why do they hate their job again?  

Posted

i'm watching the old real world, and i can't figure out why they hate their job so much. is it b/c it's a job? they complain that their boss treats them like little kids, but i think that's b/c they never show up on time. What do they expect?

we win. maria owes us an apology.  

Posted

there was a segment on sportscenter tonight about the two best female basketball teams in the nation, duke and tenn. "how do these teams get better? by playing men." Both teams have a "practice team" consisting of random guys from their college. Not real basketball players. just college guys. these guys DESTROY the girls teams in practice. the best female players in college were quoted as saying "they are so much better than us, we can't do anything against them"

so, pj's theory is proven true.

VOWW (fantasy's version of Vorp)  

Posted

PJ's down on our team, but I think it looks good.

13 teams play 4 corner infielders each (split obviously between 2 1st and 2 3rd, but combined here for simplicity). That means there are 52 corner infielders starting, and (ignoring bench), that would put the waiver wire guy at 53.

An average team would have these corner outfielders: 25, 26, 27, 28.

Our corner infielders are: 5, 18, 24, 27.

Our middle infielders (instead of the average 24, 25, 26, 27) are:

19, 23, 26, 31. (there's a player or two who is both a CI and MI so i tried to count them once)

Average catchers are 13, 14.

Ours are: 6, 12.

5x13 Outfielders = 65 playing.

Average is: 31, 32, 33, 34, 35.

Ours: 1, 6, 7, 32, 43

Now, this math is oversimplified b/c the talent pool is not bell curve, but pyramid. Thus, it's better to have the ends of the spectrum (a stud and a scrub are better than two average players.) But I don't have time to get into all of That. Besides, if that's the issue, then our Pitching is really going to do some damage. Let's assume that teams are going 6/2 for SP RP.

That puts the average pitchers at:

6x13 = 78

37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42

Ours? 2, 12, 15, 26, 32, 33

Closers (again, assuming 2)

Average: 13, 14.

Ours: 3, 4.

to sum: I like our chances.

Light Thinks!  

Posted

The double slit experiment –

Picture three playing cards standing up like dominoes. The first card has one hole in it. The second card has two holes in it. The third card has no holes in it. As the light comes out of the 2 holes they interact with each other in a process called “diffraction”. Imagine throwing stones into the water. Some of the waves that form will cancel each other out (the dark patches), while other waves will combine to form bigger waves (bright patches). These patches of light and dark land on the last card and is called “interference”.

This interference obviously indicates that light is acting like a wave and not a particle. If light acted like a particle, you’d expect big blobs of light behind the two holes. Imagine throwing darts through the holes.

Electrons shot out will form an interference pattern, but each individual one creates a point like a particle. So, electrons travel like waves, but land as particles. Light, electrons, and all other quantum particles thus act as both waves and particles.

Here’s where the things get crazy: If you shoot out electrons one at a time, the interference pattern still forms. That means 2 things. 1) Each electron must be passing through both holes at the same time AND 2) a single electron is then interacting with itself to create the wave (and interference). Remember, the patches are based on waves interacting with each other. But how can a single electron interact with itself?

Furthermore, shooting them out one at a time still creates the same overall pattern. That means that they “know” where their fellow particles have landed and continue the pattern accordingly. Shooting a million out at the same time will create the exact same pattern as shooting a million separate shots. But how do they “Know”???

Now, when you set up a detector at card 2 to see which hole a particle of light (or electron) is going through, everything changes. Instead of going through both holes and interacting with itself to form an interference pattern, all of a sudden they start acting like particles (darts) and 1) go through only one hole and 2) thus just form 2 blobs of light on card 3. They know they are being watched! Their behavior changes based on being observed.

The second you turn the detector off, they go back to acting “weird”.

So, they then created a “delayed choice” experiment. Instead of detecting the light at the holes in card two, they wanted to look at it half way between card 2 and card 3. Obviously, by this point, the light has passed through card 2 (either through one hole {particle/blob}, or both holes {wave/interference}).

When the detector is on (in mid flight mind you), the light lands as blobs (indicating that they passed as particles. But, if the detector is turned off, they form an interference pattern. So, the decision of whether or not to look at the light at this moment somehow affects how the light acted BEFORE it got to this moment. Past, present, time, causation??? Throw it all out of the window, it no longer exists.

We are only talking about billionths of a second here, but in theory, this should work for anything. There’s something called gravitational lensing. In short, as light travels through galaxies it can be bent by extreme gravitational forces. It’s similar to having the two cards out there in space, galaxies apart. If we decide to observe the light now, it should change to acting like a particle. Not just change now, but go back into time (before our solar system was even formed) and change then. How can what we do now affect a decision that was made billions of years ago?

Top of the Mountain, Bottom of the Valley  

Posted

On monday, I had what may have been the finest moment of my law school career (which in and of itself is a sad commentary on how pathetic my career has been)

In professional responsibility (which is an ethics class), the professor was talking about a life experience. The short version is that when he was a new lawyer, his friend came to him covered in blood and in hysterics. The Prof was able to calm the guy down and call the cops to turn himself in. The cops, in their infinite wisdom, brought the prof in as well and wouldn't let him leave. They demanded that the prof tell them certain information about when the guy came to see him. The professor wasn't sure if he was ethically allowed to divulge certain information (for the non lawyers reading this, just think of "attorney-client privlidge" and you get the BASIC idea).

The professor then began stroking his ego talking about how conflicted he was in his decision making process and how he was balancing all types of issues of ethics and morals. Then, the cops came back and threatened to ruin his career ("how do you think RU Law will react to hearing that one of their profs is being detained as a material witness for a murder?"). So, after a long episode of crying like a baby, the Professor came up with a deal. "if i show you where the knife is, will you let me go?".

Now, whether or not it is "wrong" to show the cops where the knife is is open for debate. Legally, it's a gray area in terms of rules of confidentiality. Similarly, it is reasonable for a person to conclude that the heinessness of murder superseeds (sp) the loyalty you show a friend. But, and here is the important part, the professor didn't make his decision based on either of these two factors. The thing that 100% controlled his decision is how his disclosure would affect him personally.

He asked for comments regarding his decision and someone a few rows in front of me praised him for making the right decision. "you did exactly what i would have done, and you did it for the right reasons." This actually caused me to lift my head up from under my computer and before i knew it, i had my hand up.

"um, getting back to your example professor, if the cops had let you go, would you have still volunteered the location of the knife?"

"no, i wouldn't have.".

"so the way i see it, and correct me if i'm wrong, but it seems like your decision was based entirely on the fact that you had something personally at stake. You only decided to disclose the knife after they threatened your career. You can talk about valor all you want, but that sounds pretty selfish and self serving to me and I don't see how that's 'ethical'".

"well, yeah, i guess you are right, but like i was telling you, i had a little birdie on my shoulder of my old professor who was going over the legal obligations and whether or not i had to disclose the information...."

"yeah, i understand all that, but like you said, you didn't make your decision based on that issue. You said you turned over the knife b/c of their threats, and if those threats didn't exist, you wouldn't have turned over the knife. So, your decision was based on personal gains."

"well, maybe i would have felt the guilty the next morning and gone back to them and turned in teh knife."

"ok. fine."

as i was done getting off my high horse, dan goes "i can't believe you just did that."

during the break 2 people came up to me and said "are you the one who called out the professor for being a hypocrite? way to go!"

the next day, another person came up to me and was all excited by my comments.

And thus, I have started the revolution. It only took 2 years and 10 months.

I'll right the valley part of the blog tomm. i'm tired and busy.

two types of commercials that need to stop  

Posted

1) the split screen NCAA commercials where the jocks claim to be something more than jocks. We don't care. Move on. It was worse last year, with that stupid swimmer's commerical that played EVERY break between games in the first two rounds.

2) commercials, in general, that make "music" with something other than instruments. McDonalds did it back in the day. Pringles had a nice run. Now there's a banging on the car commercial. We get it. It's over.

things i need to rant on  

Posted

curb, apprentice, failed suicide attempt, night terrors, other convos, elimindate, liberal comedy, poker tables, and such and such.

i'm just too tired. i know i've already forgotten the good ones.

Dogs exhibiting good ring psychology  

Posted

I had forgotten this story, but steve reminded me, so here we go.....

Before they moved in, we went to check out their apartment (it's 2 blocks from my house). As we were walking (they refused to carry me), we get blindsided by the most ferocious dog that Newark has to offer. This thing was behind a fence, but i was scared enough to jump backward when it started barking.

Having none of what he was offering, we decided to cross the street to avoid this demon. Well, just as we get to the other side, we are "pearl harbored" by a dog that was twice the size (and three times the "evil") of the one across the street. This reincarnation of hitler didn't get excited, per se, when it saw us. It was almost as though it was expecting us and snuck up to the gate to get the perfect angle of attack.

As I ran in horror, i turned my head and i SWEAR i saw the two dogs head nod to each other. We were apparently the victims of a diabolical plan developed by the two dogs. Well played, canines, well played.

[i swore that day that i would never walk to their house again, or at the very least, i would take the long route. i don't know whatever happened to those dogs though, b/c they aren't there anymore. perhaps they took their show on the road]

tuna is the anti-steroid  

Posted

in that his arguments against steroids just sucked the strength out of me. I was attempting to intelligently go through all the elements of the steroids issue to seperate fact from fiction. Maybe, we could then figure out WHY we are so against them. but tuna, once again in his simplicity, kept arguing "but drugs are bad, mmmkay?".

so, i'm ending the argument. I would have liked to discuss things such as laser eye surgery, tommy john surgery actually improving arm strength and the like. Then i'd follow it with a moral debate about what we want out of sports and how the essence of the game is natural ability and how steroids takes away from that.

but i give up. steroids are just bad. very very bad. the end.

Steroids  

Posted

Hopefully, by the end of this, i'll have an opinion on the issue. As of now, i'm undecided.

If we are going to get past the simplistic "steroids are bad, mmmkay" i think we need to decide WHY they are bad. So, in no particular order, here are reasons why one might think that steroids are "wrong"

1) They are illegal.

I guess I lied when I said i was going to tackle these subjects in no particlar order, b/c i specifically picked this one b/c of it's simplicitity. This is the weakest argument by far against steroids. If steroids became legal, would the argument against them be over? Not by a long shot. Furthermore, many of the things in question (like the growth hormone i believe) were legal at the time. as are suppliments like creotean. If it was "proven" that legal suppliments were as effective as "steroids", then the next argument would probably have to be:

2) steroids have harmful side effects.

While there is evidence indicating that high doses of steroids over a long period of time have some harful effects there haven't been any studies in terms of small doses over a short period of time. There is no way of knowing what steroids can do to people if they were only taking in moderation during a career. Most of our fear of steroids stem from hyperbole and hysteria. We have all heard of "roid rage", shrunken testicles, and the like, but who knows if any of that is true. And besides, there are a lot of things that are KNOWN to be detrimental to the body, such as cocaine, partying all night, cigarettes, and a bunch of other stuff that ballplayers do. While they test for cocaine, do we really want a situation where MLB is watching over their players like big brother and

[i'm tired and am going to bed. i'll finish this tomm. that is all]

The shortest point from A to B is twisted.  

Posted

Another connect the dots movie....when will i ever learn?

this one got me extra frustrated because they didn't even attempt to make a real "twist". Instead they basically give you 4 options right off the bat and the entire two hours is spent wondering which one it is. That's it, that's the movie. No real development, no "playing detective" by the audience. A good movie allows the audience to think along with the main character and try to "solve" the puzzle. But this wasn't a puzzle to be solved. It was more like rolling the dice. I waited two hours to see that a "3" came up.

the trick for these movies is to find the character / fact that seems to have no other point in the movie. If you have to ask "why have we been introduced to this character" then this character is the one who's going to pull the heel turn. I caught the comment in the middle of the movie, and then had to sit through the rest of it.

The really annoying thing is that they threw in misinformation as a "twist". One character would do something that would lead the viewer to think "oh, it has to be him." well, of course that's too obvious. But, i would love to put the writer/director on the stand and cross him about some of this stuff he threw in. "well, if this guy didn't do it, then why did he do this". There's no answer to this question, at least not a reasonable one. And furthermore, after the real guy is discovered, the reason it is so shocking is b/c IT DOESN'T MAKE SENSE.

It's just lazy writing and i feel so guilty for wasting my money on something that I KNEW was going to be stupid.

I'm like Rosa Parks, except in a bathroom  

Posted

Rosa wasn't out to start a revolution. She was just a tired woman who wanted a seat on the bus. She may not have realized it at the time, but her actions had monumental consequences. My bathroom protest will one day be held in the same esteem.

I know this will come as a shock to all, but I'm not that big into such superficial things like fashion or interial decorating and the like. I don't really care how things look and am not worried about dressing stuff up. However it was brought to my attention that my bathroom looks kind of bare. While I was going to put absolutely no effort into rectifying this problem, I admitted to my mother (when pressed) that i wouldn't be vehemently opposed to allowing a picture to be put up in there.

Fastfoward two weeks and in walks my mom with a really dumb looking framed ____ (I don't know the word. it's not a poster, it's not a picture... it's something). The "thing" apparently has some type of bathroom humor written on it. a top ten list if you will. Well, this is NOT what i had in mind (again though, it wasn't even my mind to begin with. i was indifferent at best). I politely hinted that i didn't think the thing was what i wanted. when that generated a "yeah it is", I said that it would look stupid in the bathroom. "no it won't, it's for the bathroom." when she asked what wall i wanted it on i said "how about the wall in your bathroom at home." 5 minutes later, it was in fact on my wall.

Luckily, nobody has used my bathroom yet, but that day is surely coming. And I know i'm going to get mocked for having something so stupid on my wall. And of course my defense of "it was my mom's idea" will only get me further ridiculed. But, really, what was i to do? Of course i could have put up a bigger fight, perhaps even arguing about it. But what's the point over arguing over something so stupid?

So, instead of getting into a huge fight over something that i don't even care about, I'm going to take a page out of Rosa's book. In a non violent protest, i will refuse to read this top ten list. Do you realize the effort this is going to take? Every day i will be face to face with this monster, but i will not yield. Not one line. I don't care what it says. Maybe it's funny, although probably it is not. Of course I have a morbid curiosity about what's on it, but the line in the sand has to be drawn. I will not back down from this battle.

And the war rages on.

note to self  

Posted

some things that i will rant on when i get home and have the time:

movie twisted

nfl, owens, cap

survivor, susan hawk

"girl power"

steve/jeter bashing

man, i can't remember the rest....i know i had 3 really good ones, but i can't remember. if only this connection wasn't so slow, i could have remembered.

worst song ever  

Posted

i'm on my desktop at home home. put on some random songs while i'm checking email. this song came up:

darryl worley - have you forgotten

i highly suggest you all d/l it so you can appreciate how angry i am.