StrangeSox

QUOTE(kapkomet @ Mar 11, 2008 -> 11:50 AM) Did your economics professor explain pricing and supply and demand and how it doesn't get set by the oil companies? Now yes, they benefit, but they don't set the prices. Just want to clarify the point, is all. Right, sorry if that wasn't clear. The market has set gasoline at $3.25 a gallon today. People are going to pay that regardless of whether or not .30 of that goes to the government.

QUOTE(spawn @ Mar 11, 2008 -> 11:34 AM) Crede hit 30 homers his last full season ('06). The only reason Fields got the job was because of Crede's injury. And if it's his job to lose, why was he playing the outfield towards the end of the season? As has been mentioned, Crede is a much better defensive 3rd baseman that Fields. And with the uncertainty of the pitching staff this season, the last thing you want is to be giving teams extra outs by putting in a sub-standard defensive 3rd baseman based solely on the fact that he hits homeruns. I'm not saying that Crede shouldn't be traded, but if he's on the roster when the season starts, he should be the starter. He was. He hasn't shown, at least to this point, that he still is.

QUOTE(Tony82087 @ Mar 11, 2008 -> 11:29 AM) Every Crede fan on this board is talking about Crede as he is 2006 Joe. He isn't. 2008 Joe is coming off major back surgery, has looked awful at the plate, and has committed 4 errors so far. There is no guarantee Crede is the same as he was in 2006. I agree 100%. Hopefully one of them steps up so we don't have to choose the one that manages to break .200 at the plate and commit less than 10 errors in ST. Right now, the situation doesn't like great with either choice, but it is only March 11th. I think I'd rather have near-GG defense, career mediocore hitter Crede than mediocore defense, good power hitter Fields. There's no guarantee we get either, though.

QUOTE(witesoxfan @ Mar 11, 2008 -> 10:59 AM) Fields hit 23 homers last year...why should he have to win the job? It should be Crede who has to win the spot from Fields and money should have absolutely nothing to do with it. Crede, if healthy, is a much better defender than Fields. Given our current rotation, that may be more important than a few extra dingers in a lineup full of guys who can and will hit HR's.

QUOTE(Balta1701 @ Mar 11, 2008 -> 10:57 AM) Of course, economically, this is a terrible idea. If you have a commodity that is only available in a limited amount, and you lower the price of it, then all that is going to happen is you're going to watch demand try to surge to make up for the price decrease, and things will come right back in to balance. So you might lower prices by a few tens of cents initially, but they'd go right back up as people bought more, and all that would happen would be that the Saudis would make more money on each barrel while the governments in the U.S. would make less. And then your property taxes would have to go up, or your sales taxes would double, or something like that. That's pretty accurate. In one of the econ classes I took last spring, the professor went over this example and showed how lowering the taxes won't save the consumer anything up front and will cost them (through higher taxes or decreased service) later on. The market has already set the acceptable price given demand. If you take out .30 in taxes, you're just increasing their profits .30. The price of gasoline won't really move and the only ones benefiting will be the oil companies.

QUOTE(Texsox @ Mar 11, 2008 -> 10:14 AM) Absolutely, it also seems easier to keep one power plant running at peak efficiency and with peak environmental controls than thousands of cars. I just see people call them non-polluting in other venues and we forget that electricity needs to be generated somehow. Go nuclear and you're only left with a small amount of radioactive waste which can be reprocessed and stored. QUOTE(Texsox @ Mar 11, 2008 -> 10:14 AM) What I see instead of some technology that will charge "fill" in five minutes, is smaller, lighter, power sources that could be swapped out like propane tanks. At least here, more people just trade tanks at our local convienence stores than have our own tanks filled. That's much more realistic than some form of rapid charging.

QUOTE(Rex Kicka** @ Mar 11, 2008 -> 08:57 AM) So there doesn't seem to be any legitimate reason why oil is this high. Inventories are at a relatively historical high and there's no real distribution shortage. This is pure speculation. Was it a mistake to allow the free trade of oil as a commodity given its absolute need in society? There's a very good reason. Oil is traded in dollars generally, and the dollar is losing value.

Joe Crede > All. They'll need to open a new wing on the HOF just for him. The rest of those bums are unfit to be in the same room as Joe "Perennial Gold Glover and Silver Slugger" Crede

QUOTE(Rex Kicka** @ Mar 10, 2008 -> 03:52 PM) Why would that hurt battery life? If I'm out of AA batteries and a set dies, sometime in the freezer gets a little more juice out of em. Batteries lose capacity in colder temperatures. I don't know the chemistry behind it. http://www.conergy.us/desktopdefault.aspx/.../451_read-3926/

How long does it take to recharge? Also, how would a car like that work for people in apartments/ condos? Run an extension cord out the window?

QUOTE(lvjeremylv @ Mar 9, 2008 -> 07:06 PM) I mentioned the 3 most important offensive stats. Nothing sneaky about that. YOU forgot to mention he walked 11 more times on the road vs. at home. Nice try, Mr. Sly! OPS > AVG

QUOTE(Soxbadger @ Mar 7, 2008 -> 02:21 PM) And you can act like its common knowledge but most people do not realize that states generally vote by historical trends. No one has really brought up some names of states likely to flip, which is what this discussion should be about. Which states will the Democrats win that they lost before? I just dont really see that many states where its likely to flip, thus my belief. /shrugs I could have also said that whatever way Ohio goes the election will go as Ohio has only gone for the wrong candidate once (Nixon over Kennedy) I don't know where you get this. It's generally accepted that states like Illinois, California, and New York will always go blue, while places like Texas will always go red. Then you hear the phrase "battleground states" constantly in the media. The two big ones usually are Ohio and Florida. There are several others as well. I think most people realize this. Just look at this map from wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:2008-US...-Map_vector.svg Here's the page on common "Swing States" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swing_state

QUOTE(bmags @ Mar 7, 2008 -> 01:42 PM) that's a strange hypothetical, though. Of course if the results remained the same as last election the republicans will win. They won last election, so if the results remained the same, they will win this election. I mean, yeah. Exactly. I think Soxbadger just had a really long-winded way of saying "If the Republicans get the same number of electoral votes as last time, they will win." Well duh.

Not a particularly good episode. The show as a whole is much more focused on story and drama than mystery now.

QUOTE(NorthSideSox72 @ Mar 6, 2008 -> 12:41 PM) The FL and MI situation is getting a little uglier. A senator from FL is telling Howard Dean that the DNC should either accept the original results, or pay for a do-over. Dean says a do-over is all good, but that the DNC will not pay for it. What kills me here is that the voters in FL and MI, and the rest of the nation indirectly, are now paying for the poor decision making of whomever in FL and MI decided to move their primaries up too far. My question is, who are those people, and if they still have jobs, why? They will need to come to a decision pretty quick. As it stands now, the re-addition of 2 big primaries probably helps Clinton the most, since she is behind. I have a feeling they will end up re-doing both primaries, and splitting the costs somehow. And that changes the math a bit. As I understand it, it was a state-wide decision to move up the primaries, not just the DNC. Many democrats were opposed to it, but were overruled by the republican majority.

QUOTE(DBAH0 @ Mar 5, 2008 -> 04:41 PM) May have to go with Archuleta again, as bad as that is. Please god, no.

QUOTE(Rex Kicka** @ Mar 6, 2008 -> 08:32 AM) If only one out of seven votes that Nader got would have otherwise gone to Gore in Florida, we'd have had a different president. If one out of three voters that voted for Nader in New Hampshire voted for Gore, we'd have had a different president. I don't think you can reasonably argue that George Bush represented a better set of policies and positions towards issues that the Green Party would generally care about. Only 1% of D voters voted for Nader. 6% voted for Bush. Case closed. Gore did not EARN the votes he needed. The D's and R's don't get every vote by default.

QUOTE(Rex Kicka** @ Mar 6, 2008 -> 01:15 AM) I didn't live in a state where my vote would have made an effect when I voted for Nader in 2000. Indiana was going for Bush regardless of my vote. Had I lived in Michigan, where it was close until three days before the election, I wouldn't have dared. The truth is, another four years of the same party in power along the executive branch means the calcification of the Supreme Court as conservative activist for a generation. That's not something I'm willing to chance happening by protesting whether or not I think my candidate is a nice guy. I think if most people who voted for Nader anticipated the differences a Gore presidency could have offered them over the last eight years, they'd gladly switch their vote retroactively. If you really want a third party to make a change, start at the bottom. Start with local races, state races. Don't start with an election that gives you no shot to do anything other than possibly derail your own interest. However, YAS, given you are generally diametrically opposed to my political point of view, I encourage you to vote for the third party nominee of your choice . Gore lost on his own. He couldn't carry his own state, and more D's voted for Bush in Florida than for Nader.

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Mar 5, 2008 -> 03:11 PM) So there is another myth up in smoke... Who's say that it wouldn't have been 65-35 Obama if not for Rush?

QUOTE(Rex Kicka** @ Mar 5, 2008 -> 03:05 PM) Again this change applies to all women. I think there's a big difference between offering different sexes time to exercise on their own, than there is to compare it to race or orientation. We separate locker rooms by women and men, we don't separate them by color, race, religion, sexuality. What's the common theme between locker rooms and washrooms that isn't true of basketball courts and workout rooms? You drop your pants.

QUOTE(Controlled Chaos @ Mar 5, 2008 -> 02:47 PM) Does anyone think Rush Limbaugh had anything to do with Clinton winning? Rex posted in another thread that Rep. voters in the Dem. primary favored Obama.

QUOTE(Pants Rowland @ Mar 5, 2008 -> 02:14 PM) I think I heard that the Cell's configuration makes it one of the toughter parks to accumulate doubles and triples. May just be b.s. since I have no source to quote, but I could swear there was some analysis done to back it up. Well, its widely accepted that its easy to hit HR's there. Some of those HR's might be doubles or triples in another park.

QUOTE(Rex Kicka** @ Mar 5, 2008 -> 02:27 PM) Regardless of my position on it, how would you enforce that? I'd be against it, by the way. Instead of something you can't outwardly identify, how about race-based? Whites can't use this gym 3 hours a day. Sound fair?

QUOTE(Rex Kicka** @ Mar 5, 2008 -> 01:32 PM) You would be allowed to use this gym. 64 of the 70 hours that the gym is being used. You also would be able to use every other gym in the system during all open hours as well. There are other restrictions on the use of other athletic facilities in the Harvard system based on ability as well. Nobody is having anything taken away. And if someone is whining that they have to walk an extra 10 minutes to exercise, that's almost as stupid as this fake outrage is. But women are allowed to use the gym a full 70 of the 70 hours. Why is discrimination based on gender ok here? Would it be ok to have a gym where women couldn't workout for a certain period, or would there be an awful lot of uproar? And you didn't answer Alpha's question. At what point does the discrimination become unacceptable? 10 hours? 35 hours? A separate gym only for women?

QUOTE(Vance Law @ Mar 5, 2008 -> 12:44 PM) Not totally disagreeing with you. But interesting to look at. Which teams have managed to do this, and how did they go about it? Yankees and Red Sox have infinity dollars to buy free agents and sign all of their own free agents- have less need to trade lots of prospects for MLB players. Tigers went through several years as a horrendous team while they built their farm system, brought people up, and now have traded away the remainder of their system to try to win it all immediately. Indians, Rays, DBacks, Rockies all go through several years of being very bad while they bing up a mostly in-house young team. Other people know farm systems better than me. What percentage of teams have managed to be consistently good major league teams all while having a good farm system (excluding fake teams the Yankees and Red Sox)? Before trading the farm for Cabrera, the Tigers were still a top AL contender. You're going to go through cycles, sure, but it doesn't have to be only one or the other.