Texsox

Thank you for that reminder. My dad just drove down to deliver a truck I bought. He and my mom spent 6 days on the road and basically a day and a half with me because of my job demands. He taught me by example the value of showing up ready to work every day.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Jun 14, 2012 -> 10:06 PM) Jesus...was he independently wealthy? No, he worked for Bell Labs as an engineer while attending to law school. It took him five years to finish law school. Very tiring work he said.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Jun 13, 2012 -> 02:19 PM) Then if its such a smart decision, those who went to College shouldnt complain. I obviously made a conscious effort to get a College degree, so it stands to reason I believed that it was worth it. But if any of my friends started b****ing about going to College, Id really have little pity for them. And those that didn't should also not complain. They each made their choice. But that isn't how life works, we all complain.

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Jun 15, 2012 -> 01:28 PM) So, no comments on the prosecutor editing testimony? Isn't editing standard practice? If not the jury would have to hear word for word hours and hours of questioning. Isn't it then up to the defense to offer their own?

When you apply for a job what is on the application? Work history and education are near the top. The better both are the better you chances. Eventually when you have great experience and a qualifying education, you are in a much better position than someone with just one or the other.

QUOTE (chw42 @ Jun 14, 2012 -> 11:09 AM) The latter would mean that he's underrated, which is definitely NOT the case. I'm not too certain about that. He is about the lowest rated manager by most posters here, yet the Marlins and their fans were practically dancing in the streets to get him. They valued him much higher than Sox fans. So it seems like we underrated him compared to Marlin ownership and fans. At least when he was announced as their manager. In reality they probably overrated him and we underrated him. Time will tell who was closer to reality.

Great advice ^^ I was just speaking with a new friend who took his engineering degree and went to law school. He practiced patent law and really enjoyed it before becoming a writer.

This goes in cycles. It may be frustrating now, but once you do start working that degree will help you advance.

Famous people get invited into deals all the time to add credibility, contacts, or whatever. I am trying to think of what may be in there that would prove that Paterno knew more about the abuse than has been confirmed. Payments to the abused was one idea I had, but they would let the media know. So that probably isn't it.

I am a little confused on the Ozzie vote. It could mean that Oz is a joke, poor manager, not liked, and not respected because of it. Or, it could mean he is much better than he is given credit for and the delta between the respect he deserves and what he receives, is greater than any other manager.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Jun 13, 2012 -> 12:11 PM) For this trial its irrelevant. From the beginning I thought McQueary was not being 100% forthright about the situation. This may be an issue if none of the victims stepped forward, but when youve got X witnesses who are all going to say Sandusky messed with them, its really going to be hard for a jury to believe that they were all lying, especially with the strange hand written messages from Sandsuky. Plus its unlikely Sandusky takes the stand, so there really is going to be little defense. Mainly just that these kids are making it up and it didnt happen. For whatever reason, I have disliked and never trusted McQueary from the start. I felt he deserved a bigger share of the blame for the entire situation.

The problem with the stats, IMHO, is they lump all gun owners together. There are violence junkies who dream of shootouts, and sportsman who dream of the perfect kill shot on a whitetail. There are folks who carefully clean their weapons and lock them up in gun safes each night and (IMHO) crazies who sleep with a gun under their pillow with a few more in easy to access positions. You can see how attitude can affect your individual chance of the kinds of dangers you have outlined. Just as a calm 50ish woman driving a corvette versus a 17 year old guy. You can give the stats on people dying in corvette accidents all you want, but if you were a betting person the odds are the 50ish woman is much less likely to die than the 17 year old male. That's common sense. I am far less likely to have a situation escalate as you describe because I would choose the path of retreat if there is one. There are other people who are looking for a confrontation. They are more likely to have a situation like started this thread happen. But they are the tiny minority. Let's not screw over the majority to help a few crazies and criminals. And Balta, I will try to raise my level of discussion here. I realize I was giving it short attention. You bring up some excellent points. But work in a gun shop for a month and you will be both scared and relaxed about gun owners.

You are taking away guns from honest citizens who do not do any of the things you mention. Out of the millions and millions of firearms in the US, very few are ever used by honest people in the manner you are outlining. After you take them away from the honest citizens, you made the world much safer for criminals. Do you believe criminals will be less violent once they have no fear of someone shooting back? I understand you have this fear of being shot by an honest person who mistakes you for a criminal. I fear more being shot by a criminal. I am offering the real world example of the most likely scenario that I would use my gun for self protection, an intruder in my home. I'm not going to be following some suspect in my neighborhood, I'm not going to be walking around with my gun. There are millions more like me. You choose to dismiss this as just an anecdote. And respond with stats. Since most of the stats do not apply to my unique situation, and include such craziness as following someone as part of a neighborhood watch, I can safely ignore those stats. Same as I can ignore stats that show how likely I am to freeze to death while snowmobiling. You will calmly tell the intruder you respect his safety and do not have a gun in the house and to please leave. I will explain I have two guns and will begin using them in two seconds if he doesn't get his ass out of my house. We both feel safer that way. You worry that my situation will escalate with both of us firing guns in the house. I believe the intruder will leave, in a hurry. I am also betting he is not carrying a gun, most home invaders do not. I believe the chance of violence escalating is greater in your case when he knows he has a chance to overpower you. I do not wish to bet my safety on hiding, the benevolence of criminals or the speedy response by police to find my address and pick the best response.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jun 13, 2012 -> 07:43 PM) It is just so simple. When a person is carrying a gun, they put themselves and everyone around them in danger. Not just the criminal. If you are carrying a gun, you have put me in danger. And no matter how much you or anyone else wants to pat yourself on the back and tell yourself you're the safe one, if you decide to carry, and you're not going to run into a bear, you have made a reckless choice and justified it using your gut. Again, you believe there are too many guns and you want to take away the guns from the honest, law abiding citizens so that only the criminals will have guns. That makes you feel safe. You think smugly that the criminal that breaks into your home will treat you nicely because you can't protect yourself. Perhaps you will take him around, show him where your valuables are, and make him your friend. After all, the important thing is that no one gets hurt. Balta, this really isn't worth debating any further. You believe you are safer hiding in the dark, waiting on the police to come save you. I want a fighting chance against a home invader. People have been killed both ways. Defenseless and fighting it out. It all depends on how you want to go. I'd rather not depend on the generosity of a criminal or the speedy response of police.

QUOTE (mr_genius @ Jun 13, 2012 -> 07:51 PM) The University of Illinois has an excellent engineering department too I hear that advertising is one of the best in the country also.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Jun 13, 2012 -> 04:13 PM) Oh come on, its not about "safe" in that circumstance, its about whether as a society we allow regular people to take justice into their own hands. As much as I would love to say that people should be allowed to be vigilantes, it just isnt in society's best interest to have people acting like Judge Dredd. If someone is threatening myself or my family, if someone is harming my daughter, this isn't about justice, this is about stopping a crime as it is occurring. No one is being a judge, jury, or executioner. They are stopping someone from attacking someone. They are potentially saving a life. Imagine if I walked by and someone was getting stabbed and I said, I'm not here to judge. Y'all just keep going, I am going to find a judge and have him decide . . .

Again, it is just so simple. Criminals have guns. You want to reduce guns so you take them away from the honest people. Serves the honest folks up like Fourth of July tourists on Amity Island. But it does keep the criminals safe. Hide in your closet while they take all your stuff. The cops will show up, eventually.

And thank you Balta, guns and balanced budgets are the only time I can be a good Republican in a discussion.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jun 13, 2012 -> 03:16 PM) And you're so comfortable with the idea of hundreds of extra dead bodies associated directly with the Castle Doctrine that you simply sit there and deny that it's possible. Damn right it is possible, and desirable. You enter my house to rip me off or harm my family, then damn straight I want to see a body pile up. There was a case yesterday where a dad caught some perv molesting his 4 year old daughter and killed the guy. Yeah, add that body to the count and I'm fine. But you want the world to be safe for those guys and more dangerous for honest people.

You want less guns. The only people who will give them up are honest people who do not want to break the law. That is a simple fact. That will make it safer for criminals, I whole heartily agree. And now that criminals have no worries about someone carrying a gun, that will make everyone safer? All we have to do is hand over our possessions to criminals and no one gets hurt. And that is really the world you want to live in? Where people have to bow down, run and hide, from some kid who wants to rob them?

I understand you want less guns. Since the criminals will not give up theirs, you want the law abiding people to give up theirs. I disagree.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jun 13, 2012 -> 02:51 PM) So, your excuse, literally, is that it was too much trouble for you to read the study before commenting on it? I guess I should have suspected since you added that bit about not knowing how they classified whether robberies happened. Considering they outline these in that study I linked, and you haven't bothered because you know intrinsically that it must be wrong, I'll drop it here. They did not say if someone was killed while committing a crime if that crime was added or not. Other posters went on about other crime stats. If I missed it, I wlould love for you to show it to me.

Just wondering if you added up all the people in the workforce with college degrees and all the people without. Who is reporting to who? Are there more college degrees reporting to non college or more non college reporting to college degrees? When you enter the workforce what do you bring? There are certainly a lot more things than education. But education is the gate keeper to many positions, not just entry level. To be a pharmaceutical sales rep for most companies you have to have a B.S. degree. That degree didn't teach you to be a sales rep. But the companies have found that people with those degrees work out better more often than people without. Of course there are some people that could kick ass at that job without a degree. But when you are hiring lots of people you need some quick filters to weed out the thousands of applicants.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jun 13, 2012 -> 02:30 PM) Of course this whole conversation was started by a post pointing out that honest people having more guns present leads to more people getting killed and no change in the crime rate. I'd say an equally easy bottom line is that more guns = more dead people and no change in crime. Because that's what the statistics say. Again, without understanding the methods used to arrive at those numbers all we know is increased gun ownership has stopped increases in crimes and there are more dead criminals. We may have also created criminals in the process.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jun 13, 2012 -> 02:22 PM) Though only one is a constitutional guarantee. It is interesting to see the contrasts between this debate and the one when any requirements are placed on voting. It'a an interesting point. Are you suggesting that a constitutional guaranteed right have lesser or greater requirements? I could see it being easier to argue they should have lesser, but I don't believe that is desirable.