Crafty Southpaw

TED is a small nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. Since then its scope has become ever broader. Along with the annual TED Conference in Long Beach, California, and the TEDGlobal conference in Oxford UK, TED includes the award-winning TEDTalks video site, the Open Translation Program, the new TEDx community program, this year's TEDIndia Conference and the annual TED Prize. Basically I love almost everything from this organization, as they post many of their "Talks" online, and I know I've spent what can be at least a couple days worth of time watching these, they cover everything from music to dance to poetry to science and so much more... anyways, figured we could post/discuss videos we like or something. http://www.ted.com/talks/malcolm_gladwell_on_spaghetti_sauce.html

If only that was it. But with Nick it's not just one nagging area. He's been on the DL because of his wrist, his hand, his back, his fractured face, a broken femur, his foot, his hip, and his hamstring. Well, with the exception of the face, the other injuries can play into others. Wrist/Hand are very related. Back/Hip can tie into leg/femur/foot/hamstring. He may be a professional athlete, but by no means does that mean he's "athletic" in every sense. I'm also not saying he's not just plain snake-bitten, but a lot of those injuries can play into the others.

What makes players injury prone, I don't get this guy. as BIG as he is, he is that fragile? :banghead It's certainly possible (though rather unlikely) that it's something undiagnosed at the genetic level, like Rocco Baldelli. Well, that and one injury likely can make you susceptible to others of the same area, especially for a hitter and his wrists, which are used as they are.

Did I see the other day that Oswalt has a mid 2's ERA but is something like 2-6? Houston needs to trade Oswalt, Lee and Berkman with the huge salaries and start completely from scratch. Harsh but true. There's nothing harsh about it, they've been patching up that ship with bubblegum for years. The players you named, specifically, deserve to win and the fans of that organization deserve a winning team. As it stands both things are mutually exclusive, those players are more valuable to the Astros NOT on their team than actually on it.

Well, regarding reading on a screen, I don't remember offhand, but I've heard that it's easier to read on an iPad for whatever reason, I think mostly glare and lighting related issues, but it really all boils down to personal preference.

Well, the Astros need to bring some talent back to the minors, so this could be a blessing in disguise.

I know this isn't particularly constructive as an overall reply but... Color me old fashioned but I could never get past the feel of carrying a paperback book around to read, yeah you can only carry so many, but still. At the same time, if you're strongly wanting an e-reader, QbanJ's response about the iPad is the better way to go in my opinion, because at least you get the other utilities that go with that and this is coming from someone who's not an apple fan.

I didn't catch Superstars, not that I'd imagine too many others watch it, how'd the Christian/Ziggler match go?

I'd take him, be a hell of a bat off the bench if he can look anything like he did in Philly and we wouldn't have to pay him jack. Wouldn't necessarily be a great move, this has been practically a full season of sub .700 OPS play from him and I can't imagine part-time play helping that any

The only thing I wonder is why the didn't wait until training camp to cut him, or maybe volunteer to pay the $5+ MM guaranteed in order to make a trade work. Maybe they've already seen all they need to, though. Maybe they were doing him a favor and letting him look for a suitable situation sooner rather than later. Maybe even with that offer nobody was interested. Thanks for your services, Alan Faneca. Good luck to you. And good luck to your replacement (Slauson/Ducasse). I believe he refused to take a pay cut. Faneca not taking a pay cut is hardly surprising, though.

Regarding 2010, it's still early in the season. We're 10th in OPS and 6th in runs per game but by the end of the year the runs per game and OPS will be within one or two of each other. That never misses. So we need to hit better or we're screwed. If hitting better is going to be our biggest problem, I can live with that, because I don't expect Coghlan to be a 51 OPS+ all year, among others with room to be better.

I would prefer to see more interleague play. It's more interesting when two teams who rarely play each other meet up. I agree with the second part, but I prefer interleague being relatively rare. It's more important to play your own league and take care of the other guys later.