gehringer_2

We did FORTRAN because it was 'engineering.' COBOL was for the busAd students who couldn't have gotten in the Engin school..... To me the funny story in engineering programming education was that after K&R released 'C' it gained wide adoption pretty quickly because it was so fast and powerful, but CS Academics hated it because it was unreadable, undisciplined and 'dangerous' (all of which are true) so Pascal became the language of choice at many University CS departments because it was more 'sound' from a purist's standpoint. But of course no-one in industry cared a whit about Pascal or ever used it for anything, so eventually university CS depts were pulled kicking and screaming by industry back to 'C'. So now we have 'C++' which combines of worst of all the worlds it tries to encompass. But anyone who wants to get anything done quickly just jumps ship to Python. 👍

GOTO with you and your FORTRAN!

There is a tragic amount of truth in this. I probably couldn't count the number to times I've drawn the parallel between the basic worldview of American Christian 'fundamentalists' and Radical Islam. Motivationally, emotionally, intellectually they are cut from exactly the same whole cloth. One basic big key being, (and just like in Jesus' day) a structure around a pharisaic class that takes the right of interpretation of divine mandate unto itself, which leverages that class into social and political power, and in the US case especially, an economic payday.

If you start quoting Leviticus you have already lost any argument. Read the whole thing and check back. 🤣

probably a mistake to challenge one of these nuts to find something in the bible, because they will. Like all complex literature, the Bible can reflect back to you anything you want to bring to it if you are so disposed. To me, and YMMV for anyone else, the key point to try to force is that religious people have no a priori right to impose what they believe on others on *that* basis. You may believe murder is wrong because God forbids it, but when you bring the desire to ban murder to the secular society you have to find secular grounds to do it. And that is easy so we do don't argue that much about legislating about murder. If you think things are wrong (or right) for religious reasons that the larger society has no reason to agree with you about, then you must be prepared to live your life the way you want and leave others alone to do the same, because in the end that is the only approach that guarantees *yours* or anyone's religious freedom in the first place.

Reyes is close to the ideal 4th OF. He can play all three positions and not be a liability, will give you a 700+ OPS (maybe a little more if does hit a few more long balls as he reaches peak strength years), runs the bases well (assuming the quad thing doesn't become some kind of chronic) and is a switch hitter, albeit one with a poor platoon split as a LHB. It's hard to argue with that profile on the bench. Anyone better is probably a starter.

yeah, I know Helm was too old be part of the rebuild here, but it was fun but sad watching his play against Edmonton while knowing how much the Wings were missing his skillset this season.

Tork has been worth his weight just in the number of bad throws he has already saved. I've only seen him lose one so far and Jeimer and Javy have both had him working hard most of the time. I don't know what kind of glove Pete Alonso had with the Mets last season but with the Cubs Javy had Rizzo at 1st. If he threw in Chi like he throws here, Rizzo must have saved him a lot of errors as well. Javy's not uncatchable wild, and clearly the arm is a cannon, but he almost never makes a straight at the chest throw to 1st either.

Going into today's game, the top 9 Tiger players by WAR (BR) are all pitchers. The 10th was javy.

these guys' bats should sort themselves out for us. All we can hope is that they don't fall in love with guys for mysterious reasons who don't produce over the ones that do.

I have a suspicion that we are at the front end (well the young are already there) of a long transition where serious news junkies start relying more and more on expert/think tank etc podcasting for in depth information and broadcast/stream/live reporting strictly for breaking news. The podcast is the successor of the function that Newsweek/Time etc once provided in the past for serious issue background. Even today, the old folks aren't watching Fox because of its news value. Fox is a service designed to give them positive emotional feedback all day long while they park their retired butts in front of a Telly. It's just the AARP version of the Hallmark channel. It just happens to destroy our politics as collateral damage. (whereas all the Hallmark channel does is make wives more discontent over their insensitive male mates. )

the funny thing with inflation is that one of the ways it can be self-accelerating is that people want to buy more because they figure out that their money is devaluing faster than what they buy with it. So there is some kind of transition between the initial resistance to purchase because prices are high, to a reluctance to hold cash. The psychology depends on whether people expect the inflation to last or not, ie. whether they expect prices to fall again. My guess is that most people understand at some level that this inflation is a transient dislocation created by governments trying to respond to the pandemic and not the kind of structural money supply imbalance we had in the 70's. So to some degree, in the present case, if people expect this end, they won't spend, and it will end sooner. The one area which is pretty detached from reality now though is home prices. They are not being driven by supply issues in China - they are just crazy. People trying to get in before mortgage rates go up is part of it, but it's still nuts.

On level it seems odd, but the other hand, this is not a merger/buyout *negotiation*, Elon already signed the deal, so the alternative take would be; "you signed the deal, you had your chance to do due diligence before you signed. We don't owe you anything. Nothing you find out now matters unless you can prove fraud. Close the deal or pay the fee."

screw 'em. There should be no special security for anyone in gov. Let them live with exactly what the rest of us get.

one run against Keller is a pretty sorry performance, but good to see Meadows hit a couple. Get him and Tork hitting balls in the same inning we might have an offense.

too interesting

soto feels a need to make this interesting.

yeah - That's as good as Fulmer can pitch.

OTOH, Masahiro Tanaka is still pitching in Japan and as far as I know never did have his UCL replaced despite a TJ diagnosis.

the pandemic drove all the monetary policy manager's around the world to pretty much the same lock step conclusion - expansive money supply was needed to prevent the pandemic from also creating depression. They all looked at the same situation with the same kind of knowledge base and made the same decisions. They over shot, so sure you can fault them, but I'm not going to be super hard on them. They know how to put this Genie back in the bottle and the other scenario could have been a lot worse.

But baseball fans are into statistics, and the numbers say when a guy can't pitch because his elbow is barking the likelihood of surgery is quite high. You don't need to see the MRIs to know the odds!

well maybe. Baddoo put up a 750 OPS and his K rate stayed under 25% the last month of last season when everyone had scouting on him and he had played a longer season than the ever had before. I put a lot of stock in how rookies finish a season. A lot of guys that hit with a bang and run up big numbers early often tail badly, and even if they finish with decent stats for a season, have weak 2nd halves as they are eventually exposed by MLB pitching. But Akil held up pretty well. So despite his lack of a standard dose of minor league seasoning I won't be surprised if he hits his way back to the majors quickly. Granted it's been a bad start though!

Funny, watching the games i get the feeling that Willi is on an upward track, but the hard numbers say that his last 50 AB he OPS'd 599, which is actually a drop from his previous ~60 AB at ~680. So he's actually tailing off. I guess when no one is hitting anything looks like something.

As I think about it, if I had Elon's money to spend and bought CNN, I would try something more along the lines of topical shows. 1/2 hour on Europe, 1/2 hour on education, 1/2 on medicine/health, Asia, State gov developments, and then also fed gov, etc. But keep each show in it's own lane and develop good topical expertise in your staff. Do a 5 minute headline recap top and bottom of the hour. Have a live news room that can pre-empt and take over if something big breaks. Again the problem is that might be an absolute feast for a news junkie, but it would be phenomenally expensive to produce those shows at a high quality level and would almost certainly fail economically. Still I'd love to see someone try it.

sure - the problem is that this approach is nearly impossible to fill 14 hrs of programming with. There is a reason that back in the day the networks did the news in 30 min. If all you are doing is straight reporting, that's about all there usually is that anyone is interested in. The alternative is go NPR or BBC and have people reporting on Botswanan high school curriculum reforms. That barely works on the radio, how may eyeballs would it capture!? 🙄 The cable/streaming broadcast environment creates an insatiable content vacuum to be filled. You only have two choices as a news org, spend a gazillion dollars actually sending top journalists with great reporting skills all around the world all day long finding hard to find interesting things to report, or paying a lot less money to people to talk about the same stuff a hundred times and the only way that works is if you keep raising the emotional level on each version you repeat. Which is going to happen in a country where all that matters is quarterly corporate results? There is a reason the industry is where it is. It's the organization and content structure that makes money. I really do wish CNN luck. I doubt they can succeed.