unclevlad

The latest trend...balks. Least, it seems that way. Maybe it's just mostly coincidental, but I've seen a LOT of em called. Thoughtless ones, basically. Just now? Reds-D'backs. 7-7, 11th inning. 2 outs runner on 3rd (maybe others but doesn't matter). Pitcher is at set position. Breaks hands apart...then returns the pitching hand to the glove. BOOM. Reds, 8-7 now. Bottom 11th coming up. Earlier this week, it was pitcher had come set, at the belt. Raised both arms, pitching hand still in mitt...then came to another stop. OOPS. Think that was a Yankee broadcast...Michael Kay was going...what? Then they showed the full replay, and yep...he conceded the point. Believe there was another in that game too. I'm wondering if the clock and disengagement rules might possibly be in the back of pitchers' minds a bit.

Just for grins...play counts. UTEP-JState: 136 Ohio-SDSU: 142...Ohio was 26-52 passing, and incomplete passes still stop the clock. UMass-NSMU: 119...in a 41-30 contest. The story in The Athletic said the average for FBS last year was 178 plays per game. USC-SJSU is at 127 with 3 minutes left, and no doubt about the outcome. Not really likely to have a lot more plays there. The other 2 games are still in the 3rd. EDIT: they're over. FIU vs. La Tech...127 plays. Of note? 83-44 La Tech in plays run. La Tech threw 44 passes; FIU, 14. Note that Ohio ran a ton more plays than San Diego State, with many incompletions. Hawai'i-Vandy, 116 plays, including 65 passes. So it may not be passing per se, but the style of passing. Outside, even swing passes to backs, that'll end up out of bounds, that team can likely run a high number of plays. But the first glance suggests it's working.

Sajak and White probably hold the record for longest-running showrunning duo. Checking...yeah, has to be, in the US. It's #3 longest running (behind Jeopardy and TPIR) but the Sajak/White combo has remained together for most of that run. Trebek was near-perfect for Jeopardy, but that's a *quiz* show, not a game show. The two require different skillsets. Given the HIGH level of involvement...yes, Trebek was probably the best host in terms of show management ever. I can't offhand think of any other game-related show where the host was essentially an equal participant to the players.

That's not a local, that's the national game. The only ESPN game today. Google does not tell you the whole story. The wide shots give you more of an idea, but not the whole thing. They do show the paucity of attendance...but the why there is the same, to a degree. Or too many degrees. Yeah, I could be there. I passed. AIR temp is low 90s. STADIUM temp is a different story. Aggie Memorial is 100% CONCRETE. The benches you see are steel. It is MUCH, MUCH hotter in that stadium than what the various weather stations might be reporting. Dunno what the on-field temp might be; I did attend a few games back in the day, but I never got down to the field. BTW, yes, it also means it's just as uncomfortable as you might think. BTW, most games start later than this; up through at least mid-September, things haven't cooled off materially at 5. Games typically start more like 6 until much later in the season. The other scourge of early season football is delaying Hawai'i vs. Vandy...yeah, I'm sure you're waiting for this one with baited breath. Lightning in the area.

Eh, I think it's an AD with delusions of grandeur. I predict he doesn't last 5 years. Insofar as the timekeeping change...one game can't give us much, unless it's dramatic. This could well be dramatic. 50 total plays for Navy. 57 total games for ND. That's all...not even 110 total, from scrimmage. Something to watch, for sure.

A compound power is also a convenient structure to build a power with an END cost exactly the way you want it. For example, 11d6 Blast. If full END (5) is too high, but you don't want to slap 1/2 END on the whole thing...gets expensive...then a middle ground might be 6d6 with 1/2 END, and 5d6 at normal. That means the net END is 3, and the overall active points is 62 rather than 69.

His 100th birthday would've been Dec. 12th, so he didn't *quite* get within 100 days of it, to win both showcases.

Huh. Big rules change for college football. No more stopping the clock on first down, outside the last 2 minutes of each half. The change is explicitly targeted to shorten the game and reduce the number of plays. That's likely to have a big impact. Figure that, let's say, 1/2 the first downs would be under running-clock conditions; others would have the ball going OB. Maybe 20 times a game? At even 15 seconds per, that's 5 extra minutes. That means those 17 point 4th quarter turnarounds will be much harder to pull off. Working the middle of the field for 10-15 yard gains was extremely time-efficient, when the clock stopped on those first downs. Flip side, it'll be easier for an offense to run off larger chunks of clock when ahead. It will also help with length of game, another goal. College games did take *forever* quite often...many pushed 4 hours.

Yeah, I posted that SI article earlier. That one lambasted Shanahan for a lot more than just the Lance move. One can safely assume...there are others. But that's gonna happen when you go all in, and it turns out you're holding 7-2 off....

Bob Barker was an institution. He was perhaps the perfect game show host. NYT reports he passed away today. He was 99.

No, not this time. Story points out...there's no QB depth controversy in Dallas. Grier was never making the backup. Clearly, Dak's not gonna play; there's no need to see Rush, either. Fine, Dallas gives the game to Grier as an extended, live audition tape under the most competitive conditions possible. They also let him know to start calling around NOW. Would you rather the 'boys sit Grier on the bench and don't tell him he'll be cut until after the game...and during the *flood* of cuts that'll happen? Grier can beat the rush, and, if nothing else, sign onto someone's practice squad, you'd think. Might not sound very good...but it makes a heckuva lot more than wrangling carts at Wal Mart. EDIT: CBS Sports but the Lance trade as the worst draft-day trade ever...beating the Ricky Williams trade.

Warning. The above video will melt your brain. It's too late for me. You can save yourselves tho.......

Story broke last week, IIRC, that a member of the British Museum staff had been fired on suspicion of looting items from the museum's collections. Well, word is now, there were warning signs going back a ways...and nothing was done. You can imagine how well THAT went over. The director of the Museum has now resigned, effective immediately, accepting final responsibility lay with him, and he failed.

My spice dealer just announced the return of pumpkin spice. I should write them...they dropped cake spice some years back. Ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg IIRC, probably some others. That's the one I really miss. I do almond flour based pancakes from time to time; cake spice was a great add. Altho recently I've been playing around with orange essential oil...yummm...and got some baking emulsions recently. Raspberry works nice...especially since I top them with zapped, crushed frozen berries anyway. (Black, rasp, blue mix.)

It takes 4 No votes to torpedo it. Interesting article. https://www.sportingnews.com/us/ncaa-football/news/acc-expansion-stanford-cal-smu-really-would-add-nothing/tjt4vceowjocnzdqy66kzpqq 3500 for basketball home games? Colorado was lousy when I was there, and drew 2-3 times that... And Cal only had 2200? We might've beaten that when the games were in the Fieldhouse, freshman year. And THAT was a glorified HS gym...literally. OLD court, terrible lighting, literally just bleachers on each side of the court. Kinda fun to watch a game there, you were right on the court...

Will it never end??? Story is that the ACC is back to considering expansion. Cal, Stanford, AND SMU. Vote may happen by the weekend.

That resounding crash you heard was not, for a change, the sound of your NCAA brackets after your overall winner lost in the round of 32. No, it's the sound of Trey Lance falling to QB 3 and going on the trade block...where he's got next to no value. Report is early day 3...that's 4th round, IIRC. Between the contract and non-production, and the assets they had to trade, this ranks decently close to the Ryan Leaf deal, and will very likely end up on "worst trades ever" lists reasonably soon. There's a HARSH!!! review of Kyle Shanahan's personnel management here: https://www.si.com/nfl/49ers/news/the-49ers-emperor-has-no-clothes

Excellent segue there, Cygnia!

From WaPo...stunned me at first but... Stephen Strasburg is going to retire. As I say, whoa...right? Except I think of him as a lot younger than he is, because, you know, we just haven't heard much about him...so he hasn't been around that long. Well, not on an active roster. GREAT 2019...but a grand total of 30 innings since. He had thoracic outlet surgery that removed a couple ribs...never recovered. The info on why is noting a rare medical condition that may have contributed to the problem. It's stunning to read that he was drafted in 2009! 247 career starts. Some of it is geographic. His best years were 2012, then 14-19. IIRC, there were fewer games on MLB Network, Fox/FS1, and TBS. Maybe a couple more a week on ESPN. The Nats were on MASN; I think I got MASN for a while, but the RSNs really shrank their distribution areas at some point in there. Ohhh...Nats make me sweat but hold on to beat the Yankees. Yippee kiyay! And...oh my. I was ANNOYED earlier because the Red Sox-Astros game was blacked out. HATE that. Oh well. Red Sox 17-1. 11 runs after 3 innings. No loss missing that, then. NOTE: Bob Costas is on MLB Tonight, talking about Strasburg. He's saying nerve damage. Tingling in the hand. Said, he can't trust picking up his daughter...can't trust his hand. So rather serious impediment.

Just FYI, the languages section is several THOUSAND lines long. In Main6E, it starts at line 714, and ends at line 10555. Note that there are some huge swathes of languages that aren't what I'd call core. HD has the complete, expanded list, it's over 600 languages, IIRC. There's definitely sections where the micro-detail is probably not necessary. If you're making your own languages template anyway...it can be worth trimming. The sheer length always irritates me, given that the HD control doesn't support matching as you type a string in, or even jump to a current entry (when there is one) when editing.

I'd forgotten that scene. On that level, tho, the Matrix was all metaphor. The comics very rarely delve into metaphor.

PLEASE DON'T !!! Plotlines like that make me just flee. Infinity War and BOTH finger snaps were bad enough. At least for me, it throws suspension of disbelief totally out the window. It frequently leads to ridiculous deus ex machina "resolutions." What's the point of anything that goes on, in that case?

This point alone is all that's needed to show the state of the "law and order" party.

I wanted to keep dinner inside. Oh, and US officials now believe an explosion brought down the aircraft in Russia with Prigozhin reportedly aboard. What caused the explosion...we probably won't know, there's plenty of ways to do it. And Russia isn't going to exactly go out of its way to determine the cause. The known humanitarian, Mr. V. Putin, had this to say: Yeah, I think we can all name one of em..............

Now, see, that's where a failing has been, from what I've heard. They've drafted "MLB ready" for quite a while. It hasn't worked. They get middle of the pack ballplayers. Their farm system might have "MLB ready"...but they're also consistently ranked low. The Angels' approach has been to try for the quick fix. It's failed miserably. Occasional rest won't do enough to alleviate what's causing ligament tears, most likely. As for Trout...it's not just this injury. Are they overly deferring to him...out of desperation? Maybe. But it's ongoing. He's missed 40 or more games 5 times in the last 7 years. I also don't mean just the free agents. This team will not win with Trout and Ohtani, because neither can be trusted to play enough moving forward. I question, admittedly from afar, whether the team's mentality is that one of them will bail them out. It doesn't work that way. I look at the Reds...to a point, the D'backs. The Rays. The Orioles. Scrappy. Hungry. The Angels? No. 5th most strikeouts. 4th fewest stolen bases. 3rd in home runs, but 10th in RBI. Passive and ineffective. EDIT: FanGraphs has now given the Angels no chance to make the playoffs. 0.0%. They need to make a miracle run (26-8 to get to 87 wins), AND have 2 of the 4 teams (Royals, Rangers, Blue Jays, Mariners) play under .500, as they're on pace for 90. Oh...and the A's are a Seattle win or A's loss away from mathematical elimination. A's have 91 losses. 4 teams have 72 wins already, and someone will come out of the Central. That's 5. Seattle has 71 wins.