59 thoughts on “October 20, 2017: Deadlines”

  1. Here's one for Mike: on the flight home last night I read in the latest Astronomymagazine article on LIGO that it has the equivalent accuracy of measuring the 4.2 light years distance to Proxima Centauri to within the width of a human hair. *mind blown*

    1. Yeah, that's about right, but they actually do slightly better than that; more like a tenth of a human hair or so if they were measuring that distance.

      LIGO is an amazing piece of equipment; did you see about the neutron star merger announced earlier this week? It's amazing that we can even detect those at all, plus this explains what short-duration gamma ray bursts are.

      Plus I think it's awesome to see all this success for LIGO after it ran for 16 years (with lower sensitivity) without seeing anything. These discoveries (and the Nobel Prizes awarded this year) were a very, very long time coming.

          1. LIGO has had plenty of serendipitous luck. First they get a detection shortly after the upgrades have finished and now this shortly after VIRGO is online.

  2. Stolen from a friend on FB:

    When I run for president my campaign slogan will be "Make Unhappy America Happy Again, Happy Always" so the hats can say MUAHAHA.

  3. So Baseball Prospectus has a redesigned website. I think I like it. It might also be the case that everything is currently free there for a limited time, if anyone is interested.

  4. Looks like the Tigers will be announcing Gardy as their new manager at noon. I’ve found myself wondering two things:

    - Will Rick Anderson & Scott Ullger be joining him?
    - What number will he wear? Depending on HoF trends, the Tigers may want to reserve #35 for eventual retirement. Gardy wore #19 with the Mets, but Aníbal Sánchez will presumably be back next season, as I doubt Detroit will be able to offload his salary. My vote is for either #53 or #70.

    1. I can't remember who it was now, but I saw a tweet from someone in sports media that one of the things that impressed the Tigers was that Gardy was showing a new openness toward sabremetrics, and that it was his time with the Diamondbacks that convinced him of the value of it.

      1. Good for him for maintaining an open mind. I think that also says a great deal about his superiors’ own willingness to adapt and their expectations for Gardy’s own professional development when he was with the Twins.

        1. Lovullo is apparently the master at empathy and Arizona has to be more analytically friendly than the Twins were when he was fired. Also, he isn't the one that has to be convinced and enact sabremetrics; he instead gets to watch someone else and learn from them. He finally had a conducive environment to learning new things.

      2. Third question of Gardy’s presser was from Katie Strang at The Athletic on analytics. He handled it really well, talking about what he learned in Arizona and basically said “I learned the game in the old school, but if you quit learning, you’re probably screwed.”

  5. This just in. Pain killers can cause dangerous conditions. I think I heard a scream of "I am Groooot" as I flushed for the first time since Tuesday morning.

    1. I am lucky when it comes to pain killers (or unlucky). Any prescription pain killers I have ever taken have made me extremely sick to my stomach. As a result, even after my shoulder and multiple knee surgeries, I just use a light dose of over the counter and deal with the pain. It has made for some sleepless nights and has heightened by pain tolerance greatly, but I don't have to worry about side effects nor the potential of addiction.

      1. I had nausea from the painkiller(s) with my first hip replacement, but with the second one I limited myself to percocet only a couple days but Advil from then on, and always with something in my stomach, and it went just fine. I generally have a pretty good pain tolerance, but the "stay ahead of the pain" mantra is always beat into your head.

      2. I had a bad response to Vicodin (I think) a few years ago. Talking with the prep nurse before my surgery I learned that my reaction was in fact rather common to it.

      3. The only time I had prescription pain killers was when they gave me hydrocodone for shingles. I took it for twenty-four hours and was sick to my stomach. They switched me to lyrica after that, which I could handle.

        One thing I learned is that you don't really want to read the list of potential side effects. You'd never take anything if you did. I think at some point you either trust that the doctor knows what to do or you don't.

        1. I'm a weirdo who hates the idea of taking medicine. When I told my ACL, I took one painkiller the day off the surgery, and then didn't take the rest. I just gutted it out. Same thing this spring when I had nose surgery.

          I'm not anti-science, but for some reason the thought of putting a foreign substance into my body to make me feel better is unappealing.

            1. I knew the first response would be about alcohol or food, but I also fully admit to being a complete weirdo about medicine. Also about medical procedures. My phobia story here is about the time I fainted when accompanying Sheenie to the doctor to learn about what was going to happen during the first pregnancy (which sadly only lasted a few more weeks after that appointment).

              1. I'm the same way. I prefer not to take medication when possible. Sometimes they are necessary, but I think it's better to be a little skeptical and go from there.

        2. I had a bad cough a couple years ago. Since my regular guy (Dr. Fear) wasn't for a while, I went to my Urgent Clinic on the Berlin Turnpike (don't try to pronounce it, you'll be wrong).

          Dr. Patel prescribes me some greenish rinse hooch (oui, Opiods) in a large bottle. First taking of it, the wife could barely get me up the stairs. She poured the rest down the drain. I survived.

        3. I've had cough syrup with codeine a few times times with good results, both in lessening the coughing and feeling the effects of the syzzurp. Good times.

          But, I had surgery once on a broken finger, and was prescribed vicodin after. Took it as subscribed for maybe a week, if even that, but when I stopped I just could not fall asleep at all. For about another week I felt itchy, twitchy and jumpy any time I'd lay down to go to sleep, unless I popped another pill of course. Going through that withdrawal after not even taking it for that long, I can certainly understand how easy it can be to get hooked on the stuff.

          1. I got the wet promethazine, thick orange and yellow tuss
            Hydrocordone on the hands free phone
            The '84 Brougham on them blades, twenty inch chrome
            If you got sixteen, you can get a bizzerd
            I'm chokin on that doja Sweet and sippin on that syzzurp

      1. I think blessing. I don't think it's his problem the Twins couldn't win a postseason game, but I foresee a lot of sturm und drang about hiring a manager that has never* won a postseason game to help the Nationals actually win a series.

        Plus, doesn't have to live in/around DC.

        * Hyperbole. Don't at me.

    1. "Winning a lot of regular season games and the division is not enough"

      Someone certainly doesn't understand postseason crapshooty-ness. There will likely be a bit of schadenfreude the next time that team goes through a dry stretch.

      1. That struck me as a particularly classless statement. Going back to 1969, the Expos/Nationals have won their division back-to-back once: this year and last year.

      2. I agree with everything said above. I'm not saying Dusty Baker is the best manager ever, but there are a lot of teams that fired a manager or coach because "he can't win in the postseason" only to discover that the post-season was no longer an issue for them.

      1. I ran across it in the context of a new story. Is it any less true today? I certainly don't remember having seen it before.

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