biggentleben

Interesting to me is that quarterback value is down tremendous in this draft. It would be interesting if a prospect like Matt Barkley or Geno Smith fell all the way to the Vikings. Say what you want about Ponder, but it'd be hard not to consider at that point.

You are wrong and right both. In many states, Aspergers is classified under mental illness, not developmental disability. For instance, in South Dakota, none of the autism spectrum alone qualifies someone as being developmentally disabled, but does qualify them for mental health services. Aspergers and autism are not violent disorders to the community, however. Possibly within their own circle (family, very close friends), but not strangers.

I didn't assume that was your intent, but you weren't the first person who's said that, and frankly, I know more than I should that do the job for the money being in the field myself. It sickens me, to put it kindly.

The last piece of that paragraph is where it goes horribly wrong. If ANYONE is working with mentally ill for the paycheck, God help us all. You do it because you want to see someone grow beyond stigma, because you have a heart for those who suffer, because you want to promote equality of all humans, but never because of the money. The second it becomes about your paycheck is the second that no one really cares about helping those who are mentally ill and we return back to the 1960s as far as mental health treatment goes.

I will say that I was impressed seeing how the news focus has been different since Friday night. I don't watch a ton of CNN, but in light of this tragedy, I watched Friday night, and roughly 1/3 of the hour I watched was about the shooter. Saturday night, I returned home, and it was still the channel of choice from the previous night, so I watched. I was pleasantly surprised that in the hour+ that I watched, the shooter was not referenced by name once.

Or ahead of Mad Dog.

Um, huh?! Piazza played defense?

It's funny that people get up in arms (no pun intended) about guns after incidents like this and then don't blink about reducing the funding to mental health agencies... I know, Lev, you wanted to avoid the gun topic, but being a mental health social worker, that's the thing that drives me bonkers as I was denied a raise based on the loss of federal funding for mental health agencies once again. I'm actively job searching because I can't afford to continue doing the job I do, and I don't pump my own abilities, but I work hard at helping consumers improve their well being along with building skills to maintain their stability. The folks that give a darn quickly find that giving a darn doesn't pay a bill, and they leave for something that will. I work in the unit of our agency that deals with those who are the most intense and nearest to permanent mental hospitalization, and our current case management staff of 8 has 4 with less than six months experience within this unit. There is only one case manager left from the day I started just over four years ago. With turnover like that so rampant and common, how can one imagine those with mental illness receiving consistent, excellent care that they so desperately need?

Some would call that faith. I wouldn't, but some would. I believe in an educated faith. I find researching my faith to be one of the most important parts of enhancing the strength of my faith. It makes me sad to know how many people would try to rip me a new one for stating that Jesus was born in a house, even though that is factually correct.

Just based on numbers, those claiming Christian denominations whose creeds declare the Bible as the "inspired Word of God" outnumbers those whose creeds declare the Bible as "unaltered (or some other form of direct/unchanged/etc.) Word of God" by nearly 3-1 in this country, and it's drastically more if you go worldwide. However, just like with guns, the loud talkers can persuade those who don't believe the Bible as literal to assume people are promoting evolution in ways that they simply are not doing. There are many in my area of South Dakota (essentially pheasant hunting mecca) who are easily persuaded that liberals are out to end hunting because some extreme talker said they are, and the possibility of such would so drastically impact their income that it is a huge issue. There are many out there who believe Christ was born December 25th as well and that he stayed out in a barn outside of town after being rejected for a room at a Best Western-esque hotel. None of that is true, but because their translation of the Bible says it, they don't believe anything else is even possible.

No reason. I don't believe in creationism but there's no reason it can't exist alongside evolution because evolution doesn't even try to explain the formation of life, just what happens to it afterward. Unless you're a crazy person and believe the earth to be 6,000 years old, like my brother does. He's an idiot. I can't believe we share genetic code. I agree with both of you that they can co-exist. But I would note that the main evidence for creationism is the Old Testament, and no one seems to know exactly who came up with the concept. The problem in creationism arise from the literal interpretation of the Bible, that insists in seven days. for the Creation. Once you remove that, and take 7 days as seven (and seven in the Biblical sense, as many) as seven periods, there is plenty of room for evolution to fin into the Biblical story. That is why Catholicism, that does not interpret the Bible literally, has no major problems with evolution. But the Churches that take the Bible literally (certain Evangelical Churches, for example) they do. Regarding on how Biochemistry started, there are certain explanations. Under the primitive earth conditions, it is possible to synthesize urea and a few aminoacids from inorganic forms of nitrogen. Once you have nitrogen in organic molecules (like aminoacids, and urea), provided there is some water, it can go from there. Mind that we are talking here of periods of hundred of millions of years. How did we get from baseball to here? The thing is that a very vocal minority of those who believe in creation actually believe in a literal 7 days. Many of those who believe in creation do not believe in an Earth that is only aged ~10,000 years. It's akin to politics (to bring it back to the original topic of the thread), where you see extremists on the liberal and conservative sides that make a heck of a lot of noise, but the large majority of the country sits between those extremes, not in them. I certainly don't believe every liberal wants to take away my hunting rifle, and I don't believe every conservative wants to have 3,408 automatic weapons per household (to pick one particular issue), but that's the word we hear because those are the loudest talkers.

I have always wondered how creation and evolution cannot co-exist. I get blasted by hardliners from each side, but to take it to the very basic level, we can't take evolution all the way back to the formation of life, but we can absolutely see (and fairly strongly prove) evolution from that point. So how can it not be co-existent?

Nice deal for the Twins, from a Braves fan perspective, I'm happy to see Worley out of the division. For some reason, he was the only righty (including Halladay) in the division that confuddled the Braves consistently. He's not an ace by any means, but he's a very solid pitcher whose stuff seems to "explode" to its location at the end. What that means, for those who don't understand the physics of it, is that unlike a normal pitch that slows down as it reaches the plate, Worley's pitch maintains velocity to the catcher's mitt, which is very deceptive to the hitter, and it leads to a lot of called strikes. I see May a lot like Meyer. If he can stick as a starter, he's ace possibility, but he's got a very high probability of spending his career as a stellar reliever rather than a starter because of some odd mechanics that could wear down over a season of 200+ innings.

And add in that Feliz, when he returns, is expected to start out in the pen. That could be a fierce back end.

Okay, I know it's not a hugely focused board on all of baseball, so I can see Bourn misspellings, but the newest Twin is Alex Meyer, not Meyers. This deal is ridiculous as Victorino is a horrible clubhouse guy, is nowhere near a CF anymore, and is on the downside of his career. I was not happy with the BJ Upton numbers, but I could see them being low by the time that deal is done the way money is rolling around.

Frank Howard was the tallest outfielder at 6'7, tied with Walt Bond and Billy Ashley, who were more part-time guys. Minnesota's own Bill Davis was also 6'7, one of many first basemen among the 9 total 6'7 listed players who comprise the tallest non-pitcher ever to play.

More like he's their 4th starter with Strasburg, Gio, and Zimmerman with Detwiler rounding out the rotation. He's basically their Edwin Jackson for this season. If Dan Haren is to the Nats what Edwin Jackson has been to the Rays, then I would expect the Nats rotation to be pretty dominant. Say what? Edwin Jackson was with the Nats last year. He was their one-year signing last year that went out and earned himself a likely multi year deal.

More like he's their 4th starter with Strasburg, Gio, and Zimmerman with Detwiler rounding out the rotation. He's basically their Edwin Jackson for this season.

Mark Kotsay - best looking wife in the big leagues. I present this for your review: http://maxcdn.fooyoh.com/files/attach/images/1148/169/613/jamie3.thumbnail.jpg

They asked for Minor/Medlen. I don't know what else was bantered, but I do know that the Braves were very hesitant on moving Delgado/Teheran for an outfielder (though I'm not in that camp, personally).

His required salary was $4.4M in arbitration at maximum decrease. He wasn't worth that for sure.

I sincerely hope you're not serious.

Gorzy isn't a starter, heck he's only thrown 140+ innings once in his whole career. That said, he's a very solid long reliever that could be a good paired starter with a guy that they want to keep innings down on.

There's a post on this already that's less than a week old..

The Red Sox made statements when announcing Ross's signing that he would be the RH answer to Salty. They were very underwhelmed by Lavernway during the season, and every report on him that I've seen this offseason has said he's going to be in AAA working on some things this year.