Wilbur

It is one of those lack-of-action actions from VAR that make you wonder if the VAR official was in the lavatory for a quick call of nature at the time? Because surely otherwise the whole reason for the existence of the function is to MAKE THAT CALL to the official and have them look at that play. They are being paid to sit there and watch the match, and to fail in this basic function is inexcusable.

Another bizarro performance from VAR for that studs-up challenge on Luis Diaz' shin/knee in the first half at Bournemouth. No whistle, not even a free kick, no VAR feedback - silence.

Sure seems like going to war is not nearly as fun as the propaganda machine told him it would be.

That is very true. The skinny guys don't have to take the beatings they would have 30 years ago. Still, it is an 82-game season, and the wear and tear have to be tremendous. As BFC said, Kareem was way, way ahead oof the curve when it came to preserving his health.

Absolutely. You look at these guys stick-insect figures and immediately think, "Ralph Sampson's hairy moustache! Surely this guy can't last five years in the league!" But then, Kevin Durant may have been an inflection point where a crazy-tall and skinny guy went and is going the distance in the NBA. Perhaps now sports-medical science can keep these guys on the floor, given sensible management (Spurs and the 24-minute limit) and discipline from the players themselves.

Montemayor with another world-class history video:

When Chet plays offense, he plays without consideration for what he should do next. He already has his court vision set as he receives the ball, and he also makes moves off the ball in a smooth manner at the same time as his teammates. No one on his team accommodates him, they are all just playing ball at speed, trying to win games. Also, he does a lot of the NBA-level non-stat connective stuff consistently - getting all the way down to the correct spot on the floor off the ball before starting his cuts, talking on defense, boxing out for teammate rebounds, etc. Wemby is not yet to this level of proficiency, in that he often re-assesses the court upon receipt of the ball. He is also a step behind on the off-ball motions in some cases as well. This is not to say he is doing anything wrong, just that he is a young player still assimilating to NBA rules and speed in a new language. Although the constant losing is galling, the Spurs have a lot of guys around him who clearly have the task of talking to him, providing him with feedback and real-time coaching, which is entirely to the Spurs' credit. When Wemby gets it right, he is the next level of NBA evolution. But on a play-by-play basis, he has moments when he still shows like a freshman playing with seniors on the high school team, where he is ever so slightly hesitant and out of sync with the others. Chet doesn't create that level of show-stopping individual play, but he does jog along with the rest of his team with a lot less timing misses. The LeBron / Melo comparison is good in the sense that LeBron was clearly far, far smarter than Melo in their respective rookie years, and LeBron was doing all the connective stuff to help his team win, Larry Bird-style, from Day 1, even though Melo put up better numbers. Wemby will develop those game smarts, English skills, etc. etc. soon enough, and he has potential to be the step-function elevation of the NBA game if the Spurs continue to keep him healthy and educate him. This year, though, if I wanted to win games, I would want Chet out on the floor.

Wow, that's even dumber than the Kentucky cousin-lover a couple pages back.

I don't know that Hardy is an amazing coach. As a coach, I would suggest that Hardy has smart, crafty, hard-working players who can implement this style. If you have players who are willing to work that hard as a team on offense, that offense will indeed be NSFW in the best of ways. And thus you as a coach will look smart. But you can't do this with players who are dumb or lazy, no matter how good a coach you may be.

It probably doesn't help that they used a picture of the guy looking like his wildest maniac dreams are about to come true.

"No superior condition exists for a product to exceed documented specs than a motivated user." - Motorola LMPS engineers

That was a good game between two likeable teams playing good football. Top stuff. Either one would have been a worthy winner, but it is nice to see Lions' fans get a win at long last.

After last month's rumors of similar Chilean action by Sernapesca, it is good to see actual evidence that Argentina has also decided to take some (very small scale) action on Chinese resource theft in their waters. If more South American nations would stand up to this sort of parasitic conversion of their national reserves, we might curb, at least a little bit, some of the habitat losses experienced in the southern Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, as well as the economic losses for South American countries being overfished by illegal Chinese industrial fishing vessels. Watch the video. Friends of mine living in Argentina say that this is made possible by the change in administrations, but I have no expertise to suggest this is true or not.

I see more and more analysis like this one that is a kind of strategic-thinking echo of the shield of dead bodies on the tank. Click for the scary Russian attack scenario. Given the way Putin's mind seems to work, and then seeing those horrific images, I am afraid that the calculus that suggests a Russian attack on NATO isn't far-fetched may not be off base.

From a theoretical standpoint, the two-party system is sub-optimal, so anything that reduces the stranglehold of the duopoly is probably good. From a practical standpoint, the political outcomes over the last couple of decades have been so poor that trying something different, AKA allowing open primaries for any registered voter, cannot possibly be worse.

Once again, it is imperative that the Biden administration get off the stump and send Ukraine the equipment and munitions it needs. We have 2,500-3,000 Bradleys sitting in East Texas and costing taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars every quarter to maintain. Haul them down I-49 to New Orleans, and ship them off to Odessa. We get to stop spending money to maintain them, Ukraine gets to use them up, everybody wins.

Yes, it is classless to boo the dead in front of their widow. On the other hand, Krause is rivaled only by Harold Katz in NBA history for fumbling away such immense, potentially-transcendent winning teams by his purposeful penny-pinching and poor man-management. And if anything, Krause screwed up even more than Katz. The Sixers in the 80s had to contend with the Bucks, Celts and Lakers, so even if Katz wasn't a skinflint, even that revelatory Sixers squad he blew up would have had to fight hard to capture more rings. On the contrary, the watered-down expansion rosters and uncompetitive landscape in the 90s meant that the Bulls could easily have glided into two or three more rings if he wasn't so personally odious to his players and so unwilling to share the wealth with the individuals who were actually generating that financial success. Add to that the mess around the construction of the United Center, and how it seemed to wall itself and the fans off from the surrounding neighborhood, excluding the locals who had supported the Bulls for decades, and his legacy is pretty questionable to Chicago fans. It sure seems like you or I could have had just as much success as he did had we lucked into a roster than included Michael Jordan. Honestly, the current management in Chicago has to be pretty tone-deaf to stage such a scene, since they presumably know what Bulls fans are like, and surely can't have expected that scenario to come off without something embarrassing plopping out. I can't believe that they don't know that most long-term fans have the perception that the Bulls won in spite of Krause, not because of him.

Gravenberch is that payer who has all the tools, but hasn't yet realized he has all the tools, and that he should use all the tools all the time. He needs to watch and replicate the play of Jota, who goes all out all the time. If he does that, it will be outstanding. Jones has made that transition this season, and look how well he has performed.

How the mighty have fallen. An actual, real-life GOP presidential primary candidate debate, and it features DeSantis and Haley. Put a flower in your buttonhole, the funeral service for the Republican National Party cannot be too far away if this is the best we can come up with.

I finished up the audiobook of Noble Smith's second book in his Warrior Trilogy, entitled Spartans at the Gates, which was read by the excellent Elijah Alexander. My reading was interrupted by the holidays and all the entertaining / squiring visitors around, but this wasn't a story that I necessarily couldn't put down. This is a sequel to Sons of Zeus, a book that I described as an adventure story set in the Peloponnesian War. This second book is actually an improvement, in that it includes several different plotlines that weave in and out amongst the various characters and settings, mainly in Attica and Boeotia. The story also includes enhancements in the form of mysteries and plotlines that could turn in several directions, as well as a few historical characters who act within my expectations for those individuals as we know them from history. So I would say that it is a high-quality adventure story set in the Peloponnesian War. So the writing is good, and the reader is a favorite of mine, and the plot works well enough that I came back and finished the book after three weeks of pause. However, this story suffers from several tropes common to books written this century, as well as some old chestnuts as well. It has the Murder Child, a character so precocious in the art of war and boasting as to be more suited to a comic book for psychopaths. It features sexposition, but in this particular work the exposition is overwhelmed by the incredibly-detailed and overly-long descriptions of the sexual acts, including a couple or three peggings that were quite over the top. The Inappropriate, Beneficial Jew makes an appearance to further the protagonist's endeavors, disappears, and reappears one more time to add a cherry to the Coincidence Sundae, then once more drops out of the story completely, like an ethnically-unlikely fairy godmother. And of course, just as in Star Wars, Everyone is (Secretly) Related - so watch out who you might encounter in those sexpositions! I guess there are worse tropes that could be popular in our current age, so I shouldn't complain too much. A hundred years ago we would all be enduring Wilkie Collins. But if you happen to be sensitive to one or more of these specific ones, be aware that this book may contain such.

It is almost like chasing traditional Republicans out of the party functions, including the long-serving administrators and operators, is a bad idea for Trump. But sure, replace them with nouveau riche blowhards who are big into social media and culture wars, but can't do paperwork, that'll turn out fine.

I guess if you compare the cost of a Patriot missile <$6 million> versus the expense report of a guy (three hotel nights, one return first class train ticket, four days' per diem for meals, dry cleaning, tips for the concierge who gave directions to the airbase, reimburse $5 ATM fee, taxis, bottles of cheap, flammable alcohol, porter tips for luggage) who wanders out onto the airfield and sets fire to a fighter-bomber by hand <$458.32>, the hand-delivered destruction is a reasonable and economical model.

This just demonstrates the uselessness of the current crop of GOP primary candidates for president. You don't have to smear him personally! - You could point to his total lack of a political platform and the absolute absence of creative political plans. - You could point to his record of not attending his own cabinet meetings and his own briefing while he held the office. - You could point to his complete failure to work with the Senate or Congress to create or pass any meaningful legislation, reform or improvement of government, etc. - You could point to his lack of achievement in working with America's allies abroad to form coalitions to achieve our nation's goals, and spending his time instead cozying up to dictators. - You could point to the failure of American federal response to the Covid plague, and the lack of leadership in a time of crisis. - You could point to Republicans' continued defeats at the polls during his term, and the inability to achieve success at the ballot box of those candidates he has chosen and endorsed, leading to wins by candidates who are Democrats. These are just the most blatant, obvious political failures! There isn't anything personal in this, it is just his resume! Only Christie has the goolies to talk about it - the rest of the candidates just fold their hands and avert their eyes, much like the GOP national party leadership.

It was nice to see Fabinho and Firmino sitting together at Anfield to cheer on their former teammates.

Both of them were adequately described by Sgt. Joe Friday years ago.