I seem to recall that you proposed not seeding the division winners at one point. That would mostly eliminate the incentive to lose to get a weaker opponent (the exception being something like trying to meet a wounded team like Washington that had already locked up a high seed).

As far as resting stars goes, I can't see how to avoid that dynamic. It happens at the game level too, or does the expression "garbage time" not ring any bells?

King, you don't understand. That is the new standard for reporting, at least in the papers you cited.

Read Glenn Greenwald.

A better description of the Raptors game was that they coughed up all but one point of a 20 point first quarter lead.

Canada (or at least Ontario) was effectively created by people fleeing the US. The United Empire Loyalists were driven out of the States after the American Revolution.

Also, from Wikipedia:

Pemberton Ridge, situated 3 miles north of Forest City on a hill overlooking East Grand Lake and Spednic Lake, in southwestern New Brunswick, Canada.

In the early 1860s it was called "Skedaddle Ridge" because of settlers who fled there to avoid draft into the US Civil War. Some of the settlers include Leeman and MacKenney, of which descendants are still living there. In its heyday, Pemberton Ridge probably had a population of 15–20 families; around 75–100 people.

Then the original Underground Railway.

Canada has always been where Americans come to avoid repression.

OK, regular season. Bowen does something. Gets attacked. League sprays punishments all around. Then the attacker goes to court against the league punishment arguing self defence.

Given an honest court (unfortunately not guaranteed, but both sides have enough money to make it a reasonable bet), the league will be forced to pay attention to both that issue and the stars favouritism issue. The dirty player case would be the precedent for court intervention into the favouritism case.

As far as a 70-80 foul game in the playoffs, if the league changed the instructions it would take less than a 20 foul quarter for the message to be recieved.

In the NHL, guys such as Bowen would get away with that shit about 2x before someone came off the bench to 'neutralize' him. It wouldn't be left to suits in the NY office to figure out what to do. They would settle it like men on the field of play.

Ask Rudy Tomjanovich about that solution. The reason they don't allow fights in the NBA is that players would die. The flip side of that is that it is the responsibility of the league to go after dirty players. Which is what the flagrant foul is all about. Bowen has apparently found a relatively subtle flagrant foul technique. I expect it will be dealt with, but it may well take an explosion or two to kick in the solution.

In Canada at least Charlie Angus has been recently denied communion. Of course, the fact that he is a New Democratic Party member (think European social democrat) may well have influenced that decision. This was over the same sex marriage bill. In Canada we have no legislation concerning abortion. The previous legislation got smacked down in the courts and never replaced.

I have never called for the elimination of penalties on charges, or for the elimination of charges. I called for a change in the charge rule so that a player who slides into defensive position JUST in time to draw the charge, who takes that position not to play defense but only to draw the charge, is called for a blocking foul. Or a no-call would be OK with me. Position defense is fine. Charge into that and it's charging. What we have now is a kind of "Gotcha" game that isn't basketball.

Competitive sports are always played at the margins of the rules.

Making the defensive play at the last possible moment is always going to be a good thing to do in basketball because that will force the offensive player to change the play with the least amount of time to make that decision. If you want to adjust the blocking/charging rulew, fine. Defensive players will have to get into position earlier than they do now. But making that change will not alter the tactical desire to get into position at the last possible instant.

I just checked the rule. It states that the defensive player must establish position such that the offensive player can stop or change direction and avoid contact. How else would you write that rule? Of course, then there is the issue of how the rule gets called. If you want to argue that rule is being improperly applied in some cases that's another question.

It doesn't matter if the rule is changed, or the officials change how they call it (consistency would be good, but not expected, see your earlier comments on NBA refereering) it will always come down to players trying to do things with .014 seconds to spare.

I'm really not sure whether you are seriously asking that question or not.

Addictive substances are price insentitive. The legal barriers to hard drugs are sufficient that anyone who is willing to get past thme is willing to pay whatever it takes. Conversely, no one who is unwilling to surmount those barriers cares about the cost.

Tobacco and alchohol have lower legal barriers, so there are still price sensitive consumers in the market.

I. F. Stone wrote "The Trial of Socrates". If you want to look at the events triggering "The Republic" that would be a good place to start.

It's hard to see how any regular agricultural method would compete with algae based biofuel.

If you want to explain bad high draft picks one of the things you need to consider is who makes them. The GM's with the worst records. Are those GM's the ones that will make the best decisions?