[ifyouread-youlljudge]

[mightyflynn]

Get in here, everyone get in here. Look into each other’s eyes. Now! Look into each other’s eyes, I want one more day with you. It’s the most fun, the best team I have ever been on and no matter what happens we must not give in. We owe it to each other. Play for each other. I need one more day with you guys, I need to see what Ryan Theriot will wear tomorrow, I want to play defense behind Ryan Vogelsong because he’s never been to the playoffs. Play for each other not yourself. Win each moment. Win each inning. It’s all we have left.

Hunter Pence, October 9, 2012 pre-game speech (via Andrew Baggerly/ CSNBayArea.com, h/t @ruhee_)

[vaswani]

Hotter than Paul Ryan:

Yet, as big as the almost certainly irreversible retreat of the sea ice will figure in the future of the planet, it has attracted relatively little attention in the here and now. A study released on Thursday by Media Matters for America, a liberal watchdog group, found that over the last few months, Representative Paul Ryan’s fitness routine—he’s a big fan of what’s known as the P90X workout plan—has received three times as much television coverage as the ice loss.

[theagendatvo]

It’s this passing reference to women who cover themselves from head-to-toe, usually in black, wearing what’s called a niqab, that hit home for me. Doug Saunders mentions this as a phenomenon and then makes the obvious link to concerns about what the wearing of this covering might say about gender and sexual equality. Later in the piece, Saunders suggests that the issue of gender and sexual equality is sorted out over time.

“And while Muslims are currently more conservative on issues such as tolerance of homosexuality and the rights of women, their views are vastly more liberal than in their countries of origin – and tend to align with Western views in the second generation.”

This passing of the buck to the next generation is normal, I suppose, but, to me, the issue of sexual equality is too often glossed over. Women make up slightly more than half the world’s population, and, call me impatient, but I feel that we’ve waited long enough for equality, and, in Canada, we’re supposed to already have it. And when it comes to the example Saunders uses, I have a problem with women who wear full facial coverings, like the niqab. …

Read Agenda producer Meredith Martin’s blog post: “Why Does She Wear A Niqab?“ 

[kvatek]

[nevver]

what a difference a day makes…

[vaswani]

"Canada, eh? You from Canada, eh?" 

[barackobama]

Well, if this isn’t the best thing we’ve ever seen. (via esus4)

[vaswani]

Ta-Nehisi Coates on magazines:

It was always a privileged life to be able to support oneself writing for magazines. Now it is an almost unheard of life.

[onescotchthreecubes-blog]

First off, when I say twitter has won I mean over Facebook. Second, I realize that Facebook is worth $50B and Twitter is only worth $10B (technically $8B at last valuation but the rumored Apple investment would’ve valued the company at $10B). So, no, I’m not an idiot, I do realize that $50 is...

[vaswani]

I'm not sure I completely agree, but, you know, fuck Facebook. 

[vaswani]

From The Washington Post:

"Muhammad Rahim, an Afghan who was a translator for Osama bin Laden," and who is now at Guantanamo Bay, wrote to his lawyer: 

"Dear Mr. Warner!" he wrote in a separate freshly declassified letter. "Lebron James is a very bad man. He should apologize to the city of Cleveland." 

Warner says Rahim's sentiment about the NBA star who left the Cleveland Cavaliers for the Miami Heat reflects his client's tribal values, in which loyalty is paramount and "betrayals are not tolerated or forgiven, although an honest apology from an offending peer is valued."

Can't make that shit up. Read the full piece: "A kitty for bin Laden's translator."

[vaswani]

The Blue Jays get their man, Dr. James Andrews. 

[bluejaysgifs]

[vaswani]

Yes.

[vaswani]

I spent a lot of time yesterday thinking about my eventual, inevitable death. 

[vaswani]

Absolutely staggering:

The United States now has, by a wide margin, the highest incarceration rate in the world. There are 2.3 million Americans in prison or jail, more than three in 100 Americans are in the penal system – and half of those are black. More than 8 per cent of black men, and an astonishing 37 per cent of black men without high-school education, are in prison. By 18, one quarter of all black American children will have seen one of their parents behind bars.

Prison has now supplanted education and welfare as the main social service provided to the disenfranchised. Blacks are seven times more likely than whites to be in prison. It’s self-perpetuating, because imprisonment increases rates of criminality, poverty, educational failure and family breakup.

But Americans do not see these effects. Prisoners don’t appear on the census, the unemployment-rate, educational-attainment records or the voting rolls.

What happens if you include them? That is exactly what Dr. Pettit has done in her new book, Invisible Men: Mass Incarceration and the Myth of Black Progress.

In short, many of the gains in racial equality during the past 20 years are erased completely if you include the full American black population.

[theclassicaldotorg]

[vaswani]

Paul Konerko arrived in Chicago as quietly as he’s done everything else in his career, as a former first round pick who was cast aside by the Dodgers and then the Reds after very short trials. During 1999 spring training, a long-vanished jobber named Jeff Abbott, apparently a fan of irony and alliteration, dubbed the low-key newcomer “King.” Konerko had hit just seven big league homers in 247 National League plate appearances. Despite low expectations in 1999, he earned the everyday first base job before the full heat of summer arrived. In the thirteen years since, Konerko has averaged 147 games per season (not because he’s avoided injuries, but because he’s played through them), hit 400 home runs, and played rock solid defense at first base (Gold Glove awards be damned). Sox fans took to him almost immediately. In 2000, a potent offense featuring Frank Thomas, Magglio Ordonez, and Paul Konerko helped the Sox reach the postseason for the first time since 1993. Fans called him “Paulie” and Chicago magazine included him in its list of the city’s most eligible bachelors. In 2004 he clubbed 41 home runs and succeeded Frank Thomas as the face of the franchise. When he crushed a grand slam in Game Two of the 2005 World Series, he became a Sox legend. That offseason, he earned even more South Side respect when he turned down big free-agency offers to stay in Chicago for less money—something he’d do again in 2010. When Ozzie Guillen named him captain of the White Sox prior to the 2006 season, Paul Konerko’s 14 became a lock to join the retired numbers on the outfield walls upon his retirement.

- TS Flynn, The Classical

Read the rest: “On Paul Konerko and South-Sidedness”

Illustration by Dmitry Samarov

[meredithsomething]

Gawd I love Toronto (Taken with instagram)

[vaswani]

Finally, I love baseball because failure is such an inherent part of the game. There’s a life lesson in there, too. You don’t always get the girl, or get the job, or make the right decisions. You stumble, slump, and fail along the way. But you step back into the batter’s box, you trust in your abilities, and you try your best to hit what comes your way. 

I wrote "We're All Trying to Hit .300," at Infield Fly.