Bungee Jumper

Keegan is good. Ambrose is crap, in my opinion (as Max Hastings has said, Ambrose should spend more time writing and less time erecting monuments). Others I think highly of: Bergerud (although he only wrote two books, both are excellent), Hinchliffe (though he only wrote one, it may very well be the best book I've ever read, and I've read thousands), Martin Middlebrook, David Glantz and Jonathon House (hard-core Russian historians out of U of KS - not easy reads). Stephen Sears's Civil War histories. Robert Citino's doctrinal histories (Pete, if your brother-in-law went through West Point, he might enjoy Cition's "The German Way of War". But he might have already read it as required coursework, too.)

Unsurprising. They're numbers.

Borders gift card. Seriously. My family used to buy me books for gifts; invariably I was either uninterested in them, or already had them. Finally, they figured out: buy me gift cards, stop trying to guess what books I do and do not have and would or would not like. Actually, only my sister figured that out. The rest of my family still buys me crap like books of WWII artwork ("Uhhh...that's not military history, that's art history, you dope...")

That should be required reading for anyone who wants an example of real stupidity. A single die has a "true value" of 3.5. I literally hurt myself falling out of my chair laughing when I read that.

Mair and Vanek have both been insane tonight - I say, as Vanek scores the game-winner. Still, this team clearly misses Afinogenov and Tallinder. Though today they played the best defense I've seen since Tallinder went down (those defensive breakdowns against the Leafs were !@#$ing painful), you can definitely see the difference without Tallinder's puck handling and Max's speed on offense. Without those two, the Sabres aren't great, merely really, really, really !@#$ing good.

Except Josh Reed. You mean they need a physical or size advantage against defensive backs combined with the ability to actually get open once in a blue moon.

Technically, it's not a baby until its born. It's a fetus. Though it's a moot point to me. As I've said before, I support abortion up to the 75th trimester. Someone make sure KurtGoebbels adds that to his sig, too.

God, that was a weird thread. Kobe is a hero, Marines are pussies, then he starts babbling away about war in some language that's almost exactly unlike English. I think he paradigm shifted without a clutch. Far more endurance than enthusiam. Tough to get enthusiastic about telling a math illiterate that error and proabability are different concepts seventy five !@#$ing times in a row. Fortunately, it doesn't require great investment of time, so not much endurance is required either. You haven't checked out the statistics discussion on PPP, have you? Holcomb's Arm is setting records...

And that's Vanek alone. I've never seen a single player skate two complete circles around an entire team before...

I've heard several of the say, now that they're in office, that it'll take time...

You're the last one that should be casting aspersions, boom...

It involved Ed insisting that BiB could not possibly have ever been attacked by a dog, because Ed had lived in three different places in New Jersey and he was never attacked by a dog...

No, best line ever was CuttingDrewWithDignity's in the homework thread: "Are you missing a chromosome or do you just continually want attention?" Still cracks me up...

http://www.stadiumwall.com/index.php?showt...ndpost&p=594779 Ah, yes...part of The Death Ride of Newbie. "If you balance a clown on a board on a beach ball, and tilt the board, Chinese lasers at the South Pole can shoot down satellites..." I wouldn't call it a classic...but it's definitely one of my favorites. That, and when Newbie explained how the only proactive action is an instinctive reaction. Then came his b.harami-like meltdown... I'm surprised no one's mentioned Tracy Lee's infamous DVD burning thread yet. Forty-some pages...fully twenty of which was everyone trying to explain to BF that copyright laws have nothing to do with throwing a cup of beer at Ron Artest... http://www.stadiumwall.com/index.php?showt...ndpost&p=141994

That must have been a hoot... "Sorry, little boy, we can't let you in without an adult..." "But I AM an adult! I'm just short!"

Man, there's so many great memories in this thread. It brings tears to my eyes...

True, that. A better data set would be comparing how long the respective QBs have to throw when they're sacked or hit as they throw. That's a much better measure of how long the line can hold their blocks.

Sorry. I don't duel idiots.

I didn't lie. I just didn't give a sh--. Like I want you people here to know my personal information.

I was just regressing toward the mean...

100 dice would be better...but 2 illustrates a probability distribution well enough without having to figure binomial factors like (100!)/(63!)(47!) BTW...tell T-Bone I respect his scientific ability, so he's allowed to agree with me. He's just a loser in every other aspect of his life.

And that doesn't cause regression toward the mean, either. But what the !@#$ do I know?

I'm shocked you care. Perchance, if duelling were legal, I wouldn't feel compelled to call people idiots, as they'd be more polite.

I am? Oh, yeah...

And that's a perfect example of regression toward the mean...of the friggin' error. You take a test, you score X. The test has no error. You take it again, you score X. If the test has error, normally distributed with a standard deviation of s, you have roughly a 68% chance of scoring within s of X, a 95% chance of scoring within 2s of X... Now postulate two different but related tests measuring the same thing, one exact and one with inherent normally distributed error. On the exact test you score X. You take the "errored" one. You score X + 2s. You take it again. There is a 95% chance that you will score within 2s of X...which means there's a 98% chance that you will score less than X + 2s. This is because the error is normally distributed with an associated probability of occurrence. It is not because X is normally distributed. It's not. It's fixed by the first test. The regression toward the mean is the regression toward the mean of the normally distributed paramater - the error. It's as I've been saying; he doesn't know what he's actually measuring. He set up this wacky simulation, measured the regression of a variable, then proceeded assign said regression to the wrong !@#$ing measurable. THAT'S why regression disappears if he eliminates error...because when he eliminates error, he eliminates the regression of such. It's because he can't even begin to understand that he's confusing two different variables that he thinks error is "causing" regression.