mothershipconnection

Not sure how a mouth guard would prevent injuries to the brain. When I was in high school it was "common knowledge" among coaches and trainers that wearing one would decrease the possibility of concussion. From what I gather, this is a somewhat contentious issue, with many medical professionals insisting that it would cushion the blow to the jaw and attenuate some of the impact, while others have said there isn't empirical demonstration of this and it's all just theory extended a little too far. I personally would never play an impact sport without one, as concussion or not, I'd like to avoid dental implants. When I boxed I did all of my training, even running, with a mouthpiece in and it began to feel weird when I was between guards and did any workouts without the mouthpiece. I don't see how anyone but a QB who wants to be heard clearly would be bothered enough to not wear one.

But it's either conditioned, or it's innate. This is clearly operant behavior, as it's not an involuntary reflex, and is a function of its consequences. If, through interaction with a pack, a dog becomes a more adept hunter, this IS operant conditioning, it's just that the relevant antecedent and consequent stimuli were not directly presented by a human. You've simply provided exposure to the contingencies/metacontingencies that shape the behavior of individual organisms in a group setting.

I guessed correctly, but ONLY because of the hint that he played for the Brewers and implication that he had one fluke year. Otherwise, there's zero chance I'd have gotten it right.

There's nothing you'd be doing in dog training that isn't operant conditioning. Any behavior we'd colloquially refer to as "non-reflexive" is operant. You may occasionally be using species-typical respondent/"instinctive" relations during training, but your attempts to increase or decrease the probability of the behavior or bring it under the control of environmental stimuli would still be operant. Speaking of operant conditioning, the nerd in me is pretty jazzed that (at home and without data or experimental controls) I just replicated a study which targeted food selectivity in developmentally delayed children to get my conure to switch from seed-only to a pellet diet with less than 2 hours of my time invested. I got him 2 months ago from a couple that only fed him sunflower seed for 2+ years - dude wouldn't even look at a pellet.

Only tangentially related, but I decided to vent about it here. Getting a mortgage SUCKS right now. Mortgage companies seem to pretty much just be covering their butts and holding on to their money. I've had a contract on a house since early June that I still can't close on. The first problem is that they won't allow my wife, her superior credit score, or her income on the application or counted as household income because she's a (legal) foreigner who doesn't have citizenship, just a work visa until her green card is final next spring. Also, all of our debt is in my name, so I have to apply as a single person, with $51K left on my current mortgage and another $50K in student debts. First, they tried to do FHA even though I already have one, which I knew wouldn't work, but the lender apparently didn't - three weeks wasted. Then, they said my wife COULD be on the loan, but then the underwriter said no. My file has been to an underwriter, "days from closing" several times, with about 6 different lenders, and each time they come back with crazy stuff. First, I had to pay off over $3K worth of debt assigned to my ex-wife in our divorce 5 years ago, pay to have a credit supplement, "lease" my current house to my wife so my expenses look lower, provide my W-2's and tax returns for 3 years, pay stubs back 6 months, provide letters from my employer verifying my income THREE TIMES. Then, once a lender was finally satisfied, they were unable to get PMI, so I have to put 20% down. That meant I had to have my dad "gift me" a couple grand that my wife will pay back after closing, provide his bank statement before and after the gift, provide cleared check images on this, as well as my statement before and after the deposit. Prior to this, they suggested that I refinance my current loan from FHA to conventional so that the new loan can be FHA, but that would cost several thousand dollars, which I balked at. It's not like I'm sub-prime our under-employed, my median credit score was 691 before I paid off my ex's collections and had the report updated, and the loan amount on the new house is roughly double my income (and 125% of our combined household income). This has also made selling my current house a nightmare, as several people have been interested, but none of them can get a loan, and keep making offers based on owner-financing, none of which have been attractive enough to lure me in.

Get a Kong My Boxer had one that ended up getting lost way before it started to come apart.

or Champman succeeded despite his arm not being treated well. We don't know at what rate others pitchers in his situation had arm problems. I think the only plausible reason that "non-babied" pitchers would seem more durable is that those who had genetic tendencies to blow out an arm were weeded out at an early age due to abuse. Those who don't burn out at 17 in those conditions may have a luckier phenotype. Perhaps you wouldn't see that in a player who was slowly brought along, as stress may not catch up to his arm until his early-to-mid-20's.

Have you guys read any of Karen Pryor's stuff? As a behaviorist, I still consider it a little too fluffy, but she's far more scientific and less into folk nonsense than almost any animal trainer you'll come across. My major beef is that there's nothing magical about a clicker, period. Second, the idea that neutral/arbitrary stimuli become conditioned reinforcers in a strictly Pavlovian stimulus-stimulus sense is not settled science (a member of our lab recently systematically replicated the latest in a series of studies that show that simple pairing often fails). Additionally, some trainers with a basis in science still get way too anthropomorphic and dive into hypothetical constructs that make a behaviorist queasy.

I just talked about this to someone at work a couple weeks ago when they didn't believe me that it is acceptable to use "an" in front of certain non-vowel starting words. I'm glad to see some people knew that here as well. It basically depends on whether or not you pronounce the consonant that begins the word. If it starts with a vowel sound, you'd generally use "an" (an honest statement) while you'd typically use "a" if it begins with a consonant sound (a hot plate). This is why Brits use the words differently, as they have silent consonants which American English has mutated to pronounce. So you could either say "an istoric" or "a historic". In writing, you're safe either way because it could be pronounced either way. Just please don't ever pronounce human "yoo-man" or say "ath-a-lete" those are just plain weird.

In an ideal world, they could make a crippled aluminum bat that hits like wood.

Sports fans absolutely HATE the concept of luck but it's inescapable. You can't wish it away. Hypothetically, you can imagine a reverse Nike Swoosh shaped curve plotting willingness to recognize luck along the continuum from the very gullible to the very skeptical. The gullible recognize it as magic while the scientific understand that outside of math, there's pretty much always going to be bouncing throughout a predicted range of effects of an IV upon a DV rather than a textbook linear relationship with all data accounted for by a straight line. Of course, luck is not an attribute or quality that an organism possesses, it's just several consecutive data points in the "good" direction away from the straight linear projection. 4

I'd be a little worried that, being owned by someone who doesn't know about guitars and left it in a basement for a long time, that it hasn't been stored properly and will be warped.

I roll with a Remington trimmer, which just cuts down to stubble because otherwise I get ingrown hairs. On the positive side, I'm on my 3rd $50 shave in about 17 years of shaving.

I think most people are correct in that getting Prince wouldn't be worth it for the Brewers, since they won't have a ton of payroll room and won't be predicted to be a playoff contender, so let's revise the question to address the original intent. If you were GM of of the Rangers, White Sox, or Giants, but had the Brewers' farm system instead of theirs, who would you trade for Fielder?

Dave Bush pitches, free meatball sub at Subway. If Rickie Weeks gets hit by a pitch in 2 consecutive at bats, all of Milwaukee will receive a free bean burrito from 11:00-3:00 the following day at participating Taco Bell locations.

I'd remain a baseball fan, but would become far more casual and feel pretty certain that I wouldn't have another favorite team. I've lived in A.L. cities for the past 7 years (DFW and Minneapolis) and have never been able to really get behind the local teams, even though they don't compete with the Brewers.

Any band with only a word and random number for a name. Sum 41, Blink 182, Maroon 5, Matchbox 20...

I had a '91 Corolla/Prizm and that thing was fantastic. I ran it to about 100k and only had an $89 cracked exhaust manifold before some schmuck in a van ran a stop sign and tore the front end off. Hondas, IMO, are not worth what you pay for them used. Sure, they may run for a long time, but why not buy a new one under warranty? We looked for Civics in vain when my wife wanted one a couple years ago, and a 2 year-old model with 60K was almost the price of a new one. What kind of idiot pays that? Honda fanboys can go on about how wonderful they are, but belts, hoses, tires, exhaust components, batteries, power window assemblies, break pads, etc will go out under the best of conditions, and under the worst of conditions, the car was owned by a dork who didn't change the oil. That's why I won't buy a used car without a significant markdown.

The idea of moving Corey or Braun to first after Prince leaves and then having Cain/Gomez in the outfield is just ridiculous. They would be able to cover so much from left to center. And whoever is in center could shade to the right covering whoevers left in right. It'd be the best outfield defense the Crew has had and easily the best in the majors. Agreed, though it's a longshot. If Gomez can get it together in AAA next year and Cain hits well enough to be a corner outfielder, Braun could move to 1B in 2012 and we'd see the best defensive outfield Milwaukee has trotted out in a while. It's more likely that Gomez is the odd man out and we just move Gamel or acquire a journeyman 1B, though.

I have a pineapple (green cheek) Conure named Shigetoshi Yoshitoshi Masayuki Watanabe. He's named after old guys I met in Japan.

Looks like a simple call worked for you. I always advise my friends to call and ask them to drop nonsense like this. I've gotten by on this sort of thing many times, and I'll reveal my secret strategy. I call the company and tell the person "I know you'll cave in to a raving, hysterical lunatic, so I'm gonna be really nice, you'll cave in like I'm going crazy, and we both win. You don't have to deal with an angry customer, and I don't have to act like one". I swear that this has never failed me on reasonable requests. On things that are pure profit for the company, they typically have quite a bit of wiggle room.

Doug Melvin needs to be fired because the pitching just stinks and he continues to pass up chances to get future #1 starters for slightly above average guys having career years.

Any chance you might be able to go? What part of DFW do you live in? I'm assuming somewhere close to Fort Worth. Maybe the Hurst, Euless, Bedford area?\ I won't be able to make that series because I'm blowing all of my PTO for the year on spring training, a trip to WI next week, and a trip to Japan this winter. I'm commuting from near Denton right now while I wait to finally close on my new house in White Settlement.

I grew up in WI, but have lived in DFW for 7 of the last 8 years. I was up in Denton for grad school, went to Minneapolis for a year, and then took a job in Fort Worth 2 years ago.

This isn't really an issue, no one loves the heat or anything down here, but I think it'd be like me saying they gotta in close Lambeau field so ppl will go to the games when its snowing. You live thru the cold year in and year out. Same with us and the heat a 100 degree day isn't a real big deal. I won't go. In 7 years, I've never gone to a Rangers game outside of April and early May (plus, they have fireworks and buy 1 get 1 tickets with Dr. Pepper cans). I work with a few big baseball fans, and we've talked about going to games after work many times, then look at the forecast and think of your body sticking to a seat for 3 hours and decide to go to happy hour at Blue Mesa instead. We also need to take market size into consideration when judging attendance. There's no exact science, but if we take 2000 census data and split the metro areas with multiple teams in half (e.g. Baltimore and Washington, Oakland and SF, etc), TEX is behind only NYY, NYM, PHI, BOS and DET. Numbers per Baseball Almanac