inning of this game, Taco Bell is going to give a free taco to anyone who shows up between 2 and 5 on October 30th.

Come on Rockies, the kid only gave up 2 runs to this lineup and you're facing a 40 year old, you gotta get more than 1 run.

QUOTE(jackie hayes @ Oct 25, 2007 -> 06:56 PM) Does McCarver know the difference between a cutter and a splitter? "I don't think that taste is there."

Um...

QUOTE(DBAH0 @ Oct 25, 2007 -> 03:33 PM) Ha, and I remember when some Bulls fans were annoyed that they traded him. Sure he's got talent, but he doesn't have a brain either. Didn't both Gray and Curry come from the 2nd rounders we got from that trade?

"Oh you've got to be kidding me" -me on seeing that swing.

QUOTE(southsideirish71 @ Oct 25, 2007 -> 02:08 PM) The 8 game layoff should hurt the hitting timing, but I am not buying the pitching part. Our pitchers in 05, like Garland sat around for a long time because of how quick we ended our series. Remember Garland didnt pitch in the DS, and then didnt pitch until game 4 in the CS. Freddy also had some time off. The pitched pretty well in those playoffs. Actually, if you recall, it was sort of a miracle that JG pitched as well as he did in Game 3 vs. the Halos. HE came out with absolutely nothing offspeed working. He couldn't even throw the 2 seamer for a strike, and that's been his bread and butter. He got through that game by somehow finding a 94-95 mph fastball, totally changing what he usually does, and shutting them down with that. I still don't know how he did it. You could clearly see how rusty he was; somehow he was just good enough to adapt.

QUOTE(kapkomet @ Oct 25, 2007 -> 01:10 PM) To further example 2: A drug has been out for years, and they reformulate with less side effects. OH BUT WAIT! According to Balta, it's just to avoid the generic bugaboo. That's not true all the time. But the government could see it that way. I think it's bulls***. This is clearly not the example I'm discussing. In this case, there's some validity to the new research. But this isn't what happens today, at least not in all cases. Much of the reformulation of drugs is done not because it reduces side effects. In fact, in more than a few cases, drugs have been put onto the market that do a worse job with more side effects in all cases, but they are heavily marketed and often used because the newer drug has not yet gone generic. Somewhere in this thread I'm pretty sure I actually stuck a link with the evidence on that, but the search function is offline and I'm lazy. A non-trivial amount of research dollars, in the billions, is spent producing drugs that do the same job or a worse job than drugs that already exist, with more side effects than drugs that already exist, and those drugs are put onto market solely because the older, more effective drugs have already gone generic.

Oil hit the $90 a barrel mark today.

QUOTE(BigSqwert @ Oct 25, 2007 -> 12:25 PM) You just have to wonder how many pockets are lined in Congress with health care money from lobbyists. A better question is...are there any that aren't?

Spiderpig, Spiderpig Does whatever a spiderpig does Can he swing from a web? No he can't He's a pig.

And on a different topic...this one is one I really like. One of the things that really annoys me about our healthcare system is that the priorities of the drug companies are completely screwed up. The biggest profit for them can be had in making a drug which doesn't cure people, but which people take to treat a symptom. In other words, if you actually were to produce a vaccine that killed the AIDS virus, it would eat into your profits significantly compared with having people need to take drugs for the rest of their life to manage the disease, and therefore, the for-profit structure drives research dollars away from many of the drugs that would be most useful to society, and on top of that, companies spend billions of other research dollars trying to develop slightly newer versions of older drugs that do nothing except allow the company to get around the generic drug competition. And then beyond that, companies spend tens of billions more on advertising trying to get you to take a drug that is to some extent optional (like Viagra), because if you don't take the drug the profit margin goes down. This bill, if it's structured right, could go a long way towards fixing that problem. Bernie Sanders of VT has put forward a bill that would establish basically a government sponsored, $80 billion/year fund through which companies that develop drugs would be reimbursed if they produce a drug useful to society. So, if you wanted to get the biggest profit in the drug industry, you wouldn't waste tens of billions on advertising and on sneaking around the generic drug laws, you'd get the biggest profit by developing actual new drugs that cure things. A system like this has the potential to dramatically improve the way the drug industry behaves, by putting all of the profit in the drug industry exactly where it should be; developing new drugs that help people.

You have made an enemy today.

QUOTE(jasonxctf @ Oct 25, 2007 -> 10:46 AM) i think you are correct about paypal. thus i'm assuming that they'll charge me a fee to get my money back (if I get it back) while i think this is a great idea, i don't quite understand why the loans don't charge a nominal (say 2-4%) interest rate. that would at least cover the kiva "donation" and paypal fees. if it's a 6 month loan of $25, 4% would mean that the receipient would need to pay me $25.51 in 6 months. Dude, isn't it supposed to be at least on some level a charity? Do you really need that $.51 that badly?

Applauding Paxson again.

John McCain runs an anti Hippy, anti Hillary ad. Opinions?

An interesting topic to touch upon today. The USA Today notes that basically since the beginning of June, there has been more than a 4 fold increase in the number of airstrikes taking place in Iraq. The article pens that the reasoning for this is an increase in the precision of U.S. bombs, but I for one don't really buy that. While there naturally has been some development, even with a smaller bomb, it's only as effective as the people deciding which target to hit. This article is worth pointing out then, for the quote from one of the generals, who probably let part of the secret out: As we've known since before Vietnam, one way to keep fighting a war but to cut down our own casualties is to use more airpower and cutback on ground forces. The problem of course is that no matter how smart your bomb is, if you're going after a group of people or a building with an insurgent, you still hit the people in that building or in that group. So if your goal was to say, produce numbers showing a drop in U.S. casualties, this certainly would be one way to do it. But it wouldn't necessarily be a positive sign for the endgame of the war.

Ok, Boston needs to discipline fans who reach over and touch balls in play.

Who will run up the score more this week. The Red Sox or the Patriots?

QUOTE(DBAH0 @ Oct 24, 2007 -> 07:07 PM) I mean I think he's got the talent to be a NFL QB, and he's pretty unlucky that he got injured and a rookie came in and hasn't put a foot wrong so far. Well, to be fair, Losman didn't get off to a great start this season even before he got hurt, and while his numbers have been improving, they haven't improved at the rate you'd like to see from a QB. Losman is already 26, 3 years out of being drafted. I mean, he's only 1 year behind Grossman's curve right now, and after 2 seasons of him being set as the QB, you need to see more from him.

QUOTE(mr_genius @ Oct 24, 2007 -> 06:12 PM) The GOP, like any party is going to have to adapt. If you remember, the Democrats used to have a large pro-segregation faction. ** Dem states used to be colored red by the media. States Rights Democratic party in orange. ** http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/comm...e1948-Large.png One could, if one were so inclined, make the argument that the Democrats' loss of the Southern/Segregationist Democrats really starting with Nixon's southern strategy helped make the Democrats into a minority party for the better part of 30 years, with only Watergate and Ross Perot giving the Dems even a shot at the White House until the nations' demographics finally began to reach a point in the past few years where they could stage a comeback. With the fact that the Republicans are also in the process of losing the Hispanic vote for a long time, if the strength the Democrats show in my generation winds up holding to some extent, then the Republicans as they exist now will have no constituency left on which to build a majority.