NorthSideSox72

Just got home. Took 3 hours to drive from Northbrook to Bucktown (roughly Damen/Webster). Tree bits down everywhere. We lost a small tree, and the lot next door had a bunch of old, neat trees torn to shreds. Didn't hit the house it appears, fortunately. Once it calms down a bit, I need to go out and get our tree out of our neighbor's drive. Yikes. And according a source in Elburn (way west burbs), the waves just keep on coming. More to come for the city.

Good place for updates. Reading the damages, sounds to me like a number of places with tornadoes, or mircobursts or the like. Wow.

Jeez that was fast - radar says the main front is already out over the lake and head out of the area. Just a bunch of rain left behind. I wonder if any of those reported tornadoes touched down.

Northbrook: BIG dark storm, branches flying out of trees. Came in, in a hurry. Where I am working has backup generators, but no one here had ever seen a power outage before... and the power went out (briefly - PC's still up). Winds look wicked. Multiple tornadoes reporting in Bolingbrook and Mokena.

QUOTE(Kalapse @ Aug 23, 2007 -> 01:07 PM) Yes, very much so. David Fincher is an outstanding director, it's a damn shame he didn't get the Spiderman franchise over Raimi (who I also like.) Fincher could have done some real brilliant work with the Spiderman character, similar to what Nolan is doing with the Batman franchise. Fincher is one of my favs. He managed to make Alien3 into a good movie, which took some doing. Last I checked, his next project was an adaptation of Rendezvous with Rama, the Arthur C Clarke Sci-Fi piece. But I haven't checked IMDB in a while. I just bought Zodiac recently - looking forward to seeing it.

QUOTE(kapkomet @ Aug 23, 2007 -> 10:39 AM) It signifies that they want to raise the value of their stock. Market Cap Value = $10,000 with 10,000 shares outstanding = $1.00 per share. They go in and repurchase their own shares and now there is $10,000 with 5,000 shares outstanding = $2.00 per share (without declaring dividends, etc). Long story short, they are trying to not dilute the value of the share price. It's not a bad thing necessarily - if they have the funds to repurchase, then they have at least some cash flow to do so. In the long run, they are trying to have a higher cap value with fewer shares. On occasion, it can also be a defensive move, if they are afraid of someone trying to buy into more control of their company.

QUOTE(FlaSoxxJim @ Aug 23, 2007 -> 12:06 PM) I don't know what you put in that letter, Northside, but it seems to have done the trick: http://www.wbbm780.com/pages/849554.php?co...ontentId=832984 Awesome. Nice to see that the voice of the public still sometimes has an effect. to everyone who made themselves heard.

QUOTE(29andPoplar @ Aug 23, 2007 -> 11:02 AM) I have mentioned this a couple of times, hopefully it will click, the Great Falls guys are still in Great Falls for two reasons. One, they are playing very well together, are gaining confidence, and learning the nuances of pro baseball. Two, the team is in a pennant race for the first time in quite a while. The ownership (which is basically the Great Falls community) is excited, it's very good for the franchise and it's very good for the White Sox' relationship with the franchise. A key factor for some of these young players is learning how to win as a group. Great Falls team is winning as a group, there are about two weeks left and this is the absolute worst time to start moving guys around to the other farm teams. It is not as simple as player does well for 2 months = player gets promoted. There are other very important factors. Leaving players in winning situations and letting them go into the offseason very confident in their skills is important. Also, lets all remember that the new director of player development has specifically said he wants to be patient with the young talent.

QUOTE(Texsox @ Aug 23, 2007 -> 11:47 AM) BTW, interesting side note. As humans, we have not domesticated a new species on thousands of years. Cows, pigs, dogs, cats, etc. were all done a long time ago. I suggest polar bears.

QUOTE(BearSox @ Aug 22, 2007 -> 10:40 PM) hopefully we'll get to see what Lucy can do come september. He would hopefully outproduce Hall, plus he is known for his good game calling and defense. I'm as big a fan of Lucy as there is on this board, but, Lucy needs to get adjusted to hitting AAA pitching. He is striking out a lot more often than he has at any other level (though this is just his first few weeks at AAA). That said though, I think after he gets some more exposure in August and September at AAA and probably a bit at the MLB level, I think you need to seriously consider him for the backup slot next year. Hall has been a pretty big disappointment, and if you aren't going to get more than a .200 hitter out of him, then you might as well do it cheaply and with a guy who can throw out some baserunners (as well as call a good game).

QUOTE(whitesoxfan101 @ Aug 22, 2007 -> 03:06 PM) The NAACP is doing more to set back race relations than any group I've ever seen, they are BEGGING others to hate them. And by others, I mean ANYBODY who isn't black, that is white people, hispanics, asians, middle easterners, everybody. Now THAT I might agree with.

When have you ever heard anyone in the MSM TV world ask ANY candidate ANY question that was even close to this challenging? They just don't do it. There are still real news outlets out there, and there are still real journalists. But they aren't the ones on network TV.

QUOTE(WHITESOXRANDY @ Aug 22, 2007 -> 07:32 AM) I'll go out on a limb here and say that the Sox will finish behind the Twins each of the next 3 years. Do you know the lottery numbers for today too? Three years. That's a laugh. No one, not even KW knows what this team will look like in 2010.

QUOTE(Cknolls @ Aug 22, 2007 -> 09:56 AM) Did anyone read Dennis Byrne in the Chicago Tribune. Pretty good piece. Where is the outrage over the steel plants pollution of the Lake. How about the city of Chicago's polluting of the River system. BP is not even in the same ball park as these two but they are an easy target because they are the evil oil company.. 1. Legislation occurred to CHANGE what BP is doing to make things WORSE. The steel companies were restricted at their levels of pollution some time ago, and have stayed there. Protesting the steel companies accomplishes little. Doing so to BP may actually accomplish something. 2. What BP is trying to do is illegal - what the steel companies are doing is not. 3. There has been plenty of outrage from some of us at polluters in general - in your view, do we need to be constantly posting about every single one of them in order for this specific one to be justified? 4. Legislation was hard-fought and enforced to keep pollution in the lake down (levels were dropped significantly with the Clean Water Act and other legislation). Here, we see a potential movement backwards. Of course there is outrage, as there should be. We drink out of that lake, last I checked. 5. I'd like to hear you tell us why you think this is OK.

If you are looking to evaluate the Sox' ability to scout for the draft, I'd suggest you should use the performance of their picks rather than the amounts of money shelled out to do that. The money paid in one given draft is a red herring - its an easy target for criticism, but its so fraught with pollutant factors that it means zero. If you don't believe that, just look at where other teams are on the list. Some of the organizations historically best at drafting are near the bottom... others near the top. Same the other way around. I agree wholeheartedly that the Sox as an organization has done poorly at choosing and developing young talent, though. I just think the better measure is to look at the resulting MLB players (or lack thereof) out of the system.

QUOTE(RockRaines @ Aug 21, 2007 -> 06:44 PM) Its a serious rarity for a rookie to come up and give you 200 innings. We would have to sign or trade for a stop gap until gio or eggy is ready. Or have a guy in the 'pen who has proven he can pick up an occasional start reasonably well.

QUOTE(Balta1701 @ Aug 21, 2007 -> 06:35 PM) Except of course...Medicare already runs with dramatically less than the overhead that we see with private insurers in almost any way you look at it. Is that the case? I have to admit ignorance on how exactly Medicare works, so I should go do some homework.

QUOTE(Dick Allen @ Aug 21, 2007 -> 04:49 PM) The big problem with trading Garland is who replaces the 200 innings? Rookies tend to struggle, Contreras won't be any younger next year, and there will be questions about how many innings Danks can throw. Can Vazquez keep up with what he's doing? There were a lot of questions in 2005 as well. I think unless KW gets someone to take Contreras' entire contract, that Garland is gone. That's a really good point. The Sox' system may have a few future starters who are near ready, but its unlikely they will come up and give you that kind of workmanship in their rookie year.

QUOTE(RockRaines @ Aug 21, 2007 -> 04:21 PM) Wanna know what I hate? The Monday night football goons last night saying how Vick needs to donate thousands of dollars to PETA or the Humane Society to "make it right" with people and to "prove that he has love for animals." Is that what we have become? donate some money and its all good? STFU you retards. I think he has proven through his actions, electrocuting, hanging, murdering dogs at every whim, that he doesnt give a s*** about f***ing animals. He is a piece of crap and no amount of donations are going to change that you goons. Awesomeness, right there.

QUOTE(santo=dorf @ Aug 21, 2007 -> 04:23 PM) I know he must be going through some hard times, but can't we please just release Cintron already? It's his third time on the breavement list and we won't need him in September. He's guaranteed the money either way. I just want him to be removed from Ozzie's toybox He's been on bereavement leave three times?! I didn't even know that. Well, in a way, when combined with his injury, that might tell you something about why he is having the year he is.

QUOTE(Gregory Pratt @ Aug 21, 2007 -> 06:07 PM) I, for one, don't know that the organization is not stupid. I have serious doubts after the Gavin Floyd and Nick Masset debacles, after Day's plusplus slider never materialized, after we gambled away Chris Young with the thought that BA could be a respectable player, at least, and we wouldn't be left naked in Centerfield. We've got some seriously bad scouts and a lot of them have to be fired. Do you seriously think that other organizations don't have plenty of debacles of their own? Because they all do. I wish people would look at things on balance. I mean, this year sucks. Its painful in fact. And there is plenty of blame to go around on Ozzie, KW, the players, and so on. But this bizarre mindset that KW and Ozzie are stupid is just completely unfounded in fact. I would think that the records compiled by both of them, when looked at among their respective peers, would make that obvious. But, people have to sling their anger somewhere, and those two are the easiest targets (even though they are NOT always to blame). KW and Ozzie and the whole organization screw up plenty. But their successes in recent years show they are far from stupid.

QUOTE(BigSqwert @ Aug 15, 2007 -> 09:36 AM) I highly recommend doing that. Whenever I avoid a company I will make sure to write them so that they know why. I have looked around the BP website and cannot find anything helpful in terms of who to send a letter to. I've already written it. If any of you happen to have gotten a name and address, could you post it here for us to use? Thanks.

QUOTE(29andPoplar @ Aug 20, 2007 -> 02:09 PM) These statements by Guillen kind of go along with what he said a few months ago. He said he wants to play more regulars in spring training. The general idea was the team might gel quicker and get off to a better start. Basically my feeling is they plan to run a tougher camp in some ways. Good. And don't be sorry about posting that stuff. Some of us are actually curious about the future (those of us who haven't already divined a 100-loss season in 2008).

QUOTE(jackie hayes @ Aug 21, 2007 -> 10:52 AM) I don't agree with that. In principle, sure, killing for sustenance is different. But both hunting and foie gras are very inefficient ways to get nutrition, for the most part. (Hunting maybe a little less so -- partially depends what you hunt.) The reason they persist is pleasure -- hunting for the pleasure of stalking and killing something (for "sport", really), and hunting and foie gras for the pleasure of eating a different sort of meat. Why is the latter pleasure inherently better than the pleasure of "sport"? And I think that, even if it were true that killing (or gavage) for eating is better, there's still a lot of arbitrariness left -- in the different treatment of cock fighting (historically), in the differing attitudes towards eating different species. I agree there is definitely different treatment, and some choice of denial. Animals that people think are "smarter", or are just cuter, get more rage on their behalf if they are made to suffer or die. Cock fighting isn't seen as being as bad, even though that makes little sense. I do understand what you are getting at. But I still think that someone who goes out and shoots a deer, and uses the whole animal in some way, is not in the same ballpark as someone who tortures a dog (or even a bird) into being a fighting animal, and then kills it or lets it be killed.

QUOTE(jackie hayes @ Aug 21, 2007 -> 10:18 AM) I DON'T think that's the case. But there IS a lot of arbitrariness in the way laws treat different forms of animal harm. Hunting may "normally" result in instant death, but that's hardly a defense. It's certainly common for an animal to be wounded and suffer. Foie gras production is not a nice business. Bans on cock fighting have come much more slowly than bans on dog fighting. It may be that the 'quantity of suffering' from dogfighting is greater than that from other sources -- but that's an awfully hard thing to pin down. Now, I'm not trying to pass judgment here. I had a foie gras dog at Hot Doug's just before the bust, I've never once asked about the conditions my meat came from, etc. Just saying, I can understand the argument. Pushing past the "quality" of suffering, the other huge difference is purpose. If one kills something to eat, I think that is an entirely different thing than one who kills for sport. And even worse if that killing for sport is cruel, and follows months or years of torture. So I think the motive behind the killing is also a big factor.