Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with draft

Slimpstreaming behind a random?

Tapioca — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 08:32:55 -0800

Do you think it is rude for Alice (a commuter cyclist) to slipstream behind Bob (another commuter cyclist, who doesn't know Alice)? By 'slipstreaming' I mean riding in the wind-free pocket behind the lead cyclist. Hope I've got the terminology right - think I've also seen it called 'drafting'.

Does it depend on headwind speed? Length of time? Other factors?

(I tried to frame this a neutral hypothetical. This happened on my morning commute today, but I'm deliberately not revealing whether I was Alice or Bob)

Are You Ready For Some (or rather, "a" question about) Football (songs)

ericthegardener — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 11:18:11 -0800

I am charged with finding music for a work party. The theme is "NFL Draft Day" so I need songs relating to American football. The association to football can be pretty loose and tenuous. Any suggestions? That the songs be enjoyable in their own right is also pretty important because people will not be listening too closely. It's more of a subliminal thing.

Ideally these songs should be available via iTunes or the Amazon music store but I'll do all the searching. Thanks!

Nerd Grand Prix

Doctor Suarez — Sun, 03 May 2009 11:05:05 -0800

Please give suggestions for a Fantasy Formula 1 league. Four friends and I are interested in starting a Fantasy Formula 1 league next year. Now, I know there are already several pages out there with available formats, but I have my problems with them. One league, for example, gives the player $90 phony dollars to assemble two drivers, one car, and one engine. But the prices are pre-set by the commissioner, and are totally out of whack with the way this F1 season is progressing. (For example, Button and Barichello are the bottom two price-wise.) Also, they made Mercedes a mid-price engine, but there are six Mercedes cars on the track, two from elite teams.

My idea is based on the Home Run pool I participate in. We select a draft order at random, run a serpentine draft until all 20 drivers are taken, then simply track the points each driver accumulates and add them to the team's total. Then, at the end of the year, we give out a constructor's prize for the player with the best team overall, and a driver's prize to whoever has the actual driver's champion on their team. (I imagine that the constructor will get 60% of the pot, and the driver's champ 40%)

So, has anyone tried this? Can anyone see any obvious flaws with this model? Any other suggestions? I'd like to keep the league relatively simple.

Auction style fantasy baseball league

dorisfromregopark — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 10:48:22 -0800

Fantasy Baseball: Looking for answers on how to run an auction-style fantasy baseball league, friend(s). This is an update to a question posed in February 2006, as there was some guidance there, but I'm looking for more current answers.

I've been active in fantasy baseball for years now, so there's some level of shame in having to ask this, but I've never participated in an auction league before. Neither has anyone else in my fantasy league and we are considering switching to auction.

A few questions quickly come to mind:

- Is there a site that can run an auction league effectively? My experience has only been with Yahoo and Sportsline and I don't remember seeing auction options on those sites. We are not tied to any of the major sites, so if there's an independent site (I'm not sure what they'd be independent of - the interests of Big Rotisserie?) that handles auctions, we're in.

- Is there any realistic way to handle an auction online? Time is not a concern, as if we can do this online, we'll do it right (and our snake-style drafts have taken six+ hours because we're idiots), but getting everyone together might be an issue. Is an in-person auction necessary?

- This may be answered if I'm directed to a site that meets our needs, but how does free agent acquisition work? My understanding is that one time each week, teams send their bids in for free agents. Who receives these bids? The commissioner or another member of the league have obvious conflicts of interest. Do you need a disinterested third party to handle free agent bids? Can an auction league website handle these?

Hope this is all clear. Thanks!

Fantasy Football Newb Query

blapst — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 09:23:36 -0800

Why are so many RBs ranked above QBs who scored more fantasy points? I'm new to FF and working on my draft strategy, and I'm wondering why so many sites rank several RBs above Brady, Romo, and Manning, when those three look to have scored a lot more fantasy points last year.

For instance, using Yahoo default scoring for 2007, those three QBs had 444, 328, and 304 points respectively. LaDainian Tomlinson had 295 points, but his is somehow ranked #2 overall for 2007, and is the projected #1 for 2008.

On Yahoo, the "Actual" ranking does not match the scored points, and on a lot of sites projected rankings do not correlate with projected points.

Or so it seems to me. What am I missing?

Fantasy Football

zzazazz — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 07:25:51 -0800

I am looking for a quality free fantasy football site that offers a live draft where I can adjust the drafting to allow each player to take 24 hours to pick. Essentially an email draft. AOL has one but I abhor AOL and will only use them as a last resort. I like Yahoo's fantasy football interface but they don't offer an email type draft.

Writing your own letter of recommendation

ztdavis — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 20:04:08 -0800

How do you write a letter for recommendation for yourself? My wife is applying for a job that has asked for three professional letters of recommendation. One of her three recommenders has asked my wife to draft the letter herself so that the recommender can go over it, make minor changes, and sign off on it.

Is there any good (ethical, not awkward) way to go about this? It seems like she will need to write it from her boss' perspective and voice, which toes the line of dishonesty. To go the other route and merely be factually descriptive without much praise will make it sound lackluster.

What have any mefites done in similar situations?

Let the sunshine in?

jujube — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 07:05:49 -0800

Is there a way of determining how much heat I am losing by opening versus closing the shutters of a drafty window? And also, determining how much heat I am gaining when the sunlight streams in through the open shutters? I have very very drafty old windows. I also have very effective wooden shutters. In the winter, I put one of those Saran-wrap looking plastic sheeting on the windows and keep the wooden shutters shut, to keep the cold out. But I really hate how dark the house gets, and all my houseplants die within days due to the lack of sun. The windows, when I keep the shutters open, let in an enormous amount of sun. In the summer, just a few hours of open shutters will render the room boiling hot. Is there any way of measuring how much heat I am losing if I keep the shutters open during the day, and also, how much heat (if any) I gain by letting the sun in?

National Service/Draft effect on society

Kensational — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 20:15:10 -0800

DraftFilter: Help with debate over National Service/Draft and it's effects on society and unpopular wars My brother and I are having a friendly debate over National Service and/or the draft. While not trusting the government to run a candy store and not liking big government I cant shake the intuition that if we had some form of National Service, we would have enough troops to fight, win and hold a so-called "good" fight, say Afghanistan and defeating the Taliban/Al Quaida, while at the same time making EVERYONE so vested in a "bad" war, say Iraq, that a bad war would end sooner. Theory being that every high school and university would erupt, Washington would have permanent protest camps, parents would make opinions known; vocally, monetarily via less campaign contributions, and via the vote.

My brother feels that (while noting there have been exceptions in the past such as Jimi Hendrix, the Rolling Stones drummer, a few writers), National Service would destroy the creative spirit of vast majority of artists, musicians, and poets.

Is there any evidence to either side or are we both just staking out opinions?

I keep writing but I don't get to the end.

Brainy — Mon, 14 May 2007 19:23:56 -0800

I'm going back to school and I haven't written essays in about...oh...five years. I can brainstorm like crazy, but I can't seem to structure it properly. As my girlfriend puts it: my essays are just black holes that suck up my time, and I get no where. Forgive me if the answer is out there hiding behind the simplest search, if I try to look up "how to write an essay", I'll get all caught up in something and I'll get nowhere.

Like I said above, I can brainstorm/pre-write like crazy, the problem is that I end up saying things I didn't even mean to...and then fleshing out those ideas...and then realizing they don't fit into what I was originally trying to say.

I don't know how better to do this: I'm spinning my wheels. How do I write better?

By the way, I know the phrasing of this question sucks, but if I don't get it out there, I won't get it out there. I'll clarify anything in responses. I just need to start the process.

Can you plagiarize in a draft copy?

Anonymous — Thu, 06 Jul 2006 06:47:27 -0800

In academia, is it plagiarism if you haven't finished writing your document, and you give it to a colleague/professor to review for content changes/problems and they find uncited sources? A good friend of mine is finishing his Ph.D. He is just a few months from having his disseration completed, but he hasn't completed writing it yet. He recently gave a few of his chapters to his committee for comments (the normal process before you submit a final version for review). To his surprise, they found 5 references (out of 650+ in the document) that were not cited.

When they found this, instead of pointing them out to him (normal procedure) they submitted them to the graduate school citing plagiarism.

My friend has been an exemplary student. He has taught classes at the university, and actually brought charges against his students for plagiarism. He takes plagiarism very seriously, and had no intent to plagiarize.

The thing is this though. The document wasn't completed. He had not scrubbed it for sources. He had not proof read it. The formatting was off. It was definately a working draft, and everyone on his committee knew this and has acknowledged it. Yet, they cited him anyway.

The plagiarism "references" were not material to the central question. He did not steal any arguments from anyone. All the references in question were in the literary review portion of the document, citing sources that had been read as a build up to the central theme.

So, I'm looking to understand the word "plagiarism." The definitions are very loosely defined throughout the internet, so its hard to lock down.

Can plagiarism occur in draft versions of the document?

Can it be plagiarism if its a working document and there is no intent to plagiarize?

Is intent relevant at all, or is plagiarism just plagiarism no matter what?

Any thoughts, especially from Ph.D. students or people with Ph.D.s would be appreciated.

Thanks...

British beer to Mexico?

TrashyRambo — Wed, 22 Feb 2006 05:37:10 -0800

What's the best way to get British cask beer to Mexico City? I live in Mexico City and I've got a birthday party coming up. Thing is, I'm British and feeling homesick. I would love to get in a few casks of the sweet, sweet ambrosia that is draft British beer (Boddingtons, John Smith's, London Pride, maybe some cider), to serve on tap. You can easily get this beer in pubs in the States but the brewers in the UK tell me that they don't sell direct to Mexico. (No demand - hah!)

So I reckon I've got two options - either ship direct from England or contact a supplier in the US and get them to ship down. I've tried a couple of places in Texas and they seem kind of funny about getting it through Mexican customs. International suppliers in the UK only seem to provide cans.

Any tips for suppliers (British or American), shippers, and getting the stuff through Mexican customs would be appreciated.

Help me keep warm this winter

Wolfie — Fri, 09 Dec 2005 11:03:48 -0800

Our (rented) house seems to have been built without insulation. Tips on keeping the house as warm as possible this winter? We moved over the summer to a new place. We found it so charminng we of course didn't think about the consequences of aluminum frame windows and a 50 year old gravity furnace. We've replaced the thermostat with one that actually registers temperature but as soon as the heat goes off - the house starts cooling down again. We've also weather stripped every door we can.
We're in San Francisco - so we're not talking about freezing temperatures - but the last few weeks have been a lot colder than normal and without the heat on at night the inside temperature is getting down to about 50 degrees inside the house.
We're wondering a few things:
Will big heavy drapes over our rather large windows insulate us in any meaningful way?
Is running an electrical heater really cheaper / more efficient than running the furnace in a relatively small house?
Has anyone done this before - sealing the windows
Any other tips for efficient home heating an old house we don't own?

First Draft... Now What?

deliriouscool — Tue, 23 Nov 2004 12:53:40 -0800

If you've written a first draft of a novel (NaNoWriMo-influenced or not) , what were your best, most interesting, most effective methods for editing and polishing it? [MI] I have 52,000 words and several ideas for an ending, but the novel has languished since NaNoWriMo 2002 - in rereading the manuscript, I just think "oh, that bit's nice" instead of "this needs to be 30,000 words longer and have a real ending." What did you do?

draft at the bottom of the shower curtain

WolfDaddy — Tue, 21 Sep 2004 22:32:16 -0800

Why does the shower curtain act like there's a draft at the bottom of it when I take a hot shower? I don't feel a breeze down there. This has always made me feel vaguely uneasy--cue Psycho music--and it's time to get an answer.

Will there be an Iraq war draft?

pissfactory — Thu, 15 Apr 2004 09:09:43 -0800

I'm looking for any informative preferably unbiased look at wether the US might set up a draft for the ongoing Iraqi war . I would also be interested in reading educated opinions on the probablility of this happening in the absence of real tangible information. I did find this: The Coming Draft, but I don't know the slant on this news source. Many thanks!