simonus

currently cap hit = $42.85 for 15 players Here are the qualifying offers (took Higgins off the list) 14 Tomas Plekanec, C (26): $1 800 000 - arbitration eligible 28 Kyle Chipchura, C (23): $903 000* 84 Guillaume Latendresse, LW (22): $892 500 32 Shawn Belle, D (24): $660 000* - arbitration eligible 78 Mathieu Aubin, C (22): $563 750* 36 Matt D'Agostini, RW (22): $558 800* 70 Gregory Stewart, LW (23): $550 000* 35 Loic Lacasse, G (23): $522 500* 42 Olivier Latendresse, C (23): $522 500*

Interesting... I need to see more... our new forwards are gigantic!

no thank you

shouldn't Weber be running the 2nd unit pp?

I dunno - the cap is based on revenue from 2 yrs prior. I have to think that the recession has to affect revenue at some point. The CBA amendment is pretty interesting, though, and does indicate a willingness to prop up the cap in the interest of stability over profitability.

Probably everyone on the board knows most, if not all, the info contained herein, but always nice to have a reference to fill in the gaps. http://www.puckprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=200

I just received a pm from this user purporting to be a mod... and he ain't... so if any of you guys get a pm from him, just ignore it He's been banned, but some of his detritus might still be floating around.

obviously one should never put too much emphasis on a single game, but it might be interesting for some of y'all to take a look at what Santana can do to the Red Sox tonight.

SHO is a streak stat because it gives a pitcher credit for inconsistency. It obscures a season's worth of rate data by focusing on a pitcher's good days. It's like saying "this hitter had 10 3-hit games", or "in games he wins, Pitcher X has an ERA of 1.10". Sure, a player that has a lot of SHO's is probably very good and has a good ERA or WHIP, or K/BB (which is a great stat), but SHO doesn't really help you find that out. SHO is a symptom of good play, and like many symptoms, need not always occur in connection with the cause. I want to see a stat that shows a how a pitcher does on his good AND bad days. Also, SHO overrates the value of giving up 0 runs. Giving up 0 runs is not incredibly better than giving up 1 run. A pitcher who only gives up 1 run over 9 innings wins ~97/100, a pitcher who gives up 0 runs wins 100/100. Why don't you use a 1RA stat in addition to SHO? Why not a 2RA (which is also pretty good) stat? Why not just look at the average rate that the pitcher gives up hits/runs. gotta go work now, I'll cover CG and W later.

no way. SHO is a streak stat. As CG and W are so team dependent it means that we should be very cautious before using them to support any argument. ERA is a decent but significantly flawed stat. WHIP is pretty damn good. DERA is pretty decent, as is pitcher VORP. VORP, WHIP, K/9 and BB/9 are prolly most indicative of a pitcher's ability. I don't really care about santana v. halladay, but if you care about quality of opponents, look here http://baseballprospectus.com/statistics/s....php?cid=313111

it's tough to compare them, especially considering that they now play in very different leagues. I think Johan Santana has had the more impressive career to date, but I am more interested in who is better right now. I think it is foolish to use 2009 stats because of the small sample size, and it is difficult to use Santana's 2008 stats because it is a transition-to-new-league year. Additionally the 2008 NL East and 2008 AL East are hugely different leagues. As far as endurance goes, Halladay is not overwhelmingly superior to Santana. Per bball-ref, he has a 230 IP/162 games where Santana has ~213IP over 162 games. Noticeable, but nothing to go wild over. Despite a slight hiccup in his league transition year, Santana has shown a distinct and significant advantage in his strikeout numbers (at slight expense of his walk numbers). Largely thanks to this, Santana has shown superior ERA+ over his career and in recent seasons. Santana is also younger and so one would expect him to have a few more years of prime performance left relative to Halladay (and being in the NL should increase this apparent advantage). For those that care, it is interesting the Halladay has yet to pitch a postseason game, while Santana has pitched moderate-to-ok in his few games (remember that postseason numbers should be judged with a skeptical eye given the quality of opposition and the small sample). Of course, Santana is somewhat removed chronologically from those appearances. I would be especially loathe to look at Santana's numbers as a predictor of future postseason results given that they are spread over a few of his early years (note that he was damned good in his last appearance). Overall, I think I give the decision to Santana by a long nose, although they are both obviously very good. I am terribly worried about Lincecum being overused and getting torn apart.

ok - you want cool bebop then. On The Corner is really experimental and a lot of jazz purists hate it. I threw it in to get a sense of where you were at. DK was absolutely right about Bill Evans. Get "Miles Smiles" by Miles David. Look at some Charlie Parker.

give a listen to stuff with Django Reinhardt. Which of the Coltrane and Davis did you like? I guess you are looking for bebop/hard bop?

not quite my forte Robert Johnson Muddy Waters Nina Simone Billie Holiday Bo Diddley Also, not quite legit, but Jimi Hendrix put out a pretty fun compendium of blues song on an album called "Blues". You might enjoy that as a transitional album. Charlie Mingus is pretty great. You might want to check out Charlie Parker. Tell me which of those Miles Davis albums you like and I can tell you what you what else you need. Miles transcends genres. oh, and you might like Jaco Pastorius.

ok. You need a ton of miles davis: at least 1) Kind of Blue 2) On the Corner 3) Black Magus 4) Bitches Brew John Coltrane 1) Soul Trane 2) My Favorite Things 3) A Love Supreme 4) Giant Steps Thelonious Monk 1) Straight No Chaser 2) Monk & Rollins Modern Jazz Quartet 1) Artistry of the MJQ 2) Django 3) Blues on Bach Dave Brubeck Quartet: Time Out That'll be a start.

if I may be so bold as to speak for Joe: religion all to often claims a role in science - a role to which it has no right. Or, to channel Richard Dawkins: religion makes a claim as to actual events, to the way the actual world works. Insofar as it makes those claims - the historicity of the flood, the tower of babel, the resurrection of a dead person, the existence of a metaphysical soul which exists independent of a living human - it is making a claim which is, at least theoretically, if not in practice, scientific. These questions are scientific insofar as it is possible to imagine evidence which could disprove the claim. In theory, if given a blood sample from Jesus and of Joseph, we would be able to see if Jesus were his biological child, or indeed one might expect to see genetic information which was non-human. If we could analyze Jesus's DNA and find no way in which it was different from a human's DNA, it would make the gospels less likely to be true. Certainly, if we were to find a distinctly non-human element to that DNA - or if such a sample included something other than DNA - then it would lend great credence to the supernatural claims of Christianity. If religion makes a claim that the world is of a certain age - 6,000 years, 10,000 years, 1 trillion years - it is a claim that can be examined. Perhaps there is a role for God that is not even theoretically testable, much less untestable in practice. Such an argument - for instance, that god set the rules of evolution or set the power of the weak nuclear force - are probably uninteresting or even offensive to the religious believer as a faith that relied on such claims alone would allow for only a non-interventionist, deist god. In essence, then, the claims that religion makes of a theistic god are to a broad degree testable and scientific in nature. PS - I realize I should reiterate that the above statement is my attempt at channeling Dawkins and is not necessarily my own opinion.

very cool, but might I suggest that this topic title deserves a verb?

to be fair, that mac ran on a different processor and a fundamentally different operating system.

Well, there are many "catholic" universities that have all but abandoned their theological underpinnings in the classroom. I doubt a biology class at Notre Dame is noticeably different from one at University of Michigan. Only where the church holds more sway to we begin to see differentiation. As to your high school, I think that is great. It is quite a different thing, I imagine, than the type of instruction offered by the Quebec school system. I am curious to know to what degree catholic dogma was taught with the same tenor as were the other religions. One of the great lessons a student can get from a comparative religion class is to study their parents' faith through the same critical lens as they do others.

kids can get things wrong when they hear a lecture. I have certainly - especially as a young child - completely misunderstood my lesson until I was later disabused of my error. The great thing about such an error - or indeed with a faithful assimilation of the information - is that it gives a child the chance to have a real discussion about it with his or her parents after school. Instead of Star Academie, the family gets to actually use their brains. The kid can learn that 1) the parents are not all knowing, and 2) the teacher is not all knowing... perhaps the parent can learn something too. These are all valuable results. EDIT: It should be noted of course, that a Hindu person absolutely believes that a conversion (to whatever degree one can convert) helps one achieve greater incarnations. Imagine the teacher disabusing a Hindu child of such a thought? What would the reaction be then? EDIT 2: I worry about this question of "proper" training. I wonder what proper training would look like to the protesting parents. Additionally, it seems like there is more concern as to a teacher's ability to teach this course than there is to teach basic science. I have encountered a legion of incompetent teachers (in Quebec and the USA) that teach things that are laughably incorrect and gobbled down whole by their students. Why are we more concerned about this? What is the terrible effect of a teacher accidentally teach the Arian heresy? but this is taking religion out. This is teaching people to be aware of the world we live in. When we study Hinduism, most of us do not imagine we are learning about the nature of the Universe - we realize that we are learning about the nature of Hindus. The problem that the parents had was not that kids were learning religion, but that they weren't learning the primacy of the religion of their parents. When that aspect of religious education is removed, it is quite a different thing indeed. Absolutely. The parents, acting as proxies for their various religious groups were implicitly making that exact argument. Perhaps not by every member of the board, but the vocal are not necessarily representative of the whole.

Parents are protesting the teaching of comparative religions at school. http://www.montrealgazette.com/Life/Quebec...4859/story.html

It is just your opinion because it is objectively wrong.

Well, Steve's just this guy, ya know?

+1 on Chicago. I'll try to get some playoff tickets (possibly, if difficult here) if they are still in the playoffs when my finals are done.

finally!