StrangeSox

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Aug 29, 2013 -> 04:35 PM) As I said to Balta, how can you get statistical evidence about things that didnt happen? How can you know what the casualty rate would be if there was no intervention. You cant. You can only compare pre-intervention to post intervention. But that is inherently flawed as intervention almost always comes when casualties are increasing, it very rarely comes when casualties are decreasing. Therefore it stands to reason that there will be more deaths after intervention, because the conflict was escalating. If they are comparing different conflicts, thats just a waste of time because they are unique. You're basically saying that counter-factual research is impossible and worthless. I don't accept that. Interventions save some lives and take others. What is the evidence that the net effect is fewer civilian deaths? How is Syria comparable at all to targeted genocide and open warfare between multiple nation-states like WWII? The comparison just doesn't hold up here. And, if you'll note, the Allies didn't really do s*** to stop the genocide even when they were bombing within a mile or two of known concentration camps. They could have very easily bombed the railroad tracks, but they didn't. They didn't intervene to help civilians or to stop the genocide. The Allies' conduct in that regard is actually pretty appalling. It's certainly not a good example of humanitarian intervention.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Aug 29, 2013 -> 04:37 PM) Its just made up bulls***. I hate to say it, but it is. Why do you say that? You seem to be saying that you categorically reject any research of this type.

1) The paper looked at conflicts from 89-2005. 2) References to Nazi Germany don't seem particularly relevant because Syria doesn't have concentration camps and that wasn't about foreign intervention, that was open warfare between numerous nation-states. 3) It was an overview of the effects of intervention. You can probably come up with some unique scenarios, like concentration camps, where the conclusion would be changed. That's not the case in Syria, though, where we're talking about warfare between the national army and various rebel groups. We are talking about coming down and backing one side over the other because one side used chemical weapons (though probably both sides have in the past several months). Why should I believe that intervention will reduce civilian casualties? I would really, really like to. I want fewer dead Syrians. I just don't think Tomahawks are the way to get there.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Aug 29, 2013 -> 04:21 PM) How in the world can you actually project that? There is no way of being able to tell what would have happened if it was just let go. Even just thinking of a place like Rwanda where somewhere around a million people died, I can't see how you could project that 1.4 million would have died if there had been military intervention at some point. The same way any other counter-factual-to-real-world is examined. Obviously you cannot know for sure, but you can study and compare different situations throughout history in which there were interventions and which there weren't. Balta posted this link a few pages back: http://themonkeycage.org/2013/08/27/do-mil...+Monkey+Cage%29 This is a challenge with any counter-factual research, but that doesn't mean it's impossible to do. From the conclusion: If you have third-party troops on the ground that you believe both sides will refrain from attacking, intervention can protect civilian populations. Lobbing a bunch of missiles, which is the only thing anyone is talking about or considering, won't do that.* *According to this paper. I'm open to any studies that suggest otherwise.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Aug 29, 2013 -> 04:05 PM) Intervention does not necessarily mean "bombing" people. But even if it did and its 50/50, does that mean those people should be sentenced to death because we dont want to take a risk that more people are going to die? I guess I just dont understand the logic. If you are into isolationism and dont believe that the US should get involved in other peoples business, I can understand that. I disagree, but I can understand. But if you think the US should help, I dont see how you can say that our hands are tied because the possibility of our help may result in death, when by all accounts it seems that us not helping will definitely result in death. Both options will result in death. Historically, at least according to some research Balta posted, intervention (aka bombing, which is the only option besides ground troops) leads to as much as 40% more deaths than non-intervention. The chances are at best 50/50 that bombing will kill less people than not-bombing. Why do you want to sentence the inevitable civilian casualties of interventionist bombing to death when there is no guarantee or even strong likelihood that the intervention will lead to less civilian casualties? That is where I stand and why I can't bring myself to support intervention. I want to minimize civilian deaths and humanitarian crises. I see no evidence that foreign military intervention will do such a thing in a situation like Syria.

Bombing people has at least a 50/50 chance of getting more people killed than not bombing people. You can "try and do better," but that's the reality.

But that exact reasoning has led to horrible humanitarian crises in the past. Intervention is no guarantee of a reduction in the loss of life.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Aug 29, 2013 -> 03:22 PM) The 5th best player. It depends on who's there and what you want to do. If you think you can find points at other positions later, take Rodgers or Brees. If you'd rather take your chance with a guy like Romo/Griffin/Newton/Kaepernick/Ryan/whoever, then take a running back. If not, maybe take Calvin Johnson or Jimmy Graham, places where you will get surplus value over regular old good players. Personally, I'd look for CJ Spiller, but I'm a homer and I think he's going to have a big, big year, especially if Manuel comes back. Manuel can do just enough to space the field, and Spiller might be the best player in the game in space. Look at rankings, look at mock drafts, whatever, there are all kinds of things you can do. No just tell me who to pick.

What about jimmy graham with my second pick at 24?

who should I take #5 in a yahoo league, non PPR with pretty much standard scoring?

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Aug 29, 2013 -> 12:39 PM) This is actually much more complicated than how you present it here. It's generally believed that the largest programs (Ohio State, Alabama, Texas) do in fact make money on their football teams overall, but the bookkeeping is very complicated because of issues like stadium construction and upkeep which in many places have been paid for out of bonds or construction fees taken out by the state or the school. For example, I have a giant, 100,000 person stadium sitting outside my window that gets used literally 6 times per year. That's an enormous stadium cost that someone has paid for, and that cost for most schools isn't shown in the yearly net revenue for football teams. The cost of things like workout facilities, offices, buildings on campus that are used by the people, those things are taken up in many cases by being part of the campus. But, there's a counterpoint also...it's hard to put an exact price on the alumni relations and loyalty that the sports programs bring. They're free marketing for the school, and they're a great way to make alums give money to the school as well. That money doesn't get counted as revenue for the school and the marketing of having millions of people watching a game involving the school is almost impossible to put a dollar amount on. I don't see how any of that justifies not paying the athletes, though.

QUOTE (Tex @ Aug 29, 2013 -> 01:17 PM) As I work towards my MA in Lierature, which is hopefully a step towards piling it high and deep, I have a Literature and Culture class that will focus on the Kennedy assasination. My first assignmnet is a book written by one of JFK's mistresses called Mafia Moll. Judith Campbell Exner is the author. My other class is a Comparative Lit class centering around "unlikable characters". Required reading include Jude the Obscure, Lolita, Madam Bovary, and a few others. I am liking my choices this semester. Obviously very creepy, but probably the best first-person narrative I've ever read.

Right, aid for refugees doesn't carry basically 100% guarantee of killing a bunch of civilians unintentionally with your humanitarian bombs. My first instinct, like yours Soxbadger, is to "do something," go in there and intervene. If there was some completely neutral, social justice military force (lol what a contradiction there) that could go in, maybe I'd feel stronger about intervention. But we'd be going in with the US military, and we'd be going in for reasons related directly to US foreign policy interests and not out of genuine humanitarian concern. We can always go back to the Allies' despicable inaction and indifference wrt to the concentration camps in WWII. We can point to Rwanda, Somalia and other tragic humanitarian crises. But for every one of those, we can point to foreign interventions going absolutely horrible for the civil population.

There's always money for bombs, not so much for humanitarian aid.

There needs to be a pretty strong case made that bombing another country and inevitably killing civilians is "the right thing."

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Aug 28, 2013 -> 09:09 PM) Doesn't a mosque get suicide bombed in Pakistan once a week?? Correct me if I'm wrong, but are those not Muslims attacking the mosques? That's sectarian violence. Like Protestants bombing Catholics in Ireland. They wouldn't turn around and bomb the nativity to piss off the other because they both deeply revere it, whereas the protestants might not care about some Catholic saint or relics.

That could definitely be another cause of a failed compression test. Might be worth a second opinion given the cost here, but take their professional opinion after actually looking at your car over mine.

A blown headgasket will fail a compression test. The head gasket seals the cylinder head (where the valves are) to the engine block. If it's blown, there won't be a good seal in the compression chamber and you'll get bad compression test results. There can definitely be other causes of bad compression, but it definitely doesn't rule out a bad head gasket.

What is wrong with the engine?

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Aug 28, 2013 -> 04:35 PM) Except when the pretty much turned Iraq into a civil war by doing exactly that. That was Sunnis targeting Shi'ite sites and vice-versa, right? Whereas all Muslims have reverence for Jerusalem.

but sexism is dead

Related to at least one of the authors, Mauser, is a pretty thorough takedown of an editorial he wrote that got a lot of very basic facts wrong: http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2004/06/23/mauser/

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Aug 28, 2013 -> 04:10 PM) Shocking, you didn't even read it (proving my point about a study about gravity): No, I didn't read every footnote. I responded to your original post which had numerous mistakes. Where have I done that here? You asked, with snark, if Harvard was reputable. You called this a new study. This isn't a study and it wasn't published by Harvard. That it was an article in an ideological newsletter lessens its credibility regardless of viewpoint. I've pointed out flaws in studies that come to conclusions I like before, I'm sure of that. I think you're missing the point I'm making about correlation here. It has nothing to do with the ideology or conclusions of the report. It's ridiculous to look at Country A Murder Rate versus Country B Murder Rate and then assign any difference to gun policy.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Aug 28, 2013 -> 04:06 PM) I think everyone accepts that. We all know economics is the biggest factor for crime. They admit that in this study. I think this is much more defending against the arguments made by Balta and others, not "less regulations and more guns means less crime." They point that out and then almost immediately state that it's not really shown one way or the other in the data they were looking at. But that argument isn't baseless, it's fairly strongly supported in the research and data. There are differing views (John Lott etc.) and it's far from universally agreed, but it definitely isn't baseless. This newsletter article isn't really much of a counter argument. Again, they hold up Luxembourgh as a main example, but the cited murder rate (9.0) is 5-10 times higher than any other published murder rate for Luxembourgh. They looked at a handful of countries and only looked at one dimension.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Aug 28, 2013 -> 04:03 PM) I could quote you a study saying gravity is real and if you didn't believe gravity is real you'd find something to complain about in the study. This doesn't actually say or mean anything. John Lott's work is highly controversial. That snip you posted cited his work unconditionally without noting that it is not anywhere near universally accepted. No, not really, and this isn't really relevant to the point about correlation and causation. This newsletter article does not investigate or establish causation in any way. It notes murder rates in a handful of countries, gets one of their two main examples spectacularly wrong, and assumes that differences in murder rates are due to differences in gun control policies. Huge amounts of work would need to be done to establish a strong correlation, develop plausible causal mechanisms and examine other contributing factors before you could conclude what is really driving the crime rate difference. Again, this article doesn't do that.