Random thoughts that are pointless and too dumb to say anywhere else thread: 2012

[RightFieldCoder]

There are a lot of people that are astounded that I like baseball better than football. The most common complaint is that baseball is too boring with no action. I also hear flak about the NHL not having enough scoring. I decided to crunch some numbers.

 

NFL 2011 season

Each team scored an average of 2.36 TD a game. I combined field goals, safeties, and two point conversions. Each team averaged 1.63 of these per game. It comes out to 3.99 scores per game per team. If you count extra points as "separate scores", it drives this average up to 6.24.

 

MLB 2011 season

Each team scored an average of 4.28 runs per game. I wanted to count only run scoring plays, but I couldn't find that information anywhere without going down to a player by player basis.

 

NHL 2010-2011 season

Each team scored an average of 2.73 goals per game.

 

The average NFL game is 3:00-3:10. The average MLB game is 2:50-3:00. So baseball has about the same amount of scores as football in the same amount of time. Unless you want to count extra points as "exciting scoring plays". I do admit that baseball doesn't have such exciting plays as running out the clock or taking a knee.

[DatHoser]

Great post, Robin19!

 

Add on to that, in football: extra point - time out - kickoff - time out - change possession (finally). That makes a pitching change downright exciting.

[Glennron]

I'm a bigger baseball fan as well, but scoring isn't the only thing that makes sports interesting. I'd much rather watch a pitcher's duel than a 12-9 slugfest with 12 pitching changes. Honestly I just think there are a lot of people who don't have the attention span for baseball.

[jazzytrav]

This sign is on the outside of a Planet Fitness on the north side of Oshkosh. It bothers me everytime I see it, so I finally took a picture and made an LOL out of it (something I haven't done for quite awhile). I always found it funny that every time I drove by it, I was casting judgment.

http://i238.photobucket.com/albums/ff307/jazzytrav86/NewImage-1.jpg

[DatHoser]

Things that make you go hmmmm - why is judgment not spelled with another e - like judgement?

[1992casey]

It's spelled with the "e" in other countries.

Common Errors in English Usage says:

---

In Great Britain and many of its

former colonies, “judgement” is still the correct spelling, but ever

since Noah Webster decreed the first E superfluous, Americans

have omitted it. Many of Webster’s crotchets have faded away (each year

fewer people use the spelling “theater,” for instance), but even the

producers of Terminator 2: Judgment Day chose the traditional American spelling. If you write “judgement” you should also write “colour.”

[dadofandrew]

Like cancelled and canceled, it's considered correct either way. Judgement does not come up on spell check.

[jazzytrav]

Like cancelled and canceled, it's considered correct either way. Judgement does not come up on spell check.

In the dictionary, it's considered a "variant." In other words, "we're so sick of people misspelling this word that we're going to call it a variant." The bottom line is that if it's truly considered correct either way, then I have beef with my 4th grade teacher for kicking me out of the Spelling Bee.

 

 

[hawing]

The bottom line is that if it's truly considered correct either way, then I have beef with my 4th grade teacher for kicking me out of the Spelling Bee.

Vengeance shall be yours!

[DatHoser]

Like gray and grey, there are now allowed variants. Funny, I remember being marked wrong for "mis-spelling" grey as gray in third grade, but I can't remember when I go to a room to get something what I went to get. D'oh!

 

Yes, I'm a mid-60's birthday old fart.

[1992casey]

I looked around for information on canceled vs. cancelled, and there appears to be a leaning toward "canceled" in the US and "cancelled" in Britain, with both variants being pretty acceptable in both places. I think a good rule of thumb for words like this is that the US likes single consonants and Britain likes double.

 

There seems to be a definite preference for "judgment" in the US and "judgement" in Britain, although it appears that US dictionaries list both spellings (with "judgment" coming first).

 

For what it's worth, I don't place 100% trust in Firefox's spellchecker. It seemed to take a nosedive in the transition from Firefox 2 to Firefox 3. I place greater trust in OS X's dictionary simply because it doesn't raise my eyebrows anywhere near as often. I'll generally let dictionary.com mediate if I see a spellcheck result that looks fishy.

[tristarscoop]

Canceled is the AP Stylebook correct spelling. Too many years as a journo student mean that's the only source I trust on spelling.

 

I was always told its GrAy in America and GrEy in England and that's who you remember it.

[GAME05]

I was always told its GrAy in America and GrEy in England and that's who you remember it.

a grammatical error in a post about AP style guidelines? http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif

 

but as someone who used to have his head stuck in an AP book all day, kudos on the reference.

[1992casey]

I'd say that's more of a typo as tristarscoop would have known exactly what she intended to type. http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif

 

The Chicago Manual of Style is big too. Style manuals can get us over humps in situations where dictionaries are somewhat permissive. The real value is when multiple people contribute to the same publication. You want grammar and spelling to be consistent from author to author.

[GAME05]

in my six years as an editor, i always used AP, so it would have been tough to switch to Chicago. but you say it really well. even from issue to issue, if the writing style isn't standardized, the publication comes across as amateurish. and it's a mark of value, too. if a publication doesn't bother the time to proofread, then you can usually tell the lack of effort in content, too.

[CheezWizHed]

You spell potato, I spell potatoe

[tristarscoop]

I work in Marketing/PR for a non-profit and we don't use the AP and we don't have our own stylebook and it drives me nuts. There is no standardization in the large amount of printed materials we produce. I have no idea how they've gone this long without it.

 

I've used the AP so long that most things I don't have to check on, but it's still sitting on my shelf for reference. It's kind of impossible to move away from it at this point and I find myself using it even on my blog, which is probably pretty ridiculous of me.

 

I had a teacher in college that actually made us "memorize" and take quizzes on individual letters in the stylebook - which was so strange. It's a reference book, dammit. Why the hell would you force a kid to try to memorize it? Can't believe I paid a few grand for those credits.

 

My apologies for my typo. Killing me to not go fix it.

[CheezWizHed]

I had a teacher in college that actually made us "memorize" and take quizzes on individual letters in the stylebook - which was so strange. It's a reference book

 

You get some of that in engineering also. I had professors that made us memorize formulas. Others gave a notecard. And others let us use the textbook. The last ones would say, "Once in the work world, things like this are critical to get right. So no one takes the chance that they remembered the formula correctly anyway."

[ewizabeff]

I work in Marketing/PR for a non-profit and we don't use the AP and we don't have our own stylebook and it drives me nuts. There is no standardization in the large amount of printed materials we produce. I have no idea how they've gone this long without it.

I never used a style guide in my work in Marketing/PR. My most recent hire is a former journalist, so now we go by AP....but he still has to correct my writing all the time.

[hawing]

At Woodman's this afternoon, I saw a guy wearing a Rangers 2011 World Series cap. I thought about remarking on how we most likely share a common hatred, but decided to let him be.

 

I also saw a woman with a Brewers purse, and a guy with a Brewers 2011 playoffs cap. A few nights ago, at the Wisconsin-Indiana game at the Kohl Center, J.J. Watt was in the crowd and modeled a dark red Brewers cap for the videoboard. Obviously I enjoy seeing Brewers gear in the off-season.

 

[RightFieldCoder]

I remember back in the 02-05 years when I was excited to see people wearing Brewers gear in Milwaukee during the season.

[hawing]

I remember back in the 02-05 years when I was excited to see people wearing Brewers gear in Milwaukee during the season.

One of the things that struck me most about the 2002 all-star events was alllll the Brewers gear worn by fans. It seemed uncommon at the time. Imagine!

[Oldcity]

So at 4:40 this morning, I'm awakened by a very loud but short beeping noise every 30 seconds or so. The carbon monoxide alarm. I'm thinking, 'That's a pretty strange alarm... That can't be right.' Sure enough, the instruction book indicates that it's the "end of life notification." I even called the fire dept non-emergency line, and they confirmed it. I'm working as a sub right now, so I'm due to get up to try to obtain a job. It doesn't even make sense for me to try to get back to sleep. Maybe this should have been in the "Things that are bugging you" thread we had a while ago instead.

[Thurston Fluff]

Today I had to be a gorilla at 6 in the morning. I got to the house and all the lights were off and no sign of life. Double checked and had the right address. Knocked on the door and it was the right house. Fun was has by all. Then I thought what if it was the wrong house? Can you imagine getting woke up to a gorilla with balloons at your door asking for Dave? You gotta wake up later and wonder if that really happened.

[Baldkin]

Today I had to be a gorilla at 6 in the morning.

I just had to quote this. That is all.