Kurdish militia backed by US-led air strikes have made significant progress in driving Isil back from rural areas around Kobane.
The Kurds successfully drove the group from the Syrian border town last week.
A spokesman for the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia said Isil forces were collapsing around Kobane.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring organisation, said Islamic State fighters were putting up little resistance in the face of the Kurdish advance and may be pushed back even further.
Collapse
"The fighting organisation of Daesh... is in a state of complete collapse at present and cannot hold ground," said Redur Xelil, spokesman for the YPG, using a pejorative Arabic acronym for Isil.
New Report Destroys Biofuel Claims By Andy Tully Posted on Sun, 01 February 2015 00:00 | 5
Despite their promise over the past decade or so, biofuels have been found to be a very inefficient way to generate energy, are bad for the environment and even contribute to world hunger, according to a new report by the World Resources Institute (WRI)...........
>>>“Let me just tell you what happened because, as you know, the game comes right down and all the things that happened before are meaningless to you now,” Carroll said. “It’s really what happened on this one sequence that we would have won the game.
“We have everything in mind, how we’re going to do it. We’re going to leave them no time, and we had our plays to do it. We sent in our personnel, they sent in goal-line (package) — it’s not the right matchup for us to run the football — so on second down we throw the ball really to kind of waste a play.
“If we score, we do. If we don’t, then we’ll run it in on third and fourth down. Really, (we called it) with no second thoughts or no hesitation at all. And unfortunately, with the play that we tried to execute, the guy (Butler) makes a great play and jumps in front of the route and makes an incredible play that nobody would ever think he could do. And unfortunately that changes the whole outcome…
“There’s really nobody to blame but me, and I told them that clearly.”<<<
>>>The staggering final play of last night’s enthralling Super Bowl XLIX, in which Seattle inexplicably called for a passing play on the one-yard line that was intercepted and cost them their second consecutive NFL Championship, was a failure in every sense of the word. And in the 16 hours since the play went down, the Seahawks have been standing in a circle, all pointing at each other, yelling, “He’s the dad!”…
Offensive coordinator Darren Blevell, who made the call—with the approval of coach Pete Carroll, who, by taking blame for the play, is the one person who isn’t standing around accusing everyone around him—says wide receiver Ricardo Lockette should have “fought through” the defense. Seahawks linebacker Bruce Irvin, who earlier became the first player ever ejected from a Super Bowl, blasted Blevell, saying “We were on the half-yard line, and we throw a slant. I don’t know what the offense had going on, what they saw. I just don’t understand.” (This was a sentiment heavily shared by many in the Seahawks locker room afterward.) One anonymous Seahawk even claimed that Carroll made the call to have Russell Wilson throw the ball, rather than Marshawn Lynch run it, because Carroll simply likes Wilson more. It was that sort of loss…
Carroll asked for a pass, but Blevell’s the one who came with the rather inexplicable idea to throw it in the middle of the field, pretty much the only place the ball could have been thrown where it could be intercepted. Why didn’t Blevell call for a fade route? (Perhaps to Chris Matthews, the surprising star of the game, who had been using his height to grab jump balls all evening?) Or even have Wilson try a play action and roll out, with the option of throwing it, running it in or tossing the ball out of the end zone to regroup? (Seattle could have held on to its precious time out that way, too.) Heck, even if Wilson had been sacked, it would have been OK. The one thing that couldn’t happen was an interception. Blevell had countless options, and he still found a way to choose the worst one.<<<
>>>Up until the Super Bowl, the Seahawks had run nine plays from their opponent’s 1-yard line. They ran the ball seven times and passed it twice. They scored a touchdown on three of those run plays (a 43% TD conversion rate), and they scored a touchdown on one of the pass plays (a 50% TD conversion rate)…
Why did Pete Carroll run a pass play? Throughout the season, the Seahawks performed better with pass plays than run plays from the 1-yard line, and Marshawn Lynch hadn’t performed well that close to the end zone. The Seahawks didn’t have the right matchup for a run play on 2nd down. And given the amount of time left in the game, Seattle didn’t have time to run three run plays in a row. They were going to have to pass it at least once if they needed all three plays to score a touchdown…
If anything, it wasn’t a pass play itself that was a bad idea, but that pass play. If you’re worried about the defense jamming the middle with a goal line defense, then why on earth would you call an inside slant? And why would you call it against a defense that would likely jam the receivers right as they came off the line?<<<
>>>Perhaps you are like my students, and your advice is that maybe Carroll should follow a mixed strategy most of the time, but not in the dying seconds of the Super Bowl. But realize that if this were an optimal choice, Belichick would probably figure it out, and he would instruct his players to guard against the run. When most of the defenders focus only on stopping one running back, they usually succeed.
Or perhaps you believe that Lynch’s statistics show that he is so successful at bulldozing through opponents that he would succeed even against a defense set up only to stop the run. I disagree. A key reason that Lynch has been so successful is that his coach has been playing a mixed strategy all season. Lynch has accumulated impressive numbers in part because opposing defenses have had to be concerned about Russell Wilson’s passing. And so Lynch’s history of success when playing as part of a mixed strategy says nothing about how successful he would be if his opponents knew for sure his coach would call a running play.
Game theory points to the possibility that Carroll’s decisive call was actually the result of following the best possible strategy, and that this is a strategy that involves an element of randomness in play-calling. This leads to the intriguing possibility that if that fateful final play were to be run in a dozen parallel universes, with each coach continuing to play the same mixed strategy, the actual plays called would differ, as would their outcomes.<<<
Auditing the Federal Reserve, it would be a positive step forward for the country.
ReplyDelete.
ReplyDeleteI like some of Paul's ideas.
I didn't realize he was this much of an asshole.
.
a real dick.
DeleteIlliterate on vaccines.
ReplyDeleteA real peckerhead.
Nearly as crazy as his father.
Wanted to use drones to blow up robbers on the get-a-way from robbing liquor stores.....
"What your government did abroad yesterday, it does at home today."
DeleteI realize he's from Kentucky, and my son voted for him, but really.............
DeleteI don't think he can get the nomination, and he knows it, but wants a little leverage if the convention starts with no clear winner in hand.
ReplyDelete.
DeleteBesides, Kelly is one of the few over that CNBC I like.
The cad.
:o)
.
Isil suffers new losses in Syria as Kurds gain
ReplyDeleteKurdish militia backed by US-led air strikes have made significant progress in driving Isil back from rural areas around Kobane.
The Kurds successfully drove the group from the Syrian border town last week.
A spokesman for the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia said Isil forces were collapsing around Kobane.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring organisation, said Islamic State fighters were putting up little resistance in the face of the Kurdish advance and may be pushed back even further.
Collapse
"The fighting organisation of Daesh... is in a state of complete collapse at present and cannot hold ground,"
said Redur Xelil, spokesman for the YPG, using a pejorative Arabic acronym for Isil.
http://www.independent.ie/world-news/middle-east/isil-suffers-new-losses-in-syria-as-kurds-gain-30958743.html
New Report Destroys Biofuel Claims
ReplyDeleteBy Andy Tully
Posted on Sun, 01 February 2015 00:00 | 5
Despite their promise over the past decade or so, biofuels have been found to be a very inefficient way to generate energy, are bad for the environment and even contribute to world hunger, according to a new report by the World Resources Institute (WRI)...........
http://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Biofuels/New-Report-Destroys-Biofuel-Claims.html
OILPRICE is a
DeleteCNBC Partner Site.
I was fishing for Rufus.
DeleteWanted to know what he thought of it.
I wanted a trout's opinion, not that of a carp.
Coach Carroll speaks -
ReplyDelete>>>“Let me just tell you what happened because, as you know, the game comes right down and all the things that happened before are meaningless to you now,” Carroll said. “It’s really what happened on this one sequence that we would have won the game.
“We have everything in mind, how we’re going to do it. We’re going to leave them no time, and we had our plays to do it. We sent in our personnel, they sent in goal-line (package) — it’s not the right matchup for us to run the football — so on second down we throw the ball really to kind of waste a play.
“If we score, we do. If we don’t, then we’ll run it in on third and fourth down. Really, (we called it) with no second thoughts or no hesitation at all. And unfortunately, with the play that we tried to execute, the guy (Butler) makes a great play and jumps in front of the route and makes an incredible play that nobody would ever think he could do. And unfortunately that changes the whole outcome…
“There’s really nobody to blame but me, and I told them that clearly.”<<<
http://hotair.com/archives/2015/02/02/quotes-of-the-day-1985/
>>>The staggering final play of last night’s enthralling Super Bowl XLIX, in which Seattle inexplicably called for a passing play on the one-yard line that was intercepted and cost them their second consecutive NFL Championship, was a failure in every sense of the word. And in the 16 hours since the play went down, the Seahawks have been standing in a circle, all pointing at each other, yelling, “He’s the dad!”…
DeleteOffensive coordinator Darren Blevell, who made the call—with the approval of coach Pete Carroll, who, by taking blame for the play, is the one person who isn’t standing around accusing everyone around him—says wide receiver Ricardo Lockette should have “fought through” the defense. Seahawks linebacker Bruce Irvin, who earlier became the first player ever ejected from a Super Bowl, blasted Blevell, saying “We were on the half-yard line, and we throw a slant. I don’t know what the offense had going on, what they saw. I just don’t understand.” (This was a sentiment heavily shared by many in the Seahawks locker room afterward.) One anonymous Seahawk even claimed that Carroll made the call to have Russell Wilson throw the ball, rather than Marshawn Lynch run it, because Carroll simply likes Wilson more. It was that sort of loss…
Carroll asked for a pass, but Blevell’s the one who came with the rather inexplicable idea to throw it in the middle of the field, pretty much the only place the ball could have been thrown where it could be intercepted. Why didn’t Blevell call for a fade route? (Perhaps to Chris Matthews, the surprising star of the game, who had been using his height to grab jump balls all evening?) Or even have Wilson try a play action and roll out, with the option of throwing it, running it in or tossing the ball out of the end zone to regroup? (Seattle could have held on to its precious time out that way, too.) Heck, even if Wilson had been sacked, it would have been OK. The one thing that couldn’t happen was an interception. Blevell had countless options, and he still found a way to choose the worst one.<<<
hotair.com/archives/2015/02/02/quotes-of-the-day-1985/
>>>Up until the Super Bowl, the Seahawks had run nine plays from their opponent’s 1-yard line. They ran the ball seven times and passed it twice. They scored a touchdown on three of those run plays (a 43% TD conversion rate), and they scored a touchdown on one of the pass plays (a 50% TD conversion rate)…
DeleteWhy did Pete Carroll run a pass play? Throughout the season, the Seahawks performed better with pass plays than run plays from the 1-yard line, and Marshawn Lynch hadn’t performed well that close to the end zone. The Seahawks didn’t have the right matchup for a run play on 2nd down. And given the amount of time left in the game, Seattle didn’t have time to run three run plays in a row. They were going to have to pass it at least once if they needed all three plays to score a touchdown…
If anything, it wasn’t a pass play itself that was a bad idea, but that pass play. If you’re worried about the defense jamming the middle with a goal line defense, then why on earth would you call an inside slant? And why would you call it against a defense that would likely jam the receivers right as they came off the line?<<<
hotair.com/archives/2015/02/02/quotes-of-the-day-1985/
Yup, really really bad call, even if one understands the logic for a pass.......
DeleteRight into the middle of heavy coverage......
Surely a memorable game and most are not memorable.
But then there's game theory -
Delete>>>Perhaps you are like my students, and your advice is that maybe Carroll should follow a mixed strategy most of the time, but not in the dying seconds of the Super Bowl. But realize that if this were an optimal choice, Belichick would probably figure it out, and he would instruct his players to guard against the run. When most of the defenders focus only on stopping one running back, they usually succeed.
Or perhaps you believe that Lynch’s statistics show that he is so successful at bulldozing through opponents that he would succeed even against a defense set up only to stop the run. I disagree. A key reason that Lynch has been so successful is that his coach has been playing a mixed strategy all season. Lynch has accumulated impressive numbers in part because opposing defenses have had to be concerned about Russell Wilson’s passing. And so Lynch’s history of success when playing as part of a mixed strategy says nothing about how successful he would be if his opponents knew for sure his coach would call a running play.
Game theory points to the possibility that Carroll’s decisive call was actually the result of following the best possible strategy, and that this is a strategy that involves an element of randomness in play-calling. This leads to the intriguing possibility that if that fateful final play were to be run in a dozen parallel universes, with each coach continuing to play the same mixed strategy, the actual plays called would differ, as would their outcomes.<<<
hotair.com/archives/2015/02/02/quotes-of-the-day-1985/
.
ReplyDelete2nd Down: Lynch on a slant to the left or (maybe better yet) Wilson on a QB sneak.
Call timeout.
3rd Down: Pass.
If the pass doesn't work, it stops the clock.
4th Down: Probably run unless you have spotted something on the two previous plays that you can exploit.
The Tao of Quirk.
.
.
DeleteIf you can't push it over from the 1/2 yard line in 3 plays, you don't deserve to win.
.
Tao of Quirk has it right.
Delete