SageAgainstTheMachine

I win.

My favorite part was Jesse vacantly staring into his duffelbag of cash, and then later dismissively shrugging off its disappearance. It was a sort of dismal reminder of why Jesse got himself into this mess in the first place, and how little he now cares about his initial motivation. Season 2 Jesse would have been a wreck over his money growing legs. Now he's just so broken that it doesn't matter. The scene you mention was awesome too. I love Walt lifting his hands and saying "you got me" as Hank jokingly (?) accused him of being the W.W. in Gale's notebook.

I'm pretty certain that would be considered a run to the left. 65% of the Bills rushes were up the middle or to the guards...I would guess because Jackson is primarily a vertical rusher?

http://footballoutsiders.com/stats/ol Take a look at the second table. The Bills ranked #1 in the NFL running in the Left Tackle direction. I think Demetrius Bell is the long term answer at LT if he can stay healthy like last season.

An additional first down or two per game can be the difference between a good team and a bad team.

Apes was great except for Freida Pinto. She's pretty and all, but I think a cardboard cutout of the actress would have done an equal acting job.

Better make it double ply. We don't want the other team backing out because we're chintzy.

I stand by what I said. Words to live by.

No, I guarantee you that everybody agrees with him. Go up to an injured Bill and call him a pus*y to his face, and see what happens. If you wouldn't say something to a man's face, don't say it behind his back.

OR every single team in the league is dealing with this and we're actually lucky because, unlike a lot of teams, nobody is seriously injured.

Advanced statistics can aid general managers in building teams that win. Ergo, they matter.

15,000 yards only gets you a maybe these days?

Spiller - Super Fast Evans - Scary fast Parrish - Really fast Johnson - Pretty Fast Easley - Very fast Jones - Darn Fast Nelson - Rather Fast Roosevelt - Kinda Fast I believe those are the official ratings.

I'd like to point something out. Those defending the old passer rating system seem to be relying on its efficacy in predicting winners. Fine, it predicts winners. That isn't the point of the statistic. The point is to specifically identify the role of the quarterback in his team's success relative to his running backs, receivers, tight ends, etc. Team batting average is great at predicting winners in baseball too, but sabermetricians dismissed it long ago in the context of identifying individual achievement at the plate, because it isn't comprehensive. It's the same with passer rating. It isn't a fallacious statistic, but it is rather arbitrary. Taking 4 stats, weighing them, then smushing them together isn't comprehensive enough in an age when so much other information is available. Take the following example. In passer rating, if the QB dumps the ball off to his running back, who jukes two defenders while using aggressive second-level blocking by a FB and OT and scores a 50 yard TD, the QB gets the exact same amount of credit as he would if he placed a perfect bomb to a streaking WR in single coverage for a TD. In my opinion, you simply can't defend a statistic that is so poor at accounting for context.

Haha, no problem buddy. I explained this in a couple threads, but unfortunately I cheated and thus gave up on the project between weeks 6 and 7. I believe it was on Day 46. I ended up losing about 15-20 pounds in the process. There was really nothing mind blowing about the experience...just a lot of boredom and even more flatulence . I regret the whole thing, because it was more about grabbing attention than any real personal growth. That's not to say I didn't learn anything, though.

Yeah, I'm a total sabermetrics nerd. I hate to admit it, but I've even been to a couple of the conventions. Football Outsiders is one of my favorite websites, but I was unaware of the other two. I'm interested to read that article from Cold Hard Football Facts because passer rating, to me, is just short of completely useless as a statistic. As others have pointed out, it pays no attention to context and in football you absolutely cannot analyze without context. Additionally, passer rating severely overrates conservative QB play and pays no attention to plays during which the QB never throws the ball (sacks, fumbles, rushing yardage).

As soon as I clicked 'enter' on my previous post I thought "Wait...there ARE more lecherous male teachers, the teenage girls just differ in that they aren't willing to !@#$ disgusting middle aged men. Teenage boys on the other hand..."

Well, I'd say that Dad running off before the child is born is a lot more damaging than Mom's attitude toward money.

Despite the stereotype of the lecherous male teacher pining for teenage girls, it seems like you see a ton more stories about female teachers behaving inappropriately these days. I wonder what's up?

Thanks for the list. Fitzpatrick right in the middle of the pack, as I expected. It's interesting to see just how much better Brady was last year than everybody else. A full 7% ahead of number 2 Manning.

How...irrelevant.

I'm glad you brought up parenting first, because I too suspect this is the biggest ill perpetually affecting inner city communities. Single parent homes are the norm, and in many cases even the one parent isn't very involved, either because they have to work overtime to keep the family afloat or they're...let's just say otherwise engaged. When parents aren't in the picture, kids will seek family elsewhere. Too often, this is in the form of a dangerous gang. I'd say these flash mobs (flash mob used to be quite the innocent term, by the way) are a subset of said gang activity. Trouble is...how do you fix such a pervasive cultural trend like this, the lack of parenting? I don't know if anybody has that answer. Now, this isn't to say personal responsibility doesn't exist. Tons of young urban black men without proper parenting have made something of themselves. Most, however, just feed back into the vicious cycle.

Ok, the link encourages us to enter recent racial violence into the general discussion on race relations in our culture. So let's talk about it. What do you think is causing such outbreaks?

Any statistics nerds among you? Obviously, football tends to be a more subjective sport than baseball, but I'm hoping football will undergo some sort of Bill James style revolution in the near future. This newly thorough method of rating quarterbacks may be the first domino to fall in that effort. At the very least, it will replace the archaic and arguably useless passer rating system. Here's a good article on it...the details of the formula will be made public today, I believe. http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/6835090/nfl-total-quarterback-rating-shifts-way-see-position

It is a perplexing mistake. In the spirit of giving people the benefit of the doubt, maybe he was sleep deprived or something? People say some really stupid things when that's the case.