Caitlin Clark could play in an NBA all-star game where no defense is played. She would not be able to keep up on the defensive end in a regular season NBA game. Due to NIL, look for her to stay one more year at Iowa. She can earn as much or more there while shattering all the NCAA records. She's already appearing in a State Farm commercial.
I tend to agree that she'll stay another year at Iowa. The limelight will be stronger and the NIL money will far exceed the salary she'll make in the WNBA. Most of her money will come from endorsement deals either way.
Word is she’s leaving. I like that decision - a fifth season would be a huge asterisk on her record. Yes, the footnote would explain that she broke the record in four seasons, but it’s better with no asterisk.
The country seems to have shrugged off Trump's obscene comparison of the murder of Aleksei Navalny to him being afforded every due process by four jurisdictions on 91 charges after having been found to be a rapist by a jury and the perperator of massve fraud by a judge. How far does this monster have to go before the cult members and sycophants turn on him? How much does he hate America when he says the judicial system here is equvalent to the "judicial system" of Russia under Putin?
I think it's kind of ironic. Is it Alzheimer's or did Trump simply forget that his good buddy Putin was the reason Navalny was there? Trump should have been celebrating the death. Imagine the glee Trump would feel if he could simply order the arrest of everyone that opposed him. But we'd need to find the funding for thousands of new prisons. I would be among the inmates.
Re: Sentiment of spectators. I read an article which claimed research to explain home field advantage in sports is attributable to the influence the spectators have on referees or umpires. They researchers believed that refs were not intentionally biased, but as humans the effect of a crowd expressing its beliefs induced unconscious bias. One would expect the same effect in courtrooms on both jurors and judges.
I'd like to see that article. My sense has been that whatever slight edge a home team has comes from crowd energy and not having to deal with travel. My only experience with this was when I played basketball in high school and the rims and background were more familiar at home, which helped me shoot.
Full disclosure here: I was going from memory and do not remember the source. There is a lot of research on the topic -- much of it has to do with measuring the effect of home field advantage. I found this article which looked at various possible explanations for it and officiating was one of the effects considered. The author rejects some popular explanations, and cites officiating bias as having an effect. He also finds other effects, or at least says some things, like the thin air in Denver, are possible effects.
In reference to the journalist who was scammed: one of the biggest helps to scammers is that they can spoof a phone number, i.e. have a number not theirs show up on caller i.d. Phone companies should not allow this. I let my calls go to voicemail before answering because of this. BTW, does this show how ancient I am?
I don't think it shows you are ancient at all. You know how to use caller ID and voicemail, and how to be on guard against scams. If you had said you let calls go to your answering machine, then that would be different.
I get spoofed calls almost every day. I'm always on guard for them. The weirdest is when I'm called by my own number, which used to happen occasionally!
Any time I get a number from a named person I don't know, it's always a scam call. What I don't get is how anyone falls for that crap? Exactly why is Samantha Carson trying to sell me auto insurance?
But how that incredibly gullible woman could put 50 grand in a shoebox & give to someone flat out boggles the minds of anyone with even half a brain!
Did you read the article she wrote? It explains exactly how she came to put that money in a shoebox.
In a moment of being distracted and possibly tired, she listened to enough of a scammers pitch to get on the hook. Then once they had her scared and stressed it is extremely hard to think rationally.
That depends on your definition of "sane person". If you allow that a person can temporarily have a breakdown in cognitive function and thus not be sane in that moment, then, sure, I agree with your statement. According to the article, she was on the phone continuously for a very long time in a high stress situation. Also according to the article it is that breakdown of cognitive function that is typical in humans that have provided police a way to extract a false confessions from people. They keep them in interrogation for an extended period of time.
So you after all that you could say she had temporarily lost her sanity. I don't think she would disagree.
Where we may disagree is that I think all of us are vulnerable to losing it like that.
I didn't post my favorite book that I read in 2023, because it is an old book, but it is relevant to this issue. It is Voodoo Science by Robert Park. The author is a physicist who writes about the prevalence of ridiculous claims like cold fusion, perpetual motion machines, homeopathy, etc. The author seems like a very smart and rational person. He admits that he sometimes he has little patience for people who believe aliens have visited earth. But he has tried to temper that by remembering a story of when, for a few minutes, while he was driving to Roswell NM in the mid-50's, he believed in UFOs.
I don't care how much stress she was under or how long she was on the phone!
She was a gullible fool & got what she deserved for being a gullible fool!
And I do believe in UFOs, because I've seen an unidentified flying object, but I certainly know it wasn't from Martians, it was just something in the sky I couldn't identify, hence: Unidentified!
Kudos to Eric for that elegant Animal House reference. Now on to what's really important in the world this morning: Who's the guy on the motorcycle in the Leader of the Pack video? Spoiler alert. I could not figure it out and finally cheated and went to the YouTube video to look at comments. Clearly it was somebody hamming it up for laughs. Answer: Robert Goulet. I wouldn't have figured that out--I think while other people's noses and ears grow with age, Robert Goulet's chin did the same thing. I can't recognize him without it.
Wow, many EZ readers don’t recognize how good NBA players are. Caitlin Clark is awesome but absolutely could not make the NBA. She can shoot, but she’d be among the smallest (only 6 feet tall), physically weakest and slowest players.
Clark isn't quick or strong enough to beat a defender off the dribble (much less finish at the rim against 7-footers), so her defender would stick to her and not allow any open space for jumpers. And on defense, she’d be targeted and toasted on literally every possession.
I hate questions like these because the answer is an absolute, objective "no," but in explaining why it feels like I'm denigrating Caitlin Clark, who is an all-time talent.
Obviously. I will write something similar next week, also pointing out that she would be lightest player in the NBA, and it IS a physical game. The truth is that she probably wouldn't be a standout in DIII men's basketball, which takes nothing away from her singular talents. Many people don't like to hear this as it sounds sexist, but a good high school boys team would likely beat the best team in the WNBA.
I was wondering where you were going with the prompt. I think most basketball fans would say the same. Again I don’t wanna be a hater, because Caitlin Clark is becoming appointment TV. But let’s be real here.
I think Mayor Johnson suffers from the Dunning-Kruger Effect, which in essence is people overestimating their own knowledge and/or abilities, which leads to poor decision-making, mistrust among colleagues, and being uncoachable.
I'm baffled as to anyone calling the truly incompetent Johnson a good politician. He was just a stooge the rotten CTU managed to get elected by lying to all Chicagoans & then fooling 51% of them. He's a flat out disaster as mayor!
As for the billionaire owners of the White Sox & Bears, not one damned penny for you of our tax money! Both of them could go to the banks & borrow the money to build new stadiums by posting the team values as collateral. The Sox are worth at least $2 billion & the Bears are worth over $6 billion!
Even worse, both teams screwed the public years ago & got free stadiums from us, Reinsdorf by getting that crook Thompson to create the stadium authority to build a new Sox Park & the truly thieving McCaskeys by getting that fool Richie Daley to rebuild Soldier Field into the Toilet Bowl at a cost of several hundred million!
So JB, don't be like that nitwit governor of New York, who just gave the constantly failing Buffalo Bills $500 million so they can have a new stadium.
Hang tough, the Bears bought Arlington Park, borrow the money & build there, if your so desperate for a new place to play!
You mean fooling over half of the pitiful number who actually bothered to vote for Mayor.
Full-throated agreement with you on Reinsdorf and the McCaskeys' using their own money for stadiums (stadii?) - the McCaskeys' are billionaires only because of the appreciation of the Bears franchise - not due to any business acumen on their part (other than not selling the team). Leverage the dough you have to build a stadium.
As for the McCaskey/Bears attempt to ratchet down the property taxes they have to pay on the Arlington Heights property: Screw you and the horse you rode in on. You buy the property for $197 MM in 2023 - thereby establishing he market value of the property for property tax purposes. Then you immediately turn around try to tell the Cook County Assessor's office that $197 MM doesn't reflect the actual (lower) value of the property? C'mon, man. You wanted the property badly enough to pay a price for it - live with it. Don't make the Cook County (and Arlington Heights School Districts) taxpayers pay for your billionaires' folly. Geez.
Hey Gaary - I agree with all the sentiments you expressed with one clarification and an additional comment. 65% of Chicago voters did not bother to vote in the Chicago mayoral runoff election, and of the 35% of voters who did vote, Brandon Johnson with robust get out the vote efforts by the CTU and allied unions, narrowly defeated Paul Vallas with 18% of the voters to Vallas 17%. In a representative democracy, people get what they vote for, or in this case, what they did not bother to vote against.
With regard to professional sports teams, unfortunately the dynamic is that team owners extort funding for new stadiums from their host cities and states with the threat of relocating the franchise. There is so much civic pride and community connection to sports teams that politicians are fearful of being blamed for losing the team, and cave in with massive funding. Sad, but that's how the game is played these days.
(I had to wage a battle with the autocorrect on my phone to get your name spelled correctly. I finally had to leave it incorrectly-corrected, and then go back and do the fix before I posted!) Have a good day!
Crain's has an article [behind its paywall] that Reinsdorf is threatening to move to Nashville if he doesn't get $2 billion for a stadium. $1.1 billion for the stadium & $900 million for infrastructure improvements.
He says the team will be sold after his death, he's 88 & that the other investors will demand that move1
I say, Good Fucking Riddance!
Let the morons & fools in Nashville get screwed out of billions!
Especially for a really bad team, which BTW, Reinsdorf wrongly & stupidly insists isn't the reason people don't go to the Mallpark!
Don’t give up on splatter platters just yet — this one from Richard Thompson in 1991 breathed fresh life into the sappy genre. Shame that someone hasn’t added it to a Wikipedia list yet…
Caitlin wins 10-6, maybe 10-7. I might be able to back her down in the post and throw up one lucky shot. If it's make-it take-it, I'd probably get the ball two or three times. But that isn't the point, now is it?
Clark is amazing, but . . . Guarded by a 6'6'' NBA guard, she would never get to touch the ball. Her move to the basket would see her shot blocked every time, so it would be just a matter of staying close to her outside and denying the ball.
I once walked into a courtroom to drop off courtesy copies of pleadings for a judge, and the public area of the courtroom was packed with police in their uniforms. It was like a sea of blue. I found out that they were there for the capital sentencing hearing of Ronald Alvine who had been found guilty of the murder of West Chicago police officer Michael Browning. It was quite intimidating. If I remember correctly it was in Judge Mehling’s courtroom in DuPage County. I believe Alvine had waived a jury for the death penalty hearing. I remember thinking it would have been hard for the judge, if he felt that life imprisonment was the proper sentence, to explain that view to the courtroom packed with uniformed police officers who obviously wanted the death penalty.
Know the feeling. I was in a jury pool for an El Rukn gang trial. Sitting across from us was most of the El Rukn leadership. Those folks are badass and scary. The guy next to me was so scared that he made believe he only spoke Polish and did not know English. We had spoken in English together before going into the courtroom. He got dismissed.
I got dismissed because the defense did not like my military background and that I had practiced law in Rockford, Illinois.
You could cut the fear in the courtroom with a knife.
Wow! My con law professor used to say the right to free speech is meaningless without the right to a fair trial. Get the bullies and cheerleaders out of the court room.
That makes a ton of sense to me. It is hard to say where the line is on this one though. Definitely clear the gallery if there is intimidation, or noisy cheerleaders. But is it common to have people in the gallery with the intent of influencing the court? Family members of the accused or of the victims of the one who is on trial being present could make the jury sympathetic to one side. Do attorneys suggest that family members come for that reason?
The judge should have discretion to remove any spectators they consider disruptive or displaying intent to intimidate. I am actually not a big fan of victims' statements. Should a victim be less important,and justice be less, because they have no family or friends? But family members should be permitted to be present if they wish, so long as they are not disruptive.
Scamming has been around since mankind originated (or should I say personkind ?)
The methods and technology have changed, but the principles have not.
1. If you are offered a really good deal, why was it necessary to tell you since people would flock to a good deal without any offers or advertising. For example, Willie Wilson did not need to reach out to people for free gas cards, they came to him in droves.
Also, the purpose of business and scams is to make money, if someone is offering an item for a huge discount, it is a scam or stolen merchandise. Common sense is a great help here.
I am selling you a gold coin for $50 and gold is way over $1,000 an ounce…think about it.
2. Scams feed on your greed. Give me $100 and some info and you will get $1,000. How can that work, this is not a charity.
3. Know who is making the deal, if you do not know this entity, do not do business!
4. Timing, if this deal has to be done now, under a payment method which quickly has you lose control of your money…red flag!
I have been unsuccessfully scammed a number of times because I am not a trusting nice person.
In fact, I once had an aluminum siding salesman on the phone for 30 minutes until he realized I lived in a 40 story Condo. He said bad words to me and hung up…Yessss!
Not all scams appeal to the scammers greed. Some scammer tried to get me with a scam similar to the one in The Beekeeper, which played on ignorance and fear not greed. Luckily I didn't fall for it since I don't have Jason Statham to take out the bad guys. (Sorry hopeless JS fan here)
You are correct on the ignorance issue. I was selling something on FB Marketplace. I got a “buyer” who asked me to text him. When I did, he responded he was going to send me a code to authenticate that it was me. I got a code number from google and then a text from him asking for the code. It took me a minute to realize he had used my phone number to try to log in somewhere as me, and the site had sent me a code number as part of a two part authentication. My senses said something wasn’t right, and I blocked his number and reported it to Facebook.
Yes, The Beekeeper is a thoroughly entertaining movie and Jason Statham played his role perfectly! My wife is sensitive to portrayals a violence and that diminished her enjoyment of the movie, but the violence as depicted on the screen is so unreal that it is almost of a comic book nature. Highly recommend this to people who enjoy movies like The Equalizer and John Wick!
Peter - Everything you say is correct. But greed is often NOT the motive of the scam victim. Sometimes, being a kind person is the motive. The scammers have methods to manipulate the better angels of their marks to scam even those who should be best equipped to deal with scammers - hence the "Grandchild Scam". (Scammers truly prey on the elderly.) A Few years ago, my Father-In-Law - (1) an Ex-FBI Agent who had chased Russian spies around the Tri-State area in the early 1960s, and (2) an extremely financially savvy former 45-year money manager for a big-name (bullish) investment firm (but who was then in his late '80s) - was scammed by a caller claiming to be his grandson (my son) who was then overseas and in the Marines. The caller convinced grandpa that it was his grandson (bad phone connection in a third-world country) who needed money wired to him to bail him (my overseas Marine son) out of jail . My "son" had called grandpa because "he didn't want his parents mad at him for being in jail" - as the scammer said. After having cleverly manipulated the kindly-intended (not greedy) grandfather - using "urgency" of course - my FIL was out $4,000 by wiring the funds through Western Union after withdrawing them from his bank account. The scam was discovered by them hours later after they had second thoughts about involving us and finally called us.
You guys make great points, and as a grumpy old man the kind man scam would never work on me.
There appears to be a number of motivators in scamming besides greed. I guess the scammer learns about their mark and uses what works…greed, fear, kindness. Ignorance.
But don’t you want to locate these scammers and kick their butt!
But they already thought about that being in some far away location. Such a sad state of affairs.
The Grandparent scam is the easiest to pick out. When they start their sad story I ask “is that you Nicky?” They always say yes and then the story continues. When he bogs down I help him with a detail or two for the fun of it. Finally, when we get to where to send the money, I confess to him, telling him the truth. I have a lot of grandchildren, but none named Nicky. Last time I did that he got really mad and I think he put me on the don’t call list.
I find it very instructive that the overwhelming majority of readers concede that Caitlin Clark, although an incredibly transformative talent playing women's basketball, would be unable to even compete in the men's game. I guess we are all acknowledging that biology matters. And that is precisely the reason that the overwhelming majority of Americans are rightfully strongly opposed to biological males competing in women's sports.
Except that transgender women are not like biological males. Unlike men in the NBA, the testosterone and estrogen levels in transgender women are like those of cis-gender women, not cis-gender men. David, your habit of referring to transgender women as biological males not only demonstrates your lack of knowledge about biology, but it is disrespectful towards transgender women, shows off your bigotry towards us, and is really getting old.
I guess you haven't seen the video of that six foot tall man claiming to be trans knocking over a girl in a basketball game so hard, the girl's team decided to forfeit the game!
Another anti-transgender bigot heard from. Notice in Garry’s post it is a “man claiming to be a woman” playing basketball against “girls.” It’s not a college-age transgender woman playing in a college women’s basketball game. Anti-transgender bigots seem to take delight in refusing to recognize the validity of transgender identities. I guess it makes them feel superior to us. People get knocked over in basketball games all the time. I imagine that Brittney Griner, a cis-gender woman, might well accidentally knock over many women opponents, or as Garry calls them, “girls.” Griner could probably flatten more than a few cis-gender men, including Garry, on the basketball court as well.
You must read the same right wing media as David L. if all the headlines referred to the transgender woman as “A Man Claiming To Be A Woman.” And the fact is that if you insist on calling someone outside of their gender, you are a disrespectful anti-transgender bigot.
The Lia Thomas story is problematic, though: She was a mediocre collegiate swimmer -- and by that I mean fairly average -- when competing as a man -- and a standout collegiate swimmer when competing as a woman after her transition.
Now, do I think this "problem" is overblown? Yes. But I don't think it's evidence of bigotry to bring it up and wonder what the standards ought to be when natal males transition and wish to compete in girls'/women's sports.
Eric, I don’t believe that Lea was average when competing as a man. In her last season competing as a man (which I believe was after she started hormone therapy) she came in ninth across the entire country in the 1,000 yard freestyle and 29th in the 1,650 yard freestyle. When she was a freshman (before she started hormone therapy) she posted the 6th fastest time in the men's 1000 freestyle. She was also ranked #49 in men's 1650 and #98 in men's 500.
>>>During the last season Thomas competed as a member of the Penn men’s team, which was 2018-19, she ranked 554th in the 200 freestyle, 65th in the 500 freestyle and 32nd in the 1650 freestyle. As her career at Penn wrapped, she moved to fifth, first and eighth in those respective events on the women’s deck.>>>
Essentially Sports: >>During the last season in the NCAA, Lia Thomas competed in the men’s division, in 2018-19. There, she ranked 554th in the 200-yd freestyle, and she is now fifth in the event this year. Furthermore, in the 500-yd freestyle, Thomas was 65th in the country. Now, she ranked first place in the event this year. Finally, in the 1650 freestyle, she is now eighth in the nation, as opposed to 32nd in the men’s division.>>>
From Wikipedia: “Thomas began transitioning using hormone replacement therapy in May 2019, and came out as a trans woman during her junior year to her coaches, friends, and the women's and men's swim teams at the University of Pennsylvania.[1][6] She was required to swim for the men's team in the 2019–2020 academic year as a junior while undergoing hormone therapy.” Her performance as a junior was not a really good indicator of how good she was as a male swimmer because she had already started transitioning for months before the junior year men’s competition.
I recently read a New Yorker article by S.C. Cornell, December 2, 2023 called “Who gets to Play in Women’s Leagues, What a blood test taught me about testosterone, athleticism and sex.”
Yikes! It gives a real interesting background on separating “men” from “women” and how blurry the line is. As we speak the Olympic committee continues to work on this issue, And yes both the article and Olympic committee tried using the “just look at their genitals test” which does not work.
I recommend reading as background on this issue. I learned a lot.
Joanie, please forgive my lack of knowledge about these things, but are the testosterone/estrogen levels the result of hormone/medicinal therapy? If someone had not HAD any therapy but leads life as a transgender woman would she have the levels of a biological male? I'm not trying to be insulting or bigoted, at all; I am against transgender women playing on women's sports teams b/c I assumed they are retaining the considerable biological advantages of being males. I probably said all this wrong and for that I apologize. And if someone has NOT gone through this therapy, then I'm still not in favor of them competing on women's teams.
Hi Beth, You are entitled to your opinion, of course. When I transitioned from male to female, for the first year, I took spironolactone, a drug that suppresses the body’s production of testosterone, and I took estradiol (estrogen). After the first year, I had bottom surgery, and no longer had to take spironolactone as my testes were removed as part of the procedure whereby my male genitals were converted to female genitals. I continued to take estrogen until age 66 when my primary care physician weaned me off of estradiol, the trans equivalent of menopause. As I say, you are entitled to your opinion, but I experienced a tremendous loss of upper body strength, among many other physical changes, when I went on hormone therapy. So I did not retain any athletic biological advantages that I might have had as a male when I transitioned to female.
VERY interesting. With respect to Lia Thomas, HAS she transitioned entirely? Are there different levels, so to speak, of transition? I shall have to do some reading.
Caitlin Clark in the NBA reminds me of this exchange on David Letterman:
Serena Williams: “Actually it’s funny, because Andy Murray, he’s been joking about myself and him playing a match. I’m like, ‘Andy, seriously, are you kidding me?’ For me, mens’ tennis and womens’ tennis are completely, almost, two separate sports. If I were to play Andy Murray, I would lose 6-0, 6-0 in five to six minutes, maybe 10 minutes. No, it’s true. It’s a completely different sport. The men are a lot faster and they serve harder, they hit harder, it’s just a different game. I love to play women’s tennis. I only want to play girls, because I don’t want to be embarrassed. I would not do the tour, I would not do Billie Jean [King] any disservice. So Andy, stop it. I’m not going to let you kill me."
Letterman: “I’m with you. When it comes to tennis, I only want to play girls.”
Yeah, I'm a fan of Caitlin Clark, she is a terrific athlete, and would kick my a$$ in one-on-one or a game of HORSE but 0% chance she could play in the NBA.
Caitlin Clark could play in an NBA all-star game where no defense is played. She would not be able to keep up on the defensive end in a regular season NBA game. Due to NIL, look for her to stay one more year at Iowa. She can earn as much or more there while shattering all the NCAA records. She's already appearing in a State Farm commercial.
I tend to agree that she'll stay another year at Iowa. The limelight will be stronger and the NIL money will far exceed the salary she'll make in the WNBA. Most of her money will come from endorsement deals either way.
Word is she’s leaving. I like that decision - a fifth season would be a huge asterisk on her record. Yes, the footnote would explain that she broke the record in four seasons, but it’s better with no asterisk.
The country seems to have shrugged off Trump's obscene comparison of the murder of Aleksei Navalny to him being afforded every due process by four jurisdictions on 91 charges after having been found to be a rapist by a jury and the perperator of massve fraud by a judge. How far does this monster have to go before the cult members and sycophants turn on him? How much does he hate America when he says the judicial system here is equvalent to the "judicial system" of Russia under Putin?
I think it's kind of ironic. Is it Alzheimer's or did Trump simply forget that his good buddy Putin was the reason Navalny was there? Trump should have been celebrating the death. Imagine the glee Trump would feel if he could simply order the arrest of everyone that opposed him. But we'd need to find the funding for thousands of new prisons. I would be among the inmates.
Re: Sentiment of spectators. I read an article which claimed research to explain home field advantage in sports is attributable to the influence the spectators have on referees or umpires. They researchers believed that refs were not intentionally biased, but as humans the effect of a crowd expressing its beliefs induced unconscious bias. One would expect the same effect in courtrooms on both jurors and judges.
I'd like to see that article. My sense has been that whatever slight edge a home team has comes from crowd energy and not having to deal with travel. My only experience with this was when I played basketball in high school and the rims and background were more familiar at home, which helped me shoot.
Full disclosure here: I was going from memory and do not remember the source. There is a lot of research on the topic -- much of it has to do with measuring the effect of home field advantage. I found this article which looked at various possible explanations for it and officiating was one of the effects considered. The author rejects some popular explanations, and cites officiating bias as having an effect. He also finds other effects, or at least says some things, like the thin air in Denver, are possible effects.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/what-really-causes-home-field-advantage-and-why-its-on-the-decline
Suspect baseball may have a different psychological home advantage in the last-at-bat thing
In reference to the journalist who was scammed: one of the biggest helps to scammers is that they can spoof a phone number, i.e. have a number not theirs show up on caller i.d. Phone companies should not allow this. I let my calls go to voicemail before answering because of this. BTW, does this show how ancient I am?
I don't think it shows you are ancient at all. You know how to use caller ID and voicemail, and how to be on guard against scams. If you had said you let calls go to your answering machine, then that would be different.
I get spoofed calls almost every day. I'm always on guard for them. The weirdest is when I'm called by my own number, which used to happen occasionally!
Any time I get a number from a named person I don't know, it's always a scam call. What I don't get is how anyone falls for that crap? Exactly why is Samantha Carson trying to sell me auto insurance?
But how that incredibly gullible woman could put 50 grand in a shoebox & give to someone flat out boggles the minds of anyone with even half a brain!
Did you read the article she wrote? It explains exactly how she came to put that money in a shoebox.
In a moment of being distracted and possibly tired, she listened to enough of a scammers pitch to get on the hook. Then once they had her scared and stressed it is extremely hard to think rationally.
Are you crazy?
It didn't matter that she was tired & distracted, no sane person would put 50 grand in a shoebox & give it to a stranger!
That depends on your definition of "sane person". If you allow that a person can temporarily have a breakdown in cognitive function and thus not be sane in that moment, then, sure, I agree with your statement. According to the article, she was on the phone continuously for a very long time in a high stress situation. Also according to the article it is that breakdown of cognitive function that is typical in humans that have provided police a way to extract a false confessions from people. They keep them in interrogation for an extended period of time.
So you after all that you could say she had temporarily lost her sanity. I don't think she would disagree.
Where we may disagree is that I think all of us are vulnerable to losing it like that.
I didn't post my favorite book that I read in 2023, because it is an old book, but it is relevant to this issue. It is Voodoo Science by Robert Park. The author is a physicist who writes about the prevalence of ridiculous claims like cold fusion, perpetual motion machines, homeopathy, etc. The author seems like a very smart and rational person. He admits that he sometimes he has little patience for people who believe aliens have visited earth. But he has tried to temper that by remembering a story of when, for a few minutes, while he was driving to Roswell NM in the mid-50's, he believed in UFOs.
I don't care how much stress she was under or how long she was on the phone!
She was a gullible fool & got what she deserved for being a gullible fool!
And I do believe in UFOs, because I've seen an unidentified flying object, but I certainly know it wasn't from Martians, it was just something in the sky I couldn't identify, hence: Unidentified!
I think you are pretending to not know what I meant when I said "believe in UFOs"
I especially like it when they spoof my own phone number! Nice try, eh?
Kudos to Eric for that elegant Animal House reference. Now on to what's really important in the world this morning: Who's the guy on the motorcycle in the Leader of the Pack video? Spoiler alert. I could not figure it out and finally cheated and went to the YouTube video to look at comments. Clearly it was somebody hamming it up for laughs. Answer: Robert Goulet. I wouldn't have figured that out--I think while other people's noses and ears grow with age, Robert Goulet's chin did the same thing. I can't recognize him without it.
I didn't know that was him, but he was as scary as a bunny portraying a motorcycle gang leader!
I missed it...where was it?
Paraphrasing from Dean Wormer: View: Pathetic, evil and disgusting is no way to go through life, Republicans.
Derp...of course! Thanks. 😊
Wow, many EZ readers don’t recognize how good NBA players are. Caitlin Clark is awesome but absolutely could not make the NBA. She can shoot, but she’d be among the smallest (only 6 feet tall), physically weakest and slowest players.
Clark isn't quick or strong enough to beat a defender off the dribble (much less finish at the rim against 7-footers), so her defender would stick to her and not allow any open space for jumpers. And on defense, she’d be targeted and toasted on literally every possession.
I hate questions like these because the answer is an absolute, objective "no," but in explaining why it feels like I'm denigrating Caitlin Clark, who is an all-time talent.
Obviously. I will write something similar next week, also pointing out that she would be lightest player in the NBA, and it IS a physical game. The truth is that she probably wouldn't be a standout in DIII men's basketball, which takes nothing away from her singular talents. Many people don't like to hear this as it sounds sexist, but a good high school boys team would likely beat the best team in the WNBA.
I was wondering where you were going with the prompt. I think most basketball fans would say the same. Again I don’t wanna be a hater, because Caitlin Clark is becoming appointment TV. But let’s be real here.
I think Mayor Johnson suffers from the Dunning-Kruger Effect, which in essence is people overestimating their own knowledge and/or abilities, which leads to poor decision-making, mistrust among colleagues, and being uncoachable.
I'm baffled as to anyone calling the truly incompetent Johnson a good politician. He was just a stooge the rotten CTU managed to get elected by lying to all Chicagoans & then fooling 51% of them. He's a flat out disaster as mayor!
As for the billionaire owners of the White Sox & Bears, not one damned penny for you of our tax money! Both of them could go to the banks & borrow the money to build new stadiums by posting the team values as collateral. The Sox are worth at least $2 billion & the Bears are worth over $6 billion!
Even worse, both teams screwed the public years ago & got free stadiums from us, Reinsdorf by getting that crook Thompson to create the stadium authority to build a new Sox Park & the truly thieving McCaskeys by getting that fool Richie Daley to rebuild Soldier Field into the Toilet Bowl at a cost of several hundred million!
So JB, don't be like that nitwit governor of New York, who just gave the constantly failing Buffalo Bills $500 million so they can have a new stadium.
Hang tough, the Bears bought Arlington Park, borrow the money & build there, if your so desperate for a new place to play!
You mean fooling over half of the pitiful number who actually bothered to vote for Mayor.
Full-throated agreement with you on Reinsdorf and the McCaskeys' using their own money for stadiums (stadii?) - the McCaskeys' are billionaires only because of the appreciation of the Bears franchise - not due to any business acumen on their part (other than not selling the team). Leverage the dough you have to build a stadium.
As for the McCaskey/Bears attempt to ratchet down the property taxes they have to pay on the Arlington Heights property: Screw you and the horse you rode in on. You buy the property for $197 MM in 2023 - thereby establishing he market value of the property for property tax purposes. Then you immediately turn around try to tell the Cook County Assessor's office that $197 MM doesn't reflect the actual (lower) value of the property? C'mon, man. You wanted the property badly enough to pay a price for it - live with it. Don't make the Cook County (and Arlington Heights School Districts) taxpayers pay for your billionaires' folly. Geez.
Hey Gaary - I agree with all the sentiments you expressed with one clarification and an additional comment. 65% of Chicago voters did not bother to vote in the Chicago mayoral runoff election, and of the 35% of voters who did vote, Brandon Johnson with robust get out the vote efforts by the CTU and allied unions, narrowly defeated Paul Vallas with 18% of the voters to Vallas 17%. In a representative democracy, people get what they vote for, or in this case, what they did not bother to vote against.
With regard to professional sports teams, unfortunately the dynamic is that team owners extort funding for new stadiums from their host cities and states with the threat of relocating the franchise. There is so much civic pride and community connection to sports teams that politicians are fearful of being blamed for losing the team, and cave in with massive funding. Sad, but that's how the game is played these days.
(I had to wage a battle with the autocorrect on my phone to get your name spelled correctly. I finally had to leave it incorrectly-corrected, and then go back and do the fix before I posted!) Have a good day!
Crain's has an article [behind its paywall] that Reinsdorf is threatening to move to Nashville if he doesn't get $2 billion for a stadium. $1.1 billion for the stadium & $900 million for infrastructure improvements.
He says the team will be sold after his death, he's 88 & that the other investors will demand that move1
I say, Good Fucking Riddance!
Let the morons & fools in Nashville get screwed out of billions!
Especially for a really bad team, which BTW, Reinsdorf wrongly & stupidly insists isn't the reason people don't go to the Mallpark!
Don’t give up on splatter platters just yet — this one from Richard Thompson in 1991 breathed fresh life into the sappy genre. Shame that someone hasn’t added it to a Wikipedia list yet…
https://youtu.be/MOCZwKmjR6E?si=bFiHwsS6r-Vt14It
Red hair and black leather. My favorite color scheme!
Thanks for the reminder! Such a great ride. James and Janie on that lovely ‘52…
In my opinion, there's nothing in this world
Beats a '52 Vincent and a Redheaded girl.
Great song. Not quite a teen song, but a gruesome death, for sure.
What fuels my optimism for Caitlin Clark's NBA prospects is that signing her would a marketing slam-dunk (sorry).
Okay Eric, let’s get serious. Half court, you and Caitlin. One on one. ten points. You start with 6 points and the ball. We have a ref call fouls.
Who wins?
If there is action on this at the sportsbook I'll put my money on Caitlin. But if it was Demar DeRozan instead of EZ I would switch my bet.
Caitlin wins 10-6, maybe 10-7. I might be able to back her down in the post and throw up one lucky shot. If it's make-it take-it, I'd probably get the ball two or three times. But that isn't the point, now is it?
Reminds me of the Michael Jordan joke. He said his Bulls would beat LaBrons team in a close game. Why close? Jordan says, “We’re 60 years old”
EZ, do you still play ball?
Clark is amazing, but . . . Guarded by a 6'6'' NBA guard, she would never get to touch the ball. Her move to the basket would see her shot blocked every time, so it would be just a matter of staying close to her outside and denying the ball.
I once walked into a courtroom to drop off courtesy copies of pleadings for a judge, and the public area of the courtroom was packed with police in their uniforms. It was like a sea of blue. I found out that they were there for the capital sentencing hearing of Ronald Alvine who had been found guilty of the murder of West Chicago police officer Michael Browning. It was quite intimidating. If I remember correctly it was in Judge Mehling’s courtroom in DuPage County. I believe Alvine had waived a jury for the death penalty hearing. I remember thinking it would have been hard for the judge, if he felt that life imprisonment was the proper sentence, to explain that view to the courtroom packed with uniformed police officers who obviously wanted the death penalty.
Know the feeling. I was in a jury pool for an El Rukn gang trial. Sitting across from us was most of the El Rukn leadership. Those folks are badass and scary. The guy next to me was so scared that he made believe he only spoke Polish and did not know English. We had spoken in English together before going into the courtroom. He got dismissed.
I got dismissed because the defense did not like my military background and that I had practiced law in Rockford, Illinois.
You could cut the fear in the courtroom with a knife.
Wow! My con law professor used to say the right to free speech is meaningless without the right to a fair trial. Get the bullies and cheerleaders out of the court room.
That makes a ton of sense to me. It is hard to say where the line is on this one though. Definitely clear the gallery if there is intimidation, or noisy cheerleaders. But is it common to have people in the gallery with the intent of influencing the court? Family members of the accused or of the victims of the one who is on trial being present could make the jury sympathetic to one side. Do attorneys suggest that family members come for that reason?
The judge should have discretion to remove any spectators they consider disruptive or displaying intent to intimidate. I am actually not a big fan of victims' statements. Should a victim be less important,and justice be less, because they have no family or friends? But family members should be permitted to be present if they wish, so long as they are not disruptive.
Scamming has been around since mankind originated (or should I say personkind ?)
The methods and technology have changed, but the principles have not.
1. If you are offered a really good deal, why was it necessary to tell you since people would flock to a good deal without any offers or advertising. For example, Willie Wilson did not need to reach out to people for free gas cards, they came to him in droves.
Also, the purpose of business and scams is to make money, if someone is offering an item for a huge discount, it is a scam or stolen merchandise. Common sense is a great help here.
I am selling you a gold coin for $50 and gold is way over $1,000 an ounce…think about it.
2. Scams feed on your greed. Give me $100 and some info and you will get $1,000. How can that work, this is not a charity.
3. Know who is making the deal, if you do not know this entity, do not do business!
4. Timing, if this deal has to be done now, under a payment method which quickly has you lose control of your money…red flag!
I have been unsuccessfully scammed a number of times because I am not a trusting nice person.
In fact, I once had an aluminum siding salesman on the phone for 30 minutes until he realized I lived in a 40 story Condo. He said bad words to me and hung up…Yessss!
Not all scams appeal to the scammers greed. Some scammer tried to get me with a scam similar to the one in The Beekeeper, which played on ignorance and fear not greed. Luckily I didn't fall for it since I don't have Jason Statham to take out the bad guys. (Sorry hopeless JS fan here)
You are correct on the ignorance issue. I was selling something on FB Marketplace. I got a “buyer” who asked me to text him. When I did, he responded he was going to send me a code to authenticate that it was me. I got a code number from google and then a text from him asking for the code. It took me a minute to realize he had used my phone number to try to log in somewhere as me, and the site had sent me a code number as part of a two part authentication. My senses said something wasn’t right, and I blocked his number and reported it to Facebook.
That's a new one! Its hard to keep up with these guys. Just think if they used their powers for good.
Yes, The Beekeeper is a thoroughly entertaining movie and Jason Statham played his role perfectly! My wife is sensitive to portrayals a violence and that diminished her enjoyment of the movie, but the violence as depicted on the screen is so unreal that it is almost of a comic book nature. Highly recommend this to people who enjoy movies like The Equalizer and John Wick!
Peter - Everything you say is correct. But greed is often NOT the motive of the scam victim. Sometimes, being a kind person is the motive. The scammers have methods to manipulate the better angels of their marks to scam even those who should be best equipped to deal with scammers - hence the "Grandchild Scam". (Scammers truly prey on the elderly.) A Few years ago, my Father-In-Law - (1) an Ex-FBI Agent who had chased Russian spies around the Tri-State area in the early 1960s, and (2) an extremely financially savvy former 45-year money manager for a big-name (bullish) investment firm (but who was then in his late '80s) - was scammed by a caller claiming to be his grandson (my son) who was then overseas and in the Marines. The caller convinced grandpa that it was his grandson (bad phone connection in a third-world country) who needed money wired to him to bail him (my overseas Marine son) out of jail . My "son" had called grandpa because "he didn't want his parents mad at him for being in jail" - as the scammer said. After having cleverly manipulated the kindly-intended (not greedy) grandfather - using "urgency" of course - my FIL was out $4,000 by wiring the funds through Western Union after withdrawing them from his bank account. The scam was discovered by them hours later after they had second thoughts about involving us and finally called us.
You guys make great points, and as a grumpy old man the kind man scam would never work on me.
There appears to be a number of motivators in scamming besides greed. I guess the scammer learns about their mark and uses what works…greed, fear, kindness. Ignorance.
But don’t you want to locate these scammers and kick their butt!
But they already thought about that being in some far away location. Such a sad state of affairs.
Here's what to say to the grandpa/grandma scammers when the supposed grandchild calls:
"Remember when I used to send you $100 for your birthday & $200 for every Christmas?"
The scammers replies yes
'Well you never once thanked me for the gift, so guess what, rot in that hell you damned ingrate!"
Yo Garry, like your style here.
The Grandparent scam is the easiest to pick out. When they start their sad story I ask “is that you Nicky?” They always say yes and then the story continues. When he bogs down I help him with a detail or two for the fun of it. Finally, when we get to where to send the money, I confess to him, telling him the truth. I have a lot of grandchildren, but none named Nicky. Last time I did that he got really mad and I think he put me on the don’t call list.
I find it very instructive that the overwhelming majority of readers concede that Caitlin Clark, although an incredibly transformative talent playing women's basketball, would be unable to even compete in the men's game. I guess we are all acknowledging that biology matters. And that is precisely the reason that the overwhelming majority of Americans are rightfully strongly opposed to biological males competing in women's sports.
Except that transgender women are not like biological males. Unlike men in the NBA, the testosterone and estrogen levels in transgender women are like those of cis-gender women, not cis-gender men. David, your habit of referring to transgender women as biological males not only demonstrates your lack of knowledge about biology, but it is disrespectful towards transgender women, shows off your bigotry towards us, and is really getting old.
I guess you haven't seen the video of that six foot tall man claiming to be trans knocking over a girl in a basketball game so hard, the girl's team decided to forfeit the game!
Another anti-transgender bigot heard from. Notice in Garry’s post it is a “man claiming to be a woman” playing basketball against “girls.” It’s not a college-age transgender woman playing in a college women’s basketball game. Anti-transgender bigots seem to take delight in refusing to recognize the validity of transgender identities. I guess it makes them feel superior to us. People get knocked over in basketball games all the time. I imagine that Brittney Griner, a cis-gender woman, might well accidentally knock over many women opponents, or as Garry calls them, “girls.” Griner could probably flatten more than a few cis-gender men, including Garry, on the basketball court as well.
That's call me names while accusing me of calling other names!
And she wasn't just knocked over, she was injured from that huge guy & he really was a guy, if you looked at him!
And all the headlines for that article used that terminology, "A Man Claiming To Be A Woman"
You must read the same right wing media as David L. if all the headlines referred to the transgender woman as “A Man Claiming To Be A Woman.” And the fact is that if you insist on calling someone outside of their gender, you are a disrespectful anti-transgender bigot.
You sure have a lot of anger Joannie.
And as far as I'm concerned, no matter how much surgery you have & how many female hormones you take, you're still a man!
That's basic anatomy & science!
The Lia Thomas story is problematic, though: She was a mediocre collegiate swimmer -- and by that I mean fairly average -- when competing as a man -- and a standout collegiate swimmer when competing as a woman after her transition.
Now, do I think this "problem" is overblown? Yes. But I don't think it's evidence of bigotry to bring it up and wonder what the standards ought to be when natal males transition and wish to compete in girls'/women's sports.
Eric, I don’t believe that Lea was average when competing as a man. In her last season competing as a man (which I believe was after she started hormone therapy) she came in ninth across the entire country in the 1,000 yard freestyle and 29th in the 1,650 yard freestyle. When she was a freshman (before she started hormone therapy) she posted the 6th fastest time in the men's 1000 freestyle. She was also ranked #49 in men's 1650 and #98 in men's 500.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/lia-thomas-trans-swimmer-ron-desantis-b2091218.html
https://www.reddit.com/r/MtF/comments/tjphyi/news_flash_lia_thomas_was_a_top_swimmer_before/?rdt=51239
From Swimming World Magazine:
>>>During the last season Thomas competed as a member of the Penn men’s team, which was 2018-19, she ranked 554th in the 200 freestyle, 65th in the 500 freestyle and 32nd in the 1650 freestyle. As her career at Penn wrapped, she moved to fifth, first and eighth in those respective events on the women’s deck.>>>
https://www.swimmingworldmagazine.com/news/a-look-at-the-numbers-and-times-no-denying-the-advantages-of-lia-thomas/
Essentially Sports: >>During the last season in the NCAA, Lia Thomas competed in the men’s division, in 2018-19. There, she ranked 554th in the 200-yd freestyle, and she is now fifth in the event this year. Furthermore, in the 500-yd freestyle, Thomas was 65th in the country. Now, she ranked first place in the event this year. Finally, in the 1650 freestyle, she is now eighth in the nation, as opposed to 32nd in the men’s division.>>>
https://www.essentiallysports.com/us-sports-ncaa-news-what-rank-did-lia-thomas-stand-at-while-competing-in-the-mens-swimming-division/
These have different events than the ones you cited, so I'm not sure what the evidence shows exactly.
From Wikipedia: “Thomas began transitioning using hormone replacement therapy in May 2019, and came out as a trans woman during her junior year to her coaches, friends, and the women's and men's swim teams at the University of Pennsylvania.[1][6] She was required to swim for the men's team in the 2019–2020 academic year as a junior while undergoing hormone therapy.” Her performance as a junior was not a really good indicator of how good she was as a male swimmer because she had already started transitioning for months before the junior year men’s competition.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lia_Thomas#:~:text=She%20was%20required%20to%20swim,to%20the%20COVID%2D19%20pandemic.
I recently read a New Yorker article by S.C. Cornell, December 2, 2023 called “Who gets to Play in Women’s Leagues, What a blood test taught me about testosterone, athleticism and sex.”
Yikes! It gives a real interesting background on separating “men” from “women” and how blurry the line is. As we speak the Olympic committee continues to work on this issue, And yes both the article and Olympic committee tried using the “just look at their genitals test” which does not work.
I recommend reading as background on this issue. I learned a lot.
Can you paste more of that article here? New Yorker is paywalled up.
Joanie, please forgive my lack of knowledge about these things, but are the testosterone/estrogen levels the result of hormone/medicinal therapy? If someone had not HAD any therapy but leads life as a transgender woman would she have the levels of a biological male? I'm not trying to be insulting or bigoted, at all; I am against transgender women playing on women's sports teams b/c I assumed they are retaining the considerable biological advantages of being males. I probably said all this wrong and for that I apologize. And if someone has NOT gone through this therapy, then I'm still not in favor of them competing on women's teams.
Hi Beth, You are entitled to your opinion, of course. When I transitioned from male to female, for the first year, I took spironolactone, a drug that suppresses the body’s production of testosterone, and I took estradiol (estrogen). After the first year, I had bottom surgery, and no longer had to take spironolactone as my testes were removed as part of the procedure whereby my male genitals were converted to female genitals. I continued to take estrogen until age 66 when my primary care physician weaned me off of estradiol, the trans equivalent of menopause. As I say, you are entitled to your opinion, but I experienced a tremendous loss of upper body strength, among many other physical changes, when I went on hormone therapy. So I did not retain any athletic biological advantages that I might have had as a male when I transitioned to female.
VERY interesting. With respect to Lia Thomas, HAS she transitioned entirely? Are there different levels, so to speak, of transition? I shall have to do some reading.
Caitlin Clark in the NBA reminds me of this exchange on David Letterman:
Serena Williams: “Actually it’s funny, because Andy Murray, he’s been joking about myself and him playing a match. I’m like, ‘Andy, seriously, are you kidding me?’ For me, mens’ tennis and womens’ tennis are completely, almost, two separate sports. If I were to play Andy Murray, I would lose 6-0, 6-0 in five to six minutes, maybe 10 minutes. No, it’s true. It’s a completely different sport. The men are a lot faster and they serve harder, they hit harder, it’s just a different game. I love to play women’s tennis. I only want to play girls, because I don’t want to be embarrassed. I would not do the tour, I would not do Billie Jean [King] any disservice. So Andy, stop it. I’m not going to let you kill me."
Letterman: “I’m with you. When it comes to tennis, I only want to play girls.”
Yeah, I'm a fan of Caitlin Clark, she is a terrific athlete, and would kick my a$$ in one-on-one or a game of HORSE but 0% chance she could play in the NBA.