caulfield12

I guess it's a bit easier for Bloomberg to go off on President Obama...since there's probably a closer split in NYC over gun rights. No matter how many times one discusses this issue of the right to have a gun as part of a militia (which was the context 200 years ago with the Revolutionary War and War of 1812), the Articles of Confederation (especially), where there was not one unified national military for the new country...the argument keeps going around and around in circles. One wonders when the "tipping point" will actually come where people start changing their minds on this gun control/gun rights issue.

QUOTE (EvilJester99 @ Dec 15, 2012 -> 12:29 AM) To me this shouldn't even be about gun rights or even God... this more speaks to the care of the mentally ill. This kid was messed up and if they would have given him the care he needed this may have been averted. However, I know everyone has their agenda when these things happen. Another tremendous difference between the US and Asian countries, where there is a tremendous negative stigma attached to seeking any kind of counseling/diagnosis/psychiatric treatment. Not to mention the health care system (in China) doesn't really have a simple mechanism for taking care of these individuals when their families are unable to. It's also an interesting part of the ongoing US health care debate that mental health counseling is one of the first areas to fall victim to budget cutbacks.

QUOTE (EvilJester99 @ Dec 15, 2012 -> 12:52 AM) I was just reading over in China there was a guy who stabbed 22 kids and one teacher today as well.. WTF is with these crazy mofos The big difference, of course, is that using a knife is much more difficult than a gun...and it seems all of those injured will survive, and few of the injuries are considered life threatening. Here in China, much of this kind of violence is economic-related. Perhaps frustration with the government, their lack of opportunity in the "new" China, usually due to lack of education...the cavern between the majority of China and the top top 10%ers, especially when many of the political elite reached those positions due to bribery/corruption in the eyes of the people, and not based on merit. Of course, the biggest difference in these two cases is the fact that it's absolutely illegal for a private citizen to have a gun, and this law is ruthlessly enforced. Police catch man suspected of injuring 22 studentsUpdated: 2012-12-15 02:40 ( XINHUA and CHINA DAILY in Zhengzhou) Comments(1) Print Mail Large Medium SmallPolice on Friday morning detained a man suspected of using a knife to injure 22 students and a villager at the gate of a primary school in Central China's Henan province. Min Yingjun, a 36-year-old villager, attacked students at Chenpeng Village Primary School in Guangshan county in the city of Xinyang at about 7:40 am, said Liu Qingdong, head of the county government's publicity department. The injured students were sent to three hospitals in the county. Their injuries were not considered life-threatening. The motive behind the attack remains unclear and the case is still under investigation. Hearing of the violence, many Internet users went online to condemn it in micro blogs. "It's raining in Guangshan now," wrote Li Kai, a reporter at the Dahe Daily. "It must be God weeping for innocent children. I can't understand why the suspect was so cold-blooded." It wasn't the first time students in China had become the victims of such acts of violence. Zheng Minsheng, a former community doctor, stabbed eight children to death and injured five others in front of a primary school in Nanping of South China's Fujian province on March 23, 2010. Yang Jiaqin, a former village doctor with a mental illness, used a knife to kill an 8-year-old boy and an 80-year-old woman and injured three other children and two other adults in front of a primary school in Hepu county, the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, in April 2010. Wang Yonglai, 45, a villager from Weifang in East China's Shandong province, broke into a local kindergarten and attacked children with a hammer in April 2010, injuring five. He then set himself on fire and died from his injuries. Most of the culprits in these crimes have been middle-aged men who were dissatisfied with their lives and pessimistic about their futures, said Yang Yongchao, a psychologist at Zhengzhou No 8 People's Hospital. Some of them had become resentful of society after their attempts to improve their livelihood were frustrated, Yang said. Chen Wei, a Beijing-based lawyer with Yingke Law Firm who specializes in cases involving women and children, said certain Chinese schools, especially in rural and poor areas, have little or no security measures in place to protect students. "Some schools have no gate watchmen or security guards, which has the potential to endanger students," she said. "And malicious adults at times will try to get a reaction by attacking children, who tend to be weak and can't really fight back." If certain people have a conflict with a neighbor, they may try to get revenge by hurting the neighbor's child, she said. Others, if they think they have been treated unfairly, will resort to extreme measures to attract attention to their cases, she added. Chen suggested that it is safer for parents to escort their children inside schools rather than leaving them at the gate.

I thought this Lanza guy's father had left the family and remarried someone in the Newtown, CT, area...? Was he also killed? Sorry, just woke up in China to hear about this horrible news....my CNN feed here isn't live, so it's still reporting 20 children/students dead, 6 adults (including the principal of the school). Columbine was 13 students, if I remember correctly, and then the 2 shooters, Klebold and Harris. Virginia Tech was 32, plus the shooter...but this would be the largest K-12 shooting. The guns were a Glock, Sig Sauer and Bushmaster (semi-automatic assault rifle)...which at least 3 of the 4 weapons were actually registered to the mother. That fact is going to be played out to death in the media, how the gun/s registered in her name was used to kill her. Saw Obama's speech....haven't seen him so clearly emotional, not to this extent.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Dec 12, 2012 -> 08:40 AM) There's no car chase on an ice palace against a giant space laser if that's what he's after. Bond has adjusted with the times. The Connery and Moore ones will obviously seem the most "fanciful and outlandish" when viewed by the prism of our current standards for gritty/realistic filmmaking as perfected by Greengrass and Nolan. Timothy Dalton's Bond movies actually fit this realistic mold, but they were too abrupt a departure from the Roger Moore style for many...and then something about Pierce Brosnan doesn't allow you to take him quite seriously, although he's actually evolved into a much better actor in the last decade of his career. Maybe you can make an argument that comic-book movies like Captain America, Green Hornet and Thor have appropriated a little of that fanciful and outlandish side for themselves....and pushed Bond in another direction. A lot of movie critics attribute this almost exclusively to the pressure from the 3 Bourne/Damon movies, but it's more than that, IMO. There's clearly space in the marketplace for both, and Skyfall proves that.

Liberal Arts is a decent little indie film. Thankyoumoreplease, not so much. Both from Josh Radnor, HIMYM....Kenyon College grad.

http://www.kansascity.com/2012/12/10/39585...s-trade-is.html Here's the thing, everyone around KC feels that Myers was at best a 2-tool corner outfielder, the equivalent of a more smooth and polished Dayan Viciedo essentially worth the equivalent of $8-10 million per season on the open market. Of course, the downside is giving up young pitching, but we've seen plenty of trades of pitching prospects where those guys didn't end up amounting to anything, too. For every Lee/Phillips/Sizemore for Colon or Nathan/Liriano/Bonser for AJ deal, there are tons that don't work out. Just look at the ACTUAL return the Indians have gotten for Sabathia, Lee and Victor Martinez, for a counter-example. Now you can make the argument they never should have signed Francouer to an extension based on half a season of probably anomalous results. You can also argue that all the pitching injuries last year or non-performance (Montgomery, Duffy and Hochevar) put the Royals in such a bind that they absolutely had to use their minor league depth to get some proven major league pitching. That line-up is incredibly dangerous, especially if Moustakas and Hosmer both hit their stride and Escobar and Perez are future All-Stars. Gordon is rock solid, we all know what Butler can do, they have the best throwing outfield in the the last 10-20 years of modern baseball, they do need to shore up 2B/CF, and that's about it. The reverse of all this is that Guthrie was a one-season fluke, Santana's best days are behind him, Shields looks more like a back-end of the rotation guy than a true ace (which he did for the first half of 2012) and Davis never emerges as the 5th starter but is relegated to middle relief (you could also argue he could be given a shot at closer, but he doesn't have the knockout pitch and that bullpen's too talented to stick him there if he can hold down the fort as a .500-ish 5th starter, which is all that they really need). Heck, we should be elated that they might be turning the corner on Bruce Chen starting 3-5 times against us, which killed us in 2012, but is unlikely to happen again in 2013. Same with Guthrie facing us 3-4 times, too.

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Dec 9, 2012 -> 10:28 PM) Cause if I wanted to watch 40 minutes of people playing poker, I'd have watched ESPN. Was Eva Green there? Have you not seen The Dreamers?

QUOTE (Joxer_Daly @ Dec 9, 2012 -> 06:25 PM) What's high up on your radar? Can be recent releases or older. At the moment my favourite foreign language films over the years would be (in no particular order): Goodbye Lenin A Very Long Engagement 9th Company A Prophet The Counterfeiters La Haine 11'09''01 - September 11 (Not so much a film, as eleven short films, by different directors, of eleven minutes and nine seconds each. It's quite a challenging and interesting piece of work) I thought Night Watch was a good laugh. Actually, there's a load of great Russian films, fecked if I can remember names at the moment though. What would you recommend for viewing? I really want to see 'Rust and Bone', and I've heard 'Amour' is great, too. A Prophet was great, I just watched that one recently. Rust and Bone is getting some curious reviews, one of the two main EW.com reviewers put it on their Worst 5 movies of the year list, but many really like it. The Kid With a Bike is another one that comes to mind right away. Has anyone else seen that? Goodbye, Lenin! and A Very Long Engagement, bringing back some memories there. Then there's Amelie, a favorite for lots of us older folks, or Chocolat with Depp and Binoche. Living in China, I guess I've seen about 80-90% of the famous Chinese/Taiwanese films over the last decade...if there's any you are interested in hearing a review of, would be glad to provide it. And quite a few Thai films as well. Two of my favorite Thai movies are "Hello, Stranger" and "BTS Traffic Love Story" (loosely translated). And Dear Galileo with Ray McDonald isn't bad if you prefer travel movies...

Too bad we didn't already have this Sanchez "kid" instead of Olmedo on the (2012) roster. That would have been worth a heckuva lot more than $25K or $50,000 to the franchise. Olmedo cost us at least one game, the one Alexei was punished for arriving late.

Except for about 4 months one season with the Royals, Teahen hasn't been a good major league hitter. Period. Certainly not Joe Randa Lite.

Trouble With the Curve isn't a bad movie at all. The reviews were mixed, but this was better than about 80-85% of baseball movies. Eastwood played another version of the same character he "cliched" (Get off my lawn!) in Gran Torino, but he was more than tolerable. Amy Adams was the real center of the story, and she's very good in this one. Justin Timberlake was decent as a former phenom pitcher who blew out his arm from overuse and became a scout for the Red Sox on the way to a potential broadcasting career. There's a couple of plot twists that you might be able to see coming, and there's a little of the "modern computer/saber stats" bashing that we already saw in Moneyball...but worth a see if you missed it in the theatre. PS: Hahn, get rid of Marco Paddy and sign Amy Adams as our Latin American scouting coordinator, haha. And it seems John Goodman is in every movie you watch these days. Flight, Argo, this one...

I'd go with, in no particular order Argo Life of Pi Lincoln Beasts of the Southern Wild Flight Bernie (Jack Black/Shirley MacLaine) Skyfall (yeah, I know, Bond movies are never in the running for awards, and Casino Royale was better IMO) Amour The Perks of Being A Wallflower or Silver Linings Playbook Zero Dark Thirty

But they'll get something like an extra $75 million from the new national baseball network contract. Ticket revenues are sliding. Used to be 50% or more of a team's revenue stream, now it's down in the 20-25% range for a number of organizations, and continuing to descend.

Pitch Perfect isn't as bad as I thought it might be...pretty good little flick, actually. Anna Kendrick is growing on me, over time. And "Fat Amy" continues to ascend in niche roles. Diane Lane is my age. I've wanted to f*** her for a long time. I've never quite had those feelings about Ma Kent. Yeah, someone older than me. Can't believe she's 48. Actually, she's one of the few actresses that has weathered her 40's and is actually getting stronger, or at least not declining. Ten or fifteen years ago, it really seemed like Meg Ryan and Julia Roberts would be on top of the world forever and look where they are now, not that anyone's feeling sorry for them. I also remember a period of time when you couldn't watch a movie or tv show without seeing Helen Hunt. Nice to see her career "comeback" with The Sessions, which is getting a lot of award buzz as we head into Golden Globes/Academy Awards season.

Or why the Giants took some time to bounce back (along with their injury problems and anemic offense)... And the Rangers' pitching staff showed signs of wear and tear down the stretch as well. With that said, Floyd has reached the end of his rope with Cooper. He is what he is...hopefully, another GM will fall in love with that arsenal and "potential" and give up something of significance when other options are taken off the table. And Danks can at least be a legit 3 starter, even if he underperforms his contract by 10-20%, we can live with that, probably.

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/mlb-big-leag...20847--mlb.html Not unexpected at all. Compare to the drama that Ozzie was creating in a quite similar situation. Refreshing to see a manager who accomplished so much be willing to admit he might not be the answer and give his GM (who's also under the gun, but still fixing Bill Smith-created problems) some flexibility.

Another band-aid in the Teahen mode, about the exact same financial commitment, actually. This kind of flies in the face of the typical KW move, in that we're "buying high" instead of hoping for a rebound, so there's more risk involved. Let's hope he doesn't become a liability before the final season of his deal. Two years would have been more ideal...but Sanchez, no matter how you try to twist his stats around, doesn't profile as a corner infielder. This type of move is one that gives the White Sox farm detractors reason to criticize. There was nothing resembling an in-house candidate (just like last season when we made the desperation play to fit Hudson into that hole), and it's costing us a bit. Now Floyd and AJ become the next question marks to deal with...and one would imagine Thornton and Crain, with their salaries being somewhat similar to what Keppinger will be making.

QUOTE (joeynach @ Dec 3, 2012 -> 11:05 PM) Some teams don't spend, they are in business for profit not championships. Pirates and Marlins ownership comes to mind. Both have been accused of pocketing or hoarding significant portions of revenue sharing dollars. Loria was even forced by MLB in 2010 to sign a waiver that stated he could no longer hoard revenue share dollars and had to invest them in player/stadium/team operations. The Pirates have been accused of similar actions by media and fans alike. In my opinion b/c the teams weren't forced to spend, no salary floor, no enforcement to spend the revenue share money, some teams didn't. Royals are definitely in this category as well, with a few exceptions (the Gil Meche contract)...under new ownership, the Padres fit this mold, too, although they've committed more money to guys like Quentin than expected recently.

Yeah, I lived in KC from the fall of 96 through 2005 and then was back for another year... Chiefs' tickets were like gold back then, maybe even more valuable. Similar to the feelings between Chicago and the Bears, Green Bay and the Packers, St. Louis and the Cardinals, etc. http://www.kansascity.com/2012/11/18/39243...disconnect.html By SAM MELLINGER The Kansas City Star The elevator door opens, and here comes Clark Hunt. He is dressed in a dark suit, like always, solemn look on his face as he walks through a basement hallway at Arrowhead Stadium. Over his head, a television plays the final seconds of another remarkably inept showing by the team he inherited from his father and that is now embarrassing the family name. “The Chiefs lose again,” the voice on the television says. Hunt doesn’t look up. Doesn’t speak. Just keeps walking, into the locker room of the undisputed worst team in football. The door shuts behind him. A security guard in the hallway turns the TV off, and it’s just as well because the Chiefs’ pathetic 28-6 loss to the mediocre Bengals is finally over. By now, we’ve all seen enough from a 1-9 clown show. The only things left are shame, ugly accusations about mistreatment from fans, and questions. If not now, then when? If the Chiefs can land like an anvil at the bottom of the NFL in year four of a process that was supposed to be competing for the division championship, then what, exactly, could it possibly take for major changes? If not after this, then what? “I’m not feeling very good at this point,” coach Romeo Crennel says. Some perspective: Bill Self’s winning percentage at Kansas is .835. Nick Saban’s at Alabama is .831, Tom Brady’s in New England is .774, and Michael Jordan’s in playoff series is .806. Opponents at Arrowhead Stadium since last November are at .889. Arrowhead used to be one of the toughest places in the NFL to play. Television executives loved having games here, the barbecue smoke in the parking lot and screaming fans inside making for some of the league’s best theater. Now, fans are literally dressing for a funeral – an organized statement to wear black in mourning of the franchise they fell in love with. Chiefs officials – Hunt, most notably – have done a rotten job of showing it, but they’ve been privately concerned about a growing fan resentment for some time now. Hunt continues to meet with angry fans, partly to gather information to help diagnose the problem. Until now, team brass held a stubborn belief that the loudest dissent came from a vocal minority, but in a season full of milestone losses, here comes one more: Arrowhead evenly split among fans dressed in black, fans dressed in other colors and empty seats. If this doesn’t push Hunt to make major changes in the coming weeks, then it’s fair to wonder what could. Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/11/18/39243...l#storylink=cpy

http://www.kansascity.com/2012/11/27/39372...o-increase.html Looks like the fans will be turning on Glass if he's not willing to add one more legit starting pitcher. About time...

http://www.empireonline.com/promotions/20-...lms/default.asp This is one person's list of the top 20 3-D films. After having watched Life of Pi, I would put it at #3, behind Avatar and How To Train Your Dragon and in front of Beowulf. Definitely worth watching this movie in the theatre.

Gellinger had a lot of health problems this past year, that has to be the main reason behind changing those roles. Thigpen, not sure about. Just an internal promotion, "Sox Loyalty" thing there apparently.

Wreck-It Ralph was a pleasant surprise... As far as a not-so-famous movie I'd like to recommend, it's "MISS BALA," about a Mexican beauty pageant contestant caught up in a narco-trafficking ring near the US border (Baja California). Very gritty and intense, keeps you interested, that's for sure. I read about the movie in an article commenting on a "real life" beauty queen who was killed in the crossfire in Mexico (Sinaloa) a couple of days ago. Reminded me of living in Colombia, watching that movie (a bit similar to Maria, Full of Grace, but even more visceral and haunting).

Hope we'll get the 3-D version of Life of Pi(scene) here in China. It's an Ang Lee (Taiwanese) movie, so it will be interesting to see the reaction of it on the mainland. I just watched the movie online and am halfway through the book. It's one of those 10 or so movies that has to be watched on an IMAX or in 3D to truly appreciate...especially once the story gets going out on the water and in nature. I found it interesting (but not unexpected) that they introduced a few typical Hollywood-ish plot points that were not in the book...but that's to be expected when you're taking a $100 million bet on such a quirky/eclectic book that defies definition.