Scuttlebutt was that it had to do with iOS's habit of pinging a particular page on Apple's site to confirm connection, but either some yutz took it down or everyone resetting their phone at the same time had unintended consequences for it. Either way, setting proxy to auto got me past the problem such that I could…

Aw, dang, you beat me to it. This did work for me (you have to do it *before* connecting, or—equally effective but more annoying—after getting kicked by the bug in the first place). AFAIK it will keep working even after you switch proxy back to "off" but, as ever, ymmv.

They're probably referring to the personal foul called against the Rams for hitting RG3 while he was running for yardage and in bounds. The football thing was unsportsmanlike conduct, not a personal foul.

The Blues did win several postseason awards despite the short playoff run, including best coach, best GM, and best team goaltending, so that wasn't necessarily sarcasm. If it was, it was rather poorly informed.

Seems like an odd rule. Hypothesis: if a team has to pay for the subways to run late, but pays nothing if the game ends on time, you've gone and created a financial incentive to end the game early, or to start it when it shouldn't be started (or not to start it at all if it looks like you won't be able to get it in on…

As a non-shitty Missourian, I thank you for the compliment re: barbecue.

Uh, no, my pants are just fine where they are. Taking the flag off the toy is stupid, but not nearly as stupid as putting the flag on the car in the first place. It is NOT like removing swastikas from WWII pictures because swastikas, in Germany, 1933-1945 meant what they meant and we can all agree that *what* they…

This. The Confederate flag wasn't co-opted by a hate group, it was *created* by the most hateful bunch of traitors this country has ever known. The KKK were and are a vile bunch, but they're amateurs compared to the original-recipe CSA.

Well, Barrett is, objectively, pretty bad behind the plate, but not nearly as bad as Harrelson is behind the mic. Barrett had the plate in a Cardinals-Pirates game last week and was, as ever, terrible; Mike Shannon (second to none in his homerism and often, we suspect, quite drunk) got his point across without…

Hm, dunno, but whatever look ^ that was supposed to be is ugly on anybody.

I scarcely count being a less-subjugated-than-others client state of the Habsburgs as "having a history of imperialism," but sure. Can't get much done in Kenya or Pakistan without a Hungarian phrasebook, after all.

There may well be some "non-imperialist, poorer nations" out there trucking for gold who deserve attention and praise (Hungary comes to mind as a fairly small and frequently trod-upon country that's punching above its weight this year). Britain, however, ain't one of 'em, so their homerism is neither more nor less…

Even the running into each other is only a no-fault halt in épée. After all the squawking from the fencers (and generally pretty solid work by referees) in saber, it's the height of irony that [read magazine, *BEEEEEEP*, "attaque, touche, point, engarde, prets, allez," read magazine] was where things hit the fan.

First off, the "butthurt Mets fan" was aimed at the OP, not you; sorry that wasn't clear.

No, they had to toss him. There is no God-given right to bitch out the umpires, even if you have good reason, and in this case he clearly didn't. The end result of the play (runners on 1st and 2nd) was clearly the correct one, so the Mets have zero right to complain (their only loss on this play was that they…

Not actually what the ICJ does. The ICJ is a court of arbitration; the only parties that can argue before it are countries. The International Criminal Court is the one with jurisdiction over individuals, and even then not American individuals, since we aren't party to the Rome statute.

How do you guys pick up on this but miss Bob Davidson screwing up a substitution and then accepting Ozzie Guillen's interpretation of what Mike Matheny meant to do, even going so far as to admit to Ozzie that he was wrong while *still*, essentially, throwing Allen Craig out of the game for no reason at all?

It is not, but he did have the ball a microsecond before the runner had any real opportunity to reach the bag. Even on super slo-mo, though, you can't really tell if the call is right or wrong, and the ejection was definitely right—you only get the argument clock if you don't immediately go crackers. "Quick hook"…

Uh... there's always been a combat log, it just automatically exports to a file. Which you can then have interpreted in realtime and displayed on a widget with third-party software (MOX parser). Just turn on combat logging in preferences. Done. Perhaps not the perfect flavor for you, but if that's your hangup,…

Hear, hear. And all the proxy-war loathing for BioWare/EA is especially hilarious since the 800-pound default-MMORPG gorilla is owned by Activision, which makes EA look like freakin' Bunny Santa as far as relative corporate evil is concerned.