The Stig
Diamond Hoya (over 2500 posts)
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Post by The Stig on Sept 28, 2011 23:16:44 GMT -5
WOW......
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The Stig
Diamond Hoya (over 2500 posts)
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Post by The Stig on Sept 20, 2011 20:45:10 GMT -5
Why build a new conference? Even if the football schools leave, the Big East name, the contract with MSG, and the exit fees the football schools will have to pay are worth salvaging. Not to mention you'll have 8 fine basketball programs to start your conference with.
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The Stig
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Post by The Stig on Sept 20, 2011 20:42:52 GMT -5
Boeheim, on PTI today, took a different tack and stood up for the decision to jump. Watching that, you could tell he was doing so through gritted teeth. It was like a politician endorsing the guy who just beat him in the primary. This whole deal is a real slap in the face to Boeheim. He's spent his life building a top-notch college basketball program in Syracuse, and suddenly it's just an afterthought in a football conference move. His life's work, one of the top college basketball programs in the country, is nothing more than an accessory for a mediocre football team. Talk about insulting. And then, just to add some disrespect to the insult, he apparently wasn't even consulted on the move. He found out about it at the same time we found out about it. I'm no fan of Boeheim, but that's just classless by the school.
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The Stig
Diamond Hoya (over 2500 posts)
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Post by The Stig on Sept 20, 2011 18:28:23 GMT -5
I agree with RBHoya's comments. I think the best way to get to that end result may be to sit still and let things happen around us. Let the football schools leave the Big East, and once they're gone simply add a couple of schools like Butler and Xavier to the remaining Big East. That way you keep the Big East name, the MSG contract, and the high-major reputation. Oh, and don't forget about those exit fees the football schools will have to pay to leave the Big East - splitting those with the remaining BE schools should take some of the sting away from this.
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The Stig
Diamond Hoya (over 2500 posts)
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Post by The Stig on Sept 19, 2011 21:10:06 GMT -5
A heck of a pitcher and a heck of a person.
Even when he screws up, things turn out well for him. If he doesn't blow the save in Game 7 of the 2001 World Series, one of his teammates and closest friends stays in New York for the victory parade and flies back to the Dominican Republic afterwards. Since the D-Backs came back and won the game, Rivera's friend changed his ticket and flew home early. The flight he was originally scheduled to fly on crashed with no survivors.
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The Stig
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Post by The Stig on Sept 19, 2011 18:30:51 GMT -5
I know this has already been mentioned in some of the other threads, but I thought it was a big enough twist to the story to merit its own thread. ESPN reporting that representatives of the Big East and Big 12 have floated the idea of merging the two conferences: espn.go.com/college-football/story/_/id/6993604/big-east-big-12-talking-possible-merger-report-saysThis could either be great news or awful news. A merger could leave Big 12/East as the weakest major conference in football, but still a conference with an auto-bid. It would also be a pretty strong basketball conference. On the flip side, there's no guarantee that the Big 12/East football schools would decide to include the non-football schools in a merger. If that happens, this goes from a disaster for Georgetown to Armageddon for Georgetown.
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The Stig
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Post by The Stig on Sept 17, 2011 10:39:36 GMT -5
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The Stig
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Post by The Stig on Sept 16, 2011 20:04:03 GMT -5
Well, I think it's pretty clear that drug abuse, even that of cocaine, really only harms your approval ratings with people who already hate you. I don't care about at any of these either since I was never going to support Sarah Palin for anything either, but the fact that Global Warming denying Sarah Palin was snorting cocaine off of oil drums just sounds like caricature. Drill baby Drill! This basically sums up my views on this. Politically this should be a non-issue, but it's pure comedy gold. I can't wait to see what the Capitol Steps do with this. And for the record, the reporter who wrote the book is creepy as hell.
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The Stig
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Libya
Aug 24, 2011 19:01:19 GMT -5
Post by The Stig on Aug 24, 2011 19:01:19 GMT -5
There are several early reports that the draft interim constitution lays out Sharia as the basis for the law of the land. Nothing is really clear right now and these reports may well be wrong. But there is enough smoke to be worried about how this will play out. The report I heard was that the draft constitution was "impeccably liberal." I saw an interesting comment in a news story today about the European/allied Arab special forces that were helping the rebels. Apparently they had a dual role - on one hand they were helping the rebels on the military side, but on the other hand they were there to keep an eye on the rebels and report any signs of Al Qaeda or other extremist presence in their ranks.
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The Stig
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Post by The Stig on Aug 23, 2011 20:13:57 GMT -5
One reason the quake created so much buzz was that it was the first quake a lot of people had experienced. If it happens in LA, everybody's used to it. But a lot of people in the DC area (including me) had never felt an earthquake before.
Also, it was a pretty hefty quake. This was a 5.9, and earlier this year a 6.3 killed 181 people in New Zealand (an earthquake-prone country with high building code standards).
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The Stig
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Libya
Aug 22, 2011 16:02:33 GMT -5
Post by The Stig on Aug 22, 2011 16:02:33 GMT -5
Before we get to Syria I just hope that "free" in Libya is something at least remotely similar to "free" in the way we want it to be. Reasonably free elections and no Islamic takeover of power in the vacuum of Ghadafi's fall. And somehow the power centers of Tripoli and Benghazi figure out a way to co-exist. NATO has the overthrow they/we wanted but now is the tricky part of country building without boots on the ground. But yes I too hope Syria will follow suit I don't think we'll see an Islamist takeover in Libya. If we see further infighting among rebel groups (a strong possibility), I think it'll be along tribal/regional lines, not religious lines. It'll be interesting to see if the NTC moves to Tripoli once the city stabilizes, or whether they effectively move the capital to Benghazi. The other big issue is the Berbers - they led the rebellion in the west that ultimately punched through to Tripoli first. They cooperated with the NTC, but it would be a stretch to call them part of the NTC. How they work with the new government will be a big factor in deciding Libya's fate. As for Syria, Assad isn't going anywhere.
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The Stig
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Post by The Stig on Aug 19, 2011 9:00:39 GMT -5
Apropos of the bin's earlier post, does anyone believe, HONESTLY, that when he announced his candidacy, Barack Obama would have made that mythical 100 person list? I think if you exclude your knowledge of what happened afte h declared, your honest answer would be no. He had arguably the thinnest resume of anyone in the field. Love him or hate him politically, he was a great unknown and a leap of faith. I am afraid where that leap will land. I don't think we need to keep re-hashing this BUT George W. Bush was in all likelihood the least experienced person ever elected to the presidency of the United States of America. It is a shame that he only held that record for eight years. It would be in all of our best interests if we could all agree that we will never allow this to happen again. The difficult part, I think, would be convincing the media to spread the idea that being a good President is HARD. It's not something that half of us (even us Hoyatalkers) could just parachute into Dave-style and be awesome at. Abe Lincoln (1 House term over 10 years before he became President) has them both beat. A few other Presidents came into office solely on the basis of military accomplishments, with virtually zero political experience. I believe that President of the United States was the first political office that Taylor, Grant, or Eisenhower ever held. Of course, "inexperiened" and "unqualified" are two very different terms. All of these Presidents (including Bush 43 and Obama) were inexperienced, but I don't think any were unqualified.
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The Stig
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Post by The Stig on Aug 11, 2011 21:59:25 GMT -5
If its implemented immediately, UConn will probably not be eligible for next year's tournament - they'd miss the number by a long shot. But it'll probably be delayed for a few years.
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The Stig
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Post by The Stig on Aug 3, 2011 17:50:55 GMT -5
EAS is pork, for sure, but the government is losing more in 1 month with the delay than it spends in about 5 years on EAS. It's typical Tea Party stuff - killing a spider in your basement with a 1000 lb. bomb.
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The Stig
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Post by The Stig on Jul 22, 2011 10:52:54 GMT -5
NBC and the media in general is covering this story like it's 9-11 or the stock market crash. This story, along with the royal wedded couple and the heat index crisis, allows NBC to replace the Anthony trial in its newscasts so it doesn't have to explain why and how GE paid no income taxes last year. While I agree with your disgust over GE not paying income taxes last year, it's not like the non GE-owned TV media are all over that case. If you want good investigative reporting on important issues in the US, you don't watch TV news, whether it's NBC, Fox, or CNN. They're all terrible. PBS is the lone exception, but nobody watches them.
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The Stig
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Post by The Stig on Jul 21, 2011 22:03:41 GMT -5
Why would people really think that FOX would be shut down by this? They would have to do actual investigative reporting to get caught up in a scandal like this. People said the same about NotW. Their normal reporting practice was to bribe/blackmail a "witness" into signing a scandalous "first-hand account" written by the NotW journalist. Here's a good insight into how NotW works: news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/24_07_08mosleyvnewsgroup.pdfIt's from the Max Mosley court case, where he successfully sued NotW. It has some pretty graphic details that most people won't care to read (although they are presented in a delightfully dry British manner), but if you jump down to paragraph 79, you'll get a good account of how NotW normally gets their stories.
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The Stig
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Post by The Stig on Jul 17, 2011 16:25:08 GMT -5
Wow....
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The Stig
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Post by The Stig on Jul 12, 2011 21:29:19 GMT -5
Regardless of the specifics of the deal, I have to commend Obama for the mentality of his offer. Hopefully it'll be a sign of things to come.
For too long in DC, the tradition has been this: GOP says "Let's cut spending on X." Dems say "Don't cut spending on X, cut spending on Y instead!" GOP: "We can't cut Y!" Compromise: GOP agrees to not cut spending on X, in return Dems agree to not cut spending on Y. No spending is cut. This is what happened in the Bush tax cuts expiry debate.
With Obama's plan (and some of the GOP proposals as well), we've finally seen the compromise move from "Let's not cut X or Y" to "Let's cut BOTH X and Y." This shift in mentality, if continued, could result in some real progress on the deficit.
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The Stig
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Post by The Stig on Jul 11, 2011 21:33:51 GMT -5
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The Stig
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Post by The Stig on Jul 7, 2011 20:44:38 GMT -5
This is hardly the first slimy thing NoTW did. I remember reading some of the stuff from the Max Mosley court case, and their tactics were pretty shocking. For example, to get the quotes for their scandalous stories, they write a scandalous (and totally made up) statement from a "witness" and then bribe/blackmail somebody into signing it.
I don't think their slimeball tactics are as much a News Corp thing as a tabloid thing. Do I think the WSJ is hacking into dead soldiers' voicemails? No way. Do I think that a paper like the Daily Mail, despite their outrage over this incident, might be doing something similar? I wouldn't put it past the bastards. They're all garbage, although NotW was the worst of the worst.
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