I'm pleased that the Twins aren't changing anything, but feel the pressure from players may force them to move the fences. It doesn't come up until the very end, but I think the real problem isn't the park, it's the team. Opponents have out-homered the Twins in both years, proving that although it's a pitchers' park, it's not death to fly balls.
I'm really glad they got quotes from noted professional hitter, and all around developing talent _elm_n Y_ung.
"At Target Field, when those balls turn into can-of-corn outs and I was fighting for playing time over there, I couldn't afford to have a fly out to deep right field," Young told the New York Times. "I had to try to pull the ball to get a base hit."
Yeah, definitely the "can-of-corns" the he couldn't afford.
Yeah, that was his problem! The park! That's gotta be it.
I wonder what was holding him back at the Metrodome.
Also the stadium.
I'm sensing doubt of his talent.
Given that _elm_n knows all fly balls hit in Minneapolis automatically turn into cans of corn, it's funny how he still couldn't figure out how to catch any without giving the impression that the outfield had been flooded with marbles.
Ha, I think that provides an even better mental image than the rollerskates.
Probably the only thing about _elm_n that I won't miss is my brain inserting the Fred Flintstone twinkle toes sound effect every time I see _elm_n running on the field.
That's what you won't miss, or will miss??
I'm hoping he means will. Now that CH mentioned it, my brain will do the same thing whenever I see Twins play the Tigers.
In my mental picture, Delmon is still wearing the rollerskates in the marble-flooded outfield while he dodges cans of corn.
If he's going to be throwing my name around, perhaps I should contact _elm_n about sponsoring the sight.
So that's why he hit so many home runs to right on the road!
Man, that quote from TR at the end of the piece really says it all.
I like Gardy's at the end of the first page, as well.
the concrete hasnt dried yet
I have loved this explanation ever since Dick decided to say it out loud during the inaugural TF season.
Some Twins officials believe Target Field is more middle-of-the-road than it gets credit for. But ESPN's Park Factors -- which measures offense at home vs. the road -- ranked Target Field 21st in the major leagues last season with a rating of .944.
But? But? 21st out of 30 puts the field barely out of the middle third of the league. How do the hitters in the bottom nine fields deal with it? Hit some line drives and get on with life.
ESPN's Park Factors are kind of naively done, just comparing total number of runs scored while at home versus away. It doesn't do any averaging of multiple years either. B-R has a 95/97 rating for batters and pitchers respectively for 2001 and a 98/98 rating overall. Still a pitchers park, but more middle of the road.
I more take issue with the writing here. Yeah, ESPN's park factors are naive, but even so, the best evidence they can come up with to contradict the claim that Target Field is more middle-of-the-road is that it ranks 21 out of 30? Oh man, those Twins officials are so very far off base.
How do the hitters in the bottom nine fields deal with it?
Well, exactly. SOME ballpark has to be at the bottom.
As long as Target Field isn't an extreme pitcher's park, then stop whining, Twins batters! The visiting teams seem to do alright.
Nothing really groundbreaking here, except I think I'd rather have another arm in the bullpen than Butters as a third catcher and I don't love Revere in left*. But hey, pitchers and catchers report tomorrow!11!!!!1one!
*what are the other options though?
Who would you prefer in left? Span presumably? I wonder how his arm compares to Willingham's.
Maybe I just like the idea of a guy not losing his job due to an injury, but I'd prefer Span in center. I guess I was thinking of this in terms of getting better offensively as I feel like that's a need for the club. That being said, I'm not sure there is a better option for the outfield. I don't see the Twins bringing in someone from outside the organization so in-house is what I looked at.
Minor league totals*
Ben Revere............... .326 .385 .408 .793
Darin Mastroianni...... .279 .370 .372 .742
Rene Tosoni............. .272 .361 .419 .780
Joe Benson............... .265 .359 .443 .803
Trevor Plouffe.......... .258 .320 .406 .726 *all totals in 5 or more seasons
We know I'm not very good at making projections/arguments based on statistical analysis. In that way, I'm a bit of an outlier around here. But even I can see that Revere seems the most likely to succeed with the big club based on my request for “more offense”. Are there better options?
As for defense, Revere can definitely cover the ground no matter where he plays. I don't feel like the arm would hurt him as much in left as it occasionally did seemed to in center. If he consistently plays with the energy that he showed last year, then (to answer your question) I'd have to say I prefer him out there.
Assuming Span is healthy, I would have to agree. Willingham was a left fielder, but there's no way his arm is worse than Revere's, so it makes sense to put him in right. If Span has to miss significant time, then I would put Willingham in left with Benson in right. The idea being Benson would be here longer, so him learning the right field wall will be helpful for more years. He also supposedly has a good/great arm, which is another reason.
Is learning the wall really that much of an issue? I know that the powers that be mention this a lot, but how hard can it be to set up a few practice sessions with a pitching machine and someone to hit balls off the RF wall all afternoon? Also, it's said about some fielders that they really know how to play a particular fence well, but I'd bet that fielders who really learn to play one fence well would just be good at playing caroms off of just about any fence.
I fully agree with this. If you're a decent athlete and are willing to work at it, learning the wall should not be a big problem.
If you're a decent athlete and are willing to work at it
But, but, but I thought Cuddyer was the hardest-working, most humble, greatest human being on the planet yet he couldn't figure out the wall at all.
My guess is that it would take a few days of practice, since there are three surfaces for confusing ricker-shays. Probably only a few hours in one day to learn it and then the rest to make it instinctive.
cuddy never seemed to quite get the hang of it.
It's really more about judging where the ball is going to hit, rather than how it's going to react to what it hits, no? The overhang is so unique - I can imagine balls that would be catchable but for just glancing off of the stone. Play the bounce and you're wrong and you're screwed. Go for the catch and you're wrong and you're screwed. That's a a lot to account for in a small amount of time.
Sure, I'm not saying that the skill itself is easy. But I question whether experience during games is really that necessary to develop mastery of the wall. You can get way more reps in during practice than you could seeing maybe a tricky carom every other game during the regular season. Some players will be good at this and others will be bad at it, but it probably has a lot more to do with whether or not you're a good fielder than getting actual game time in at the position.
Gotcha. Agree completely.
Anyone have any experience getting rid of cable/directv? I would have to get myself okay with no Twins games obviously, but there really isn't any must-see TV these days (I could still buy individual episodes of Mad Men & Breaking Bad I think) and we stream Netflix.
you can stream mad men and breaking bad on netflix anyway.
we only had basic cable before, but after we moved we decided to just get internet only, and i have no regrets at all (plus, with the digital upgrade to the system, over the air is pretty decent quality itself). streaming netflix more than covers my TV viewing needs, and libraries have turned into mini-blockbuster stores, so i'm not missing it at all.
if anything, just having cable seemed to make more watch more TV than i would/should. probably for the best as well.
Right - sorry, I meant new episodes. Those are the only ongoing shows that I would really want to see immediately.
ahh. i'm very behind in my viewing habits, so i'm not caught up there yet. plus, there's a number of other shows i want to catch up on anyway so i don't think this would be an issue for me.
if anything, just having cable seemed to make more watch more TV than i would/should.
Exactly.
I haven't had anything but broadcast TV since college 10 years ago. I don't even have Netflix, since I watch too much TV anyhow. I listen to the Twins on the radio and watch occasional games at bars and friend's houses, but other than that, I certainly don't care about the rest of the channels I'm not getting.
The nice thing is that our neighborhood recently have fios internet installed - much faster and much cheaper than what we had, so all streaming options are on the table.
I made the broadcast/Netflix only plunge a few months ago and love it. Plus, I'm too busy playing werewolf at night to watch tv anyway.
Am I not supposed to be watching TV while playing?
No, I think its stated in the rules that you're only allowed to be taking shots while playing and no other external stimuli.
Timberwolves games excepted, of course.
So much to learn... though no Wolves games if I drop directv.
Well, that depends...
Theoretically, someone might be curious about things like that too.
I'd say go for it. We stopped so much crap-watching because-it's-there when Comcast took away our free cable. It was hard to adjust at first, but now we hardly even watch broadcast, and we can get most of what we want from the library, which is like a really slow Netflix, with maybe one redbox a month for something we really want to see right away, and maybe buy one DVD a month of something we're likely to watch repeatedly (cartoons, typically).
I compared it tonight to having one cable station that plays all the movies you want to see, but you still can't change what's playing any one weekend.
Also, leaving ESPN behind has made me a better person.
My only nagging concern is that my kids will lose their interest in beisbol. So, when we go to my in-laws', I sit infront of the big HD flatscreen and soak in everything I can, and ask CER and HPR to do the same.
we can get most of what we want from the library
I too, get films (mostly foreign) from the library. Hartford is quite a diverse city, so the library stocks plenty of interesting films from Poland, Germany, Spain, Mexico, Russia, Vietnam, India, China, Korea, even Turkey.
Krzysztof is one of my favorite foreign film directors - also Aamir Khan.
Anyone here a doctor? And/or ever had a kid who's had a fever for 6 days? We've already been to the doctor once, 3 days ago, and he couldn't find anything obviously wrong. At this point, I'm starting to freak out. We're going back to the doctor again this afternoon, but my hopes of diagnosis are obviously tempered.
What with all the lawyers, I'm not surprised we don't have a doctor around here. I assume it's pretty low-grade?
It wasn't the first 3 days (~103), then dropped down to 101 or so, and this morning seemed to be a little higher. He doesn't have appetite/seems lethargic (except when the tylenol/etc. is working), but that could just be fever side-effects. I don't know. It just isn't going away, which is irritating/scary. No one else in the family is having any problems either, so it doesn't appear to be especially contagious.
Also, I love taking money away from doctors.
Ha! The boy had pneumonia this fall, he was maybe 7 months old at the time. It didn't have a lot of outward symptoms, but that got steadily worse. So basically I got nuthin'.
Skim had a couple of long fevers like that, as did my sister, where they'd just be sick forever and nobody else would catch it. I heard everything from "growth spurts can cause this" to "she's not eating healthily enough" (I doubt any kid could eat better than mine have to this point). In the end, the long fevers just stopped happening when they reached the toddler stage or so.
Well Aquinas is already in the toddler stage... he does have a molar coming through, but that's been going on for a while before this started, and everything we've seen said teething can't possibly cause such high temps.
Mostly though, I made this comment to indicate that I've decided what to call my family. Wife = Philosofette, Son (age 2) = Aquinas, Daughter (5 mos.) = Aristotle. Future children will be assigned other philosophers (Socrates, Plato, Neitzsche are probably the first ones on the table. Descartes, Rousseau, Hobbes, and Rand are completely out.)
Teething definitely caused temps that high for both of mine, though they were short-lived.
I read something that teething-associated fevers are typically just the day the tooth actually erupts. Or maybe I just made that up.
Philosofette? Sounds pretty good. Definitely better than referring to your wife as an ethnic slur (that happens to also be her ethnicity). I remember a commentor on my old blog trying to get into a huge fight with me about how insensitive I was.
Not that I expect you to have such a large household congress, but I look forward to Patočka and Solovyov!
(Seriously, these are great. Given the creativity of some Citizens in this regard, I have secretly always been ashamed I never found a better handle for Mrs. Hayes.)
I hope Aquinas is back to feeling normal shortly.
Moss wanted to name a son Blaise, but Mrs. Moss would have none of it.
Should have tried the more modern "Blaze" or "Blayze"
That's been on my list of middle names ever since I found out that was Pascal's first name.
I don't know if it's an option for you, but we have a nurse-call number that my wife uses all the time for things like this. It's the nurses that work at our family doctor's clinic, so they have access to all our records, and they're really good at helping us figure out if we need to take the kid in to acute care or set up an appointment or just stay home and get lots of rest. It's better than using WebMD, at any rate.
We've got one of those, but they just scheduled us for another appointment today. I'm wondering if this one will turn up anything. Strat's pneumonia comment tracks with something one of my coworkers mentioned (her kid showed no symptoms other than fever), so I'm starting to think he's got something like that (maybe not exactly that), where he's a little kid and rambunctious and otherwise healthy, so he's just not presenting with a full set of symptoms. We'll see what the doc says. All I know is that I haven't been at work much this week...
Yes, Phil. Two of my four got it. Both missed a week of school. Fever, tummy ache, headache. Prone on the couch the whole. Each of them puked a little but not the geyser usually associated with little kids. Very strange and scary but the doctor told us it was just a virus and to keep pumping them with Tylenol. Thanks. But it was over after a week. Hopefully you've got the same.
TJ archives:
-Two years ago, he was still in Vancouver covering the Olympics and wrote a generic article about the Canadian hockey team without any awful one-liners.
-Three years ago, he profiled then-rookie Cal Clutterbuck and described him getting hit in front of Ottawa's bench. "It was a clean hit, but Ottawa's Chris Neil, having watched Clutterbuck rattle his teammates' molars all night, retaliated by slamming Clutterbuck to the boards, even though the puck was long gone. With Clutterbuck immobilized, Ottawa's Jarkko Ruutu, sitting on the bench, reached over, grabbed Clutterbuck's head and gave it a twist, as if he wanted to mount it on his living room wall. The officials gave Ruutu, who once bit an opponents' ear, a 2-minute minor penalty for attempted decapitation."
Of course, the article online also contains this correction: "In this Jim Souhan column, the Ottawa player who retaliated for a Cal Clutterbuck hit was misidentified and the biting incident involving Jarkko Ruutu was mischaracterized. Ottawa's Chris Neil did not play in the Saturday night game, and Ruutu was suspended for two games in January for biting the thumb of Buffalo's Andrew Peters."
-Four years ago, the U was heralding incoming player Ralph Sampson III. The article mostly detailed his father's income tax difficulties and divorce. It did have this nugget: "Ralph III is asked what his goal is for his Minnesota career. 'My No. 1 goal,' he says, 'is to win a national championship.'"
Missed it by about as much as TJ missed his description of Clutterbuck's hit.
-In 2006, he compared tried to describe the environment of the Olympic hockey games in Turin. He wrote, "[T]his few people haven't made this much noise since Cream disbanded. It's like the Yankee Stadium bleachers, without the weapons."
-In 2004, the Twins had just signed Dougie Eyechart to a two-year deal (despite Morneau being almost ready). "This is just a sign that this guy helps us win baseball games," [Terry] Ryan said. "You never can tell what a prospect might do, but Doug's been a big part of our winning here. You don't win many games at this level with a bunch of rookies. He's in the prime of his career, and even though he's not the stereotypical first baseman in terms of power, he does a lot of good things with his bat."
-In 2003, Eddie Guardado showed up in Spring Training talking about his offseason. He played in a basketball league against Snoop Dogg. He also "attended a Lakers-Timberwolves game at Staples Center. 'My wife was star-struck,' Guardado said. 'When Eddie Murphy left, the crowd started chanting, 'Eddie, Eddie,' and I got up and said, 'Thank you very much.'' As Guardado chatted, Matthew LeCroy brought him a small tin. The label read: 'Carolina road meat - waste not, want not. . . . No rubber-tire aftertaste, no meat from a stiff-tailed carcass. A byproduct of rural highway 247 in Possum Kingdom, South Carolina.'"
-In 2002, he was discussing the strange offseason featuring the dreaded C-word (no, not Colin). "One day, lawyer Roger Magnuson argued two cases on behalf of Twins owner Carl Pohlad. In the first case, he tried to ensure the Twins' 2002 games would be televised by the Twins' proposed Victory Sports network. In the second case, he argued the Twins should not survive to play the 2002 season."
-In 1997, the Twins were preparing for their first full-day of workouts. Apparently, they had signed Eric Anthony that offseason to a contract in which he "would receive $ 25,000 for being an All-Star, $ 50,000 for being comeback player of the year, $ 25,000 for a Gold Glove, $ 25,000 for winning a Silver Slugger, $ 25,000 for being the League Championship Series MVP and $ 50,000 for being the World Series MVP."
-On this date in 1996, Chuck Knoblauch had an arbitration hearing with the Twins. According to TJ, "The Twins feel that if Knoblauch wins, they will have to trade him, because then signing him to a long-term deal would be cost-prohibitive. If the Twins win, they fear they will lose, because the feisty Knoblauch might not take well to having his credentials run down in a hearing, then losing his case."
-In 1995, "These players have signed addenda to their contracts to become replacement players: Catcher Tom Griffith, infielder Greg Hunter, outfielder Ricard Ingram, outfielder Paul Jackson, outfielder Gregg Leavell, pitcher Steve Otto, shortstop Al Quintana, outfielder Sean Ross, first baseman Ben Shelton, pitcher Tom Traen and catcher Jeff Wedvick."
Also, Twins equipment manager Jim Weisner announced that he would not be giving any replacement players #34.
I rarely if ever comment on these, but I should mention that I love that you do them.
Yeah, me too. The note about contraction / victory(!) is mind boggling.
I'd say Magnuson earned his fee that day.
How do you figure? He lost both cases!
Also involved in the trade of Dougie: Brendan Harris, his first of four trades.
Maybe "Werewolf: Rome" has gotten to me, but when I read, "he does a lot of good things with his bat" I had to laugh.
He likes to swing his bloc around.
So, I'm Dougie now. No more of this Spoonto business.
Wow. There is nothing, anywhere, that isn't a thing.
to be fair, it doesn't look like that was much of a thing.
Just wait for Rule 34.
aww, dude...
That's totally a Spoonto move.
classic spoonto.
I nominate dirty Dougie Spoonto.
Nice.
As you may know, "Ricard Ingram" is Riccardo Ingram, who got 8 at-bats with the Twins in 1995 and also coached and managed in their minor league system for several years.
I caught that and just forgot to add his B-R page. I was trying to flag the Major Leaguers whenever I catch a "scab" in case you want to add them to your birthday stuff.
so I've been playing a Twins franchise on 2K11 the last couple of weeks, and its scarey how real life it is. Justin Morneau, Joe Mauer, and Denard Span are already on the DL and Im not even through April!
I do miss EA Sports making baseball games. MVP05 is one of my Post-8bit games.
MVP05 was excellent, but I still like The Show better (though not by much).
Before the MVP series, EA was horrible at baseball. I had Triple Play 2002, and within a month or so I could throw a perfect game and strike out 20 guys about one out of every five games. On the highest setting, there was no challenge against the computer.
Well, except when Sosa batted against me. Dude took me deep every time, so I'd throw at his head.
I believe that there are people doing mods for the PC version of MVP05 still. It sucks that 2k bought the rights to MLB, because the 2k games have been pretty awful. This makes me very sad as they are the spiritual continuation of World Series Baseball which I adore.
The Show is great, but I usually only play a few games. This year I'm getting it for the Vita, so I'm hoping to play my season while I watch the real games. Baseball overload!
This is the last year of 2K's third party-exclusive license.
You'll have to keep us updated on what you think of the Vita. I can't justify it, but it looks like a very nice piece of hardware.
I dont remember too much about the Triple Play series, except for a 'funhouse mode' or something like that where one had to do challenges in weird places like a kitchen or an amusement park.
So, for the homebrewers out there, my boss just sent me the coolest work email ever:
a link to the beer labelizer. I haven't tried it yet, but he was saying that if you print out the labels with an laser jet printer (so it doesn't run) and apply the labels with a thin coat of milk as the adhesive, they'll come right off in hot water.
that's too cool!
And the Dr. says "Not normal to run a fever this long, even for a virus. There might be an ear infection, but at most one of the ears looks 'questionable.' Antibiotics prescribed and if the fever is still there in 3 days, we'll talk again."
Hopefully that does the trick.
Rub some dirt on it.
Point: Strategery.
I used to have a Doc in Forest Lake (retired now). He had been a war doctor, and was of the old school - wore a tie (not scrubs), dress shoes (not tennis shoes).
I remember one time I had come back from a long trip to Thailand, and hadn't shaken the jet lag for more than a week after coming back. I called him up about it and he said 'Ah, suck it up. You'll be fine.'
yeah, we just found out the boy has one, if not both ears infected. of course, him and the wife are out of state, so i can do absolutely zero about it from here.
My six-year old daughter and my three-year old boy both have double-ear infections. Getting kids to take antibiotics can be a lot of fun.
I had a double ear infection last fall -- my first ear infection ever, that I recall at least. I went to the doctor and he said it was ear wax and had my ears cleaned out and prescribed an antibiotic(!) Nurse said, hmmm, not much wax in your ears. Took it for a couple of weeks, still plugged. Went back to a different doctor. She said your ears are full. I said, the doctor I went to a couple of weeks ago had them flushed. She said, no, it's not wax, it's an infection. She took a culture and found out that it was a particularly tough strain of bacteria. She prescribed a powerful antibiotic. It took two full weeks for me to start to feel some lessening of the fullness. I took that damned antibotic for a month before I was confident that the infection was cleared up. The first antibiotic was a pill, the second drops. The second doctor said in an infection like this, you want topical application of the antibiotic.
So yeah, that first doctor, you suck. If I ever get another ear infection, I'm going to demand a culture be taken.
I hate the "prescribe antibiotics for everything" school of medicine. If it's a virus, antibiotics aren't going to work, and the doctor damn well knows that. If it's already been six days and the doctor wants to wait three more days to see if the fever magically goes away, I'd say it's time to look for a different doctor.
i'm also against the "anti-bacterial everything" school of soap and sanitizers.
This.
Ditto. Nothing wrong with washing your hands, but "sanitizing" constantly seems like overkill.
actually, guys, we should reel it back in a back here. i think we're brushing up against the forbidden zone...
Hey, now. My hands are clean.
was joak. yours was better though.
You got me with the joak. I was trying to figure out who we were offending, other than germs. I eventually decided you were not so serious.
i dunno, i'd imagine some parents get pretty passionate about this, specifically in the "everything must be operating theater sterile" camp. jane gets kind of hardcore about everything being safe and clean (not in the anti-bacterial way we've been discussing, but well washed for sure), while i'm more laissez-faire about the whole thing.
Yeah, I've run into my share of the militant-germicidal types. I can completely understand sometimes, when you've got a kid that's very susceptible to illnesses.
I used to semi-jokingly refer to mrsS as "Howard Hughes," but one of her cousins is married to a true phobic. Back in the day she would spray her kids' shoes down with Lysol daily, then store them in plastic bags.
Granted, they were South Siders. But even for those environs, that was over the top.
Solution: Boil everything!
We're not big fans of the over-antibiotic school either. I'm not a huge lover of this particular doctor, though he seems perfectly acceptable and decent with the kids otherwise. There's another doctor at the same clinic I prefer, and he's the one I see. Generally though, if you're a doctor practicing at a small set of clinics in Mankato, MN, you're probably not going to fall into the "brilliant" range.
Meanwhile, when Aristotle needed spinal surgery, we apparently got one of the single greatest pediatric neurosurgeons in the world. So that was cool.
Seriously, read that article. Amazing, amazing stuff.
That is a great article. Amazing what the application of common sense and focus can do for anyone, in any field, isn't it?
Amen.
A few years after this, Warwick was basically forced out, since the other doctors didn't want to deal with accommodating patients in the same way. They're not nearly so great any more.
if you're a doctor practicing at a small set of clinics in Mankato, MN, you're probably not going to fall into the "brilliant" range.
This would depend on the definition of brilliant you're using.
Maybe I'm being a bit mean. After all, I'm a lawyer practicing in Mankato, MN, and I consider myself brilliant.
I do think the fact that he didn't jump to the antibiotics the first time was probably a good sign here.
I'm guessing bilateral leg weakness or a stress reaction mainly because I'm pretty sure both of those medical conditions are impossible to diagnose (at least, according to TJ's medical experts).
hey, don't call his kids pussies.
how long is the 'Hoe-Down' Jim Hoey banner going to be kept around? He is with Toronto now
we've discussed this recently. there's a few like that lying around. i'm thinking they can hang around until opening day.
The things you miss out on when you don't twitterate.
Ugh, looking for acting work in Phoenix is so deflating.
Porn acting and acting need to be filtered into different places. This seems very obvious to me. Argh.
i'll bet you'd at least get a lot of auditions.
Gah, so many jokes coming to mind! My brain is locking up! Just pick one and go with it, dammit!
The deflating part would be more a problem for the other Kelly Wells, I assume.
Phew. Almost had a meltdown, there.
They keep holding your other career against you, eh?
Man, that was way too slow. Need to refresh more often.
i'm a little disappointed that that's all we came up with so far.
Quality over quantity.
are you saying that we are coming up short on KW??
Oh, snap...
Something, something "his acting abilities are like a porn star's/abilities in bed force others into great feats of acting." Yeah, I got nuthin'.
The thought is what counts.
We'll keep pumping away until something comes to mind.
sweet jesus, I snapped too soon.
Take a few minutes and calm down, you'll be ready to go again in no time.
Over at NBA.com, this photo:
is accompanied by the lede "A stiff challenge." The writers have some fun over there, apparently.
Someone over at the 4LTR should probably uh, think a little more about their headlines.
I always often sometimes try to assume the best in people, but... wow.
That is pretty bad. I know people can sometimes be obtuse but c'mon, really?
FIAL.
wooooow.
Headlines are never accidental and quite often based on wordplay. Some idiot must really have thought this was hilarious.
The real question is, how many people will taste the axe over that one?
Associated Press
NEW YORK — ESPN has apologized for using a racial slur in a headline for a story on Knicks sensation Jeremy Lin.
ESPN ran the headline "Chink in the Armor" after Lin had nine turnovers in New York's loss to the New Orleans Hornets on Friday night on its mobile website that could be seen on phones and tablet computers.
Lin is the NBA's first American-born player of Chinese or Taiwanese descent. He has captivated sports fans with unexpected dominance on the court that sparked a seven-game winning streak.
ESPN says in a statement Saturday it removed the headline 35 minutes after it was posted. The cable network says it is "conducting a complete review of our cross-platform editorial procedures and are determining appropriate disciplinary action to ensure this does not happen again. We regret and apologize for this mistake."
and they did it on-air too, although that one might actually have been "inadvertent".
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESEGRwnQW4k
Buck O'Neill interpretation:
Whichever Friday-night intern who wrote the hed was actually unaware it was a slur.
This would be the "Catch a Tiger by its toe" defense.
That's possible, but I find that unlikely, as it showed up on the mobile site only, it sounds more like Dan Shanoff's "Coppin a Feel: Cocks get Blocked", trying to put in a poor-taste pun for a brief moment of juvenile glory.
You would have to have grown up in a bubble not to be aware that "Chink" is an ethnic slur.
I would assume today's Friday-night interns are 22 years old or so, meaning they were born in 1990. Living on the whiteside of whitetown in rural MN, I first heard the term as a freshman or sophomore in HS, only because the JV football team played another JV team where there was a kid of SE Asian heritage that apparently should have been on Varsity and several of my classmates needed to vent anger about him. Had I not attended that game, I wouldn't have heard it until college watching Platoon or the Deer Hunter or another Vietnam-war film that hit too close to home for my father to wish to watch them with me.
So, I could see how I could have made it to 22 years old without knowing it, or at least being aware of the depth of its offensive nature (which I certainly may still not fully appreciate), and I can see that had I been born more than a decade later, it'd've been even easier for me to get to that age whilst ignorant of the loaded use of the term.
I really shouldn't labor it, but even if it's possible an intern was aware of it in retrospect (oh, yeah, right), it's possible she or he didn't recognize it as such when writing it. I don't know how over-used and shop-worn the phrase is at ESPN, so it's possible it's become an unthought cliché, like "Thrown under the bus".
Through high school, the only slur I ever heard enough to immediately recognize as offensive and needing to be avoided was the N-word, which would lead me to never use the unrelated though phonetically similar word "niggardly".
And again, I find this cause for the tasteless hed possible though very unlikely.
shorter AMR: though NU may not be Funkytown, it may be in a bubble.
I'm well aware of the offensiveness of the term, but when I looked at that headline, it took me quite a while to figure out what people were talking about, because I simply wasn't thinking about Lin's ethnic heritage. I think it's entirely possible that the headline writer wasn't thinking about it, either, and used the phrase innocently. It was quite properly taken down, but I could see someone using it who just wasn't thinking along those lines.
That's all well and good, and I agree with the fact that it's not a given that every single person has heard the term, but Spooky's comment above rings true. Headline writers nearly never write up a headline without a pun or some sort of play on words in it if they can find a way to add one. There's no reason to word it like that if it's 5 random dudes.
There is maybe a 1% chance that this was unintentional.
There's no reason to word it like that if it's 5 random dudes.
Precisely. This was not unintentional. Headline writing is taught in a way similar to titling screenplays: always use a pun if you can. That's what we're told.
This headline is completely vague and uninteresting if you take the offensive term out of it. There's no way a headline writer goes with something so nondescript without a reason.
Having never used ESPN's mobile site, and rarely using their main site, I'll leave it to others to determine whether there's ever inane heds (like, "Chink in the Armor" after the Packers lose one after winning fourteen straight once Rogers throws five INTs), or mostly puns (like, "Chink in the Armour" after some British guy does something bad
So, but I'd agree that Buck Conjecture #1, the fully innocent via ignorance, has a probability of <1%.
Buck Conjecture #2, not as favorable, is much more probably, maybe 10%, would be that the Friday-night intern who wrote the hed did not realize it was a particularly offensive term. (Wikipedia tells me it's "extremely derogatory", which I did not know. Wikipedia also reminds me that the term I first heard after the JV football game was "Gook", which feels more offensive to me, though wikipedia does not include the adverb in its description.)
My Korean sister-in-law will confirm to you that "chink" is a horrifyingly offensive term.
Well, there's some ignorance on my part.
/Learns new things every day.
//Not always things I want to learn
I was just looking for the best possible explanation, as Buck O'Neill did according to Pos.
I believe the story was that Buck & Pos witnessed a grown man wrestling a child for a foul ball. Buck's theory was that perhaps the man promised a child at home that he would try his hardest to get a foul to bring home, or something like that.
Maybe I should call it the Buck Theory, or the O'Neill Conjecture. (If someone knows an actual coinage, coming from either Buck's optimism or any other source, please let me know.)
Ah, I had forgotten that story. Yeah, I see what you were doing now.
Another year, another article about
Petco NorthTarget Field.I'm pleased that the Twins aren't changing anything, but feel the pressure from players may force them to move the fences. It doesn't come up until the very end, but I think the real problem isn't the park, it's the team. Opponents have out-homered the Twins in both years, proving that although it's a pitchers' park, it's not death to fly balls.
I'm really glad they got quotes from noted professional hitter, and all around developing talent _elm_n Y_ung.
Yeah, definitely the "can-of-corns" the he couldn't afford.
Yeah, that was his problem! The park! That's gotta be it.
I wonder what was holding him back at the Metrodome.
Also the stadium.
I'm sensing doubt of his talent.
Given that _elm_n knows all fly balls hit in Minneapolis automatically turn into cans of corn, it's funny how he still couldn't figure out how to catch any without giving the impression that the outfield had been flooded with marbles.
Ha, I think that provides an even better mental image than the rollerskates.
Probably the only thing about _elm_n that I won't miss is my brain inserting the Fred Flintstone twinkle toes sound effect every time I see _elm_n running on the field.
That's what you won't miss, or will miss??
I'm hoping he means will. Now that CH mentioned it, my brain will do the same thing whenever I see Twins play the Tigers.
In my mental picture, Delmon is still wearing the rollerskates in the marble-flooded outfield while he dodges cans of corn.
If he's going to be throwing my name around, perhaps I should contact _elm_n about sponsoring the sight.
So that's why he hit so many home runs to right on the road!
Man, that quote from TR at the end of the piece really says it all.
I like Gardy's at the end of the first page, as well.
the concrete hasnt dried yet
I have loved this explanation ever since Dick decided to say it out loud during the inaugural TF season.
But? But? 21st out of 30 puts the field barely out of the middle third of the league. How do the hitters in the bottom nine fields deal with it? Hit some line drives and get on with life.
ESPN's Park Factors are kind of naively done, just comparing total number of runs scored while at home versus away. It doesn't do any averaging of multiple years either. B-R has a 95/97 rating for batters and pitchers respectively for 2001 and a 98/98 rating overall. Still a pitchers park, but more middle of the road.
I more take issue with the writing here. Yeah, ESPN's park factors are naive, but even so, the best evidence they can come up with to contradict the claim that Target Field is more middle-of-the-road is that it ranks 21 out of 30? Oh man, those Twins officials are so very far off base.
Well, exactly. SOME ballpark has to be at the bottom.
As long as Target Field isn't an extreme pitcher's park, then stop whining, Twins batters! The visiting teams seem to do alright.
Nothing really groundbreaking here, except I think I'd rather have another arm in the bullpen than Butters as a third catcher and I don't love Revere in left*. But hey, pitchers and catchers report tomorrow!11!!!!1one!
*what are the other options though?
Who would you prefer in left? Span presumably? I wonder how his arm compares to Willingham's.
Maybe I just like the idea of a guy not losing his job due to an injury, but I'd prefer Span in center. I guess I was thinking of this in terms of getting better offensively as I feel like that's a need for the club. That being said, I'm not sure there is a better option for the outfield. I don't see the Twins bringing in someone from outside the organization so in-house is what I looked at.
Minor league totals*
Ben Revere............... .326 .385 .408 .793
Darin Mastroianni...... .279 .370 .372 .742
Rene Tosoni............. .272 .361 .419 .780
Joe Benson............... .265 .359 .443 .803
Trevor Plouffe.......... .258 .320 .406 .726
*all totals in 5 or more seasons
We know I'm not very good at making projections/arguments based on statistical analysis. In that way, I'm a bit of an outlier around here. But even I can see that Revere seems the most likely to succeed with the big club based on my request for “more offense”. Are there better options?
As for defense, Revere can definitely cover the ground no matter where he plays. I don't feel like the arm would hurt him as much in left as it occasionally
didseemed to in center. If he consistently plays with the energy that he showed last year, then (to answer your question) I'd have to say I prefer him out there.Assuming Span is healthy, I would have to agree. Willingham was a left fielder, but there's no way his arm is worse than Revere's, so it makes sense to put him in right. If Span has to miss significant time, then I would put Willingham in left with Benson in right. The idea being Benson would be here longer, so him learning the right field wall will be helpful for more years. He also supposedly has a good/great arm, which is another reason.
Is learning the wall really that much of an issue? I know that the powers that be mention this a lot, but how hard can it be to set up a few practice sessions with a pitching machine and someone to hit balls off the RF wall all afternoon? Also, it's said about some fielders that they really know how to play a particular fence well, but I'd bet that fielders who really learn to play one fence well would just be good at playing caroms off of just about any fence.
I fully agree with this. If you're a decent athlete and are willing to work at it, learning the wall should not be a big problem.
But, but, but I thought Cuddyer was the hardest-working, most humble, greatest human being on the planet yet he couldn't figure out the wall at all.
My guess is that it would take a few days of practice, since there are three surfaces for confusing ricker-shays. Probably only a few hours in one day to learn it and then the rest to make it instinctive.
cuddy never seemed to quite get the hang of it.
It's really more about judging where the ball is going to hit, rather than how it's going to react to what it hits, no? The overhang is so unique - I can imagine balls that would be catchable but for just glancing off of the stone. Play the bounce and you're wrong and you're screwed. Go for the catch and you're wrong and you're screwed. That's a a lot to account for in a small amount of time.
Sure, I'm not saying that the skill itself is easy. But I question whether experience during games is really that necessary to develop mastery of the wall. You can get way more reps in during practice than you could seeing maybe a tricky carom every other game during the regular season. Some players will be good at this and others will be bad at it, but it probably has a lot more to do with whether or not you're a good fielder than getting actual game time in at the position.
Gotcha. Agree completely.
Anyone have any experience getting rid of cable/directv? I would have to get myself okay with no Twins games obviously, but there really isn't any must-see TV these days (I could still buy individual episodes of Mad Men & Breaking Bad I think) and we stream Netflix.
you can stream mad men and breaking bad on netflix anyway.
we only had basic cable before, but after we moved we decided to just get internet only, and i have no regrets at all (plus, with the digital upgrade to the system, over the air is pretty decent quality itself). streaming netflix more than covers my TV viewing needs, and libraries have turned into mini-blockbuster stores, so i'm not missing it at all.
if anything, just having cable seemed to make more watch more TV than i would/should. probably for the best as well.
Right - sorry, I meant new episodes. Those are the only ongoing shows that I would really want to see immediately.
ahh. i'm very behind in my viewing habits, so i'm not caught up there yet. plus, there's a number of other shows i want to catch up on anyway so i don't think this would be an issue for me.
if anything, just having cable seemed to make more watch more TV than i would/should.
Exactly.
I haven't had anything but broadcast TV since college 10 years ago. I don't even have Netflix, since I watch too much TV anyhow. I listen to the Twins on the radio and watch occasional games at bars and friend's houses, but other than that, I certainly don't care about the rest of the channels I'm not getting.
The nice thing is that our neighborhood recently have fios internet installed - much faster and much cheaper than what we had, so all streaming options are on the table.
I made the broadcast/Netflix only plunge a few months ago and love it. Plus, I'm too busy playing werewolf at night to watch tv anyway.
Am I not supposed to be watching TV while playing?
No, I think its stated in the rules that you're only allowed to be taking shots while playing and no other external stimuli.
Timberwolves games excepted, of course.
So much to learn... though no Wolves games if I drop directv.
Well, that depends...
Theoretically, someone might be curious about things like that too.
I'd say go for it. We stopped so much crap-watching because-it's-there when Comcast took away our free cable. It was hard to adjust at first, but now we hardly even watch broadcast, and we can get most of what we want from the library, which is like a really slow Netflix, with maybe one redbox a month for something we really want to see right away, and maybe buy one DVD a month of something we're likely to watch repeatedly (cartoons, typically).
I compared it tonight to having one cable station that plays all the movies you want to see, but you still can't change what's playing any one weekend.
Also, leaving ESPN behind has made me a better person.
My only nagging concern is that my kids will lose their interest in beisbol. So, when we go to my in-laws', I sit infront of the big HD flatscreen and soak in everything I can, and ask CER and HPR to do the same.
we can get most of what we want from the library
I too, get films (mostly foreign) from the library. Hartford is quite a diverse city, so the library stocks plenty of interesting films from Poland, Germany, Spain, Mexico, Russia, Vietnam, India, China, Korea, even Turkey.
Krzysztof is one of my favorite foreign film directors - also Aamir Khan.
Anyone here a doctor? And/or ever had a kid who's had a fever for 6 days? We've already been to the doctor once, 3 days ago, and he couldn't find anything obviously wrong. At this point, I'm starting to freak out. We're going back to the doctor again this afternoon, but my hopes of diagnosis are obviously tempered.
What with all the lawyers, I'm not surprised we don't have a doctor around here. I assume it's pretty low-grade?
It wasn't the first 3 days (~103), then dropped down to 101 or so, and this morning seemed to be a little higher. He doesn't have appetite/seems lethargic (except when the tylenol/etc. is working), but that could just be fever side-effects. I don't know. It just isn't going away, which is irritating/scary. No one else in the family is having any problems either, so it doesn't appear to be especially contagious.
Also, I love taking money away from doctors.
Ha! The boy had pneumonia this fall, he was maybe 7 months old at the time. It didn't have a lot of outward symptoms, but that got steadily worse. So basically I got nuthin'.
Skim had a couple of long fevers like that, as did my sister, where they'd just be sick forever and nobody else would catch it. I heard everything from "growth spurts can cause this" to "she's not eating healthily enough" (I doubt any kid could eat better than mine have to this point). In the end, the long fevers just stopped happening when they reached the toddler stage or so.
Well Aquinas is already in the toddler stage... he does have a molar coming through, but that's been going on for a while before this started, and everything we've seen said teething can't possibly cause such high temps.
Mostly though, I made this comment to indicate that I've decided what to call my family. Wife = Philosofette, Son (age 2) = Aquinas, Daughter (5 mos.) = Aristotle. Future children will be assigned other philosophers (Socrates, Plato, Neitzsche are probably the first ones on the table. Descartes, Rousseau, Hobbes, and Rand are completely out.)
Teething definitely caused temps that high for both of mine, though they were short-lived.
I read something that teething-associated fevers are typically just the day the tooth actually erupts. Or maybe I just made that up.
Philosofette? Sounds pretty good. Definitely better than referring to your wife as an ethnic slur (that happens to also be her ethnicity). I remember a commentor on my old blog trying to get into a huge fight with me about how insensitive I was.
Not that I expect you to have such a large household congress, but I look forward to Patočka and Solovyov!
(Seriously, these are great. Given the creativity of some Citizens in this regard, I have secretly always been ashamed I never found a better handle for Mrs. Hayes.)
I hope Aquinas is back to feeling normal shortly.
Moss wanted to name a son Blaise, but Mrs. Moss would have none of it.
Should have tried the more modern "Blaze" or "Blayze"
That's been on my list of middle names ever since I found out that was Pascal's first name.
I don't know if it's an option for you, but we have a nurse-call number that my wife uses all the time for things like this. It's the nurses that work at our family doctor's clinic, so they have access to all our records, and they're really good at helping us figure out if we need to take the kid in to acute care or set up an appointment or just stay home and get lots of rest. It's better than using WebMD, at any rate.
We've got one of those, but they just scheduled us for another appointment today. I'm wondering if this one will turn up anything. Strat's pneumonia comment tracks with something one of my coworkers mentioned (her kid showed no symptoms other than fever), so I'm starting to think he's got something like that (maybe not exactly that), where he's a little kid and rambunctious and otherwise healthy, so he's just not presenting with a full set of symptoms. We'll see what the doc says. All I know is that I haven't been at work much this week...
Yes, Phil. Two of my four got it. Both missed a week of school. Fever, tummy ache, headache. Prone on the couch the whole. Each of them puked a little but not the geyser usually associated with little kids. Very strange and scary but the doctor told us it was just a virus and to keep pumping them with Tylenol. Thanks. But it was over after a week. Hopefully you've got the same.
TJ archives:
-Two years ago, he was still in Vancouver covering the Olympics and wrote a generic article about the Canadian hockey team without any awful one-liners.
-Three years ago, he profiled then-rookie Cal Clutterbuck and described him getting hit in front of Ottawa's bench. "It was a clean hit, but Ottawa's Chris Neil, having watched Clutterbuck rattle his teammates' molars all night, retaliated by slamming Clutterbuck to the boards, even though the puck was long gone. With Clutterbuck immobilized, Ottawa's Jarkko Ruutu, sitting on the bench, reached over, grabbed Clutterbuck's head and gave it a twist, as if he wanted to mount it on his living room wall. The officials gave Ruutu, who once bit an opponents' ear, a 2-minute minor penalty for attempted decapitation."
Of course, the article online also contains this correction: "In this Jim Souhan column, the Ottawa player who retaliated for a Cal Clutterbuck hit was misidentified and the biting incident involving Jarkko Ruutu was mischaracterized. Ottawa's Chris Neil did not play in the Saturday night game, and Ruutu was suspended for two games in January for biting the thumb of Buffalo's Andrew Peters."
-Four years ago, the U was heralding incoming player Ralph Sampson III. The article mostly detailed his father's income tax difficulties and divorce. It did have this nugget: "Ralph III is asked what his goal is for his Minnesota career. 'My No. 1 goal,' he says, 'is to win a national championship.'"
Missed it by about as much as TJ missed his description of Clutterbuck's hit.
-In 2006, he compared tried to describe the environment of the Olympic hockey games in Turin. He wrote, "[T]his few people haven't made this much noise since Cream disbanded. It's like the Yankee Stadium bleachers, without the weapons."
-In 2004, the Twins had just signed Dougie Eyechart to a two-year deal (despite Morneau being almost ready). "This is just a sign that this guy helps us win baseball games," [Terry] Ryan said. "You never can tell what a prospect might do, but Doug's been a big part of our winning here. You don't win many games at this level with a bunch of rookies. He's in the prime of his career, and even though he's not the stereotypical first baseman in terms of power, he does a lot of good things with his bat."
-In 2003, Eddie Guardado showed up in Spring Training talking about his offseason. He played in a basketball league against Snoop Dogg. He also "attended a Lakers-Timberwolves game at Staples Center. 'My wife was star-struck,' Guardado said. 'When Eddie Murphy left, the crowd started chanting, 'Eddie, Eddie,' and I got up and said, 'Thank you very much.'' As Guardado chatted, Matthew LeCroy brought him a small tin. The label read: 'Carolina road meat - waste not, want not. . . . No rubber-tire aftertaste, no meat from a stiff-tailed carcass. A byproduct of rural highway 247 in Possum Kingdom, South Carolina.'"
-In 2002, he was discussing the strange offseason featuring the dreaded C-word (no, not Colin). "One day, lawyer Roger Magnuson argued two cases on behalf of Twins owner Carl Pohlad. In the first case, he tried to ensure the Twins' 2002 games would be televised by the Twins' proposed Victory Sports network. In the second case, he argued the Twins should not survive to play the 2002 season."
-In 1997, the Twins were preparing for their first full-day of workouts. Apparently, they had signed Eric Anthony that offseason to a contract in which he "would receive $ 25,000 for being an All-Star, $ 50,000 for being comeback player of the year, $ 25,000 for a Gold Glove, $ 25,000 for winning a Silver Slugger, $ 25,000 for being the League Championship Series MVP and $ 50,000 for being the World Series MVP."
-On this date in 1996, Chuck Knoblauch had an arbitration hearing with the Twins. According to TJ, "The Twins feel that if Knoblauch wins, they will have to trade him, because then signing him to a long-term deal would be cost-prohibitive. If the Twins win, they fear they will lose, because the feisty Knoblauch might not take well to having his credentials run down in a hearing, then losing his case."
-In 1995, "These players have signed addenda to their contracts to become replacement players: Catcher Tom Griffith, infielder Greg Hunter, outfielder Ricard Ingram, outfielder Paul Jackson, outfielder Gregg Leavell, pitcher Steve Otto, shortstop Al Quintana, outfielder Sean Ross, first baseman Ben Shelton, pitcher Tom Traen and catcher Jeff Wedvick."
Also, Twins equipment manager Jim Weisner announced that he would not be giving any replacement players #34.
I rarely if ever comment on these, but I should mention that I love that you do them.
Yeah, me too. The note about contraction / victory(!) is mind boggling.
I'd say Magnuson earned his fee that day.
How do you figure? He lost both cases!
Also involved in the trade of Dougie: Brendan Harris, his first of four trades.
Maybe "Werewolf: Rome" has gotten to me, but when I read, "he does a lot of good things with his bat" I had to laugh.
He likes to swing his bloc around.
So, I'm Dougie now. No more of this Spoonto business.
dude, you don't get off the hook that easy.
yeah, you wish, spoonto.
Wow. There is nothing, anywhere, that isn't a thing.
to be fair, it doesn't look like that was much of a thing.
Just wait for Rule 34.
aww, dude...
That's totally a Spoonto move.
classic spoonto.
I nominate dirty Dougie Spoonto.
Nice.
As you may know, "Ricard Ingram" is Riccardo Ingram, who got 8 at-bats with the Twins in 1995 and also coached and managed in their minor league system for several years.
I caught that and just forgot to add his B-R page. I was trying to flag the Major Leaguers whenever I catch a "scab" in case you want to add them to your birthday stuff.
so I've been playing a Twins franchise on 2K11 the last couple of weeks, and its scarey how real life it is. Justin Morneau, Joe Mauer, and Denard Span are already on the DL and Im not even through April!
I do miss EA Sports making baseball games. MVP05 is one of my Post-8bit games.
MVP05 was excellent, but I still like The Show better (though not by much).
Before the MVP series, EA was horrible at baseball. I had Triple Play 2002, and within a month or so I could throw a perfect game and strike out 20 guys about one out of every five games. On the highest setting, there was no challenge against the computer.
Well, except when Sosa batted against me. Dude took me deep every time, so I'd throw at his head.
I believe that there are people doing mods for the PC version of MVP05 still. It sucks that 2k bought the rights to MLB, because the 2k games have been pretty awful. This makes me very sad as they are the spiritual continuation of World Series Baseball which I adore.
The Show is great, but I usually only play a few games. This year I'm getting it for the Vita, so I'm hoping to play my season while I watch the real games. Baseball overload!
This is the last year of 2K's third party-exclusive license.
You'll have to keep us updated on what you think of the Vita. I can't justify it, but it looks like a very nice piece of hardware.
I dont remember too much about the Triple Play series, except for a 'funhouse mode' or something like that where one had to do challenges in weird places like a kitchen or an amusement park.
So, for the homebrewers out there, my boss just sent me the coolest work email ever:
a link to the beer labelizer. I haven't tried it yet, but he was saying that if you print out the labels with an laser jet printer (so it doesn't run) and apply the labels with a thin coat of milk as the adhesive, they'll come right off in hot water.
that's too cool!
And the Dr. says "Not normal to run a fever this long, even for a virus. There might be an ear infection, but at most one of the ears looks 'questionable.' Antibiotics prescribed and if the fever is still there in 3 days, we'll talk again."
Hopefully that does the trick.
Rub some dirt on it.
Point: Strategery.
I used to have a Doc in Forest Lake (retired now). He had been a war doctor, and was of the old school - wore a tie (not scrubs), dress shoes (not tennis shoes).
I remember one time I had come back from a long trip to Thailand, and hadn't shaken the jet lag for more than a week after coming back. I called him up about it and he said 'Ah, suck it up. You'll be fine.'
yeah, we just found out the boy has one, if not both ears infected. of course, him and the wife are out of state, so i can do absolutely zero about it from here.
My six-year old daughter and my three-year old boy both have double-ear infections. Getting kids to take antibiotics can be a lot of fun.
I had a double ear infection last fall -- my first ear infection ever, that I recall at least. I went to the doctor and he said it was ear wax and had my ears cleaned out and prescribed an antibiotic(!) Nurse said, hmmm, not much wax in your ears. Took it for a couple of weeks, still plugged. Went back to a different doctor. She said your ears are full. I said, the doctor I went to a couple of weeks ago had them flushed. She said, no, it's not wax, it's an infection. She took a culture and found out that it was a particularly tough strain of bacteria. She prescribed a powerful antibiotic. It took two full weeks for me to start to feel some lessening of the fullness. I took that damned antibotic for a month before I was confident that the infection was cleared up. The first antibiotic was a pill, the second drops. The second doctor said in an infection like this, you want topical application of the antibiotic.
So yeah, that first doctor, you suck. If I ever get another ear infection, I'm going to demand a culture be taken.
I hate the "prescribe antibiotics for everything" school of medicine. If it's a virus, antibiotics aren't going to work, and the doctor damn well knows that. If it's already been six days and the doctor wants to wait three more days to see if the fever magically goes away, I'd say it's time to look for a different doctor.
i'm also against the "anti-bacterial everything" school of soap and sanitizers.
This.
Ditto. Nothing wrong with washing your hands, but "sanitizing" constantly seems like overkill.
actually, guys, we should reel it back in a back here. i think we're brushing up against the forbidden zone...
Hey, now. My hands are clean.
was joak. yours was better though.
You got me with the joak. I was trying to figure out who we were offending, other than germs. I eventually decided you were not so serious.
i dunno, i'd imagine some parents get pretty passionate about this, specifically in the "everything must be operating theater sterile" camp. jane gets kind of hardcore about everything being safe and clean (not in the anti-bacterial way we've been discussing, but well washed for sure), while i'm more laissez-faire about the whole thing.
Yeah, I've run into my share of the militant-germicidal types. I can completely understand sometimes, when you've got a kid that's very susceptible to illnesses.
I used to semi-jokingly refer to mrsS as "Howard Hughes," but one of her cousins is married to a true phobic. Back in the day she would spray her kids' shoes down with Lysol daily, then store them in plastic bags.
Granted, they were South Siders. But even for those environs, that was over the top.
Solution: Boil everything!
We're not big fans of the over-antibiotic school either. I'm not a huge lover of this particular doctor, though he seems perfectly acceptable and decent with the kids otherwise. There's another doctor at the same clinic I prefer, and he's the one I see. Generally though, if you're a doctor practicing at a small set of clinics in Mankato, MN, you're probably not going to fall into the "brilliant" range.
Meanwhile, when Aristotle needed spinal surgery, we apparently got one of the single greatest pediatric neurosurgeons in the world. So that was cool.
And my family also has experience with a man who has to be one of the single greatest healers of all time: Warren Warwick. This guy: http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2004/12/06/041206fa_fact
Seriously, read that article. Amazing, amazing stuff.
That is a great article. Amazing what the application of common sense and focus can do for anyone, in any field, isn't it?
Amen.
A few years after this, Warwick was basically forced out, since the other doctors didn't want to deal with accommodating patients in the same way. They're not nearly so great any more.
if you're a doctor practicing at a small set of clinics in Mankato, MN, you're probably not going to fall into the "brilliant" range.
This would depend on the definition of brilliant you're using.
Maybe I'm being a bit mean. After all, I'm a lawyer practicing in Mankato, MN, and I consider myself brilliant.
I do think the fact that he didn't jump to the antibiotics the first time was probably a good sign here.
I'm guessing bilateral leg weakness or a stress reaction mainly because I'm pretty sure both of those medical conditions are impossible to diagnose (at least, according to TJ's medical experts).
hey, don't call his kids pussies.
how long is the 'Hoe-Down' Jim Hoey banner going to be kept around? He is with Toronto now
we've discussed this recently. there's a few like that lying around. i'm thinking they can hang around until opening day.
The things you miss out on when you don't twitterate.
Ugh, looking for acting work in Phoenix is so deflating.
Porn acting and acting need to be filtered into different places. This seems very obvious to me. Argh.
i'll bet you'd at least get a lot of auditions.
Gah, so many jokes coming to mind! My brain is locking up! Just pick one and go with it, dammit!
The deflating part would be more a problem for the other Kelly Wells, I assume.
Phew. Almost had a meltdown, there.
They keep holding your other career against you, eh?
Man, that was way too slow. Need to refresh more often.
i'm a little disappointed that that's all we came up with so far.
Quality over quantity.
are you saying that we are coming up short on KW??
Oh, snap...
Something, something "his acting abilities are like a porn star's/abilities in bed force others into great feats of acting." Yeah, I got nuthin'.
The thought is what counts.
We'll keep pumping away until something comes to mind.
sweet jesus, I snapped too soon.
Take a few minutes and calm down, you'll be ready to go again in no time.
Over at NBA.com, this photo:
is accompanied by the lede "A stiff challenge." The writers have some fun over there, apparently.
Someone over at the 4LTR should probably uh, think a little more about their headlines.
I
alwaysoftensometimes try to assume the best in people, but... wow.That is pretty bad. I know people can sometimes be obtuse but c'mon, really?
FIAL.
wooooow.
Headlines are never accidental and quite often based on wordplay. Some idiot must really have thought this was hilarious.
The real question is, how many people will taste the axe over that one?
and they did it on-air too, although that one might actually have been "inadvertent".
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESEGRwnQW4k
Buck O'Neill interpretation:
Whichever Friday-night intern who wrote the hed was actually unaware it was a slur.
This would be the "Catch a Tiger by its toe" defense.
That's possible, but I find that unlikely, as it showed up on the mobile site only, it sounds more like Dan Shanoff's "Coppin a Feel: Cocks get Blocked", trying to put in a poor-taste pun for a brief moment of juvenile glory.
You would have to have grown up in a bubble not to be aware that "Chink" is an ethnic slur.
I would assume today's Friday-night interns are 22 years old or so, meaning they were born in 1990. Living on the whiteside of whitetown in rural MN, I first heard the term as a freshman or sophomore in HS, only because the JV football team played another JV team where there was a kid of SE Asian heritage that apparently should have been on Varsity and several of my classmates needed to vent anger about him. Had I not attended that game, I wouldn't have heard it until college watching Platoon or the Deer Hunter or another Vietnam-war film that hit too close to home for my father to wish to watch them with me.
So, I could see how I could have made it to 22 years old without knowing it, or at least being aware of the depth of its offensive nature (which I certainly may still not fully appreciate), and I can see that had I been born more than a decade later, it'd've been even easier for me to get to that age whilst ignorant of the loaded use of the term.
I really shouldn't labor it, but even if it's possible an intern was aware of it in retrospect (oh, yeah, right), it's possible she or he didn't recognize it as such when writing it. I don't know how over-used and shop-worn the phrase is at ESPN, so it's possible it's become an unthought cliché, like "Thrown under the bus".
Through high school, the only slur I ever heard enough to immediately recognize as offensive and needing to be avoided was the N-word, which would lead me to never use the unrelated though phonetically similar word "niggardly".
And again, I find this cause for the tasteless hed possible though very unlikely.
shorter AMR: though NU may not be Funkytown, it may be in a bubble.
I'm well aware of the offensiveness of the term, but when I looked at that headline, it took me quite a while to figure out what people were talking about, because I simply wasn't thinking about Lin's ethnic heritage. I think it's entirely possible that the headline writer wasn't thinking about it, either, and used the phrase innocently. It was quite properly taken down, but I could see someone using it who just wasn't thinking along those lines.
That's all well and good, and I agree with the fact that it's not a given that every single person has heard the term, but Spooky's comment above rings true. Headline writers nearly never write up a headline without a pun or some sort of play on words in it if they can find a way to add one. There's no reason to word it like that if it's 5 random dudes.
There is maybe a 1% chance that this was unintentional.
There's no reason to word it like that if it's 5 random dudes.
Precisely. This was not unintentional. Headline writing is taught in a way similar to titling screenplays: always use a pun if you can. That's what we're told.
This headline is completely vague and uninteresting if you take the offensive term out of it. There's no way a headline writer goes with something so nondescript without a reason.
Having never used ESPN's mobile site, and rarely using their main site, I'll leave it to others to determine whether there's ever inane heds (like, "Chink in the Armor" after the Packers lose one after winning fourteen straight once Rogers throws five INTs), or mostly puns (like, "Chink in the Armour" after some British guy does something bad
So, but I'd agree that Buck Conjecture #1, the fully innocent via ignorance, has a probability of <1%.
Buck Conjecture #2, not as favorable, is much more probably, maybe 10%, would be that the Friday-night intern who wrote the hed did not realize it was a particularly offensive term. (Wikipedia tells me it's "extremely derogatory", which I did not know. Wikipedia also reminds me that the term I first heard after the JV football game was "Gook", which feels more offensive to me, though wikipedia does not include the adverb in its description.)
My Korean sister-in-law will confirm to you that "chink" is a horrifyingly offensive term.
Well, there's some ignorance on my part.
/Learns new things every day.
//Not always things I want to learn
I was just looking for the best possible explanation, as Buck O'Neill did according to Pos.
I believe the story was that Buck & Pos witnessed a grown man wrestling a child for a foul ball. Buck's theory was that perhaps the man promised a child at home that he would try his hardest to get a foul to bring home, or something like that.
Maybe I should call it the Buck Theory, or the O'Neill Conjecture. (If someone knows an actual coinage, coming from either Buck's optimism or any other source, please let me know.)
Ah, I had forgotten that story. Yeah, I see what you were doing now.