Aardhart's profile

Aardhart
15628
Member since: October 31, 2006
Last visit: April 30, 2011

Aardhart has posted 1 link and 135 comments to SportsFilter and 0 links and 1 comment to the Locker Room.

Recent Links

posted by to at 12:39 AM on March 19, 2024 - comments

Recent Comments

SportsFilter: The Thursday Huddle

I think the baseball plan may be like the 96-team field NCAA tourney plan. A bad idea that actually gets rejected because it is such a bad idea, after it was presented as a inevitability.

I hope.

posted by Aardhart at 07:40 PM on April 21, 2011

Reds' Leake Arrested for Shoplifting

So besides the condescension, what was the point you were making?

posted by Aardhart at 06:45 PM on April 20, 2011

Reds' Leake Arrested for Shoplifting

rcade, you missed the context in which I used the word psycho-babble. If a label has no value except to sound authoritative, it is babble. I used psycho-babble to contrast with conditions that explain behavior.

In the Rosenhan experiment, psychology researchers (and other non-insane people) gained admission to psychiatric hospitals by calling for an appointment and feigning auditory hallucinations. While admitted, they acted normally. From wikipedia:

Hospital notes indicated that staff interpreted much of the pseudopatients' behavior in terms of mental illness. For example, one nurse labeled the note-taking of one pseudopatient as "writing behavior" and considered it pathological. The patients' normal biographies were recast in hospital records along the lines of what was expected of schizophrenics by the then-dominant theories of its etiology.

Calling note-taking "writing behavior" is psycho-bable. Similarly, if "kleptomania" is not a cause for theft, the term has no value and must be psycho-babble.

posted by Aardhart at 04:08 PM on April 20, 2011

Reds' Leake Arrested for Shoplifting

Only if you don't understand the difference between causes and possible explanations.

Yeah, help me out here. I thought the explanation was that he stole stuff because he was a kleptomaniac, or had kleptomania, or whatever. But I think the condition is purportedly a cause, or a reason, for the action.

If there is no causal link, then I think there would be no value to couching a description of an action into psycho-babble. If saying that he has kleptomania is the same as saying he stole something, the label has no value. It also constitutes neither a cause nor an explanation.

Am I missing something, or is there something of value behind your condescension?

posted by Aardhart at 02:02 PM on April 20, 2011

Reds' Leake Arrested for Shoplifting

When mental disorders can be uniformly diagnosed, more people will believe that they are "just like cancer."

The sad fact is that nearly any kid can be diagnosed with something that can be treated with anti-depressants, and anti-depressants have a similar effectiveness rate as placebos but they keep the drug companies' profits up. Is there any bad behavior that can't be blamed on a mental disorder?

posted by Aardhart at 08:53 PM on April 19, 2011

The Strongest Hands in the World

First thing I did was check the date of the article. I thought there was a good chance it was from April Fools. But it wasn't. Although surprising, I understand him not playing football because he hated it. This article was somewhat similar to the one on Jake Plummer. "People don't realize, he explains, how hard these guys train (15 to 20 hours a week) or how little they earn (less than $6,000 annually)."

posted by Aardhart at 11:55 PM on April 10, 2011

SportsFilter: The Saturday Huddle

I think a few Cubs slid on the tarp during the rainout of their first planned home night game on 8-8-88. Then a few drunks from the crowd did it too. I remember them being criticized because of risk of injury.

posted by Aardhart at 02:12 PM on April 09, 2011

SportsFilter: The Monday Huddle

Any chance Notre Dame would join Big 10 hockey as a hockey only member? Would anyone care now that Nebraska is on board?

posted by Aardhart at 09:49 AM on March 22, 2011

How to Avoid Penalty Shoot Outs

Does soccer have a coin flip to determine who kicks off? (I casually follow big-time soccer. It did in my AYSO soccer league, but I can't recall any coin-flips at the World Cups.) If so, replace the coin flips with a shoot-out. Use the shoot-out for possession and to break a tie.

Using it only to break a tie that might not exist just seems somehow unacceptable to me.

posted by Aardhart at 03:00 PM on March 17, 2011

What Baseball Team Should I Root For?

I got stuck with the Yankees.

posted by Aardhart at 01:49 PM on March 05, 2011

BYU kicks Brandon Davies off team for violating honor code

What are Brandon Davies' options now? Can he play Div. I basketball elsewhere on a scholarship next season? Can he get a scholarship to sit out a year at another school? If he has to take a year off, is that a year of eligibility forfeited or is like a red shirt year? Can he make it as a pro, NBA, Europe, or otherwise?

I assume he is done with BYU.

posted by Aardhart at 07:10 PM on March 03, 2011

NCAA President: No Pay for Athletes

What's sad is that that tradition is hopeless corruption.

posted by Aardhart at 12:11 PM on February 25, 2011

NCAA President: No Pay for Athletes

rcade, I like sports. I do not think sports should be banned. I just don't think that the connection between sports and college makes much sense.

I don't think the University of Chicago suffered too much from ending their football program, the Monsters of the Midway. I do not think Harvard and Yale suffered too much from ending their participation in bowl games and from dropping down from big-time football.

I did not choose my MAC college based on its athletic program. I chose it because it had the academic program I wanted and it was cheap. I went to football and basketball games while I was there, but they were free.

UNT, MAC schools, and Sunbelt schools will never have athletic programs that could rival Ohio State, Texas, Florida, or USC. Yeah, there is an occasional upset, but rarely is there a new member of the elite programs.

I think we just disagree on the cost-benefit analysis, and whether it is appropriate to spread the costs to unwilling students and tax-payers.

posted by Aardhart at 10:35 AM on February 25, 2011

NCAA President: No Pay for Athletes

FYI. I'm an alum of a MAC school.

You act as if the only point of college sports is to make money and entertain people.

No. I act as if the primary purpose of colleges is education, not to provide subsidies for sports.

posted by Aardhart at 09:14 AM on February 25, 2011