gehringer_2

This is true, but if a guy can make good hires, then from a practical standpoint that's pretty much as good as him having talent himself. But even given that, I will still be calling for Hinch's head if they come out of the gate all hitting below their averages again. That just can't happen three times in a row.

Why are you not considering the Neural Patterns THEMSELVES as the chemical process that changes the physical state of stasis? In chemistry, every reactions system obeys fixed rules. Every subsequent state of matter is the direct consequence of the prior states an the material and/or energy crossing the system boundary and the relationships are immutable. Maybe I'll reverse the thesis to approach from a different angle: According to chemistry and physics, what happens chemically in your brain simply can't be influenced by something like a thought because a thought doesn't exist in any process definition in chemistry/physics. But you can actually can draw the conundrum out even further: as far as science is concerned, there is no difference between a living chemical process and a dead one. Both are following the exact same rules, and there is nothing you can point to in a living process in terms of the physical laws that it is obeying that separate it from a dead one, which is another way of saying that chemistry and physics don't recognize what we call 'life' as being something definable or distinct in chemical or physical terms at all.

You lock him up because if he left you could do a lot worse? In general I think Hinch is fine - he seems to have a real talent for managing a bullpen, which is probably the most important thing a modern manager has to be good at. The one caveat is that if they start another season with all their hitters in the tank, then you have to lay that at Hinch's door because your outlier occurrences are proving themselves to be trends.

LOL - that's what I was thinking. Man is actually damn lucky it hasn't killed him yet. You have to be born with a lucky gene package to be that resistant.

I'm ready to see Holl bumped. Haven't cared much for his play recently.

One more shot to get on the same wavelength here. Tell me how your *decision* to wait to eat changed the chemistry in your brain such that you didn't walk to the refrigerator. That is the missing link. For a *thought* to change what your body does, the mental process has to generate a *cause* in the physical world - i.e. it has to change a reaction in your brain chemistry. We have zero understanding of how that happens. We can see it after the fact - that you make a decision to do something and then neuronal activity appears in your brain, but how a thought causes those neurons to fire? Missing link. You hold two competing options in your mind - depending on which you pick, different neurons are going to fire, but according to the laws of physics, in the moment before you make the *decision*, your brain chemistry has only one possible path - the one determined by its present state and the rules of chemistry. Yet you changed it, or at least you believed you changed it (that is unless conscious choice is the delusion) - how?

Manning is basically a 4 seam fastball pitcher. He doesn't have the velo a Verlander had but it's that kind of pitcher profile. So just for perspective I'd note that JV threw over 500 MLB innings before he reached a one K/IP K rate. Manning is at ~225. He has enough stuff if stays healthy and learns how to use it - never any guarantees with pitchers but I would understand if the Tiger are willing to give him more time to develop before moving him.

but you have just defined a machine that reacts in a programmed way. That model excludes the possibility of true volition. The next chemical state of your brain is *fully* determined by its current state, the laws of 'physics', plus the sum of the additional external stimuli that act on it. There is no place in that model for a consciousness, whatever we think that is, to affect that. The aspect of 'volition' that defines it as volition and not simple stimulus response is that it can originate separately from the simple sum of the external inputs - otherwise it is not volition - in which case we should stop putting people in jail for doing things they actually have no real control over because all a person's *will* is is the sum of their environmental experience and genetic programming. Again - I wouldn't say categorically that this may not be the true, I certainly can't prove it isn't, and 'science' would argue that it is true, but if it is, all of civilization is then based on the lie that people are responsible for what they do when they aren't.

It it could be arranged, it might actually be sorta fun to have a crack at expropriating some tech from China in an area where they are a world leader. Having them experience being the aggrieved party in some tech theft might be just the thing to help bring around their thinking....

Yes - this is pretty much just the 'what's outside' the universe paradox in different guise. If the universe needed a first mover, what moved it, etc. You can add a layer to the depth of the recursion but you still end up in the same paradox.

What does a Chinese LiFePO4 battery plant allow them to steal from us when they are miles ahead of us in that tech? Seems the the bigger potential for knowledge transfer is the other way.

When I hear the name 'Pat Caputo', the immediate word association that comes to mind is "shell of his former self.'

I have very mixed feelings about guys in a room deciding who the best teams are based on their subjective projections of what they think they will do based player availability. (BTW - in case any one wonders, I'm still bitter over Wayne Duke telling MI they could skip a Rose Bowl because Denny Franklin was injured ). It would be one thing if FSU had actually lost a game after Travis went down, but they haven't. UM hasn't looked all that great for the last three weeks either, and we still have our star QB. But maybe the committee should decide we've taken more O-line injuries than they think appropriate and bump us out? There is a reason you play the games and the winners are the winners and the losers are the losers. If there is a problem with records being suspect because of scheduling abuse - then put an end to scheduling abuse, but please don't let old dudes in a room establish a precedent for overruling the results on the field.

He'd prolly walk across the lake to find a little peace and quiet.

Mine is a different question. You are talking about the framework around which you hang the construction of self-identity. One of the hats I have worn is more or less as a chemist and what I'm talking about is how a thought in your mind turns into an action in physical/temporal space. How does a process in what we call conciousness - which cannot be located in the physical domain, create the chemical event in the physical domain that cascades into the creation of causation in the physical world? Sure we know how an axon works, but not how you make an axon fire by 'making a decision'. We think we know that mind affects matter, we believe volition exists nearly universally, but we cannot locate mind in matter and whatever the interface is eludes our understanding.

I know athletes are not exactly interchangeable, but when you have that much talent on one side of the ball and so little on the other, you'd think there would be a couple of guys you could move to the other side get more balance.

I wonder if Klatt is gonna get flack from the conference office for going along with Harbaugh having the trophy presented to Zinter. The bureaucrats won't like him colluding with a subversive act.

LOL - I knew Harbaugh would not take the trophy from Petiti

this game is like Bo vs Woody circa 1972, except that no-one would be going for it on 4th down.

that's all fine but there is no mechanism for conscious volition in any of that. Your arguments here are basically that our sense of ourselves is basically a fallacy - that consciousness is a self-delusion. Which is perfectly possible - I only raise the point to argue that there are some pretty fundamental things about our immediate existence that we do a lot of glossing for.

How you square your ability to make decisions of your own everyday when every chemical process in your brain is completely determined by the laws of physics completely independently of whatever "you" believe your existence to be? As far as your brain chemistry goes - there is no "you". "You" as a physical entity able to 'make a decision' simply don't exist.

weird game. Wings really didn't deserve it based on the lacksidaisical play in the second half of the game, but Larkin didn't let them lose.

4 goals in the 1st period, one a shorty by the Wings. 3-1 going into the 2nd.

I would say your view of what both Science and range of beliefs about God/Deism are narrow. There is no fundamental contradiction between any finding of Science and the possibility that there are higher order existences. The scientific rejection of supernatural intervention in human affairs does not speak to any number of more fundamental questions. Metaphysical propositions such as teleology, the origin and nature of will/volition, are not subjects that Science has been able to speak to. The latter question is one we may be getting closer to, but the fundamental paradox between the determinism of chemistry and physics vs the fact that no human being alive believes they have no will of the their own so far remains.

During a period break in the last game Yzerman made it sound like it would be a couple of games but that it would be up to Kane to tell them when he thought he was ready.