[kenberg]

onoway, on 2013-June-25, 17:55, said:

Don't think they do much curling in Moscow either, Aberlour

Too busy shearing pigs.

[Aberlour10]

onoway, on 2013-June-25, 17:55, said:

Don't think they do much curling in Moscow either, Aberlour

You are wrong. Many curling teams there, including European Champions (Women competition )

but I would agree with the statement : There are no avocado trees in Gorki Park

[Winstonm]

Aberlour10, on 2013-June-26, 05:02, said:

You are wrong. Many curling teams there, including European Champions (Women competition )

but I would agree with the statement : There are no avocado trees in Gorki Park

How about Zamboni trees?

[Aberlour10]

Winstonm, on 2013-June-26, 12:44, said:

How about Zamboni trees?

No Z-trees but a lot of work for classic Zambonis on Europe largest ice rink for skaters

Remember Lee Marvin as a killer in Gorky Park?

[y66]

I almost posted a link to Ian Buruma's recent story about Chinese dissident Liao Yiwu's prison memoir. But I decided it was too disturbing.

[Winstonm]

The best thing about this thread is that it's not the climate change thread.

[Aberlour10]

Winstonm, on 2013-July-03, 17:21, said:

The best thing about this thread is that it's not the climate change thread.

Curling in Alaska Anno Domini 2079

[Winstonm]

That has to be hell on Zambonis.

[y66]

Water cooler post of the year Aberlour.

[jjbrr]

BBF WCers,

I think I'll post this here instead of starting a new thread because I doubt there's much interest. If it looks like I'm wrong, I'll either start a new thread for people to sign up in or get a mod to extract this or something. If it gets a mod's attention and we want to open it up to anyone on BBO, I say the more the merrier.

Does anyone want to play a WC bridge-related game? I have two in mind.

The first would be a bridge team draft very similar to the NFL draft or whatever where each player takes turns selecting one bridge player to make up their fantasy bridge team. After the draft, each player could write up a short explanation of why their team is awesome, including synergies and complementary styles and whatever, but with the condition that normal partnerships would be somewhat frowned upon. For example if you draft both Levin and Weinstein, you would be encouraged to make a case for them to play with any of the other members on the team that you've drafted rather than each other. We can either vote on the best/most interesting/most exciting team or run a tournament where we vote on head to head winners in each match.

The second idea is commonly called "sheep" and is a family-feud style game where you try to choose the most common answer given by the other contestants. There may be fifteen questions or so and all you'll have to do is PM me answers to those fifteen questions. The theme would be bridge, so each question will be about bridge, but as an example if the theme were baseball a question might look like this: "Which team has won a lot of world series titles?"

Obviously answering "Yankees" would score well, so if 8 answers were submitted to me and the answers look like this: yankees, yankees, yankees, red sox, red sox, chicago bulls, chicago bulls, cincinnati reds

The scoring would break down as follows:

Yankees - 3 points
Red Sox - 2 points
Chicago Bulls (even though it's a wrong answer!) - 2 points
Reds - 1 point

The contestant with the highest cumulative score would be the winner.

If either of these sound interesting, I can post a more comprehensive set of rules and explanations

[mike777]

I grew up in roseland/south chicago...rats:


Two children, ages five and seven, are among the many victims of shootings across Chicago.

Since Wednesday afternoon, gun violence has killed eight people, and wounded 30 others.

Jaden Donald, 5, was one of three people shot late Thursday night at Cooper Park in the Roseland neighborhood


Read more: http://wgntv.com/201.../#ixzz2YFHlX6zn

fwiw I don't know this cooper park...I know palmer park or 103 and cottage grove or palmer park at 111th.

---


fwiw Chicago has strong anti guns laws...it don't seem to matter.

[y66]

Who is Jason Everman?

Quote

Jason Everman has the unique distinction of being the guy who was kicked out of Nirvana and Soundgarden, two rock bands that would sell roughly 100 million records combined. At 26, he wasn’t just Pete Best, the guy the Beatles left behind. He was Pete Best twice.

Then again, he wasn’t remotely. What Everman did afterward put him far outside the category of rock’n’roll footnote. He became an elite member of the U.S. Army Special Forces, one of those bearded guys riding around on horseback in Afghanistan fighting the Taliban.

[kenberg]

Every once n a while we meet or read of someone demonstrating the enormous capacity of human life. Thanks for posting.

[y66]

Opened the windows in the house last night for the first time since June. Man that breeze feels good.

[y66]

Volkswagen Reveals Cleaner, More Powerful Diesel Engine



My wife loves her Jetta TDI. Acceleration is decent.

[Winstonm]

That would make a damn fine Zamboni engine!

[y66]

From the annals of shame:

Quote

"For the past 40 years, the war on drugs has resulted in more than 45 million arrests, $1 trillion dollars in government spending, and America’s role as the world’s largest jailer. Yet for all that, drugs are cheaper, purer, and more available than ever." -- from The House I Live In.

“If you stand in a federal court, you’re watching poor and uneducated people being fed into a machine like meat to make sausage. It’s just bang, bang, bang, bang. Next!” says journalist Charles Bowden.

“It’d be one thing if it was draconian and it worked. But it’s draconian and it doesn’t work. It just leads to more,” says David Simon, creator of the HBO series, The Wire.

[PassedOut]

y66, on 2013-August-15, 10:22, said:

From the annals of shame:

Yes, the 'war on drugs' is an unconscionable travesty. The idea (now) is to feed more and more lost souls into the for-profit prison industry.

Of course I don't like to see folks destroy their lives by drug addictions. But I'm more concerned about the huge sums that go to drug lords and the effects on society of the activities needed to acquire the money to pay for addictive drugs. It would be much better to treat the addicted for free, allowing them to stay high until they quit using or die.

And for mild drugs and hallucinogens, criminalization is not only stupid but immoral. We pay taxes to support a pure food and drug administration. Let's get our money's worth.

[y66]

From today's paper:

Quote

A WELL-KNOWN senior Madison Avenue executive, Antony Young, is leaving the biggest agency holding group for one that, if not the smallest, is certainly the newest.

Mr. Young is becoming president of the Water Cooler Group, which is being formed to be the parent of four agencies — Bolt, Hip Genius, Maude and Media Storm — that specialize in tasks like media planning and buying, social media, creative and content development and interactive television.

The name was chosen, said Craig Woerz, a managing partner at both the Water Cooler Group and Media Storm, to invoke a holy grail among marketers: stimulating conversation, word of mouth, buzz and social sharing among consumers, a k a the water-cooler effect.

I thought the holy grail was eating a bacon sandwich while driving a zamboni between curling matches.

[Winstonm]

y66, on 2013-August-26, 10:42, said:

From today's paper:



I thought the holy grail was eating a bacon sandwich while driving a zamboni between curling matches.

Only if the bacon sandwich is doused with Finnish ketsup.