Texsox

A couple ideas for middle school lever readers: #1 The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton. It offers a great look into the 1950's greaser society. The real advantage of this book is the reading level is lower but the subject matter has a more mature tone if read carefully. Teen pregnancy, gangs, alienation, the value of education, crime and punishment, etc. My second choices would be Of Mice and Men by Steinbeck, The Great Gatsby by Fitzgerald, or To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee although the reading level may be too advanced. The administration will approve of the "classic" standing if those titles and you should have some spirited debates in class. I'm not certain of your time frame but all could be completed in a 6 week time period with plenty of time for some pre-reading activities and a project at the end. Plus, if allowed, all have better than average film adaptations.

It's too bad that we will never know how good A-Rod and Bonds would have been playing "clean". Those two seem to me are the two guys that went from superstar to mega superstar with PEDs. Sosa, Mac, Palermo, and that crowd all went from very good to superstar. But Bonds and A-Rod started at pretty high levels before PEDs.

I'm wondering if a $25,000,000 personal fine is the largest ever in sports, or any other field. I know technically it isn't a fine, but it's what it is costing him.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Dec 30, 2013 -> 02:17 PM) That's part of it. I'd suggest it is a lot more than a mechanical or technique issue though. I think instinctively, most people don't want to kill other people, even if they feel justified in doing so. I wrote a couple papers that compared Revolutionary War to Civil War casualties. Conventional wisdom is that the Civil War weapons were more accurate resulting in greater kills. I offered a thesis that the reason deaths were so much higher during the Civil War wasn't accuracy to range of the weapons, (something most paper ignored) but that the long range accuracy made it possible to shoot someone without "seeing the whites of their eyes". Basically at the range that the Revolutionary War was fought the weapons of the day were as accurate as Civil War weapons for the range that war was fought at.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Jan 15, 2014 -> 11:52 AM) Are you doing the Wonderland trail? Or just a straight peak ascent? Upper Midwest? If you are looking for outdoor stuff, I'd have suggestions, depending on where you are going. For backpacking, Porcupine Mountains in the UP, or the Superior Trail in MN are both worthwhile. For canoeing or kayaking, Boundary Waters or Quetico. Thank you for the suggestions, I will check them out. Currently we are considering Apostle Islands but Boundary Waters is getting interesting. My Scout Troop will be there starting around the first of july for ten days. I also was just contacted tofay about running a Scout camp in Alaska. My entire summer may change.

Nice. I would love a player to alias chart. I also loved the comments. "Meanwhile across town the Cubs are using the alias Major League Baseball Team."

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Jan 14, 2014 -> 07:47 PM) Considering he has fusion surgery in October and will need up to a year to recover, and hasn't pitched in a couple of years anyway, I don't think this is true. Possibly not. But, all those issues are known. We've had time bombs in camp we thought would be the bomb.

I just got back from Big Bend and will be back in March. This summer we will be travelling the upper Midwest, the itinerary hasn't been fully thrashed out.

X always slows this down.

We've had worse in camp.

Useless to argue.

Saturday was sad. My daughter finally got a flight back to Chicago. She was stuck here for an extra week.

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Jan 11, 2014 -> 11:21 PM) I think this girl is a little farther gone than just 'sick'. Who gets to decide when enough is enough? Who do you want making the decision about you? We've had any number of possibilities in these cases. Would you like your ex-wife and her new husband deciding? Your parents? Doctor? Insurance company? A judge? A mix of all in a "death panel"? It's a tough call.

QUOTE (DukeNukeEm @ Jan 10, 2014 -> 10:58 PM) Which is subsidized by higher rates for everyone else. Same s***, different pony. Some people might be stupid enough to think its progress though. Yep, some people are just stupid. In one scenario the hospital doesn't get paid, in the other the hospital does get paid. Some people may be too stupid to understand that when companies get paid for services they can continue to offer services to all their customers. It's a basic business concept that the average person understands, but like you said, some people are stupid.

Almost finished with my master's classes. Studies in Gender and Studies in American Literature are on tap for this semester. One professor is a Faulkner scholar and the other is a Mailer fan.

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Jan 5, 2014 -> 05:13 PM) OK, maybe not the most caring way he could have phrased that question, but really, who IS paying for that? if it is on the public dime, at what point do we accept medical diagnosis that she is indeed dead and beyond recovery? The old medical system allowed people without insurance to basically skip out on the bill. A poor person never had the money to pay medical bills that could easily amount to the same as their lifetime earnings. Now with the Affordable Care Act she should have had insurance.

QUOTE (Buehrle>Wood @ Jan 9, 2014 -> 09:33 PM) The Lord of the Rings books are borderline unreadable. The movies are masterpieces. I find that interesting. Why do you believe you find the books borderline unreadable?

Unless you don't know me you will understand why my students hear Steam's NaNa Hey Hey when they are called out of my class.

I was surprised that I enjoyed the movie version of "On the Road". I am a big Kerouac fan and I just didn't believe I would enjoy any adaptation, even if I did it myself. I was hoping to see "Big Sur" in theaters but the opening was small and never spread near me. I was reasonable pleased watching the "Lord of the Rings" movies. Perhaps because my expectations were small. I really did not like the movie "I am Legend" mostly because it did not follow most the literary analysis of the book. When the book was published there was a lot of "white flight" from the cities. Many scholars believed that the vampires were a metaphor for blacks and the protagonist represented whites fleeing from the cities or staying and dying. As for the movie that bested the book -- "Jaws".

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jan 8, 2014 -> 06:42 PM) Megan Thomas ‏@meganthomas35 51m President Obama just called my husband!! #BigHurtHOF I was wondering if he called. I figure the most prominent Sox fan would take advantange of being President and making that call. I would.

Tears in my eyes. I remain a baseball fan.

Oh my. It is finally warm 60+ here

There really is a huge difference between being a senior manager of a company and driving a truck. You have the perfect job if you want to make racist tweets. No one really even knows what company you work for or probably cares. That isn't the same for a very visible senior manager of one of the industry's biggest companies. Her Twitter account isn't an anonymous private account. She generally uses it as a forum to promote herself within the industry.

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Dec 21, 2013 -> 08:54 PM) Hot drinks for evening temps in the 40s? LOL It was 86 here today.

QUOTE (DukeNukeEm @ Dec 21, 2013 -> 09:18 PM) So we should all just define ourselves by our job. If your employer wouldn't like something you do in your personal life you just shouldn't do it? Fffffuuuuuuccckkkkkkkkkk that. Most people understand that with management positions, especially senior management, comes greater responsibilities and expectations of behavior. With the six figure salary comes demands on yourself 24/7. Clearly those types of positions would not be for someone who wants to spew racist statements. They would be better off taking an entry level position without any real visibility to their company.