86 thoughts on “February 3, 2014: Blowout”

  1. Tarvaris Jackson now has more rings than Dan Marino, Fran Tarkenton, Jim Kelly, Warren Moon, and Donovan Mcnabb COMBINED.

    2. When it first started operating, amatuer astronomers were fascinated by the new mystery spy satellite that could change directions periodically. Enough observers were able to pick up its new orbit after a couple days.

    1. So did I.

      There were about a dozen people at the party I attended last night. At 7:45 PM, I leaned in next to the hostess and asked if there was another TV where I could watch Downton. Her eyes lit up and she practically shouted, "Unless there is a problem with it, at 8 o'clock we're flipping over to PBS. Problem? Anyone? Good." People were definitely more interested in the Crawley household than the "Big Game" by that point.

    2. We had some friends over last minute…to go to a college band concert in town by my alma mater. A band I and the friend were part of when we were in college. Sadly they cut the concert a bit short so people could get to their parties.

      We turned the game on about 2/3's through the 1st quarter and watched through the halftime show. They went home, we cleaned up the house, and then I played a video game.

    3. Two additional thoughts: Not one commercial stood out as anything special. And for knowing next to nothing about him, I thought Bruno Mars was pretty good. Not exactly Prince, but who is?

      1. Yeah, I kind of came away with the same impression Re: Mars, Bruno (and have the same knowledge base; didn't he cover a Police song recently or something?). I'm not going to run out and buy any of his CDs, but his set was light years ahead of, say, the Black-Eyed Peas.

        1. My wife was trying to switch it over to the half time show, but since we didn't have the game on it was difficult to know when it was. Fortunately for me (because I already know I'd have hated it. I know myself pretty well.), she was not able to turn the channel in time.

    5. I flipped around for a while, watched the halftime show (I liked Bruno but one measly song by "Special guests" Red Hot Chili Peppers!?) and then my wife turned to Downton without a smidgen of complaint from me. I don't really watch the show, so I went and did dishes and read a 2-month-old copy of The Atlantic Monthly.

  5. In my historical Diamond Mind league, my lowly 1953 Brooklyn Dodgers were playing the lowly Chicago Cubs on May 12 when Jim Delsing stepped to the plate for Chicago. He hit a line drive to shortstop Eddie Miksis who stepped on second base and then threw to first base for a triple play. The very next day, Jim Delsing stepped up again and hit a line drive up the middle caught by pitcher Paul LaPalme. LaPalme fired it to the thirdbaseman who sent it back over to first double off both runners (talk about awful baserunning at first base). Yes, somehow Jim Delsing lined into triple plays in consecutive games.

    1. Line drive, caught by LaPalme! And now a comedy of errors, the main players being X and Y. X broke too soon, and I don't know what Y was thinking as he was down by second!

    1. That was . . . amazing.

      Minnesota Rules of Professional Conduct 7.2, comment 3:

      Questions of effectiveness and taste in advertising are matters of speculation and subjective judgment. Some jurisdictions have had extensive prohibitions against television advertising, against advertising going beyond specified facts about a lawyer, or against “undignified” advertising. Television is now one of the most powerful media for getting information to the public, particularly persons of low and moderate income; prohibiting television advertising, therefore, would impede the flow of information about legal services to many sectors of the public. Limiting the information that may be advertised has a similar effect and assumes that the bar can accurately forecast the kind of information that the public would regard as relevant.

  7. Sheenie and I got an invitation to attend "An Evening with Neil deGrasse Tyson." Any reason not to?

    2. I listen to a lot of Startalk Radio, which is quite enjoyable. He's a little too smarmy sometimes and way too in love with the sound of his own voice (I mean "sound" literally, not that he's excessively verbose; he loves to drop into the "telephone voice" register a bit too much), but besides that, yeah, I'd go in a second.

      1. Heh, we had a conversation about him during the semi-watching of the game last night. The consensus was that he was a bit full of himself, but compared to Hawking he was a saint.

        1. Yeah, I wouldn't refute that assessment. One thing I do love about him though, and I believe it was someone around here that said it (strategery?), is that he's one of the few people out there actually selling science to public. We need a whole lot more of people like that.

      2. I also listen to Startalk and your assessment is spot on. Smarmy, but still one of the good guys.

    1. That list is... interesting. "Lately*" by Stevie is all about how he's pretty sure his significant other is cheating on him and going to leave him shortly. Very good song for all those couples in long-term relationships.

      * That song has the lyric "Lately I've been staring in the mirror/Very slowly picking me apart", which I always found hilarious coming from Stevie Wonder.

    1. I do it. It's a habit and I only have enough energy to change so many of my habits. If I ever wrote something that really mattered, I'd use LaTeX and it would space everything properly for me.

    2. Thank you, Pepper. I never use two spaces to separate sentences (although that's what I was taught in HS typing class), and now everyone I work with who turns in drafts with two spaces will receive a copy of this article. Now, can you help me eradicate the Oxford comma?

          1. I know, not actually an Oxford comma example (that would be more like "Eats shoots and leaves" vs "Eats, shoots and leaves"). But still.

            1. Out of curiosity, how is the Oxford Comma useless (or at least no longer relevant)? I thought the scientific diagram which I linked to above clearly illustrated its usefulness.

      3. will receive a copy of this article.
        Manjoo writes some interesting articles on a variety of topics, but I would hardly consider him definitive on anything.
        And c'mon, it's Slate. If one space was used more often, he would have written the exact opposite column. Because Slate.

    4. I'm an unabashed 2-spacer. As the article points out, it's essentially an arbitrary rule. And when it's arbitrary, it's no rule at all and common usage should be deferred to. Thus, 2-spaces.

        1. I acknowledge that it is the held-out standard. But I'll take common usage over arbitrary rule every single time.

        2. AP is the same on 2 spaces, although that's because newspapers do whatever they can to save space. That's also why the Oxford comma (often referred to as the serial comma) was often not used. To be fair, though, the AP always stated that you should use a serial comma whenever it is needed to avoid confusion, so the reasons shown why it is needed don't truly apply. Of course, leaving a rule up to interpretation for the writer and/or editor will just lead to more confusion.

      1. Take heart:

        Typographers can point to no studies or any other evidence proving that single spaces improve readability.

        Even if you are "totally, completely, utterly, and inarguably wrong," you're "totally, completely, utterly, and inarguably wrong" about something that is completely inconsequential to getting your point across.

        2. a few weeks ago, my staff had an extensive discussion (somewhat light-heartedly) about proper punctuation for en-dashes and em-dashes. (to space, or not to space? Chicago Manual says no spaces before-and-aft)

    6. Oh, sure, the one time I fall asleep in the middle of the day, I miss this.

      I still type two as a force of habit, as it was drilled into me at a young age and I type on a constant basis every single day. I would like to rid myself of the habit, but as others said, I guess it still hasn't struck me as important enough to break me from something that's been muscle memory for thirty years.

    1. Chelsea win! Now atop the Premier League table. Hey where can I find the standings from our BPL contest?

      1. The table is displayed here, but I don't know where the actual one is.

        Hey! Things are looking good for me right now! How recently was this stuff updated? How quickly is it gonna go bad for me?

        1. You'll be happy to know Philo that that widget auto-updates. I dunno if it's queried since the end of the ManCity-Chelsea match, but it was accurate as of this morning.

          1. That's cool. I should go spend some more time looking at the standings and schedules and stuff. My interest is growing a little. Now to find the time...

            1. If you're interested in suggestions for a team, I'm sure we could draw something up. We need a Norwich or West Brom fan around here, right?

                1. 19 points from 24 games and the worst GD in the league...probably not. If I'm gonna be miserable, I might just switch to Chelsea.

      2. Looks to me that Chelsea is still 3rd in the PL table. (I don't really have a dog in that fight except that I find Mourinho interesting, and I want Jozy and Clint to start scoring some goals.)

        1. Jozy has games where he looks great (last weekend at Newcastle was one), but he just doesn't find the net (like his chance last weekend at Newcastle). It's a strange thing. He seems to play very well when he has support (he makes chances for others), but he's at his worst when he's on his own.

  14. Im not the first to suggest it, but if Rick Adelman has had enough of coaching after this year, the Wolves should drive 3 Brinks trucks down to Ames Iowa and park them in the front yard of Fred Hoiberg's house.

      1. I hope he'd reconsider because if there is any coach out there who would probably do well with this team while also satisfying Papa Glen's obsession with the familiar, its Hoiberg. Otherwise, we may as well prepare ourselves for Flip 2.0.

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