NorthSideSox72

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Nov 1, 2010 -> 06:30 PM) Defensively he isnt all that great at 1B, where he excels is in saving his fielders from throwing the ball past him. That wont win him any awards though. Taking throws is by far the most important thing a 1B does, and he excels at that. He's also very good with throws, which a lot of 1B's aren't. And usually, he's got a great sense of the field. His only weakness, really, is his range, and he makes up for part of that with good positioning.

QUOTE (Brian @ Nov 1, 2010 -> 07:43 PM) Only about 28 more hours for Obama to get anything done until the next elections in 4 years. You mean 2 years, right?

QUOTE (chw42 @ Nov 1, 2010 -> 06:10 PM) Because DRS had him as one of the worst 1B in all of baseball this year. And this voting is heavily based on DRS (which was made by John Dewan, who is one of the voters in this, along with many other proponents to that stat). It did seem like Paulie had a less than stellar year, at least by his standards. Made a few more mistakes than he typically does. But I'd still consider him above average, looking at the other 1B's in the league, and I'd even say he's had some years where he's been among the best.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Nov 1, 2010 -> 06:04 PM) False equivalency I think that Al Gore is probably a true believer, but he's ALSO making money from it. And I think there are GOP'er climate change deniers who are also true believers, and also make money off of it. The key difference, to me, is that one is willing to acknowledge the value of science and evidence, while the other wants to make modern decisions based on beliefs not founded in one iota of fact. And by the way, neither represents the entirety of either party.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Nov 1, 2010 -> 05:59 PM) Al Gore? Yeah, I was going to say, that is only part of the issue here. Furthermore, it works both ways, as SS points out. So yes, the big business lobby is partly at work with the GOP here. That's one of the things that is laughable about the big GOP wave being bolstered (sort of) by the Tea Party - these people want independent control and individual freedoms, yet the candidates they are screaming to have in office are completely in the pockets of big business. There more here though, that is motivating it. Base things, just like money... fear being most primary among them. Religion, or the contorted view of it, being another. Which of course is another irony - the hatred that some on the far right spew towards Islam, is exactly what motivates their enemy. They are becoming their own enemy.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Nov 1, 2010 -> 04:49 PM) I honestly don't get how anyone votes Republican. Because the Dems have some equally idiotic policies. I'm voting for some R's this election. I don't like some of what they stand for, but in some cases, they are the better choice. It does drive me insane though, the GOP's complete head-in-the-sand approach to environmental issues. Its one thing to say that you cannot just go full-boat on alternative energy because of the up front costs... which I may not agree with but can at least understand. Its entirely another thing to look at literally thousands of scientists in a chorus about climate change, and further to simply ignore common sense that pollution is bad, while grasping onto NO scientific evidence whatsoever to refute the idea of climate change. Its chosen ignorance and I agree that it is baffling.

Keep an eye out here, we'll have the new Top 25 list out soon. Also, danman, myself and others will start putting some offseason material out on the ChicagoNow site (and link here), to keep things moving.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Nov 1, 2010 -> 12:07 PM) And yet, we're managing to pull data from the Genesis mission. Genesis was sent into space with a Gauss gun?

His future depends on what happens in the offseason with Paulie and/or whatever big bat the team acquires. It would be ideal to have him stay in AAA a bit longer, but if DH or 1B are a massive hole in March, then he needs to get the job.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Oct 30, 2010 -> 01:58 PM) My word, Kareem is tall. He's taller than the Tuba. Speaking of which... I missed the first hour or so of the rally... why was there a random sousaphone on stage anyway?

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Oct 29, 2010 -> 08:19 AM) Well, this will make the deficit hawks happy give people another thing to want to waste money on along the border. Guaranteed, an actual, physical wall would be far more expensive and still need a lot of the same monitoring anyway. I still think that the virtual wall is the best solution here, if you are going to do anything at all.

So I printed out a template ballot today, to check out the names for the races I don't know well yet, and then research the people running. For State House 11th district, my choices are apparently a democrat whose consistently dodges questions of how to fix the budget, or a Republican whose web page is almost entirely written in Latin. Fantastic. I want to make one plug here - I advise everyone to vote for Forest Claypool for County Assessor. He's one of the few honest, good guys in county government. He's normally a Dem, but Berrios ran him off the ballot with the machine. By the way, here is my ballot for the major offices (and my endorsements, I guess you could say)... US Senate: Kirk ® Governor: Whitney (G) AG: Madigan (D) SecState: Hanson (I) US Rep 4th: Burns (G) State Rep 11th: Williams (D) Water Dist: All Green Candidates Cook County Board Prez: Keats ® County Sheriff: Dart (D) County Assessor: Claypool (I) County Commissioner 12th: Fritchey (D)

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Oct 29, 2010 -> 07:44 AM) The technical challenges are pretty daunting. I think the only material that would work for the cabling that we know of is carbon nanotube-like construction. I actually can't remember the material cited, but one of the major science rags looked at this a year or two ago, and said the materials were there to make it doable now. Getting it set up is, as you said, a huge challenge. But the thing is, once its up, its cheap as hell to use.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Oct 29, 2010 -> 07:33 AM) As soon as I complete the Guillen/Stanton deal I'll get right on that. You joke, but I actually think it may be the best eventual model to go with. The technology is there now to do it. Its expensive to set up, but way, way, way, way cheaper than any rocket launch to operate.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Oct 28, 2010 -> 05:33 PM) Some interesting articles on Space Tourism and climate change, and on soot problems in general. Space tourism to accelerate climate change This article contains a response indicating potentially unreliable/wrong data in the study. But either way, soot is still pretty bad. 2003 paper by Hansen on soot. Space elevator is the way to go, IMO.

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ Oct 28, 2010 -> 10:51 AM) I remember fathom saying all that year that he had no clue how Cotts had only given up 1 HR. I just thought that fathom was being fathom (or am I the new fathom now?) Cotts was just one lucky mofo in 2005. Or, as Balta said, he was a different pitcher. Something similar happened with Wassermann. He was lights-out up through the minors, then put up a pretty damn good rookie season with the Sox in 2007. During the offseason, Cooper sent him off to change a few things - he changed where he pitched from on the rubber, tried to add a change-up, eliminated the overhand fastball, some other stuff. He came back in 2008 and got rocked. I'm a big believer that for pitchers, the smallest of changes can have big effect, good or bad. If Cotts changed his arm slot and delivery, for a guy who was already only a 2-pitch specialized guy, that could be a huge factor.

QUOTE (Milkman delivers @ Oct 28, 2010 -> 10:45 AM) Expound? There has to be more to it than that. Really it was that simple. Everyone who knows me, knows I'm a big Sox fan. Same with my wife. So, we bought some cheap Cubs shirts and hats, and went to a party like that.

I went as a Cubs fan last year. I am now using the Cubs t-shirt as a cleaning rag.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Oct 28, 2010 -> 09:43 AM) "I have a gift and sooner or later I have to give it away.I have to share it. Hopefully I'll get the opportunity here." -Barry Bonds, on his desire to become the hitting coach for the San Francisco Giants Cream and clear for everyone!!! And there was much rejoicing!

QUOTE (Brian @ Oct 27, 2010 -> 05:45 PM) James Cameron gonna make Avatar 2 and 3. Does that make me have to see Avatar? The first one was awful in almost every respect (except for the special effects), so I can't imagine the sequels will be much better from the same team of people.

QUOTE (Paint it Black @ Oct 27, 2010 -> 03:05 PM) Bumping a potential good thread. It's tough being unemployed and trying to find a professional job. Anybody have a good place to look that isn't the careerbuilder/indeed/whatever else? I'm a finance major if that helps. Having been in the full time work force out of school for well over a decade, here is what I can tell you. The best way to find jobs, in order, is... 1. Connections with people at companies you want to work for (personal, professional, networking) . . . 2. Recruiters and headhunters . . 3. Campus recruitment offices (only when recently out of school, for the most part) . . . . . . . . . . . 99. Blind applications to jobs found via the web Since #1 is hard to make work for someone with minimal experience, I'd focus on #2. Find recruiters and headhunters and firms of those types who specialize in jobs in finance, and get in front of a recruiter there.

If he can be signed for super-cheap, and if TCQ is still around as maybe a DH, then I'd be all for signing him as the other side of the combo. Between those two and their potential, and injury history, I'd say that makes a good DH combo. Like Kotsay/Jones, except, not washed up.

Actually, there is another alternative here. You can do relatively simple things to the existing FSA rules, and make it way, way better... 1. That thing that specific vendors do to not require receipts, is simply the way that they submit data to the card company (in this case, the FSA credit card, which is really like a debit card of any other kind). You can require all medical providers to do this. This is very simple thing to do - it literally could just be a one-time process where you register as a medical provider (which they already would have anyway) with the state, they email you a magic code once a month that says you are verified, and you send the code up with the debit card transaction. This is all Walgreens does anyway, its virtually no cost to the provider, and it makes millions of people's lives easier (including the medical providers, who can provide far fewer paper receipts and field fewer phone calls by doing this). 2. Make the debit cards reloadable all the time, instead of this silly once a year election. For most large employers (the ones who even have FSA), you can already go into a website and change your deduction amounts. So, just allow the deductions for FSA to vary, and the money goes over whenever it changes. No sweat. Do these two things, and the program will take off.

We tried this for this year, and won't be doing it again. Its a huge pain in the ass that consumes significant time to deal with, the use it or lose policy makes no sense, and all that for relatively minimal savings that is wiped out in terms of time spent. Not worth it, IMO. That said, the much easier thing to do here, is to get rid of it entirely... take out the high bar for deductions, take it all the way to zero... and then give a choice - you an deduct the expenses at tax time if you do deductions, or you can take a flat deduction that represents the average medical costs for your income bracket. That way, you only have to deal with the B.S. once a year, you remove the silly use it or lose it rule, and you cut out the wasteful spending.

QUOTE (3E8 @ Oct 27, 2010 -> 12:37 PM) The articles have been clear that the Tigers have lost money, almost $30M in 2009 to be exact, yet their actions have not indicated they will curtail spending. After a $30M loss in '09, the Tigers committed to over $100M in new contracts in the '10 offseason between Verlander, Valverde, Damon, and Laird. Last week they signed Inge to a new 2-year/$11.5M deal. Detroit as a city has been hit hard. But so far we've seen it hasn't affected Ilitch's willingness to pour money into the organization (which he played for) and I don't see why we should believe they are going to cut back given recent history I see what you are saying, I guess I just see something different going on. We'll see soon how this goes.