text:
Who y'all talkin' to, man?
Uhh, check it out, check it out
This, here, goes out to all the niggas
That be fuckin' mad bitches
In other niggas cribs
Thinkin' shit is sweet
Nigga creep up on your ass, hahaha
Live niggas respect it—check it
I kicked flows for ya, kicked down doors for ya
Even left all my motherfuckin' hoes for ya
Niggas think Frankie pussy-whipped
Nigga, picture that, with a Kodak, Insta-ma-tac
We don't get down like that
Lay my game down quite flat
Sweetness, where you parked at?
Petiteness, but that ass fat
She got a body make a nigga wanna eat that
I'm fuckin' with you
The bitch official, though, dick harder than a missile, yo
Try to hit, if she trippin', disappearin' like Arsenio
Yo, the bitch push a double-oh
With the five in front, probably a conniving stunt
Y'all drive in front, I'ma peel with her
Find the deal with her, she fuck around and steal, huh?
Then we all get laced
Televisions, Versace heaven, when I'm up in 'em
The shit she kicked, all the shit's legit
She get dick from a player off the New York Knicks
Nigga tricked ridiculous, the shit was plush
She's stressing me to fuck, like she was in a rush
We fucked in his bed, quite dangerous
I'm in his ass while he playing 'gainst the Utah Jazz
My 112, CD blast, I was past
She came twice, I came last, roll the grass
She giggle, saying "I'm smoking on home-grown"
Then I heard the moan, "Honey, I'm home!"
Yep, tote chrome for situations like this
I'm up in his broad, I know he won't like this
Now I'm like, "Bitch, you better talk to him
Before this fifth put a spark to him
Fuck around, shit get dark to him, put a part through him
Lose a major part to him—arm, leg..."
She beggin' me to stop but this cat gettin' closer
Gettin' hot like a toaster, I cocks the toast, ugh
Before my eyes could blink
She screams out, "Honey, bring me up somethin' to drink!"
He go back downstairs, more time to think
Her brain racing, she's telling me to stay patient
She don't know I'm cool as a fan
Gat in hand, I don't wanna blast her man
But I can and I will, though; I'm tryna chill though
Even though situation looking kinda ill, yo
It came to me like a song I wrote
Told the bitch, "Gimme your scarf, pillowcase, and rope"
Got dressed quick, tied the scarf around my face
Roped the bitch up, gagged her mouth with the pillowcase
Play the cut, nigga coming off some Love Potion shit
Flash the heat on 'em, he stood emotionless
Dropped the glass screaming, "Don't blast, here's the stash!
A hundred cash! Just don't shoot my ass, please!"
Nigga pulling mad Gs out the floor
Put stacks in a Prada knapsack, hit the door
Grab the keys to the five, call my niggas on the cell
"Bring some weed, I got a story to tell", uhh...
Yo man, y'all niggas ain't gonna believe what the fuck happened to me. Remember that bitch I left the club with man? Yo, freaky yo. I'm up in this bitch playa this bitch fuckin' run them ol' Knick ass niggas and shit. I'm up in the spot, so. I don't know, I don't know. One of them six-five niggas, I don't know. Anyway, I'm up in the motherfuckin' spot. So boom I'm up in the pussy, whatever whatever. I sparks up some lah, Pop Duke creeps up in on some, must have been rained out or something because he's in the spot. Had me scared, had me scared to death, I was shook, Daddy—but I forget I had my Roscoe on me. Always. You know how we do. So anyway the nigga comes up the stairs, he creepin' up the steps, the bitch all shook she sends the nigga back downstairs to get some drinks and shit. She gettin' mad nervous, I said fuck that man! I'm the nigga, you know how we do it, nigga, ransom note style put the scarf around my motherfuckin' face. Gagged that bitch up, played the kizzack. Soon this nigga comes up in the spot, flash the Desert in his face he drops the glass. Looked like the nigga pissed on his-self or somethin, word to mother! Ahh fuck it. This nigga runs dead to the floor, peels up the carpet, start givin' me mad papers, mad papers. (I told you that bitch was a sheisty bitch cuz! Word to mother I used to fuck her cousin' but you ain't know that! You wouldn't know that shit. Really though.) I threw all that motherfuckin' money up in the Prada knapsack. Two words, I'm gone! (No doubt, no doubt... no doubt!) Yo nigga got some lye, y'all got some lye? [conversation fades out]
[Produced by Buckwild and Chucky Thompson]
In 2014, Knicks player John Starks appeared on ESPN's Highly Questionable and was grilled about this song, which he said is based on a true story but wouldn't specify who it's about.
Then, in 2015, Jadakiss appeared on Highly Questionable and was grilled about the subject of Biggie's story, too. He claims B.I.G. wouldn't tell him who it was about but Jada's done some investigation on his own over the years.. "Out of my candidates, it would have to [Anthony] Mason, Larry Johnson, maybe Derek Harper," he said. "Could have been any of that team. Those were the crazy Knicks back then."
In 2016, Fat Joe revealed that the Knick in question was Anthony Mason.
Diddy confirmed that the story is about Mason.
This song is a classic example of the dramatic monologue; dramatic dialogue, also known as a persona poem, is a type of poetry written in the form of a speech of an individual character.
Literary critic M.H. Abrams notes the following three features of the dramatic monologue:
A single person, who is patently not the poet, utters the speech that makes up the whole of the poem, in a specific situation at a critical moment […].
This person addresses and interacts with one or more other people; but we know of the auditors' presence, and what they say and do, only from clues in the discourse of the single speaker.
The main principle controlling the poet's choice and formulation of what the lyric speaker says is to reveal to the reader, in a way that enhances its interest, the speaker's temperament and character.
Another thing to note about the track, or maybe to note about a later released track, is the drums used on this track, a drum sample from Al Green's "I'm Glad You're Mine," are the same drum sample used on Biggie's "What's Beef?" and "Dead Wrong"—for more sampling information, click here.


text:
If I want an Asian-soulamte in my life; I have to think about her all the time and write about her all the time until the world around me turns Asian-soulmate. I know how the system works; I just got to keep working it! The hardest part has been self worth or value! One who is used to thinking negative and then surviving; this is not easy! Its not easy to turn to positive and feel safe and secure! and thats a funny thing to say! The problem is trusting myself to follow through! Im to afraid of sabotaging myself of what I want and getting back to a lower safer and less livable life! So, Im struggling to change; Ill get their! persistence is the key!
Im used to blaming my mother and father for everything because of what happened ; what they did to me! That does not work here! Blaming someone does not add or change anything! I must pay the price for the change in my thinking! I have to do the work!
Things are changing! The goal is to feel positive e all the time! " Thank you universe for all the good things in my life I don't know about yet".

subset: commoncrawl


text:
« STEM Teacher Fellowship Program Grows With New Jersey Plans | Main | Draft Accommodations for Common-Core Tests Could Narrow Eligibility »
International Tests Spark Questions on Finland's Standing
Educational tourism has become a sizable industry for Finland in recent years, thanks to its strong showing on a global exam for 15-year-olds. But new data from a different set of assessments suggest that Americans might not need to travel so far to learn about building a strong education system.
The most striking contrast is in mathematics, where the performance of Finnish 8th graders was not statistically different from the U.S. average on the 2011 TIMSS, or Trends in Mathematics and Science Study, released last month. Finland, which last participated in TIMSS in 1999, actually trailed four U.S. states that took part as "benchmarking education systems" on TIMSS this time: Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, and Indiana.
(For the big picture, check out the EdWeek stories on the new results from TIMSS, which tests 4th and 8th graders, and PIRLS, or the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study, focused on 4th graders around the world.)
Tom Loveless, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, argues that the new results call for some rethinking of what he calls the "Finnish miracle story."
"If Finland were a state taking the 8th grade NAEP, it would probably score in the middle of the pack," he said, referring to the National Assessment of Educational Progress. "Finland's exaggerated reputation is based on its performance on PISA, an assessment that matches up well with its way of teaching math," said Mr. Loveless, which he described as "applying math to solve 'real world' problems."
He added, "In contrast, TIMSS tries to assess how well students have learned the curriculum taught in schools."
Asked about Finland's performance, Jack Buckley, the commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, said "I've always been a little puzzled by" the high level of attention trained on the Nordic nation of some 5.4 million people. "Finland captured the world's attention for a variety of reasons, but as these results show," he said, "there are other places to look for case studies."
And those places include some of the American states that posted strong scores on the new global exams.
"It's not necessary to travel halfway around the world to see this," Buckley said, even as he cautioned that there is still plenty of room for improvement, even among high-performing states like Massachusetts.
Finland's score of 514 on TIMSS for 8th grade math was not statistically different from the U.S. average of 509, the data show. Massachusetts, meanwhile, posted a score of 561, placing the Bay State below just four nations in the TIMSS rankings. (The TIMSS scale runs from 0 to 1,000, with 500 being the average of participating nations.)
Finland trailed South Korea, the top performer on TIMSS in 8th grade math, by nearly 100 points.
"That's a full standard deviation. That is massive," Loveless said. "On PISA, they're only five points apart."
He was referring to the performance of Finland's 15-year-olds in 2009 on the Program for International Student Assessment, which also is scored on a scale from 0 to 1,000. Finland ranked in the top tier among all 34 member countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Its score of 541 was not statistically different from South Korea's 546, the highest of OECD members. (Hong Kong, Singapore, and Shanghai, China, did post higher scores.)
Finland did make a stronger showing on the science portion of TIMSS than in math. At the 8th grade, for instance, it scored 552, well above the U.S. average of 525. But that figure was still shy of the 567 posted by Massachusetts.
In 4th grade reading, Finland was in the top tier of nations and above the U.S. average. But its score on PIRLS was about the same as that of Florida, the only U.S. state to participate as a benchmarking education system in that exam. (Basically, that means the state voluntarily agreed to have a large enough sample of students participate so that its performance could be compared with the nations tested.)
Applying Knowledge
I reached out to Pasi Sahlberg, the director general of the Center for International Mobility at the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture, in Helsinki, to get his perspective on Finland's TIMSS results. (Sahlberg wrote an EdWeek Commentary last January providing some insights into what he believes makes its education system strong.)
"This is indeed the first time Finland took part in TIMSS since 1999," he wrote in an email, saying that overall he believes Finland "did very well."
With specific regard to math, he said: "I was not really surprised. ... Finnish math curricula put strong emphasis on problem-solving and applying mathematical knowledge rather than mastery of content. PISA measures the former, TIMSS the latter."
He added, "I think many U.S. states did very well on TIMSS this time. But we must dig deeper in TIMSS data before we can say much more than this."
Finland not only tested its 8th graders on TIMSS. It also tested 7th graders, the same grade tested in 1999. And what's striking here is that the nation's 7th graders have actually seen a significant decline on TIMSS math since that time, from 520 to 482. (In essence, it dropped from being above to below the global average of participating countries.)
Sahlberg again pointed to the issue of the Finnish approach to math as helping to explain the drop.
"This is mostly due to a gradual shift of focus in teaching from content mastery towards problem-solving and use of mathematical knowledge," he said.
Stepping back, Sahlberg offered a few closing thoughts. First, he seems to sympathize with those who may be feeling a bit of Finland fatigue, given how much attention the country has drawn based on its PISA results.
"It is understandable that some people think that there has been enough of Finland already in education," he said. "I think, however, that we should not draw too rapidly conclusions from one measurement. Regardless of TIMSS 2011, Finland is one of the few education systems that have shown steady progress in student learning, equity, attainment, and efficiency in education during recent history. Just a month ago, international education giant Pearson ranked Finland the best education system in the world in its new composite index that combined several aspects of education system performance." (That assessment, however, did not factor in the latest TIMSS data, which came out later.)
In the end, Sahlberg said, "I also think that education reformers should look at several high performers in education rather than looking for a silver bullet from one country, whatever it is."


text:
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text:
The latest rage in my sewing room is Quilters Artist Trading Cards (ATCs for short). What a blast I have had taking a foray into this particular arena!
I have experimented with a few techniques that I have hesitated to try on my quilting, like thread painting and embellishing with a variety of fun things.
I have made a new friend right in town here and she was the one who invited me to go along with her to a quilt shop she likes to trade these cool little treasures with a group of ladies she has taken some classes with. I can't wait!
I will put the entire collection of cards on my Webshots page (link at right) if you are interested. Here is a little something to pique your interest...
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Quilters ATCs!
Posted by Christa Irell at 7:02 PM 3 comments
Fabric Adventure!
I had a GREAT day! I met up with my friend Joan who lives in Denver, and we went to the Rocky Mountain Sew Expo in Denver.
What a show- so much to see and touch and drool over. So many choices about what to buy and what not to buy.
I hadn't met Joan in person before today; she and I belong to the same online fabric postcard trading group and she nicely offered to go with me to the show, knowing I don't know a lot of people around here yet. We started out by having a leisurely breakfast first and then spent the next three hours wandering from booth to booth. Joan brought me a gorgeous moose pincushion as a "welcome to Denver" gift. Isn't it cute? Joan is a sweetheart.
I really didn't intend on buying any fabric, but the prices were so good and I saw some stuff I knew my girls would LOVE. They are bag-a-holics just like I am and any time I get cool fabric, they want a bag of some sort out of it. I have lots of bag patterns and I love making bags... so it's all good!
Next week my adventure continues when I will go to an artsy quilt shop with a friend I have made here in the neighborhood. We will be trading quilter's ATCs, and I have been working feverishly on them for the past couple of weeks. I will post later today or tomorrow and show you a little sample of my "art".
In the meantime, check out the cool fabric I got today. I am so excited!
Posted by Christa Irell at 4:09 PM 0 comments


text:
The two sides of A.J. Ellis
Dodger fans watching today's game saw the team enter the bottom of the ninth, down 5-0, only to score seven runs, capped off by a walk-off three-run shot by A.J. Ellis.
But it's what happened afterward that prompted this post.
Sitting inside my office at Camelback Ranch, I have a view of Maury's Pit, the mini field here where the players work on their bunting with Dodger legend, Maury Wills. In the afternoons, it turns into a playground for all the Dodgers' players kids as they wait for their fathers to get done "at work." In fact, yesterday a five-year-old Rafael Furcal Jr. was absolutely crushing baseballs using a Major League-sized bat.
Then today, right after watching the ninth inning unfold on TV, I looked outside my window and saw A.J. Ellis' kids playing around in Maury's Pit. As he walked up in street clothes, just a few minutes after hitting a game-winning homer in a Major League game (albeit a Spring Training one), there were no congratulatory high fives or adulation…he simply picked up his son and immediately turned back into "Dad."
Quite often, we forget that these players are actually people just like the rest of us but served as a fantastic reminder, and it couldn't happen to a nicer person. A.J. is truly one of the most genuine people I've ever encountered in the game of baseball and his family is equally as awesome.
Congrats to all of them on their family's game-winning hit and on having an All-Star dad.
113 Comments
Thanks for the new thread, Josh. Love all you do for us….keep up the good work. We will do our best to keep you informed, as well 🙂
Thanks Josh!!! Good Job!!!
Fantastic post Josh!!!! I am kind of an A.J fan. I think with some consistent playing time, he just might surprise us with a good solid bat and a pretty good catcher at that 🙂
The team is showing some life.
Thanks for the well wishes everyone!
When the going gets tough, the tough get to Fresno. 🙂
Good evening ITD boys and girls!
Yeah, I know, I know. It?s been TOO LONG since the last time I started a post like that! Now that the season is almost here (YEAH!!! DODGER STADIUM HERE I COME!!!) I?ll try to keep my disappearing act to a minimum. I watch as many of the ST games as I can. Yeah, Giminez is really impressing me. As jhall said in the last thread, injuries are part of the game. I do like Casey Blake overall, but his body has been slowing down for quite some time now and it?s time for him (long overdue IMHO) to step aside and play a backup role and let a younger pup a chance. I always have liked the signing of Juan Uribe and his versatility will help us tremendously. I?m concerned that Jaime Carroll won?t be anything close to what he meant to us in 2010; only time will tell. I?ve never liked the idea of a platoon in LF, especially when our left-handed LFer isn?t doing all that well in ST. Again, only time will tell what happens there. But I?m thrilled that Giminez has been willing to play other positions aside from catcher. That?ll make him that much more valuable to us. Again, I don?t want any player to get injured, but if Navarro?s oblique problem opens a door for Giminez, then so be it.
I'm with you, nellyjune. I've been rooting for AJ to be one our two catchers all offseason. I was worried when they signed Barajas and Navarro, but I was still holding out hope that AJ will have a good spring and make the roster. I've met him a few times and completely agree with ItD! (I'd say Josh, but you never know who's writing from the Front Office sometimes – never assume anything)
Yeah Enchanted!!!!! It's good to see that name!!!
Hey CP!!! Good to see you!!! Can't wait for the season to start so these comeback games actually count!
sunshine – It would be a great thing to see him get some substantial playing time to see what he can really do.
enchanted – seriously, glad you moved to safer ground (I hope).
Go get'em Beav!!!
My Nellygirl!
Yeah, can?t wait either. Hey, guess what? I got another call this morning and I have another initial appointment on Tuesday with a plumbing company. I sent him a letter last year; this was a plumber that did some work for us. I remember when he was working at the house that he mentioned he needed QB help in his office so when I got my QB certification, I sent him a letter offering him my services. So be praying for me on Tuesday!
I?m sorry for running out on you the other day, but I just lost track of time. I?ve got 30 minutes that I can spend on ITD tonight! Thx for telling me about yourself. I?m glad that you have a sports -minded class; yeah, it?s gotta be fun for you! I think I told you before my sister is a teacher at Arvin H.S. and I hear stuff from her. I know it?s tough what teachers have to deal with these days. I?m glad that the Academy is doing well and expanding! That is great news! I?m not in Norcal very often, but I?ve gotta make a point to come see you next time I am. I hope your hubby?s health scares haven?t been too traumatic for him, or you for that matter.
If Michael decides to go to a 4-year school for baseball, does he have any schools he?s thinking of? You know LB State or Fullerton are great baseball schools! But I?ve gotta tell you something else. JC isn?t a death sentence anymore. One of my husband?s coworkers at the USPS has a son that pitches for the Phillies? organization. His name is Justin De Fratus. The kid was pitching a ST game a couple of weeks ago against the Yankees when he gave up a HR to Curtis Granderson. I know he?s not on their roster, but I don?t know if he?s going back to AA or if he?ll get promoted to AAA. My point is that Justin was going to Ventura College when he got drafted by the Phillies. And we all know that our Andre started at a JC and then went to ASU. So there are tons of possibilities open to him! And the love birds are still love birds? That?s great to hear! How?s school for Mariya? Well I hope.
So you and Trumom are coming to Andre's Bobblehead night? Maybe I can convince my mom to take me on that night and we can meet up for sure! I?d love to see you two! And I?d love it if you met my mom! Can?t remember, have you met my mom yet? At first I was saying no, you haven?t but perhaps you have and I don?t remember. Oh well, we?ll plan on something later. Love ya!
Jhall!!! It?s been too long my friend! So how is life in Ohio these days? Your Buckeyes are doing well in the tourney! You?ve gotta be thrilled!
And Enchanted, are you in Fresno now?
Well sorry guys, but I?ve gotta run. Maybe another time.
CP – That's great about your business…..prayers for sure!!!
I will let you know when I am heading down the So-Cal way too. I don't think I have met your mom. We were supposed to meet at Andre's autograph signing at AT&T, but remember, I went back in line to have another thing signed for your mom – LOL!!! shhhhh!!! don't tell!!!
Michael is leaning towards two JC's. Cabrillo College in Aptos (Santa Cruz area) and Northeastern Oklahoma A&M in Miami, Oklahoma (80 miles from Tulsa). Cabrillo College has been contacting Michael since early summer, and how NE Oklahoma came into the picture is New Mexico State. They wanted to give Michael a full scholarship, but they need him to play a year (or two) at a JC. So, NE Oklahoma is a feeder school into NM State (sound familiar?). That would also be a full scholarship. He is flying out there during his spring break to check out the school and the team. There are several players from California he is going to talk to and several players who came from NM state as well. Both teams are doing very well in their divisions so he can't lose that way. Menlo College (a four year NAIA private school) is still in the picture, and it's early so who knows who else will be in the picture in the next month or so. He is pitching very well right now (his ERA is about a 1.7 or less), and they just beat an undefeated team on Tuesday.
Hi'Ya CP!!! Going well here. Thanks!!! Yea, we're very happy with the Basket Ball Buckeyes!!!! Still a long way to go!!! One game at a time..
Two sides of Barry!!! Put the Pumpkin head steroid boy in jail!!!!!!! Freakin' lyin' peice of crap!!!!!!
I'll drink to that, Jhall!
Jhall – I was listening to KNBR (gnat radio), and they were talking about the trial saying that Stan Conte is on the witness list for next week some time.
Your Buckeyes were playing Fresno State the other day in baseball, but Fresno State won.
Well Nelly, lets hope Conte can do one thing right in his life. Bury the pumpkin head steroid boy!!!! He's worthless as a trainer!!!!
You're too cool Trumom!!!
So far, they are saying there isn't enough clear-cut evidence to prove he knew about it (whether we, the fans, think so or not), but then you are talking the gnat fans mind is a little skewed when it comes to him.
If he didn't know he was "using", he's even dumber asss than I thought! lol
All of you ITDers make me cool 🙂 I'm really a shy, reserved person 🙂
Glad you are OK EnchantedB!
We Love A.J. He was the nicest when he was one of the guest s we had for the Boton Dodger road trip.
For those that might like to attend the SABR conference in Long Beach, the game we will be going to is the Andre Ethier BBH night. We will also be going to an Angel game and posible a game at San Bernardino (Rancho Cucamonga will be on the road). I with someone else is in charge of the goodie bags.
My afternoon conductor on Metrolink gave me some flyers about the new Metrolink lines (Anetelope Valley, San Bernardino, Ventura County) will offer weeknight return service from Union Station at 11:p.m. so riders can use these lines to connect with the Dodger Stadium Express. details at metrolinktrains.com
If I can be of any help to our Dodger fans that live far, let me know.
Good Morning ITD readers and writers!! I am testing this to see if it is working. Tru can't seem to get on here, and I am seeing if the same happens to me. Have a great day Dodger fans!! I am very proud of Andre, James and all the players that are going to Tuscon to play baseball today.
Good Morning ITD readers and writers!! I am testing this to see if it is working. Tru can't seem to get on here, and I am seeing if the same happens to me. Have a great day Dodger fans!! I am very proud of Andre, James and all the players that are going to Tuscon to play baseball today.
Testing…………..1………….2………………3 🙂
Hi Folks
Yes it was a great finish to a game regardless of it's importance and it was good to see A.J. finally get a hold of one.
It shows if he gets the right pitch, he can hit it out.
He just has to do it more often to better his chances of making the team and the Dodgers could sure use another homegrown.
No posting since my last one last night? I know the website was not working earlier. i think this has to do with the email Mark sent that they are upgrading all the MLb blogs, but is working now.
Four job openings at work. accounting, field engineer (San Jose), quality engineer and Production control. Also we will have the Summer program which is good for students with good grades and that are continuing their education.
Six days or 146 hours till Dodgers Opening Day!
Just read this post from Roberto of Vin Scully is My Homeboy: http://www.vinscullyismyhomeboy.com/2011/03/do-you-want-great-customer-service-from.html . It compares the "Reds way" of customer service to the current Dodgers' style.
Thought I'd share.
Just read this post from Roberto of Vin Scully is My Homeboy: http://www.vinscullyismyhomeboy.com/2011/03/do-you-want-great-customer-service-from.html . It compares the "Reds way" of customer service to the current Dodgers' style.
Thought I'd share.
Hi everyone
I tried to post here earlier but apparently I couldn't, so I'm just trying to see If I can get this in.
I just seen the pictures of the Arizona game today. I just wanted to say, that it was so nice, to see the Green Family, smiling once again. Their daughter/sister/loved one was truly an angel.
We are all so blessed to have been touched by her.
Christina We Love You…
Hello Everyone!! Well, I'm looking forward to these next few games and seeing who makes the cut and who doesn't!! Hope you all have a great weekend!! GO DODGERS!!!
Hello Everyone!! Well, I'm looking forward to these next few games and seeing who makes the cut and who doesn't!! Hope you all have a great weekend!! GO DODGERS!!!
Hello Everyone!! Well, I'm looking forward to these next few games and seeing who makes the cut and who doesn't!! Hope you all have a great weekend!! GO DODGERS!!!
Broadcasting live again from the home office and not beautiful downtown Fresno.
Hello Everyone!! Well, I'm looking forward to these next few games and seeing who makes the cut and who doesn't!! Hope you all have a great weekend!! GO DODGERS!!!
Hello Everyone!! Well, I'm looking forward to these next few games and seeing who makes the cut and who doesn't!! Hope you all have a great weekend!! GO DODGERS!!!
Hello Everyone!! Well, I'm looking forward to these next few games and seeing who makes the cut and who doesn't!! Hope you all have a great weekend!! GO DODGERS!!!
Hi Everybody I was unable to post on this blog yesterday. Let's see how I do today.
Testing 1,2,3……
Are we there yet!!!
Are we there yet!!!
Are we there yet!!!
Where is everybody? No posts in 2 days? Did the rapture take place or something?!!! I hope not! Take care…
Hey Batter, Batter….Hey Batter, Batter
Le'ts Go Dodgers, Let's Go!!!
Game On!!
*****'a You…..
Josh: this thing ain't working
HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!! to Jhall and Oldbrooklynfan!!!!
How's about here?
Well I'm game E.
Since Josh doesn't seem to be around, why don't you (Dodgereric, Enchanted or Jhall) start a new thread here?!
We need a new and good topic of discussion.
Hello gang!! What's happening? Good idea Dad!! Sounds like Bud's got Franky by the short hairs!! Can't wait until he is gone. The sooner the better for all concerned. I'm not buying his SoJackOff contrition and crocidile tears!!! Hope the fans continue to not show up.
If frank can't make payroll, there won't be a team to watch 🙂 I take that back….with the crap Donny put on the field yesterday, there ISN'T a team to watch!
LOL!! They're not worth watching now. MLB won't let that happen. It will just give Bud more ammo to seize the team and force a sale!!! JMO!! I'm praying that we are close to the day when it is announced that MLB is selling the team and all hell breaks out here and in LA!!!! Wah-Hoo, what a party!!!
If, and when, that happens, we all need to meet up and toast mccrook's ouster 🙂 That will be a great day for Dodger fans everywhere!
In fact, that should be the day we fill up the Ravine!!!
Definately!!! Led by DodgerDad/Eric!!!
For some really lousy baseball viewing, tune in this weekend to watch our AAA Dodgers team take on the New York Mets. This weekend's play to feature such outstanding players such as Aaron Miles, Jay Gibbons, Russell Mitchell, and James Loney. Perhaps some surprise appearances from Jamie Hoffman and John Lindblom. Who knows, maybe Ned will dig up the Ortizii and Juan Castro? Family fun for all.
"Go sit in the front kid. Nobody is coming because of Frank"
This is classic. You can't make this stuff up.
LOL!!!!! I am laughing at many things. You guys are too funny!!!!
We are titillating!!! LOL!!!
…..Oh….just a tad 🙂 LOL!!!
Titillating, timely, topics ( : ) ( : )
Is "titillating" derived from "lactating"?
I'm lactose intolerant 🙂
Ethier said the pain occurred after he slid into home plate during the Cardinals series two weeks ago, and it affects him more throwing than hitting.
I read that yesterday. Let's hope it's something these couple of days rest will cure. MLB Network was reporting he should be ready for Friday's game against the Mets. However, we do have Conte so I am being cautiously optimistic at this point.
Maybe he was smart and sought outside help. Conte only makes things worse.
Hopefully 🙂
I gotta get some work done sometime today, but I thought I'd pass this along:
I doubt the "ten best" are in any sort of order, namely because Vin is the 4th one. And you up there in gnat land are going to barf when you get to a certain twosome, but the article is well worth the reading just for the one about Bob Uecker. It has a bunch of his quotes, and they're just friggin' hilarious! Example:
"People don't know this, but I helped the Cardinals win the pennant. I came down with hepatitis. The trainer injected me with it."
To use your phrase………….."Dear Lord" or "Good Gawd". Jon Miller I can certainly see. Even though he is the voice of the Giants, he does have some good stories to tell. As for the other two……………..blah!!!!!
Blah, is right! I'd go one step further and say, "It's Krud & Krap!"
Is that Jamie Jhall? LOL!!!!
Hamana-hamana-hamana…….Oh baby, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I've made mistakes, but I want to win you back.
Hey, where the fuck is my gravatar??????????
Oh goodness gracious Frank. It's a sign you are out the door.
Frank must still be fighting MLB for the Dodgers and his Avatar.
Well, gotta go. I'm seein' a couple of guys who look like Ron and Bobby from Lizard Lick Towing checkin' out my Yugo. Where's my bat? Ned, get out here, you're fatter than I am!
Okay Frankie & Jamie…..please move your act….we have a new thread!


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Hello to everyone from West Berkshire!
I got into the office around 8:20 – first thing on the agenda is to go through my emails; luckily it's a Friday so it's reasonably quiet on that front. I did respond to an interesting post on the Historic Environment Record (HER) Forum regarding HERs as an education resource for schools: this is something that I was promoting in my previous role as HER Officer for Hampshire, so glad to see that others are also on board with the same ideas. Now that archaeology has a stronger presence in the National Curriculum I hope that HERs can make a positive contribution in the future.
Next on the agenda is to set up some meetings with some other West Berkshire colleagues; firstly at the West Berkshire Museum (/https://twitter.com/WBerksMuseum) to discuss good practice when dealing with archaeological archives. The Museum is due to re-open at the end of August after being closed for a while, so everyone is working very hard! Secondly, with our Conservation Officers to catch up on how our local listing and parish heritage initiatives are going. These are both important projects aimed at getting local communities to recognise their heritage and feed it into policy and good practice. This will hopefully highlight the importance of local sites and ensure that they are recognised and appreciated by everyone.
After that, I commented on some pre-applications that have come in. This involves an initial appraisal of some proposals before they are submitted as planning applications, and ensures that archaeological issues are highlighted, with suggestions on how these issues can be dealt with. This can sometimes include evaluation (such as a geophysical survey), or in other cases there are no historic environment concerns at all. Further details on our part in the planning process can be found here.
Next it's time to get out of the office for a bit! Off to Speen (just north west of Newbury town) for a meeting to discuss the location of an information board about the Civil War Second Battle Of Newbury. This board has been developed in partnership with the Battlefields Trust and the West Berkshire Heritage Forum and will be another good example of raising local awareness of heritage. Fund raising for the board came partly through a series of talks held at West Berkshire Council's Shaw House. The idea is to have a grand unveiling of the board in October as close to the 370th anniversary of the Battle as possible! I also took the opportunity to visit Speen Church and holy well to snap some photos!


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Publishing news about marketing, social media, technology, politics, entertainment, soccer and life…Read more about The Main Street Analyst
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Why Every Major Brand Should Use Empire Avenue – Social Media Rocket Fuel
For Major Brands – Social Media Is A Sales Driver! If You Treat It As Such
In My Opinion – How Big Brands Create Social Media Campaigns, General Motors' $30 Million Facebook Campaign
Major Brands: Social Media Is Great – How Do We Make Money Off It?
Our Twitter In Magazine Form – The Main Street Analyst Daily
The Big 3 In The World Of Luxury Brands
Social Media And The Fashion Retailers
The Office Catwalk – Why office Fashion Can Be A Full Time Job
Doing Research? Need Numbers? Check This Out – Statista.com
More Posts And Infographics
So, And You Believe You Have A Free Choice On The News You Get?
Social Insecurity – Got Social Media FOMO?
Gender Marketing – Consumer Differences Between The Sexes
Moms Are The Biggest Brand Boosters
Quick Start Guide For Social Marketing On The Big 3
Facebook vs. Pinterest On Twitter
Maximizing Millennials – How To Manage Gen Y
The iPhone Turns 5 – A Success Story
RIM's Dramatic Losses – The Blackberry Is In Danger Of Extinction
Are Women More Attracted To Jerks?
The Status Of Social Media In Marketing
Where Are The Most Social Small Businesses?
What You Need To Know About Sunscreen
Got Milk? – What Do You Know About Milk?
Cannes Lions – Big Buzz For Selena Gomez
41% of Kickstarter Projects Fail
20 Most Expensive Houses In The World
Social Media Teens Seek Time Offline
Building An Engaged Audience – And Keeping It
Top 5 Industries in Mobile Adoption
The Power And Growth of Mobile Marketing
Mobile Commerce And Business On The Rise
A Snapshot Of Mobile Photography
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Why No Soccer Superstar And No World Cup For U.S. Soccer
Fernando Torres – Mystery? (04/2011)
Don't we all like to look at beautiful people and dream on how we are going to start working out to look like them. Well, here is a chance to motivate yourself for a much harder workout.
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So there's the final episode of Carranger. This isn't the last Carranger release however. We've still got:
– Carranger vs Ohranger
– ep 1-10 with new translations by Kou.
The batch torrent will also contain updated versions of ep 11-23 with the new typesetting that we used starting from ep 23 but otherwise those eps will remain mostly unchanged. What this does mean however is that there won't be a batch torrent right away so if you want to watch Carranger right now you'll have to click 42 times! All the eps can be found here.
MFC will be doing Megaranger vs. Carranger.
XDCC: #HaroRangers @ irc.rizon.net


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Internet resources for what you need to know about NYC Crime and Police
Five Favorite Sites For Beginners
by Jerome Chou
In The News:
(jan '00) Paris Drake is accused of a senseless and brutal crime on a busy Midtown street in broad daylight. Whether or not he is convicted of bashing a woman's head with a brick, his arrest has highlighted the criminal justice system's failure to deal with repeat offenders.
Before the alleged attack, Drake had been jailed more than twenty times and was a free man for exactly 17 days out of the last eight years. Like many of his fellow inamtes, Drake was arrested several times on drug-related charges (an estimated 70% of the City's 70,000 inmates have a history of drug abuse). Most of his crimes were misdemeanors, which typically bring sentences of only a few weeks or months in jail.
Clearly, the system doesn't work for Drake and thousands of others who spend years cycling in and out of prison. Prison advocates call for more drug programs, but too often inmates themselves complain that these programs don't work. Most of the ex-cons I spoke to in a recent study of parole--even those who insisted they needed help to stay clean--ridiculed the rehab programs available to them. Some skipped out without consequences. When Drake, for instance, was finally ordered to seek treatment after years of revolving-door prison stints, he blew it off.
Mayor Giuliani and Governor Pataki have called for a kind of "three strikes and you're out" policy that would mandate longer sentences for repeat offenders after a certain number of misdemeanors in a given time period. Steven M. Fishner, the mayor's criminal justice coordinator, has said "It is for people like Paris Drake, for offenders who sell marijuana repeatedly in city parks, and for others who make a career of committing crimes and skating under the mandatory sentences for felonies."
Such a plan might please prison-happy public officials, but probably won't change criminal behavior. Why not? The motivation needed to go straight is extremely difficult to manufacture, whether you're giving inmates a boot camp regimen or drug programs, long terms upstate or slap-on-the-wrist sentences. The problem is, for those ex-cons who are determined not to return to prison, it's difficult to find a job that pays the bills, and exceedingly easy to get back into crime, especially selling and using drugs. Until this balance changes--perhaps by making effective pre-release programs a priority--no proposal to reduce the number of repeat offenders is likely to succeed.
Jerome Sounds Off:
Quality of Life Crime #54: Selling cheap goods on the subway. (Good thing too, since mostly recent Chinese immigrants are in that racket nowadays, and with their mangling of the language and their haggard countenances, these people are comical at best, downright disturbing if you're in a bad mood. Not the kind of thing you want the tourists to see. Plus, they're cutting into Duracell and Doublemint sales at legitimate rent-paying stores. And remember the "broken-windows" theory � today they're selling yo-yos, tomorrow they're hawking stolen watches, pretty soon they're robbing you at gunpoint when you try to take the train! That's why I'm glad I saw a sting operation last week--six uniformed and two plainclothes officers nabbing two guys who, I was told, make thousands of dollars a week selling $1 batteries. It's a good thing these crooks are off the streets now, but not before pocketing our hard-earned George Washingtons and menacing our quality of life.)
Jerome's Favorite Five Sites For Beginners:
Other Recommendations:
Visit the Topic Archives!
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NBC executive: We're not replacing Matt Lauer
A top NBC executive says the network is not considering replacing Matt Lauer as anchor of the "Today" show.
NBC News executive Alex Wallace, who oversees the troubled morning show, made the comment Wednesday in response to reports that the network had approached CNN's Anderson Cooper about the "Today" job.
The report first appeared in Deadline Hollywood and was confirmed to The Associated Press by a source who spoke on condition of anonymity because the discussions were private.
Wallace says Lauer is "the best in the business" and that NBC wants him on "Today" for many years to come.
The "Today" show has fallen behind ABC's "Good Morning America" in the ratings and Lauer has been buffeted by bad publicity surrounding last year's ouster of co-anchor Ann Curry.


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text: I have examined maps of the city with the greatest care, yet have never again found the Rue d'Auseil. These maps have not been modern maps alone, for I know that names change. I have, on the contrary, delved deeply into all the antiquities of the place, and have personally explored every region, of whatever name, which could possibly answer to the street I knew as the Rue d'Auseil. But despite all I have done, it remains an humiliating fact that I cannot find the house, the street, or even the locality, where, during the last months of my impoverished life as a student of metaphysics at the university, I heard the music of Erich Zann.


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I have a confession – not every yoga class is a good one. Some are just ok. The last class I attended at my new yoga studio (thanks to a Groupon deal!) was just ok. It didn't have me dying to go back, which explains my two week absence.
However, tonight's class? Tonight's class was awesome. It was the same class, same time slot, but a different teacher. This teacher had a little more experience and kicked the class up a notch. It was a *warm* flow class, and by the end I was sweatin' up a storm and becoming shaky in my poses. The whole class was just the post-marathon detox I needed. I sweated out all the toxins my body was holding onto and left the studio feeling like a whole new person.
The best part about the class was that my legs felt great. Sure, some poses were harder to hold than others, but it was a complete 180 from the yoga podcast I did Tuesday morning! I think I'm ready to attempt a run in the morning. 🙂
Before class, I had a handful of mixed nuts while working in Starbucks.
Not going to lie, I was very tempted when the Starbucks' Frappuccino "Happy Hour" started (1/2 priced frappuccinos from 3-5 until the 13th) and the Starbucks was suddenly full of folks ordering very delicious looking frappucinos (I saw a few walk out with 4 or 5 of them!). But I stuck with my iced coffee. I figured Derek and I could get 1/2 priced fraps together on Saturday if I still wanted one then. 😉
After yoga class, I made a very quick stir fry with roasted bok choy for dinner.
Stir fry:
- carrots
- onion
- snap peas
- corn
- tempeh
- brown rice
- peanuts
- sesame oil
- soy sauce
The boy choy was roasted at 400 for 20 minutes with some red pepper flakes and sesame oil. The results were delicious! The leaves reminded me of "kale chips" and sort of melted in your mouth.
I had some key lime cookies from a generic gift box for dessert.
I hear ya, Maddie. I'm ready for bed too.
How can a dog who sleep 8 hours a day be so ready for bed at 9:00pm? It boggles my mind! 😉
Good Night!


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Shares of Tenet Healthcare Corp. (THC) have surged about 73% since January 2012 and hit a 52-week high on January 3, 2013. This Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) healthcare services provider should have further opportunities for price momentum given its long-term expected earnings growth rate of 10.3%, along with its strategic plans for acquisitions, share repurchases, debt repayment and a reverse stock split.
Third Quarter
On November 7, Tenet Healthcare reported third-quarter operating earnings of 28 cents per share, which fell short of the Zacks Consensus Estimate but soared 300% from last year.
Reported net income, including earnings from discontinued operations of $10 million or 9 cents per share, stood at $40 million or 37 cents per share, improving about 7 times from $6 million or 5 cents in the year-ago quarter.
Net operating revenues grew 5.8% year over year to $2.2 billion, largely driven by higher outpatient visits and surgeries along with cost containment initiatives.
Subsequently, Tenet Healthcare posted adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) that jumped 40.1% year over year to $269 million. Adjusted EBITDA margin was 12.1%, expanding 300 basis points.
Earnings Estimates
The Zacks Consensus Estimate for 2012 is currently $1.96 per share. Meanwhile, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for 2013 is up 6.6% to $2.90 per share over the last 60 days, supported by upward revisions from 10 of 15 estimates. This implies growth of 47.6% over 2012.
Compelling Valuation
Tenet Healthcare currently trades at a forward P/E of 11.8x, a 4% premium to the peer group average of 11.37x. Its trailing 12-month P/E of 21.4x is at a 73% premium to the peer group average of 12.4x. On a price-to-book basis, shares currently trade at 2.9x, a 40% premium to the peer group average of 2.1x.
Based on the company's bolstered growth prospective, the premium looks reasonable and well cushioned by its 12-month ROE of 16.9%, which is above the peer group average of 15.8%.
Shares have been consistently trading close to its 52-week high and far above its 200-day moving average since November 2012, while it has fared well with respect to the 50-day moving average since around mid-December 2012.
The stock has also outperformed the 1-year S&P 500 index substantially, with a return of 67.06% over the last year, compared with S&P 500's tally of 16.03%. Volume averages 2.41 million daily.
Tenet Healthcare is one of the largest investor-owned health care delivery systems that offer healthcare services through its own 49 acute care hospitals along with ambulatory surgery centers, diagnostic imaging centers and related health care facilities in the U.S. Its hospitals have a total of 13,216 licensed beds and serve the urban and suburban communities across 11 states. With a market capitalization of about $3.65 billion, Tenet competes with HCA Holdings Inc. (HCA) and Community Health Systems Inc. (CYH), among others.
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The State of Dungeons & Dragons: Future
Pages 1 2 NEXT
The State of Dungeons & Dragons: Future
Examining the ghosts of RPG past, present and future.
To early to talk about 5E? HAHAHA... The official forums have been talking about 5E off and on for over a year. And there are plenty of hints that they're working on the latest version.
I think the biggest problem is he fails to see his success as actually being a success.
We still have them. having support, modern updates, supplements and more is just not needed. Explicitly, there's only so much you can make that will contribute to a game that is definitely never seen as modular beyond the campaign settings. I owned every single WOTC book under the 3.0 and 3.5 system at one point, and the amount I paid for them made having to toss most away a few weeks ago when I had to move far away with very little showed me just what an awful waste and ridiculous publishing system every single RPG to date has had, and it is perpetual.
People wonder why 4th edition came out and was so different, but the really simple answer may be - could you even *THINK* of ANY kind of concept that needed full WOTC published support you yourself couldn't settle for a homebrew material, that would be worthy of a shiny, expensive source book slot that would need to sell tens to hundreds of thousands of copies to cover the expense of? One of TSR's biggest reasons for going under was releasing so many books that just had a tiny market that only the worst nerds of the hobby would buy because they were collectors or obsessed, not because they were badly designed. They were just bad ideas from inception to rotting on shelves to the games poorly tested materials helped ruin.
It wasn't about balance, or trying to go more mainstream. They might claim they had that as a very high reason for the influence and style of design, and you know what? I think it was a very good thing. I feel 4th edition has been more playable from numbers to the edict that you can re-flavor any mechanic with whatever fluff you like being the next big thing in tabletop games if we could get over the stupidity that is proclaiming dis-associated mechanics are bad. (Rolling dice is the biggest disassociated thing in all of RPGs but only it gets a pass because of tradition and because nerds are stubborn and awful?)
And you know what, even if it wasn't that good, between the PHB and DMG 1, a D&DI subscription, and the 4e rules compendium, even if it was a mistake, they pushed a new method of delivering content that was lighter on my wallet fivefold than any other previous edition, and when I cancel, leaves me without the need to cling to ruined useless tomes like everyone else does on the hope they'll somehow appreciate in value, which they never will.
I think DnD will always be in trouble if success is defined to be a product line that brings in $100 million a year. I play DnD and I don't think that there is enough of an audience for that kind of thing.
This was a great series of articles, I never really got into D&D and so missed out on most of its history and politics. All I had ever read about it was really basic historical stuff about how it got started, so I loved reading about all the drama that it's been through.
As for where it's going, I don't think pen and paper RPGs have to go the way of model trains - as long as they actually adapt to the realities of most gamers. For me, I had an opportunity to join a D&D game earlier this year, but I wasn't going to be in the same country for long enough. I think a lot of people have similar situations, whether they have to move or they just have made friends across the globe via the internet. If WOTC provides an easy way to run games across long distances, that would remove a lot of barriers to playing.
This has been a great series.
It's been interesting to see what the designers of the game and its competitors think about the whole thing. I like that Mike Mearls sees the problems and is working to correct it.
I think the $100 million dollar mark won't work as well in this hobby, unfortunately. All you need to play the game is a couple of books, so realistically, after you get the core books, there's no reason to buy anything else.
It should be interesting to see how far Wizards has to take the DnD franchise to be as successful as Magic: The Gathering. Will we be roleplaying with cards and booster decks in the future?
I'm very curious to see how 4th edition translates into video games. Hopefully whatever comes of it, the games will be better than the fare Atari cranked out.
The swing of it: We already had 3rd Edition D&D for all the "creative" players who wanted to try different combinations (both mechanically and in theme).
But that's what you get with a system designed with that kind of freedom in mind. Giving more power and freedom to the players means it will be that much more difficult to balance (the DM *is* a referee AND storyteller. It's easily the hardest job to do in a tabletop).
Creating something that's challenging without being completely unbeatable/unavoidable is very difficult, and it becomes exponentially moreso when you add more and more books with increasingly more broken classes and feats to the pile.
And for all of the "WoW-ification" of 4E, I actually respect their efforts in bringing the game back down to earth. This also sets 4E apart from 3E, which is a *good* thing.
Though I suppose now WotC's Hasbro taskmasters are hoping for a more generic "One Stop Shop" gaming system that has a wide appeal, all under the banner of tabletop's most recognized franchise name.
Fittingly enough, I think that era has already passed (think "d20 System").
If my years of DMing and playing tabletops have taught me anything, it's this: DO NOT try to force conflicting player archetypes together and assume it will work itself out.
By that, I mean do not try to force the Power-Playing Min-max Munchkins, the Storytellers, and the Board Strategists into the same "community" just so you can more easily sell them a "one-size fits all" product via word-of-mouth.
They're at odds not specifically because of your game rules, but because of wildly differing (sometimes directly conflicting) gaming philosophies. You could mix these folks into any other given game and it would likely end in an argument (or worse).
"How do we get all these guys back together, so we actually have real communities, not just a bunch of separate smaller communities, that don't really interact in any way?"
I am no designer, and I trust that both Mike and Monte will do their best in designing 5th edition to be as successful as possible. I would like Mike, who asked the question, to consider something: an apology for the things that were said by the old design team and the manner in which those who played previous editions were treated might help scab over a few wounds.
Sure, it's been years. But some of us don't forget.
Best of luck to M&M making D&D at WOTC.
Very good series of articles. Enjoyed the read. You can count this 40+ year old among those that abadoned D&D when it got away from "1st edition" Advanced D&D. I remember vividly walking away after the train wreck that was Unearthed Arcana.
Thanks for catching me up on the changes
I'm one of those "rare" individuals in the RPG consumer world who loves new editions of games, it's not like the old editions of games go anywhere after all, and new rules are cool and exciting especially if they feel like different games rather than glorified updates.
This was definitely the best article of the three, and a very interesting look at possibilities for the future. I have lost my faith in Mearls, however, as he seems to me misguided in so many ways these days.
I don't think its fair to equate 4E with the imaginative/unimaginative skew by any means, no matter how much the elitist anti-4E sect would like to think that, but 4E did shuck too many sacred cows for its own sake.
Also, I think that it's actually a good year here in 2012 to announce a 5th edition. Gamers are tired of being stretched out over too many editions of the game, and I think we could use a unifying edition....if WotC doesn't move forward on this, its going to be Pathfinder (not necessarily a bad thing there, either; I win either way, as I am a "pro-game player" who benefits by not jumping on any edition war bandwagons as much as possible).
I'm surprised that it hasn't been brought up or noticed that a major barrier to the consumption side of the hobby is the amount of time it takes to start playing (and how much time it takes just to get anything done). 45 minute combats in 4E are all well and good, but one module for 4E can take weeks or even months for my group to complete. Imagine if we had mechanics that ran more quickly and smoothly (ala AD&D 1st and 2nd edition days)....people coould actually buy a module and play it in a couple sessions, with 10-20 minute combats and a faster story pace; that might actually drive more product sales, I would think, as people would actually "get more" out of modules by being able to enjoy them in shorter but more intense game sessions than the current 4E (and 3.5) models of play, which can usually spend four or five times longer accomplishing exactly the same tasks that were so much quicker in the older editions. But....just a thought.
I'll have to concur with this, with one caveat.
I can and do play RPGs in a variety of styles, but my approach to 4e is very much as a powergamer.
An example of munchkin-ing in 3.5e is summoning a colossal giant centipede to jump on your enemies, because "attacking in the most efficient manner" is to deal 160 dice of damage in a 4x4 ('cos the mob is 16 tons). It doesn't even take any damage if the jump is 10 feet off of a wall.
Where, in the same situation, a powergamer would trigger a contingency to cast a haste, then drop a maximised fireball (which is damn hard to resist due to stacked feats on DC and spell penetration), then use the increased movement speed due to haste to get behind cover.
The two groups are actually polar opposites in that .. munchkins will cheat on die rolls ('cos winning is everything). Powergamers will punch people in the mouth for cheating on die rolls ('cos cheating is an insult to having 1337 skills).
I think what might spare D&D and its ilk from the fate of model trains is that its core appeal remains alive across the entire face of gaming and culture more generally. Really it's an apples to oranges comparison. Model Trains represent a fascination with an outmoded technology - the train. Nobody rides or sees trains anymore. Dragons, dungeons, friends, Friday night and pizza are alive and well.
However, I wouldn't be surprised if the hobby does narrow for those interested in the pure experience of pen, paper and imagination. As boardgames have shown, gamers are looking for a structured and self contained experience. There's a world in a box, a world filled with miniatures, maps and implements like cards and dice. The tangible nature of the fantasy boardgame experience will converge with the world of pen and paper RPGs.
It's happened in reverse already, with examples like Descent. And though Descent focused on a particular aspect of the RPG experience, there are games out that have gone much farther. I recently played Mage Knight and was blown away by it's sublime hodgepodge of card mechanics, world building, player choice and character development. It's obvious inspiration, Magic Realm, is another example.
Currently, what has traditionally been D&D's greatest strength is its Achilles heel. As I said in another post, it's not at all clear what you're buying with D&D. When you buy a boardgame, players know they're buying a complete experience. If WotC is smart, 5th edition D&D will be a hybrid boardgame/pen and paper experience. D&D can't go home again, the OSR ensured that. And why would it? That market is a known quantity and it's well serviced by many other products. Instead of fighting a war of attrition in a staid market, create a new one; change the paradigm once again.
Point taken, though too often in my experience, the two cross paths at the common circle I call "griefing".
Well, that's only a problem if you mix powergamers with people who don't powergame.
sorry for not reading anyone else's comments, but im just here to say that i've been playing since 3.0 and now i like pathfinder.
peace out girl scout
Hopefully it will be better than what Black Isle cranked out too, but I don't see that happening.
Of course, I still regularly play one of the Atari D&D games, so there is that.
I feel cold fingers of high leveled undead Nostalgia on my shoulders.
Forcing the min-maxer with the roleplayers never worked well... This conflict is one that has been going on for a millenia and will probably continue to plague the RPG world for the next many generations.
It's become somewhat hard, if not impossible, to gather a group of people who are willing and able to give tabletop role-playing a proper go. People these days have their heads full of media-induced and what seem to be mostly other people's dreams, and while a decent number are willing to give it an initial go, creativity seems somewhat scarce amongst the more consumerist-minded escapists. That, and the power to focus on something for a little longer than just an hour, just one session, just one weekend.
I do hope there will be a revival of sorts, and I do hope there will be digital D&D quality titles for all tastes and all systems available. I still have a bookshelf full of splendid D&D and AD&D artificial ADD, and up to the Beholder series the trip was even fun in digital form.
Hell, I even got the JAMMA Mystara and Tower of Doom, even though they were mostly empty calories. My Rulebooks and Creature Compendia have inspired three generations now already, and they will continue to do so. If a revision manages to revive not only the 'franchise' but the whole idea so it become viable again, all is good. If it ends up betraying its own nature just because some 'leading professional service' suit or some other high-paid ignorant optimizing agent tries to fit it into the ugly world of potentially relevant statistics, facts and figures, it's about time to kiss it all goodbye.
It's really obvious that the writer of the article is hostile to 4e, and trying to hide that instead of being honest about it.
The idea that 4e is for people with 'limited imaginations' is absurd, and it's kinda pathetic that somebody got paid to write that.
It may seem like that at first, but please, forget about emotions for a moment and tell me - judging by official adventures and campaigns released for newest edition of D&D - don't you feel that it became some sort of tactical hack and slash game ?
As far as i can see, adventures for D&D are now almost solely about "tactical encounters" and while you need some imagination to survive them, it's completely different kind of imagination than this required for role-playing.
Good series of articles. I've played a long time and I don't plan on stopping while I have players. As for no new bood, I advise the Computer and Game Club at a high school and I have kids wanting to play P&P. Some have played before, others are new. I think I'll stay optimistic about the hobby's future...
*edit* Btw, Ryan Dancey is involved with a Pathfinder MMO that is under development. That might account for some of his pessimism about P&P. The outfit is called Goblinworks. We'll see what they come up with.
The articles are indeed a good read, however I don't like the generalisations made about DnD (3.5, pathfinder, 1st-2nd ed. clones, 4e) being the only line of rpgs that matter in the industry.
Another article with nothing but negativity directed at 4E and another thread with people who have terrible DMs complaining about the "lack of roleplay" in 4E.
I just want an all encompassing program that allows me to manage every aspect of my campaign in full detail via laptop, desktop or Tablet.
I don't even need it to have multi-player support like a dice roller room, I'll take a half assed version that lets me plug in dice rolls, and do my rolls via pc or dice and then plug it in.
Imagine a full WoTC connected and supported program that let you extrapolate monsters and items, and character sheets into an application that lets you que up your encounters, edit attributes and auto roll initiative. (buy monster manual 3 get a dlc copy to plug into your 4e utilities)
Moving through the int tracker like an RPG where you can readily see abilities and when they can be used, and what is on cool down and what status is applied, super quick and easy way to see player hp and status so if need be you can lay down those fudge rolls, decide that a roll 2 below an enemy AC is allowable, set it in so remains that way til the end of the encounter.
If need be pay for DLC, wham just que up a module and plan it all up.
Or go All out and build it into a multi-player RPG, that is just based on the game and no bullshit, a grid based rpg with side sections where the dm controls out of battle sequences etc. Let the players go to shops on their own and spend their gold on what you say is allowable so you can get the mundane stuff out of the way unless your pcs are into that stuff.
There are so many ways to make it more intuitive and use technology to smooth out all the bumps and hassles of juggling pages so my mind does't become a loading screen when I have to juggle the whole universe at the same time, on pages and pages.
Well, I haven't been around long enough to see 3rd edition or the rest of it (Only been playing for 2 years) But before we had access to rulebooks of any sort, I played a single tutorial game with my uncle whilst I was on holiday. I enjoyed the hell out of it, took my findings back to my friends, and we agreed to get the rulebooks. We already played warhammer, so we got a board and some dice, used all the rules I had from memory, looked vaguely online and made the rest up (Some 70% of the stats and rules) and played enjoyably for half a year in this system, we got the rulebooks, and we now enjoy good structure, but from those days of improvising everything, we learned something and that was to never let rules get in the way of the Role-Play. We play with 4E rules, but we use 9 alignments instead of 5, we have random items which each person chooses as a little token of backstory, have separate specilisations in made up jobs with made up rules.
4E is a fantastic combat simulator, but if the role-play isn't to your liking, then just make up rules to make it better for your party.
The "lack of roleplay" said for whatever system is meaningless, you don't need rules to roleplay the same way you do for combat, in my opinion "no RP rules" are better than "roll diplomacy to have the npc obey you", besides if I am not mistaken, 4e has more RP rules than theprevious ones (it added skill challenges). However what 4e did to "hurt Role-Playing" is that it made the combat (even more) a war of attrition, in result having the combat portions of a session be so freaking long that there is little time left for actual roleplay. Still if there is energy in you enough, after a 2 hour long combat, you can roleplay all you want.
Certainly, there were problems with early 4e modules, but you're doing the system a huge disservice by pretending that's representitive of the system and it's qualities.
The game itself has far more support for roleplaying and non-combat than 3e did- it has a whole system for non-combat skill challenges, the DMG and DMG2 have better advice for story, character, and campaigning then any previous book, and there are better options for improvisation as well, because the game does a better job of showing gms that tthey can improvise, and giving them help with it if they need it. Helping with this stuff is hard for any game to do, but 4e does it better than most, especially with it's excellent advice sections.
It's also absurd to claim that 4e's campaign settings are set up for 'hack and slash'. Some people didn't like what they did for the FR, but it's not as if people wren't harshly critical of it before the change, too. All the other campaign settings, large and small, have been top notch. Eberron and Dark Sun both got excellent releases, and alternative takes on settings like Neverwinter and Nentir Vale have also been high-quality.
I'm not the one being emotive here. The hostility to 4e is not about 'roleplaying' or 'creativity', it's people who don't like change, and value nostaliga over good design. There's nothing magical about crappy old rules that don't work right. There's nothing 'roleplaying enhanced' about playing a game who's designers didn't do a very good job of balancing classes or other options.
The backlash against 4e is understandable to a degree, but it's reached a height of absurdity and bile, and if WOTC bows to it, they will only be alienating their actual customers, in prefernce for people who are happy buying Pathfinder, and won't be happy with anything but another retread of 3e.
There are plenty of legit critisms to make against 4e, especally the early modules, and the combat grind- but fwe if any of them are included in this article, or other typical 4e-bashing screeds, which focus on nonsense like '4e is less imaginitive' and '4e prevents roleplaying' and other uninformed drivel.
I see.
those who remember Ravenloft being a module for DnD not the demiplane of Dread. Those who witnessed fall of Tyr. Those who visited even most exotic countries of Faerûn and encountered no wild surge on the route since there was no such thing then. Those who remember times when Vecna and Cyric were only mortals. Those who took part in the War of Blood. Those who believed that Spelljammer is real and they tried to find it and seize its power.
...Do they really care about changes in system ? Sure they may whine about this and that, they may find something better, something worse, but those are minor elements. They - players - are mature enough to create from scrap and mantain single campaign for YEARS. If they are willing to use their energy, their adventures can be rich in elements, deep as Mariana Trench second to (maybe) only such epic tales as Kalevala or nordic Eddas.
On the other side of this spectrum we have newcomers. New to RPG, new to D&D.
I don't want to depreciate all this hard work, but since Dragon #155 they are mainly about tactical encounter=>next stage=>tactical encounter=>next stage ad infinitum. Official modules are no better. It's not that i've bought all of them, but i try to stay up to date. :)
Thus, newcomers will start to think that "this is what RPGaming is all about". In their eyes, RPGaming consists of characters fighting endless fights with some short cutscenes when they have to choose between some simplified dialogue options not unlike of Skyrim.
True, people can play as they want, but (and that's my point) they CAN do it only because they already know how to do it, thanks to their vast RPG experience. I feel (i may be wrong) that nowadays D&D isn't capable of producing both DMs and players capable of role playing the way it was meant to.
With that in mind i think that article of Mr. Tito, this one we're discussing here is very true.
Stop being sensible.
Don't you know this is an excuse to wank on and on about how x edition was the best and everything else sucked, especially y?
But seriously, great post, all of it.
I've a lifetime of books in general I've been thinking about lately. If I move, there's just far too many of them to deal with. So I've been gradually ditching the hard collection with digital ebook versions that are actually practical.
I'd like to see D&D go more digital. Give us more electronic tools to organize games without fiddling with pens and paper. Online tools that work through browsers to play with our busy friends or those far away. Heck, give me programs to organize a game of D&D through my tablet.
And this is the only reason tabletop RPG gaming may go the way of model trains. It's just darn difficult to get a group of four or more together. I think three is a reasonable number to get together, but not optimal for an RPG experience. On the other hand, three is great for things like MtG and a lot of board games.
Personally, I've also found that games like D&D that are as steeped in nerd-culture, rules, lore and all that jazz just aren't that attractive to someone who might like gaming and games, but isn't interested in learning or playing something as dense as D&D.
Case in point: my wife enjoys games and fantasy worlds and having fun, but there's no way I could get her even interested in a D&D setting, let alone get her to navigate rulebooks, expansions, etc. It's not even really got to do with complexity, though that is part of it. On the other hand, source material is king for new players and my wife has glommed on to Mouse Guard using the Burning Wheel system. So much so in fact, that she was willing to split the cost of the deluxe edition. (my wife purchasing an RPG box set. Amazing!) The rules are relatively simple, but it's the idea of playing as one of the heroic mice from the comics that really appeals to her, appeals in a way that playing, say, a magic using elf never would.
On the flip side of that, between the wife and I plus my two regular gaming friends we've only managed one session and that was a character creation session. I'm fairly certain we'll get more play dates locked down, but trying to regularly get any more than myself, my wife, my cousin and our friend together is a herculean task.
In the future that's why online RPGs and bite sized board games that you only need one day to complete will probably rule for the foreseeable future. Sure, there may be a time when getting a group together on a weekly basis is feasible for more people, but for now, there's a reason that videogames, MMORPGs and mobile gaming are king.
This is especially true when many new players idea of an RPG is formed by things like WoW, Skyrim and other videogames, where the RPG elements are all to do with character building for the purposes of defeating monsters and player choice in attitude, actions, alignment and personal choice are necessarily limited by what the game can provide. Most videogame RPGs are simply unable to account for, or include the options, to deal with or allow the majority of choices that are available in a PnP RPG. Videogames barely take into account non-combat abilities and scenarios, and most that do include some of that are limited to black and white morality choices and speech ability checks.
To me, PnP were always best when the rulebook was simply a reference for how to figure out how player choices should be worked out when interacting with the game world. The rules should never bog down players in technicalities, unless of course that's what a particular group wants. I think that the "role play" element has been lost somewhat, in favour of video game style stat building and min/maxing.
(best captcha in a while: lickser beer)
This is a problem of tribalism, not divergent games. You don't need to be playing the exact same game to have something to talk about. You just have to have something to say other than "My game is the only one with real roleplaying."
To whit:
Did he actually "admit" that in so many words or are we just editorializing?
-- Alex
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Maine Democrats call on LePage to release bonds dating to 2010
AUGUSTA, Maine (AP) � Maine Democratic legislative leaders are calling on Gov. Paul LePage to release voter-approved bonds dating back to 2010.
Senate Majority Leader Seth Goodall of Richmond said Thursday that the bond investment would boost Maine's economy by putting people back to work.
Democrats say LePage has prevented the investment of $296 million in state and federal dollars into Maine's economy by putting a hold on bonds approved by voters more than two and half years ago. They say LePage is artificially linking release of the bonds to passage of his plan to repay hospitals a $484 million Medicaid debt.
House Republican Leader Ken Fredette of Newport says the Democrats are just looking for a way to distract from the issue they really don't want to confront � LePage's hospital repayment plan.


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Med & Dk Green wool felts
Our Medium and dark green wool felt blends are (20% wool/80% rayon) models PW1xx or (35% wool/65% rayon) blend models PW2xx. Both blends are approximately 2mm or 1/16" thick. Available sheet sizes are: 9" x 12" - $1.15 or 12" x 18" - $1.85. Colors are available in the following yardage sizes - 36" wide ¼ yard (9") - $2.45, ½ yard (18") - $4.75, ¾ yard (27") - $7.15 or yardage - $9.50/per yard. Want to order 1 and a ½ yards just order 1 then a Yardage Plus option comes up and select half yard and we will send one piece. Also if you order 2 half yards you get one piece. We now carry 6 strand DMC cotton floss that is color matched to our wool felts. Note: Colors displayed are made from high quality scans of each color of wool felt and DMC floss. Monitors, screens and printers can change displayed colors. Dye lots can change as well but is rare which we have no control over.


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Today, for Youtube Tuesday, we are leaving the USA and the BSA. The UK Scout Association has produced a great video that does a great job of promoting Scouting and asking adults to volunteer in their local units. What I find fascinating is most of the information in the video could apply to the Boy Scouts of America. This video was uploaded in October 2010. Check it out and let me know what you think about it.
100 Days of Scouting: Day 57.


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Kobe Bryant: Dwight Howard will 'have a great year'
- Rather than further fan the flames%2C Kobe Bryant was diplomatic about Dwight Howard%27s departure
- Bryant said Howard will %22have a great year%22 because he%27ll be able to be a more offensive player
- Additionally%2C Bryant said there is still no timetable for his return from his April Achilles injury
HOUSTON — In a perfect NBA world, this would have been the night that Kobe Bryant returned.
The Los Angeles Lakers star who is still recovering from his Achilles tendon tear suffered in April would have shocked the basketball world by facing off against his former teammate in Houston Rockets center Dwight Howard, and all the hype surrounding this non-reunion game that was mostly irrelevant would have been unexpectedly justified in the end. But Bryant not only didn't return on Thursday night at the Toyota Center, he took this boring blueprint one step further by — yawn — being diplomatic while discussing Howard.
The more time has passed after Howard's July 5 decision to sign with Houston, the more the dirty laundry that was mostly kept quiet about their ill-fated season together in Laker Land is aired out for all to see and hear by way of the media. Yet Bryant, whose presence and personality played such a big part in Howard's decision not to return, wasn't about to continue that trend.
"I think he'll have a great year," Bryant said of Howard. "He's always very determined to be more of an offensive player. Here in Houston he'll have the opportunity to do that. He always wanted to compete with some of the all-time greats, the Chamberlains and Shaqs and Olajuwons and so forth. This year should be the year where he starts putting up those kind of numbers — 25, 26 (points per game), stuff like that."
As for Bryant's status, he said he still has no timetable for a return. While he is running at full speed, he has yet to progress to making lateral cuts.
"I don't have a timetable; let's start there," Bryant said. "I've been pushing pretty hard, man. I'll go and do some more conditioning after I get done talking to you guys.
"The hardest thing is the conditioning and getting back and playing at a high level and being able to run and play at a high level for 48 minutes. (It) is tough, man. You really have to push yourself conditioning wise to get in shape ... get down to feeling really comfortable, feeling strong, working through the fatigue first of running straight forward. Once the endurance is there you start doing more lateral things."
Bryant provided a few lighter moments, specifically when asked about whether he had spoken with Howard since he left. When Howard was in Los Angeles on Monday to face the Clippers, he said the two had not spoken.
"We speak every day," Bryant said sarcastically.
Howard's return to face the Lakers for the first time inside the Staples Center won't come until Feb. 19, when Bryant — and the Laker Nation that so adores him — hopes he'll be taking part.
"Hopefully (I'll play in that game)," Bryant said. "I hope so, barring any major setbacks."
Hoopsworld's Yannis Koutroupis contributed to this report.


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Search for State Aid Awards
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You can move thru the grid using the sliding rule on the right. Measures are ordered by registering date. To get more information on a measure, click the link. To get the measure regulation please click on the link.


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If anything could be more embarrassing than dying while having sex, it might be being preserved in flagrante delicto for millions of years so that members of an advanced species could dig you up, gawk at you, and write a journal paper about your final romantic encounter. For a group of ancient turtles, this nightmare just came true.
Online Wednesday in Biology Letters, paleontologists describe nine couples of a species of aquatic turtle that perished while copulating and that were then preserved -- the first such record among vertebrates, the researchers say. Far from a mere salacious look at the unfortunate reptiles, the fossils provide critical clues about the environment in which they lived.
For decades the Messel pit, a fossil site in west-central Germany, has yielded extraordinarily well-preserved remains. The fossils include complete skeletons of creatures ranging in size from rodents to pygmy horses, as well as insects and feathers that still have hints of their original colors. The oily shale that entombs those fossils was laid down as lake sediments about 47 million years ago, says Walter Joyce, a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Tübingen in Germany. Although the site has yielded tens of thousands of fossils, only the saucer-sized turtles have been found in pairs.
While some researchers have speculated that the animals died while copulating, the new analysis is the first to provide strong evidence -- revealing, for instance, that each pair includes a male and a female. Male turtles of this species, like many of their modern relatives, have longer tails than females, says Joyce. Also, males are typically smaller than females, a trend clearly seen in the fossils. Finally, in seven of the nine pairs, the turtles are in direct contact along the edge of their shells just above their tails -- and in two of those pairs, the male's tail wraps below the female's shell in mating position.
"I'd heard about this hypothesis at various workshops," says Tyler Lyson, a vertebrate paleontologist at Yale University. "When [Joyce and his team] found that each pair included a male and a female, I was sold on the idea."
That still leaves a couple of mysteries: How did the turtles die, and why at such an intimate moment? Previously, some scientists had suggested that toxic algal blooms may have tainted the lake. Yet that scenario doesn't make sense, says Joyce, because there are no sediment layers containing large numbers of remains that would suggest mass death in a single event. Also, he notes, researchers haven't found any fossils of cyanobacteria that might have caused such blooms.
Other teams have suggested that the surface waters of the lake were saturated with dissolved carbon dioxide or other naturally toxic substances, as some volcanic lakes are today in Africa. Creatures that drank from the lake, including bats and birds that grabbed a sip as they swooped across its surface, could have succumbed to the substances dissolved in the lake, those scientists suggest. But that scenario doesn't jibe either, says Joyce, because researchers have found thousands of fossils of fish at the Messel pit site -- a sign that at least some of the lake's waters supported life. "This lake was clearly a good place to live."
Joyce and his colleagues suggest instead that while surface waters of the ancient lake were oxygenated, deeper layers were oxygen-poor and possibly saturated with carbon dioxide or other toxic substances. The lack of oxygen in deep water would help explain the wonderful preservation of creatures whose remains fell to the lake bottom.
The disparity between deep waters and the surface would also explain how the turtles ended up dying in pairs, Joyce says. Modern-day relatives of this species can absorb dissolved oxygen from the water through their skin, a trick that helps them stay submerged for long periods of time. Plus, he notes, the largely aquatic turtles mate in open waters and often begin to sink when they're copulating -- which is no problem in most lakes but proved fatal in the Messel pit lake. "Mating in turtles is quite strenuous and can go on for long periods," says Lyson. It's easy to see how these pairs could have run out of oxygen if they descended into anoxic or otherwise toxic waters.
The scenario "is very speculative but plausible," says Donald Jackson, an animal physiologist at Brown University. It's possible that the ancient turtles, like some modern species, were relatively oblivious to their surroundings when they were copulating and, therefore, unable to escape the deadly depths. Also, he notes, if the waters were warm, the turtles' revved-up metabolisms and increased activity would likely have consumed the oxygen in their bloodstream at an exceedingly high rate. "This could have produced mortality very fast."
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This is adapted from ScienceNOW, the online daily news service of the journal Science. http://news.sciencemag.org


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At FYSB, we offer a variety of programs and services to support the social and emotional well-being of youth and families.
Runaway and Homeless Youth
Each year, thousands of youth run away from home, are asked to leave their homes or become homeless. The Runaway and Homeless Youth Program supports street outreach, emergency shelters and longer-term transitional living and maternity group home programs to serve these young people.
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The Family Violence Prevention and Services Program administers the Family Violence Prevention and Services Act (FVPSA), the primary federal funding stream dedicated to the support of emergency shelter and related assistance for victims of domestic violence and their children.
Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention
To prevent pregnancy and the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, FYSB's Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention Program supports state, Tribal and community efforts to promote comprehensive sex education, adulthood preparation programs and abstinence education.


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A full range of communication options are available to ensure that patients and visitors with hearing problems, speech problems and those with foreign language barriers have access to healthcare services.
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For more information, please call (217) 238-4369.


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VMware, makers of desktop virtualization solution Fusion for Intel-based Macs, is offering up a shiny new MacBook Air for the lucky Fusion user who can create the best ""Switch to Fusion" video. The company is also putting up a "brand spanking new" iPod touch for those switchers who are better at blogging than making movies.
Both contests award every participant with a "My Mac <3 VMware" bumper sticker, and video producers will also get a hot VMware Fusion t-shirt. The entries are supposed to tell your "switching" story, though it is never specified what your might be switching from. Perhaps you switched to a Mac from a Windows PC and need to run some Windows only software. Perhaps you're looking for something easier to integrate with Mac OS X than Boot Camp. But it seems like VMware has left the door open to switchers from that other virtualization software for Intel Macs.
Rules and instructions for the video contest and the blogging contest are available in PDF format. Entries can be turned in until May 15, so if you're a die-hard Fusion user, you may want to bone up on your non-linear editing skills. Or if writing is more your bag, fire up your favorite word processor and share your story—could be worth some sweet new gear.