79 thoughts on “September 3, 2013: Priorities?”

  1. Speaking of that, I need to remember to change the name of my autodrafted team to "We're all losers".

    1. You and me both - computer managed to draft 3 players for me who are currently without roster spots. Sad things is, I was near the computer during the B-Squad draft and up until about 40 minutes prior, remembered that it was happening. Come 8 o'clock, space-cadet city.

  2. That's one of the reasons I stopped playing fantasy. If I can't pore over the games from noon to ten on Sundays, I feel so removed the gambling really isn't fun for me. It'd be like playing poker by sending a friend to the table with my money

    1. I'm not surprised weight and comfort were the reasons catchers so quickly adopted titanium. When I was still on active duty the Corps transitioned from a combat helmet
      developed in the early 1980s to a modern one a half-pound lighter and, because of a redesigned suspension system, significantly more comfortable. As soon as they became available guys rushed to get them. We all presumed they were safer than a twenty-year-old design, but the lighter weight and greater comfort definitely were the driving factors for how quickly we adopted them. The difference really was night and day, particularly if you were going to be wearing it for 6-16 hours every day, and especially when wearing night vision optics mounted on the helmet. Unfortunately, we didn't get them until after returning from deployment...

      1. Being that we weren't "front-line", my unit had the Kevlar helmet throughout my 2 deployments. They weren't typically worn on watch and thus, when security missions rolled around, there was much grumbling about the extra 4# on the noggin. When coupled with these bad-boys (sans ceramic plates if you thought you could get away with not getting caught), you were hauling around an additional 20-25% of your body weight on any given day.

        1. We were lucky to have interceptor vests/SAPI plates on our deployment (or so we thought until we got home and found out they were subject to recall for poor performance). I wore the old PASGT vest in training, however – uffda. A buddy of mine preferred it for some reason, which I never understood.

          I had heard there were M1 steel pots kicking around in damage control lockers aboard some ships as late as the early-mid 2000s. Ever see one in your time?

          1. Nope, never did - though considering the vintage of the tin can I was on, it wouldn't have surprised me. Re: the vest, "Uffda" is right, though I think we may have rec'd the Improved Outer Tac Vests later...already getting fuzzy in my mind.

  4. Ugh. So this happened. Second cousin, grew up in the same town, he's a year older than me. Always thought he was kind of a dick, but never thought he was capable of this. Jeff A (or anyone else), any extra prayers could be useful in that direction. Especially for the little girl left without a mom.

  5. From the department of time flies: some of you will no doubt remember when my daughter was born, as I did chronicle it at the old site. This morning, my wife and I took her to school and she's now sitting in her first grade classroom. Man, how did that happen? Answer: one day at a time.

    1. My niece, who was born shortly after I started posting in the old basement, started kindergarten this morning. That seems entirely impossible, and she's not even my kid.

    2. CER started 5th Grade.
      HPR 2nd.
      AJR Pre-school.

      It's all home-school, so that last one may be a bit nebulous.
      EAR does have lesson plans for her though.

      1. Huh. We have a fifth grader, a second grader and one who starts Kindergarten next week. I didn't realize our kids were so close in age. I remember CER as being older than my oldest. My mistake.

        I don't think there's any way we (my wife) could do home school. We've gotten to the point where we are excited for summer to come to an end!

        1. CER's birthday is July 8. She is 10.

          There's definitely times when EAR has had doubts. The second half of the last school year was a lot of "going through the motions" of teaching for her, out of exhaustion and inertia. She got a big pick-me-up from her consultant towards the end of the year and has a head of optimistic steam chugging through her to make this the best year ever. Also: the littlest two are just enough older where they might be less work.
          /knocks on wood.
          I should start looking at the local schools again after saying that.

          1. Crazy. My oldest is 10 and his birthday is July 13. They should've been even closer since my wife was induced on the 11th and they sent us home when it didn't take. That was the worst. She was induced again on the 12th, but he wasn't having any of that. So the emergency C-section was at 1:30 in the morning on the 13th.

            Speaking of looking at schools, our former neighbor stopped by our new house on Friday. Her oldest is going into sixth and she said they weren't thrilled with any of the St. Paul middle schools they visited. They ultimately opted for the fancy private school in St. Paul: 25 grand! My jaw still hasn't recovered.

                    2. If you want more information, stickandballguy at the google mail. Be advised that I don't check it that much, but if you send an email in the next week, I will check.

              2. I'm pretty happy that our parish school walks the talk, so to speak:

                Family with one child (grades 1-8) $4,030/year
                Family with two children (grades 1-8) $6,620/year
                Family with three or more children (grades 1-8) $8,530/year

              3. The median cost of tuition at a private school (grades one through 12) hovers around $45,000 for boarding students and nearly $20,000 for day students in the U.S., according to a recent national survey conducted by the National Association of Independent Schools.

              1. That's a great site. I don't know what we're going to do about middle school next year. We've heard not-so-great things about all of the public options in St. Paul.

                1. I can't remember the last time I heard anything good about any school district. How did any of us turn out okay?

                  1. It's not the district. All anecdotal, but we've heard good things about many of the elementary schools in our area and a couple of the high schools. It's just middle school where we don't have any great options, it seems.

                    My wife attended one of our kids' middle school options and she did turn out okay. But that was a few years back.

                    1. My nephew started at Ramsey today (I think) after 2 years with the l’Etoile du Nord French Immersion school...his mother (a music teacher in the Stillwater school district) isn't thrilled with the choice, but it's where most of his athletics friends are headed and, as you pointed out, there are many other great options.

                    2. Ramsey's probably the leader in the clubhouse, CoC. Does he play hockey? Just curious whether he is at Edgcumbe or Highland.

                    3. He does play hockey...as much as possible. Both he and his younger brother were on the Edgcumbe Squirt White team last year.

    3. Congrats.

      Aquinas started pre-school today. I was extremely nervous, and today was just the "parents come visit and the kids see everything with them" day.

    4. Skim, who was born less than a year before I started coming here, is now a Kindergartener. Skim's in third, which is wild to me.

      The two of them have been in school for three weeks now; Arizona starts much earlier (I imagine to get the kids to stay out of the dangerous August heat).

      1. (I imagine to get the kids to stay out of the dangerous August heat).
        Why not have school in the summer with the long break in the winter?

    5. I remember when Morneau was a rookie terrified that Sheenie already had his jersey and that Corey Koskie kept teasing him about it.

  6. at tire shop, hoping to escape with only a patch. wife's beemer has all-wheel drive. 4-tire replacement threatens.

    also, reading ESPN mag college fball preview. column asserts research shows that elimination of native American nicknames has only small short-term economic cost. INteresting.

    2. ESPN the Mag article I mentioned above.

      two Emory University professors have conducted updated, more comprehensive research into the same subject and have come to the same conclusion. Michael Lewis and Manish Tripathi looked at how dropping native identities affects revenue at NCAA basketball programs and found that "schools experience a very short (one or two years) negative financial impact and then quickly recover. Furthermore, in the long term, the shift away from a Native American mascot yields positive financial returns."

      1. It's like the people who said they were quitting baseball forever after the strike in '94. Forever was until something big happened and baseball exploded again.

    1. So: Opposition Baserunning (stolen bases and caught stealings) are more a product of the pitcher than the catcher.
      Prior results: Throwing (called) strikes is often the catcher's responsibility through framing.

      Next: Giving less than 110% is optimal.

  8. I will never understand why people like drinking so much booze they passout or forget about what happened the night before.

    I will also never understand why my friends and acquaintances continue to get DWIs when they know I am always available to be a sober driver.

    needless to say, its bee a weird morning.

    1. On the way to work this morning, there was what appeared to be a brand-new 300 C parked serenely on the grass to the side of Hwy 36 with a crunched front passenger headlight/quarter panel. No driver was present but a state trooper was parked behind it.

      You could see where it had come across 2 lanes of traffic from an entrance ramp, into the grass median, through a narrow gap between a concrete bridge abutment and those new steel cable highway dividers, back across 2 lanes of traffic and into the base of a light stanchion.

      Me to my wife, "Holy hell!" My wife to me, "Drunk driver...huh."

    2. there's a lot of testosterone-poisoning out there in society. I'm not proud that I drove drunk several times as a young man. Thankfully, I never killed or injured myself or anyone else, and lived long enough to wise up.

      Certainly, social attitudes (broadly speaking) have changed significantly since I was a teenager, but we have a long way to go. Binge drinking is a scourge.

      I don't think my kids have ever seen me over-consume. We've been very consistent and insistent about not drinking and driving, while at the same time acknowledging that the Boy is now in college and is consuming alcohol on occasion.

      My main educational strategy with both kids has always been to treat my nightly beer as an event. I don't chug or swill, I savor. I'm teaching the Boy (and will teach the Girl when she reaches the same age) that beer (and, more generally, alcoholic beverages) is a privilege and a treat, and should be respected. Life is short.

          1. Not sure that they really are smarter. Some things have changed, but others, not so much.

            This figure shows the "Number of self-reported episodes of alcohol-impaired driving among adults --- Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, United States, 1993--2010".

            Impaired driving data are, ahem, driven by men in the 21-34 age range. This Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report from the CDC shows that 1.8 percent of survey respondents overall self-reported having driven while impaired in the preceding 30 days -- 2.8 percent of men and 0.8 percent of women. The estimates for men 21-24 was 4.5 percent, and for men 25-34, 4.2 percent. (big confidence intervals for both groups, to be sure).

            Baby boomers are now well out of the high-risk age categories; Gen Xers are just about out, and Millenials (children of late boomers and early Gen Xers) are moving into their mid-20s. I suspect that these age and life-cycle demographics are driving a lot of the change.

            Since 2006, self-reported alcohol-impaired driving episodes have declined 30%, reaching a low of an estimated 112 million episodes in 2010. Neither self-reported alcohol consumption nor binge drinking in the past 30 days, as reported by BRFSS, declined significantly over this period. Reasons for the decline in alcohol-impaired driving are not well understood, but possible factors include less discretionary driving as a result of the current economic downturn (5) and possible changes in drinking location to places where driving is not required such as at home (6).

            Alcohol-impaired driving fatalities declined 20% from 13,491 to 10,839 from 2006 to 2009, the most recent year for which fatality data are available (7). However, the proportion of all motor vehicle fatalities that involve at least one alcohol-impaired driver has remained stable at about 33%, because non-alcohol-impaired driving fatalities have declined at the same rate as alcohol-impaired fatalities (7). This study indicated that alcohol-impaired driving rates remain disproportionally high among young men, binge drinkers, persons who do not always wear a seatbelt, and persons living in the Midwest.

            1. Hmm. I'll parse that in a positive way, for now. At least the thing that needed the most changing is the thing that's changing. Binge drinking will kill oneself, but drunk driving will kill oneself and others.

              1. yah. I think we are saying the same thing? The age distribution has shifted over the past two decades, such that there are relatively fewer adults in the riskiest age brackets and relatively more older, less risk-taking, adults. So the absolute numbers of events has declined from the peak and, presumably, the overall rates are way down (because population is up).

                1. The graph you show I read as little change.
                  Probably a bit of a downward-slope, but not much.
                  Remove the last datapoint and it's flat.

                  Maybe we need an age-corrected rate, to know how much is due to actual changes in behavior and how much is just the ageing and thus responsibleing of the population from demographics.

                2. Hey that graph is coooool.
                  Baby boom & echo & even a second echo (which might also include some immigration).
                  I wish the stuff I did for work ever had that fantastic-looking a result.

    3. I love beer and wine, but I don't like to be fall-down drunk. I had to give up liquor a couple of years ago, however, because I drink it like it's beer and I ended up having a very sad episode. As for driving, I won't drive after a single drop. It's just not worth it, in any way.

    4. I enjoy a few spirited beverages from time to time, but I'm also don't understand why folks get so liquored up that they can't function. I work for a very prominent museum in the French Quarter, and almost every day I have to deal with a tourist and / or a bum who is way over the line. I called the cops last Friday because a woman passed out on the steps into my shop, puked on herself, and then began rolling around in the middle of the side walk. She was moaning loudly, and I thought she was going to die right there. The cops bring the ambulance, and she heads out to which ever emergency room has an opening to pump her guts, and then they dump her right back into the quarter to start it all over again.

      I like watching normal folks come here on vacation and cut absolutely loose, but the folks who can't take care of themselves are problematic.

      1. a woman passed out on the steps into my shop, puked on herself, and then began rolling around in the middle of the side walk.

        sounds like it could have been performance art!

        1. If so, she was very convincing with her 'acting'.

          I had to check for breath on a kid who was maybe 20 years old about a month ago. After I found out he was still breathing I kicked him in the shins until he woke up, and asked him politely to remove himself from the front of my shop.

  10. RIP Ronald Coase, one of the greatest and most influential social scientists of this or any time.

    In his autobiographical essay written for the Nobel committee after being awarded the prize, he recalled being taken by his father at age 11 to a phrenologist to hear what could be discovered from the shape of his head. The phrenologist detected “considerable mental vigor,” Professor Coase wrote, and recommended that he work in banking or accounting and raise poultry as a hobby.

    1. yea. He apparently cleared waivers when he was DFA'd, and went to the River Cats, whose season just ended. But bringing him back requires a 40-man roster move. I wonder who....

  14. Interesting piece on "preventable" deaths due to heart disease and stroke.

    At least 200,000 deaths due to heart disease and stroke can be prevented each year by quitting smoking, controlling blood pressure and cholesterol, and taking aspirin when recommended by a physician, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

    In a study published Tuesday in the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, researchers found that the rate of avoidable deaths from cardiovascular disease had dropped 29% from 2001 to 2010.

    However, researchers found the pattern of decline differed by age, race and state of residence.

    looking at the map of age-adjusted preventable deaths by county, all of Minnesota is in the "best" category.

    What is "preventable" death, you ask?

    In this report, avoidable deaths include all deaths among persons aged <75 years with an underlying cause of ischemic heart disease (International Classification of Diseases, 10th Revision [ICD-10] codes I20–I25), cerebrovascular disease (stroke) (I60–I69), hypertensive disease (I10–I15), or chronic rheumatic heart disease (I05–I09) (2). The analyses were limited to persons aged <75 years because the life expectancy of the total U.S. population in 2010 was 78.7, and 100% of these deaths in persons aged <75 years were considered to be preventable in accordance with previous analyses (3–5).

  15. mebbe just one more link today. It's a monday for all intents and purposes, right?

    so, Flyover Geography and Geology 101 (linked only for comedic value; please ignore teh Politicks further on):

    Our old friend, the Ogallala Aquifer, which is pretty much what keeps everything between the Cubs and the Dodgers from being a desert, is still in trouble.

    for reference, here's an actual map:

Comments are closed.