Sorry physicists. Shut down your supercolliders, turn off your telescopes, and reprogram your supercomputers. José Canseco has a new theory that makes all your old theories obsolete. The paradigm has shifted, FKers.
415 thoughts on “Original Gravity Grill”
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Yeah, but you gotta admit it’s not a half-bad line of stoned extrapolation from a mental midget…
Pretty sure Hunter Thompson saw 30 foot leather birds flying way more recently than the age of the dinosaurs.
Somewhere around Barstow.
Definitely bat country.
It’s MOND gone mad!
You have to admit that his theory neatly evades solar system constraints. Also, I’m waiting to hear his thoughts on evolution of the fine structure constant.
Hey, at least he likes Umphrey’s McGee.
How depressing
There’s something very Craig Ferguson about that robot.
Look away now, MikeV.
???
Thanks, and go As.
Arsenal
oh, got it.
Yeah one of the weird things about not having cable or any of the fancy channels anymore, I really don’t follow like ANY footy. Like at all.
I kinda want to force myself to get into MLS this year. I know the kids would like going to some Quakes games.
Thanks, and go As.
Sorry, after your reply I was worried about spoilers in case you were watching later so I though silence was the best policy. It’s here if you’re interested.
Lew lied, he was offside.
LOLOLOLOLOL Guy Fieri LOLOLOLOLOLOL
BA top 100 is out. Russell is the only player for the A’s.
Wow: http://www.cbssports.com/mlb/blog/eye-on-baseball/21733001/video-the-story-of-the-2013-blue-jays-as-told-by-nintendo
NOT 8-BIT ENOUGH.
Unpopular opinion time!
I know you’re not all gun lovers here, but can some of us agree that the argument is more nuanced than “Buy a shotgun”? Perhaps I’m opening myself up to attack, but it seems a bit hypocritical that people hired to protect government officials don’t carry nothing but double-barrel shotguns.
It is more nuanced than that. But a solid 50% of the problem is that too many gun owners don’t see the difference between them (untrained, at least in high-stress situations) and the Secret Service (the opposite).
Also, essentially no citizens face the kind of risk that, say, Obama does.
The reason “buy a shotgun” makes sense for home defense is that you are a lot less likely to miss with it.
no semi-automatic pistol sidearms?
Is there an active threat against you or your family? There usually are against government officials
So if there were an active threat against my family, it’d be OK to have more than a shotgun? Seems ludicrous to me, given that if certain people had their way, I’d be unable to legally purchase the necessary protection.
I believe that law enforcement should be able to license private security to protect people who are actively under threat.
Yup.
This is the right answer.
People with training/aptitude should have licenses. If I believed there was a credible threat against my family, I would hire security. And, if I really wanted to be armed myself, it would still be the case that the shotgun is the best home defense for someone like me who can aim fairly well, but not fabulously by any means, under shooting range conditions and has never faced home-invasion conditions.
This is old, but relevant.
http://abcnews.go.com/2020/video?id=7312687
To turn this around a bit. Do you really want someone who’s delusional enough to *think* there’s an active threat against them handling firearms?
How many civilians in this country do you think have active threats against them?
Exceptionally few.
Do you count families of violent street gang members?
Not really. That would fall into the “get a shotgun crowd.”
I’m no genius when it comes to… well, anything. But I could feel my IQ dropping as I read Canseco’s tweets.
Unpopular opinion time!
I love Jose.
He’s hilarious. But amazingly dumb.
I revised my opinion upward after this series of tweets. He’s dumb, but at least he’s thinking about big concepts, which is sort of endearing.
Hehe, that’s one way to look at it.
The thing is… Jose was dumb as a stump BEFORE he became a stoner, so there’s only up to go from there. Seeing the efficacy of his extrapolation process, even though his raw initial data was flawed, makes me think he’s sort of an idiot savant of sorts, at least when he’s high.
Mad basketball skillz!
If I show this to the Spawn, they will love it, but it will create an unreasonable expectation that Eddie will showcase his dunking skills the next time we go to the zoo, which will likely end in tears. Not sure which way to go…
Whoa. http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57570198/columbia-professor-strips-shows-9-11-tape-during-class/
Here’s video. I can imagine this is standard fare for Bed’s students.
That wasn’t even the stupidest thing Canseco has said on Twitter recently
Forget climate change, our universe may be destroyed by another.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/02/19/172422921/if-higgs-boson-calculations-are-right-a-catastrophic-bubble-could-end-universe?utm_source=npr&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=20130219
Somebody call Walter Bishop. I think we may be in trouble.
The good news is that the odds of it happening anywhere near us are infinitesimally small (and anything happening outside a 5 billion light year sphere doesn’t hit us until after the Sun has gone red giant on our ass).
The really good news is that this Universe only exists (maybe) because of such a quantum phase transition bubble nucleation – they’re pretty widespread in ultra high energy theoretical physics.
The really really good news is that the accelerating expansion of space means that we move away from distant points in the Universe faster than the speed of light – which is allowed because space itself is stretching rather than a mass moving through space; it’s the ultimate in surfing. The downside hear is that we suffer heat-death.
And it’s possible that this is a mechanism for a multiverse to recycle itself by creating such a vastness (thanks to the accelerating expansion) the the timescale for bubble nucleation to happen falls to within the heat-lifetime of a Universe. In true quantum physics fashion empty space is then actually chock-full of probability.
I don’t know what most of that means, despite my religious devotion to Star Trek.
I do know what most of that means, despite my high school education.
If there are any specific questions, feel free …
If a quantum phase transition bubble nucleation happens within the heat-lifetime of a Universe, what are some appropriate metaphors to explain what happens from there? Does it eat/consume the heat dying universe? Does it expand into the dying universe’s spacetime and cause some sort of compression phase akin to a big crunch? If a “bubble of true vacuum” passes through a point of spacetime, does the information from that point get completely obliterated, or would some of it pass through the bubble and have effects on the universe that now occupies that point in spacetime?
I feel like Canseco here… trying to make intuitive frog leaps onto lily pads I can only guess the location of…
My guess (and this is way outside my area of expertise) is that it would manifest as an abrupt change in what we think of as “laws of physics”.
From that article, I’m not really clear on exactly what kind of shift in the Higgs field they are talking about. Maybe ptbnl can answer my question: Are they talking about a jump from one position on the minimum of a Mexican hat potential to a different position that is still on the minimum? Or is it a change to the potential, so that it has a minimum at zero and the Higgs mechanism doesn’t work anymore?
Good questions.
There’s a real problem with metaphors in cosmology, because anything familiar enough to be useful is inevitably flawed. My friend Mikey likes to recall a conversation in which I replied to his “So you mean it’s like …” with “Yes! And then again, no”.
The surface of the nucleated bubble expands with the speed of light (which is why you never see it coming), and as far as we know it completely obliterates the space it expands into (but we also know that our standard model of physics is incomplete and self-contradictory, so we don’t really know what happens at such extremes).
I think that if one can simultaneously understand and envision multiple “Yes, but no” metaphors at once, like a Venn Diagram, one can focus on the overlapping zone, and sort of separate informational wheat from chaff.
So much this.
Would the surface of the nucleated bubble create some sort of pressure or shock wave (or quantum equivalent) that would lead in front of the bubble?
If the bubble is expanding with the speed of light, I don’t think that anything could lead it.
Would that just mean that whatever was leading would also have to move with the speed of light?
But how would it get ahead of the bubble in the first place?
By being outside of it in the first place.
But wouldn’t whatever it was made of get eaten by the bubble?
Well sure. But if you hit something with the speed of light, wouldn’t it briefly fly out in front of it (by an infinitesimal amount) ever so briefly before being gobbled up? Possibly enough to see it’s impact coming from a far?
That would entail the something travelling at greater than the speed of light, which so far hasn’t been found to be possible.
Not necessarily. If I push a car, the car is in front of me at the rate of speed I’m at. I could see a case where when universes collided all matter in the destroyed universe simply became a shell around the new one. Or a case where it was a shell until it became completely annihilated by the bubble. It doesn’t necessitate that it move faster than light, just that it move in concert with the bubble’s boundaries. But maybe that gets into what would happen if you’re on a ship moving the speed of light and you step forward. Are you going faster than light or are you simply appearing to go faster than light from the perspective of an outside observer?
At this point I should probably stop and just leave it to the actual physicists rather than the armchair ones to answer, but if I understand the Neil Degrasse Tyson book I’m reading right now, it’s impossible to appear faster than the speed of light – even if an object is moving toward you, the light from that object (or in this case, the image of someone moving a step forward) wouldn’t appear to be faster than the speed of light.
@dmoas The problem with your pushing the car analogy is that information doesn’t travel faster than the speed of light. When you push a car, the front of the car doesn’t start moving until it knows about the fact that you are pushing. Or, to take the micro view, you are pushing on some molecules at the back of the car and they push on the molecules in front of them, etc. The force from your push won’t actually propagate faster than the speed of light (and it probably propagates a fair bit slower).
At one point when I was a kid, I came up with this idea that you could have instantaneous communication across huge distances if you could just get a really long and stiff rod. Then someone would slide their end of the rod back and forth and, since the length of the rod is fixed, the other end would react instantaneously. Well, it doesn’t actually work this way, so what would really happen is that you would send compressional waves along the rod at the speed of sound in whatever metal you happened to be using.
It’s not that the information would travel faster than light, but be traveling in front of the information coming from the bubble. The car example fails mainly because it’s hard to imagine me having enough force to instantaneously obliterate it upon pushing, but from someone looking at me head on, the light from the car would still reach them before the light from me. You could say that by the time you could actually observe it, you’d be toast so (philosophically) relatively speaking for all intents in purposes you couldn’t really see it coming, which may be what you’re all getting at?
The shockwave would have to be composed of something and come from some event – in this case the “force” of the bubble. In other words, it would have to start some time, however small, after the bubble began, pushed on by the bubble. But the bubble, travelling at the highest speed possible, would swallow up whatever composes the shockwave before it could get started.
Isn’t there some way that the “quantum shockwave” (for lack of a better term) could start BEFORE the event, in anticipation? Or is that completely absurd?
@dmoas If you want something traveling out in front of the light-speed bubble, then it has to get started before the bubble comes into existence / starts expanding. In which case, what you see is not the bubble, it’s whatever that other thing is.
@Kay What would inform the quantum shockwave that it needed to start?
@colin, in the scenario we’re discussing, one universe expanding into another, isn’t there always something outside the bubble, namely the other universe?
@dmoas Yeah, but the regular old universe, just sitting there isn’t any evidence of this bubble. What I’m saying is that there is nothing you would be able to see that would serve as advance warning of the bubble. One second everything would look normal and the next second it would have swept over and past you.
I’m willing to wager my entire net worth that it hits Russia first. Anyone?
@colin Right. *IF* there were a wave a of some sort as I was describing, it would basically be so close in front of the bubble that it wouldn’t really matter if it were there, short of stopping time just as the light from it reached you, there’d be no way to differentiate it from the oblivion that followed. Hell, even if you could stop time to look at it, you wouldn’t know wtf it was other than know that you’re toast.
@dmoas actually no, it is an important distinction between being “closer than we humans can distinguish” and “fundamentally simultaneous”.
@kay I think the quantum shock wave is the twinless virtual particles. I’d love to ask Hawking about this.
@ptbnl this made my FKing day, you know?!? I ask a question and to even possibly get an answer, it’s got to go up the chain to STEPHEN HAWKING? (squee!)
Thank you for being so awesome and sharing your work with us, even though sometimes we punt it around like monkeys trying to fk a football.
No – that would require it to move faster than the speed of light.
Couldn’t you theoretically see the effects of the bubble coming though?
The only thing I can think of is something akin to Hawking radiation, where one of a virtual pair of particles would become real by virtue of its partner being consumed before they had annihilated.
However I am no expert on this, and the physics across the bubble edge is complicated stuff.
Why does it need to happen within the “heat-lifetime”. Even in a universe that has fully thermalized, couldn’t you still nucleate a bubble of alternate vacuum? Like you said, most of the rest of the universe would be receding so rapidly that the bubble would never catch them, but it can still happen, no?
Yes, I was only invoking the heat-lifetime as that span of time over which there might be an interesting Universe for life to exist in. But certainly you could have enormous fallow periods too.
I intuit that quantum phase transition bubble nucleation is more likely to end/consume a universe than for a universe to reach complete thermalization.
I wish we could run millions of universe simulations and see what the data shows. Then again, I’m pretty sure that’s exactly what’s happening on some level, and we’ve inserted downgraded copies of our “true” consciousnesses to “inhabit” the models, because the initial AI-only models were massive failures.
If the expansion of the first Universe is accelerating then after a certain point space is stretching fast enough that you can have both the head-dead host and the newly-spawned bubble co-existing for all eternity.
Is it possible that the core laws of physics and thermodynamics vary within these bubbles? If light speed is not a constant between the two universes, umm, my brain kinda fries at that point.
To take it one step further, perhaps some of the inconsistencies we see in the laws of physics is simply caused by the overlapping of a previous universes integrating, both with separate and competing rules.
So Canseco may have been half-right with the different gravity idea?
muahahahahahahahah
To be clear, the inconsistencies are between our theories of (i) gravity and (ii) all the other forces (ie. general relativity and quantum chromodynamics). Each is spectacularly successful, accurate and self-consistent, but they are mutually incompatible. Mostly this is just at a theoretical level since there are very few domains (black holes & big bangs) where they are both required.
Right, I was mostly going for kind of funny. To go Canseco here, but perhaps those few domains are a result of universes colliding/being formed, in which case it would explain the fuzziness when they overlap.
This may or may not make sense, but…
Are there any reasonable hypotheses about data repetition in bordering universes (i.e. if one could observe multiple bordering or parallel universes, would one see/extrapolate data patterns in the aggregate that suggest some sort of relation/interconnection/shared data pool between the universes)? Do we have any mathematical extrapolations or strong hypotheses about physical properties of other universes (i.e., do they by necessity have the same laws of thermodynamics, etc…)?
The question of why the physical constants of nature have the values they do in our Universe is definitely debated, alongside the thought experiment of them taking different values is each uni in a multiverse.
In part this comes back the importance of the distinction between “so close we can’t measure the difference” and “fundamentally identical”; the latter reflects some underlying principle (often a symmetry in the theory) whereas the former is often seen as a problem of fine-tuning. For example, for many years Hawking argued that since
(i) the natural value for the vacuum energy was 1 with 120 zeros after it (10^120)
(ii) the observed value was between 0 and 10
therefore the value had to be exactly zero due to some as yet unknown symmetry. Then we measured it to be about 0.7, but still no-one knows how or why you get a number 120 orders of magnitude away from what you’d expect.
Another approach to this is to invoke an anthropic principle and argue that the values of the constants can take any values, and do across all the different Universes, but only those values that give Universes capable of supporting life can ever be observed. Not very elegant, and requires all kinds of assumptions about what life could look like across the multiverse.
There is one theory for why gravity is so weak that proposes the existence of one or more “large” extra-dimensions, where large in this context means a fraction of a millimeter or so. These large extra dimensions are curled up, so it’s like a garden hose — from far away it looks like a one dimensional line but if you get close up, you can see a second dimension, which takes you around the circumference of the hose. String theory, in particular, involves lots of curled up extra dimensions, but they are typically really really small (like way smaller than an atom) so that explains why we never notice them.
In the “large extra dimensions” theory, you need to explain why we haven’t noticed the fourth spatial dimension, so how that works is that electromagnetism and the weak and strong forces are all bound to one surface and they can’t explore that extra dimension. The one force that does “see” this extra dimension is gravity. This solves the problem of why gravity is so weak, because it is spreading out in four or more dimensions while all the other forces only spread out in three dimensions. Conveniently, we also don’t really have good experimental data testing gravity on small scales (these experiments are hard because gravity is so weak, natch).
I think that there are several experimental groups looking into these ideas, but the one I’m familiar with is Eöt-Wash (at University of Washington), because I worked with his post-doc who did his PhD work in that group.
Anyway, the point of this whole thing is that if this theory was true, then you could have other universes that are separated along this extra spatial dimension and they would be able to interact via gravity.
Lego Eck
Win.
Now includes Bonds, Randy Johnson, and Mark Fidrych.
The Bonds one’s head is too small, junk is too big, and not in prison stripes. Poor form.
I was hoping for an asterisk somewhere on the uniform.
Good news for Kay.
Thanks, and go As.
Woohoo! FK yeah!
Thanks, and go As.
Eesh, isn’t the clavicle supposed to touch the scapula a bit more?
exactly.
Doctor said because of the way it’s sitting, it’s pretty likely that all three ligaments were damaged. Still no surgery though.
I think I am going to look around for a sports therapy injury sort of place to get it Kinesiotaped.
Thanks, and go As.
Good to hear you dont have to go under the knife, but shoulder injuries suck man, hope it heals up quickly.
Can you sleep okay? That’s what bothered me the most when I messed mine up, I like to sleep on my side half the time.
Man, that’s the truth. Pain which keeps me from sleeping, then aches worse in the AM right after waking, is the biggest reason I’m finally having my rotator cuff surgery next month.
Sorry to hear, my GF’s dad has his ankle surgery next week and we volunteered to be his minions for a few days.
Get some minions, they are KEY.
I’ve set myself up as perfectly as I can imagine by:
1. Having a nurse for a wife…they take an oath!
2. Being able to order my kids to fetch me stuff whether they want to or not.
3. Scheduling it so my recuperation coincides with the opening rounds of the NCAA hoops tournament, the best four sports days of the year (non-A’s-in-the-World-Series division).
Triple fucking crown.
Geez, we’re the Walking Wounded around here. As the A’s go, so go their fans.
Add me to the list. Boy can’t hit the broad side of a barn much less a baseball, but he made fairly solid contact with my head last week. Didn’t think anything of it at the time (and was advised that I didn’t need to be seen by the doctor), but eventually headaches starting popping up. Doc says it was a mild concussion.
At least
.
Ouch! Maybe he’s preparing for the zombie apocalypse.
I think you mean “starting.”
Potato, tomato…
Yikes – look after your head!
If we all met up in Jennifer’s basement she could really build something out of all of our broken bits.
FKstein.
First 2 nights were shitty, I was on the recliner with pillows propping up my elbow – that was the only way I could relieve any pressure on my shoulder.
Sunday night and last night I slept in my bed again sot hat was nice.
Thanks, and go As.
Ugh, I hate sleeping in chairs and couches, good stuff to be back in the bed.
Yeah.
I’m going to start looking around for places locally that can do K-Tape. My aunt is an occupational therapist but lives in LA, but recommended I find a place to do it for me to get a little extra support for the shoulder while it continues to heal.
Thanks, and go As.
The shoulder muscles are pretty damn good at adapting to give strength and support around an injury. Dr. Upgrade says prognosis positive!
yeah, to be honest I’m kinda surprised at how little pain I’ve been in. They gave me a prescription for Norco on Friday in the ER, but I haven’t taken any aside from the initial dose that I had at the hospital.
I’ve taken a few Aleve and a few ibuprofen since then, but that’s it. It’s not really painful, it kinda aches and if i move just right it hurts, but I would describe it more as that kind of tight feeling like when your ankle or elbow or whatever needs to pop but doesnt, only its in my shoulder.
Thanks, and go As.
Heh, Norco sounds really illegal, or like some new type of techno music from Chihuahua.
Reading the label, it’s a combination of hydrocodone and acetomin.. acetimin.. TYLENOL.
I dunno, it has never been pain to the point that I wanted something (besides whiskey) to dull it that much.
Thanks, and go As.
Isn’t that the same as Tylenol 3?
LOL. No.
Tyleno #3 is acetaminophen and codeine.
Norco is acetaminophen and hydrocodone.
Eh, close enough. They have some of the same letters.
What is Tylenol #2?
There’s Tylenol with codeine #2.
It’s only 15mg of codeine, while Tylenol #1 has 8mg of codeine, #3 has 30mg, and #4 has 60mg.
I had no idea there were so many kinds of Tylenol.
Those are just Tylenol with codeine.
I have no idea. I don’t take a lot of stuff other than ibuprofen – I have a huge resistance so a lot of shit just doesn’t work on me that well, so I don’t bother.
Thanks, and go As.
whatever, I was into Norco before it was cool.
Is that… a cardigan design team?
I thought it was a State Prison?
I shoulda went into ortho.
But at least you have better stories where you are, right?
But she’s of no use to Mr. V right now.
Ortho shit is the best part of the job. I’ve seen some fucked up bones, man. Once this old lady fell and caught herself with her right arm and split her humerus in two, lengthwise. Then it also dislocated her shoulder and the two splintered pieces of bone pushed around the humeral head.
\O/ <---- Like that. Her arm was stuck above her head, too. I was supporting her eblow and I could feel the bones in her humerous crunching when she moved her fingers. Best. Day. Ever. Just once I've gotten queasy when someone with a break has come in. It was a little three y/o girl who fell off her parents' deck. Her humerus was fucked. Almost in a Z shape.
While I was holding the old lady’s arm, I noticed weird brown spots on her neck. Then I lifted up her neck fat and noticed orange clumps, too. Of course, I touched them. Turns out she had fell on a candy dish of M&Ms and they were stuck in her nooks and crannies.
I want to feel bad for the old lady, but you make it hard not to laugh.
They were Halloween M&Ms. Oh, and she fractured one of her cervical vertebrae, too. They didn’t do surgery on the arm, either. She was too old and probably wouldn’t survive the trauma. She’s still alive.
Can she use the arm at all?
perhaps as a coat rack?
Thanks, and go As.
Heh
I’m not sure. The last time she was in she was in a neck brace, but I don’t remember anything about her arm. It was not still above her head.
Eh, just chop it off. She’ll be fine.
is her arm still over her head?
Thanks, and go As.
I guess they just don’t make old people like they used to…
I could hear my shoulder popping and tearing when I moved it around earlier. That was fun.
Thanks, and go As.
Oh man, I’m in the same zone as Ozz!
Welcome! Leave your pants with the hatcheck girl, grab a drink, and feel free to try out the Rorschach tests at your leisure.
Don’t make the mistake of leaving your pants with the hatchet girl. Man, you don’t make that mistake twice.
Some people have to learn the hard way.
I take the hard road so others won’t have to.
I’m dizzy and I cant find my pants.
Where we’re going, we don’t need pants.
So generous of you.
from soccer?
Yessir
Thanks, and go As.
Between 0700 and 0800 we have had 4 inches of snow. It’s also thundering. Classes weren’t cancelled, but there were 6 students so the teacher said fuck it. I wish I had television.
I had to turn on the heater and the defrost the windshield before I drove to work today.
I’m still a little shaken but I think I’ll be able to pull through
Thanks, and go As.
I had to throw off the blanket last night. But I can’t complain too much, the sun is out now. Although the next 2 days are supposed to rain. Life is rough all over.
Two mornings ago I woke up and swam in the warm ocean off Maui at 8:00 AM. Yesterday morning I woke up and scraped the frost of my windshield in Berkeley. Things are in precipitous decline.
You should probably go back to Maui.
The snow is still coming down. It’s knee-deep.
It dropped down below 50, but the sun is out.
Thanks, and go As.
At least I have power and internet.
It’s so cold and snowy, I’m to the point I’d cuddle with even you, Mike.
Brown Chicken Brown Cow!
Still chilly. Sun is still out. I’m moving offices today so I actually broke a bit of a sweat.
Thanks, and go As.
Why are you moving?
My boss left, I am moving into his office space because there is a window and the vent blows air into it.
Thanks, and go As.
So you worked in a cave before?
They wanted to put him in the basement, but he threatened to burn the place down.
They closed our KC office about an hour ago.
All the highways are closed.
This is my car.
Our Senior VP in KC’s car had about half that after sitting outside the office parking lot for a half hour this morning.
They’re cleaning out the parking lot! Woo! Freedom! All the roads around me are clear because I like by the sheriff’s department and a fire station. Thank God for emergency snow routes!
Well, I’m stil fucked.
Stop bragging.
Today I offered someone oral sex to shovel out my car. They turned me down. :(
You can’t talk to kids like that.
Would you have gone through with it if they didn’t turn you down?
I’m not going all the way out there just for a BJ.
Thanks, and go As.
I’ll be looking at places to rent at Tahoe once I get back from spring training, and a carport (or preferably garage) is pretty high on the list of requirements for that very reason. There are times that happens 6 or 7 days in a row.
That was what my car looked like about a two weeks ago.
Dolphins are cool.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/02/20/172538036/researchers-find-that-dolphins-call-each-other-by-name
Huh. I just thought they called everyone bro
Cool article.
Sound familiar:
The first two paragraphs are so full of caveats and disclaimers that I had to look at the url three times to make sure it wasn’t an Onion article.
This has been my take for awhile…if the A’s can prove to MLB that the SJ plan is financially viable–including the unaddressed issues of remaining land acquisition and infrastructure costs, which are substantial–then I suspect MLB gives the go ahead. But I am not at all convinced that the A’s have that fiscal package in order.
Maybe I’m in the minority, but I want the A’s to stay right where they’re at… in Oakland, in the Coliseum. I don’t want them to try to generate shitloads of new revenue, either. I want them to do the best they can with what they have… keep the payroll between 60-80m… keep the seats relatively cheap… Status quo…
It’s a nice thought but just completely unrealistic as far as having any real hope of working for them.
It’s realistic enough. We’re already on the third lease extension that the A’s have begrudgingly signed because they have noplace else to go. I don’t see why a few more years of hemming and hawing and stalling on the Giants’ part won’t lead to another extension that’ll keep the A’s where they are until 2022 or later.
It’s not viable at all as far as a longterm solution is concerned. You just can’t expect them keep finding ways to compete while at an overall disadvantage where their facilities, payroll and, yes, general fanbase is concerned.
I basically agree with this, even though I also very much agree with Kay’s sense that the ethos of the franchise and its fans are likely to change irrevocably for the worse whenever the team lands in a modern park (anywhere, Oakland included).
I don’t know. I think we still play second status in a new stadium and I think that’s highly reflected in the ethos of the fan base. It’ll change, certainly, but not nearly as much people probably think. Especially considering how much of our fan base is NRAFy.
You’re being misled by the NRAF quotient on the internet. In real life I’d bet there aren’t significantly any more or fewer far-flung A’s fans than there are, say, Mariners or Rangers fans. Our colors just stand out better.
Even still, we’re still the bay area have nots. A new stadium won’t change that. The in-stadium experience and game day crowd dynamic will certainly change for the worse, but the other all fan ethos, not so much.
As much as I like the underdog role, it doesn’t succeed in the long run. That and I don’t think MLB is all that excited about the prospect of anyone being on revenue sharing for most of another decade.
I’d be perfectly fine with the Coliseum City thing. I’d also be perfectly fine with a massive Coliseum renovation, but that ain’t gonna happen.
Thanks, and go As.
Me too. More than perfectly fine, actually.
hi. im DFA i have been saying this shit for years
I greatly enjoy the status quo.
I’m not so sure the infrastructure cost is all that substantial (nor the land acquisition for that matter). Certainly not relative to stadium building costs. That being said, your overall point is certainly valid in that there’s absolutely no way MLB gives the go ahead without being absolutely certain they can actually pull this thing off. Just as there’s absolutely no way the A’s don’t already know that that would be the case.
Ugh
What’s worse is the utter incompetence of the Oakland pols.
#DemandBetter
I wrote a blog post for KQED about this (which hasn’t been published yet) entitled “Unnamed Sources Say Something Important Might Have Happened, Maybe”.
Just read it. Nicely done.
It would have been OK to edit Greg Baumann’s quote to make him look like less of an ass: “…come up
the101…”.This!
I suppose. It doesn’t make him look like an ass, just a Southlander. oh wait…..
Yesterday the bosses were trying to get me to do something more on the San Jose city councilman who says he has an army of lawyers lining up to sue the Giants if the A’s don’t move to San Jose. I asked them if they were familiar with the phrase “laughed out of court”.
If he sues the Giants, no doubt, it’s a laugher. However, if MLB told the A’s they could not move to SJ, then a lawsuit against MLB by someone with San Jose standing might have more traction. You’d still most likely ultimately lose, assuming courts stuck to precedent kicking the antitrust decision to Congress. But that’s not the strongest precedent around; I could imagine a future Supreme Court changing course.
This is completely academic, though…you’d have to be willing to invest years and millions to pursue such a case to completion, and I very much doubt anyone’s willing to do that.
Would SJ have standing?
Sure. But in municipal government today, committing precious revenues to a protracted, expensive and unlikely to succeed legal battle would be downright negligent.
Except they’re talking a pro-Bono case where compensation would come through as a % of whatever they would win. He was talking about spending city money on it.
Why does Bono benefit from that?
I’d imagine they’d benefit from whatever cash settlement they win for SJ.
Oh, not U2.
You have no Powers over me.
the letter “u” and the numeral “2”
A big 10-8 place
Kitty’s favorite song!
We may not be into stealing HR steam cleaners, but we’ve become REALLY good at making ourselves invisible!
Not so sure they’d be laughed out of court. From the sound of it, they’re after financial considers instead of actually forcing MLB to move the A’s to SJ. The attempts aren’t without precedence and while what FSU said about it having the potential to take years and millions to pursue, odds are once they got in the door it would be settled out of court. *If* they actually have lawyers willing to actually take the time to handle it, odds are they won’t think they’re wasting their time. That being said, saying you have lawyers lined up is akin to saying you have buyers in Oakland lined up, namely without naming a name, it’s vapor.
The cyborg revolution has accelerated.
I thought this was going to be a link to the temporary tattoos that read brainwaves, but alas…
Give it time, Kay, give it time…
robots > cyborgs
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Finally, Bentley is making a car priced for those of us in the bottom half. Of the 1%.
http://blogs.cars.com/kickingtires/2013/02/2014-bentley-flying-spur-first-look.html#more?cmp=cartalkfacebook
I just got through driving a Ford Focus for a week. It, hmmm, well, uhhh, the gas mileage was pretty good, so if you needed a commutemobile to get you from Manteca to Silicon Valley 5 days a week that might be OK.
I had a rental Focus about 7 or 8 years ago and I hated it. The new ones are supposed to be better, but still.
I had a Ford Fusion in Maui. Really sluggish; I’m sure I’d thrash the weak-ass four cylinders pretty quickly if it was my daily driver.
The Focus I had felt like it was constantly on the verge of just flying apart. Every bump, every time you went over 45, every time you sneezed. The car just bounced and rattled and squeaked and pretty much acted like it wanted to be left alone.
I had one last summer… the first car I rented after getting my license.
The only thing I liked about it was that it was easy to cover up the big ass scratch I put in the fender with a white crayon, and the rental people didn’t notice a thing.
Hahaha! Awesome.
I’d much rather own a Tesla.
Tesla sucks and will be dead as a company within 10 years.
We shall see. Meanwhile, the Tesla/NY Times sideshow this week was, uh, interesting.
Elon Musk is a jackass, and his pyramid scheme won’t last, despite the fact that the all-electric car is a great idea. Hopefully some non-jackass company will become viable once Tesla craters.
The Chevy Volt is pretty nice actually
Thanks, and go As.
The two folks I know who have Volts are happy with them.
I like innovative jackasses
I don’t know much about Tesla. Is there actually a reason why it’s a pyramid scheme? That seems like a strange structure for a car company (unless it’s really a pyramid scheme company, of course).
I’m being a bit hyperbolic. Tesla to date has burned through more than $100 million in venture capital and government subsidies for its products without yet being able to 1) market a car that enough consumers can afford, or 2) demonstrating that its business model can even sustainably break even over the long run, much less turn a profit. All the while Musk keeps making outlandish promises and claims about how Tesla can make its model work, claims which have fallen short pretty much always. So, not a pyramid scheme in the classic sense, but analogous in the investors never getting repaid with anything but empty promises sense.
But that was always the plan. Build a sports car to get the infrastructure and investment then build a luxury sedan then build a consumer sedan.
Yes. And I’m saying that the plan sucks and is fronted by a charlatan. Venture capitalists losing their investment bets is no skin off my nose, but if the process harms the chances of achieving the incredibly important goal, well, that’s a lot of skin off all our noses.
Why does that plan suck? How else are you going to get the infrastructure to build price competitive regular people cars
I don’t know enough of the specifics to say whether or not this is true, but one way that plan could suck is if it turns out that building sports cars or luxury cars is substantially different from building regular cars, so all of the work they are doing won’t ever lead to a cheap and practical electric car. I think there is certainly some logic behind their idea, but that’s no guarantee at all that it will work.
Getting the economies of scale necessary to make cost competitive non hobbyist cars is nearly impossible without sinking a huge amount of money into the endeavor. The plan is IMO the smartest way they could do it, focusing on battery and drive train first letting lotus build the body, then making the whole sedan
Also, building higher end models first lends credibility to lower end models. A $30k Porsche will likely sell a lot better relative to it’s competition than a $100K Kia.
All I can say is that I will look forward to saying I Told You So when Tesla dissolves into a flurry undelivered orders, unfulfilled promises, lawsuits and general acrimony, sometime in the next few years.
I was very much worried about that before the Ss actually came out. I’m less worried now, though of course it is still a possiblity.
meh. thats like betting that a baseball player wont get a hit. it is a great bet to bet on failure. The question is whether or not the plan is better than the alternative methods of starting a motor company. If youve got a better idea, Id love to hear it/work for your company.
Not really the same, because the likelihood of future failure impacts sales now (because no Tesla means no repair parts, means a $60K+ brick).
If I actually had that cash for that purpose, I’d definitely care about Tesla’s viability before ordering.
Im talking about FSU’s claim betting on failure not that there wouldn’t be problems if it went bad
Maybe, but I’ve already seen 4 or 5 of the sedans this week alone.
I can understand why you may not like Musk, but I do give him serious kudos for designing and manufacturing a forward thinking vehicle, in the US, by americans.
Even w/ the enormous ego and the audacious promises, the above point outweighs any personal feelings I may have for him- although I think actively working towards a manned Mars mission is pretty cool too.
I don’t feel bad about the government investing in future technologies, some will fail, that’s a natural consequence of pioneering/ creativity, without which the difficult lessons would not be learned and innovation would fail to blossom.
Also, the amount invested is peanuts compared to whatever new military vaporware is being developed, a great many of those projects get scrapped as well with less to show for it.
you say that like it is a bad thing
This This This a thousand times this
Also, it makes more sense to invest in the potential of future technologies than to pour money into doomed industries like oil.
The biggest concern I’d have over all electric is it’s not really an alternative solution. You still have to use the same power plants to create that energy. And their parts and batteries are notoriously bad for the environment to manufacture. That and how do you charge the things long distance? A plugin station where you have to wait an hour for it to recharge?
If you add charging stations at rest stops, you could get drivers to stop and rest every few hours. It might improve highway safety.
This is a fundamental misunderstanding of pollution control strategies. Small sources of pollution especially at the consumer level are that are expensive are very very hard and inefective to regulate, where as large sources are much easier. This is even true with dirty power plants like coal, where regulations can be implemented to add scrubbers, cogeneration, and other means of boosting efficencey that you cant do to consumer products like cars without massive costs and non compliance.
ozz, if you’re trying to get people to buy in, forced rest when you have errands or kids or are trying to work or who knows what isn’t something they’re going to jump for joy at. They’re more likely to want the gas guzzler instead.
dfa, i’m not misunderstanding anything. You’re trading pollution from one place for another. Is it nice that the new place could have more regulation, sure. Is it also nice that it’s more isolated/localized at power stations, kind of. But you’re still relying on dirty energy and it’s not a true long term solution. We’re trading one problem for another.
No, I’m just saying that when people are on road trips, they often drive for a lot longer than they should. If they had to stop to recharge their car, they might (might) drive more safely.
Have to agree w dmoas here, cars are a more efficient way to use petro, its relatively 1-1, where as using electricity is far less so as you lose a good amount of energy in the long distances it needs to travel.
Another question is what to do w/ the lithium batteries when the car is kaput? While your helping on the carbon front you’re making up the balance on the hazmat end.
Yeah you are wrong. The ability to innovate on a power production for mass consumption scale is much easier than on a smaller scale. You can bring wind solar geothermal and biomass generation online to make the grid a lot easier than you can replace 300m cars with cars that produce their own power, which is way way farther away than using a solar array to collect energy and then transfer that over transmition lines.
As for li-ion batteries, yes they are problematic. But dealing with that is way way easier than dealing with carbon emissions.
You do realize that you’re still dealing with innovating 30 m cars regardless of how you’re powering them, right? Plus short of near instant power transfer, you’re still going to have a major issue with customer adaptation which is a rather significant issue. We need a new method of powering vehicles, but battery innovation is still way too weak to be the answer.
No. I’m not. I’m dealing with how to make good decisions for myself.
And for my purposes a plug-in will be FAR FAR more convenient than gas. I wake up, drive to work, drive home, plug in, and never have to go to a gas station.
I road trip once or twice a year, so who cares if that’s a bit more challenging.
NM- Vehicles able to plug into a 110 outlet are great.
DFA- I’m not arguing for petrol per se, I was commenting more to our existing infrastructure, and whats most efficient right now in terms of energy prod and transfer.
DFA is right though, that you’re more likely to build huge solar plants than putting panels on every house.
Too bad we cant be more like Germany in that sense, Carter tried I guess, and the subsidy still exists AFAIK.
It kills me to drive down I-40 through AZ and NM and see these signs for pastures available to lease for grazing, for a few hundred bucks a month and think of all the solar panels you could put out there.
Yeah I hear ya, Personally I think they would be best implemented in urban centers, as close to the end user as possible. PG&E could give incentives to those businesses and individuals who backfeed to the grid, etc. Make it a part and parcel of every roof construction. Build the panels in CA, employ folks.
That would be even better, really.
This is why we need a better grid, so that you could really use that pasture land that way.
But green energy and infrastructure investments are just a boondoggle, remember?
Relevant.
Getting to this debate late, but nm is generally right regarding solar panels – without tremendous incentives (which Germany did pretty well, IIRC), it’s pretty damn difficult to get a huge mass of people to adopt alternative technologies. I listened to a talk about this several years ago from one of Oregon’s Department of Energy guys and our ex-governor’s energy policy guy. Before the financial meltdown, Oregon was trying to do similar things to Germany, but it went out the window when no one had any money.
The 2007 session really had some awesome stuff. It was sad that the recession fucked everything
I seriously looked into going full PV/net-metering at the time, but it still didn’t fully pencil out at the time, even combining state and federal incentives.
Once I own the home I’ll stay in (maybe in the coming months!), I definitely want to invest in that stuff.
We looked at one house that had solar everything (water heat, furnace, electricity) and was actually a net contributor to the grid most months.
Unfortunately, the floor plan/location sucked.
Another strategy would be to go downmarket initially and force established firms up. That’s a common way to bring disruptive technologies to market.
On the other hand, I’m fairly certain that electric cars are an evolutionary, not revolutionary, technology and so the innovator’s dilemma wouldn’t apply to them.
I would argue that it isn’t disruptive.
Yeah, I hinted as such in my second para, and generally agree with you.
sorry I was trying to agree with you. Unexpected I know.
Why does Tesla harm, say, the Chevy Volt, the Prius plug-in or the Ford C-Max plugin?
They seem fundamentally different to me. Tesla has delivered a high-end sedan that has a lot of range on a pure-electric design. Is it expensive? Yes! But it can be had for BMW prices, not Bentley prices. And it’s a real product that real consumers can choose to buy.
It would largely be symbolic, a la Solyndra…not materially affecting the work other companies are doing, but serving as a convenient bugaboo for citation by those who are antithetical to electric vehicles to begin with.
But so what? They have that already.
Indeed it was. I tended to come down on Tesla’s side, though they definitely overstated their case.
I’m interested to hear why you think this.
I now see your answer to Colin above – thanks.
There are a lot of things I’d rather own than a Bentley. They’ve never really done anything for me.
If I see this goddamned Budweiser ad with the “Landslide” song in it I swear I am gonna stalk and slaughter Stevie Nicks personally. How did someone who sings like a sheep ever get so huge? Never underestimate the power of teenage girls that fantasize about being willowy gypsy-shawled chanteuses, I guess. Give me Peter Green blues-based Fleetwood Mac any day and thrice on Sunday, please.
If I see it again, I mean
Hey look, Jennifer!
http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Fremont-nurse-accused-of-sex-attacks-4298335.php
They’ll be sure to flock to the GOP banner once they hear what the Ted Nugent Black Power campaign has to say.
Yeah, but what are his thoughts on gravity?
The Republican view of why minorities don’t vote for them seems to be, “It’s not that you don’t like our message, it’s just that you’re too dumb to understand it or too selfish to give up your government freebies.”
Tough to see why that doesn’t work.
I hope I don’t actually need to make use of this, but does the FK hive mind have any useful info on detaching retinas?
I haven’t done that in a long time, but if you really need me to try just call me.
Do you want to detach one?
Not if I can avoid it. I had a large and annoying floater suddenly appear yesterday, and on my drive home I was perceiving occasional flashes of light in the corner of the same eye. I’ve got a doctor’s appointment on Saturday, so unless I actually see a dark curtain pass across my field of vision there isn’t anything more I can do about it. If it does blow, I’ve been told it’s not a huge deal any more, they reattach them with a laser or something like that.
Idon’t understand words right now.
It turned out to be a Posterior Vitreous Detachment, which is very common among us old folks. Posterior as in the back of the eye, not the ass. It’s harmless, except for the large and annoying thing in my field of vision, but since the symptoms are the same as retinal detachment it had to be checked out.
So what happens next?
I learn to ignore the large and annoying thing in my field of vision, or in several months it sinks to the bottom of my eyeball where it’ll be less annoying.
So you have to just ride it out. Great.
I suggest not doing ti
Get a parrot. Brush up on your pirate.
I just Pinterest’d some tie dyed t-shirts and I Literally felt my mind explode.
I’m pretty sure they can reattach that with a laser too.
how do they make heart shapes?b It’s amiracle.
Think about cutting out paper snowflakes. Fold the shirt in half, draw a faint half heart shape as a guide, then make a series of thin folds back and forth along that line, sort of like a fan or accordian. Then tie off that section of folds with rubber bands to isolate from the rest of the shirt which you’ll do in different colors.
Personally, I’m voting for Billykid Sangma.
http://www.sfgate.com/news/world/article/Adolf-Hitler-stumping-for-votes-in-Indian-election-4299783.php
On the other hand, there is no way I’d vote for Jhim Carter.
He’ll do amazing charity work after he leaves office, though. And his peanuts are second to none.
So your parents really named you ozzman99, right?
Well duh. That would be a pretty stupid screen name, don’t you think?
Wow.
I’m looking forward to him doing that to CJ Wilson.
Holy crap, dont hurt yerself’ Yo!
There needs to be video of this.
Seriously. I really want to watch it.
Thirded.
Wait, doesn’t it depend on who edits it?
Would a gif be good enough?
http://www.cbssports.com/mlb/blog/eye-on-baseball/21754255/gif-yoenis-cespedes-hits-homer-with-weighted-bat
Nice! He looks like he’s talking shit too!
link
Ahhh, there’s an auto-play thing on this!
my bad
I was wondering why I kept hearing that CSN sound until I found this.
Me too!
Me three. I thought Brodie Brazil was trying to Skype me.
I hope he gets consent first before he tries something like that.
That sounds terribly unpleasant. But hey, whatever floats your boat.
KTOTD. Just fucking excellent work.
I made it out! Woo! My dogs love the snow.
Or they just wanted to get away from you.
Just because:
My favorite was Mac v. Johnson at the Kingdome.
Video of that one is elusive. MLB.com has added a bunch of classic video over the last few months, though, so maybe it will show up.
My favorite Big Mac story was (IIRC) the team’s trip to Cleveland his rookie year, where he hit I wanna say 6 HR’s in 3 games, including 3 in the last game. In his final AB, the Indians fans were cheering for him to go deep a 4th time.
I was sick in bed with the flu and watched one of those games on my black & white TV. My mom made me drink liquid Jello and I spewed all over the place.
I think I listened to the Friday and Saturday games on the radio and watched the Sunday game (channel 36, I believe). Of course, they only used to televise what, 40 games or so each year?
Giambi sighting!
Man I loved watching him bat.
Indiana and Kansas tie for the saddest results on this map (non-Wal Mart division).
The car?
Pretty bad, but not at the level of “at home.”
LOL! I was thinking they meant a passenger.
That one was… odd.
Assuming that “subway” for Massachusetts means the T, not the restaurant.
Homemade guac and refried beans with nachos tonight.
I thought you didn’t like guac.
I don’t. I make it for others. And I like it mixed with sour cream.
So you have guests?
Left Boob. And Right Boob.
And Jennifer. The Holy Trinity, FK-style.
My parents.
They drove out to you in the snow? What, do they love you or something?
I am at their house.
Oh. So they don’t really love you that much.
Fuck off.
I’m sure he did that earlier. I did mention boobs earlier.
I can neither confirm nor deny that at this time.
Happy National Margarita Day! And it’s 5 o’clock somewhere! Like here! (Hands Jennifer a plane ticket to Saint Somewhere).
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The Kay-est Kay b8 I have ever seen.
thoughts?
meh
I’m more focused on the non-hot-bodied newbs flooding into the community than I am about the particulars of the workplace standards of the hot-bodied-enough-to-get-paid-to-perform.
However, I am in favor of unionization of the performers, or at least a very strong performers’ association that has enough leverage to keep everything consensual and on the up and up in local professional shoots.
You don’t think that the portrayal of kink as acceptable and based on consent is important for the movement?
Part of the problem with unionization with strip clubs is there is an inherent competition between performers for time slots that prevents cohesion between the members. For the cams at kink, that wouldn’t really be an issue I don’t think, because it is straight pay it seems like.
The article suggests that the root of many of the performers’ complaints was when Kink.com switched away from straight pay, to the more industry-standard commission based pay for its private cam performers.
Right, but that shouldn’t be an issue in that there is an unlimited cam audience and that the time slots I wouldn’t think would be an issue like they are for strip clubs that has caused so many problems when trying to organize.
I’d imagine there’d be some sort of limit based on bandwidth and rooms? Probably not enough to have that big a negative influence, but some.
Yeah that makes sense. But it is less likely that those are major factors than in a strip club where there is one main stage.
Also you can be all over the world and spend money on cams, so there should be a 24 hour demand.
Also keep in mind that viewers are likely only watching one show at a time so any competition would negatively affect the performer’s audience. But like you said, none of these things are anywhere near the factor they are in a strip joint.
Yes that is true. However, I would suspect that if you are scheduled at the same time as someone who is particularly sought after it wouldn’t substantially affect your market value, since they are only doing private cams for one person.
The A’s top 10 list at BPro has been posted. I like the aggressive ranking of Nunez and it’s hard not to like these comments about Russell:
“it wouldn’t shock many talent evaluators if the 19-year-old finishes the season at the Double-A level. If you are looking for a player that could be the top prospect in baseball at this time next year, Russell is a good candidate.”
interesting him so high on nunez and low on head.
He doesn’t like head just as much as you!
Heh!
But PL78 said that Russell would make it to the Majors this year!
It’s hard to get a better write up for a new prospect than that!
PL78 wonders why Parks is so down on Addison
It’s raining mice, Hallelulah! It’s raining mice!
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/02/22/172695707/dead-mice-are-going-to-be-dropped-on-guam-from-helicopters-really
My favorite part: “The senator and justice sought assurances from the $85-an-hour medium that Zappala’s investigation wouldn’t result in criminal charges.”
http://news.yahoo.com/3-political-sisters-pa-convicted-corruption-212941147.html
So Canseco does a commercial for HT Higher Testosterone. Maybe the reason he can’t get a boner is because gravity has gotten stronger and he can’t overcome it.
Marry me. Then quickie divorce me.
I’ll be in CA by June.
Ooooh!!! Hopefully SCOTUS will over turn same-sex marriage by then.
Oh, but my divorce won’t be final by then.
Boo.
JamesV: I thought you might be interested in this link. I know that you primarily love sports photography, but you seem to be socially conscious and this program provides grants for photographers partnering with non-profits. EC, I thought you might be interested as well.
http://photophilanthropy.org/new-home
Looks interesting, but it doesn’t really seem to be something that’d apply to me. Thanks though.
And the fun never ends
Evil unicorn?
Is that a penis on his head?
The use of “Thus” instead of “this” feels appropriate here.
Yes, I want to believe that’s not a typo.
Also sprach Jose.
Jose has really found his Nietzsche, hasn’t he?
If you tweet into the abyss…
Bleacher sign!
I like it!
Holy shit, this is too good to be true.
He is now, per twitter, apparently doing an image of Donald Trump.
I think the Coliseum Authority should commission a mural.
On the other hand, there is at least one professional physicist who really does make Canseco look like a genius by comparison.
I’m thinking this guy could possibly have Asperger’s, or something similar.
Yep.
I’m thinking this guy could have been any number of people that I knew in grad school (only slight exaggeration).
The term “absent-minded professor” was coined for a reason. One of my grad school professors certainly fits the same personality-type, although he did manage to meet and marry a real (much younger and very attractive) woman rather than falling for a hoax.
This guy struck me as a huge asshole, from the article at least.
Possibly. However, if there is some sort of autism-spectrum disorder (Asperger’s is apparently being grouped, at least by some, in that category), it’s hard to say how much is true ego and how much is the disorder talking. For example, Spawn1 is prone to bragging about his own athletic abilities despite being not particularly athletic; he does this moreso than other kids I’ve observed. Part of it seems a way to self-mask insecurity. I don’t have a particular problem with it; but I recognize it for what it is. This seems to be the case with the professor in the article; he likes to inflate his own probability of geting a Nobel based on those he claims he’s worked with.