The Ryan Dempster Saga, Part 2

Ken Rosenthal is reporting that the Cubs might be getting close to a deal with the Dodgers for [Name Redacted].

David Kaplan says they're moving closer to a deal and a it may be a multi-team deal.

On CSN Chicago Kaplan talks a bit more in detail about it. 

After working the phones late last night and today, it appears that the Cubs are going to be very busy this weekend trying to close a handful of deals that could accelerate the rebuilding process exponentially. 

Team Theo and Co. are looking at a number of scenarios, with sources telling me this afternoon that a multi-team trade that would send Ryan Dempster to his preferred destination, the Los Angeles Dodgers while netting the Cubs a handful of prospects built around starting pitching is getting closer to happening.

Interesting.

163 thoughts on “The Ryan Dempster Saga, Part 2”

  1. Dempster might have done the Cubs a huge favor, if it gave Theo time to build a multi-team deal that nets them better/more prospects.

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  2. @ GW:

    well, if wrigley caved in and he was trapped in the rubble, for example… might be able to lead the team to safety.

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  3. Buster Olney ‏@Buster_ESPN
    To this point, Ryan Dempster continues to hold firm in his preference to go to LAD. Cubs trying to make chicken salad out of this situation.

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  4. Bk(Mpls) Had dempster approved the trade, what would have been in your summary of the trade?

    Klaw (1:13 PM) I actually wrote it up, raving about it for the Cubs.

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  5. Dempster is a leader. He wants to stick it out to the end, no matter how rough it gets. A strong presence like that on your ballclub is especially important when it’s full of a bunch of lazy selfish players who put themselves ahead of the team.

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  6. MLBTR:

    The Cubs offered to send Dempster to the Dodgers straight up for right-hander Allen Webster, but the Dodgers turned it down, writes Jon Heyman of CBSSports.com. People briefed on the talks say the Dodgers have thus far offered a couple of lesser prospects who may project as relievers instead. It now seems that the Dodgers are more interested in Matt Garza than Dempster.

    Joy!

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  7. According to Harry P, the Smokies had an epic Double TOOTBLAN tonight. (dying laughing)

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  8. @ SVB:
    I’ll put it in the spoiler box…

    [spoiler]Batman fights crime and Gotham’s gangsters are scared. They enlist the Joker to unleash mayhem. At some point Two-Face is created. Batman has to take the rap for the Joker and Two-Face’s rampage across the city. Cue cliffhanger[/spoiler]

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  9. @ mb21:

    if you are upgrading from snow leopard, is it still just 20 bucks? (dying laughing)

    i put off changing for a long time because of some software i was running.

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  10. @ josh:
    I haven’t seen the new one yet, but as for the first one, if you know the mythology of Batman, you can probably watch it after you’re done with this one and it might not hurt.

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  11. @ Rice Cube:
    Yeah, depends on your Batman acumen. Actually, knowing the comic or having played Arkham City will work too. The movie tries its best to be watchable even without the others, but I can’t judge its success in that respect. You will miss something of a visual joke if you haven’t seen Batman Begins.

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  12. @ GW:
    Pretty sure it is. IT’s an upgrade for SL and Lion users.

    I liked Lion. I thought it was a nice upgrade over SL. ML isn’t as much of an upgrade but it has some really nice features. It would be a pretty big upgrade over SL in my opinion. For $20, do it.

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  13. I just double checked, you have to have Snow Leopard or Lion so you’re good. I think there’s a workaround for updating from Leopard for anyone here who may have that still.

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  14. @ mb21:

    some dna sequencing stuff I know for sure. other protein structure visualization stuff i’m not so sure of. it just gets to be a big pain in the ass.

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  15. @ mb21:

    actually, shit, yeah, i’m still using leopard, (dying laughing). i bought mine about a month before snow leopard came out. forgot about that.

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  16. @ GW:
    That’s probably not the type of stuff that gets updated regularly. Any idea if it has ML support? I would guess anything that’s been updated over the last 3 to 4 months is compatible with ML.

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  17. @ dylanj:

    yup. you have to wonder if frank wren has tried the sales pitch on dempster, i don’t remember him indicating anything like that the other day.

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  18. I totally loved Nolan’s Trilogy of BatBrawler or BatNinja, heard both and they both fit. He kind of throws the whole World’s Greatest Detective out of it, but still makes for an amazing series of movies with great stories. Batman Begins is required before The Dark Knight Rises, the Dark Knight is helpful, but less so for this story. Also, to get the full batgasm, you need to be aware of Shark Repellent before watching.

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  19. dylanj wrote:

    Dodgers are playing it smart- they know Dempster is really limiting the Cubs hand

    If they play too hard, the Cubs should just keep him and get a pick.

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  20. RT @thekapmanDodgers do not want to put Allen Webster in the deal and the package that they are offering is very suspect.Cubs will not cave— Brett Taylor (@BleacherNation) July 27, 2012

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  21. @ BubbaBiscuit:
    Ever since Dempster showed his hand, I have thought it would go this way. Dodgers have no incentive to go above and beyond here, especially with Greinke and Johnson out there.

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  22. @ Mercurial Outfielder:
    The Cubs shouldn’t make a deal just to make a deal. Period. You and I were talking about this recently, but I see no point to get fleeced in a deal just to make one. Whether that’s Dempster, Garza, Maholm or Barney, the Cubs better get a decent return or it’s pointless. It’s not about making Dempster happy. It’s about being smart. It’s not about making Garza happy either. Theo and Hoyer have to make themselves happy and if they can’t do that they should walk away. I hate the idea of trading just to trade. I’m sure someone could make an argument the Cubs are better off taking a midlevel prospect or two than keeping Dempster, but I’ll give Thoyer the benefit of the doubt.

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  23. @ Mercurial Outfielder:
    It will probably go this way until those guys are off the market. I think the Cubs should be trying harder to trade Garza than they are Dempster. Garza could potentially bring more in return. I’d rather try to trade the most valuable pieces first and then deal with what’s left. Seems backwards to me, but again, I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt.

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  24. @ mb21:

    i agree with that. however, it’s a pretty low bar to clear the value of that compensation pick, imo. where exactly will that pick be, anyway? after the competitive balance picks, in the 35-40 range?

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  25. @ GW:
    It’s probably a C prospect. C+ maybe. If they can’t get one of them then they’re better off keeping him. I wouldn’t trade him for that unless the other team pays all of Dempster’s remaining salary. That would probably be the equivalent of getting Gould or Webster with the Cubs paying all of his salary.

    All of this said, I’d be very surprised if the Dodgers aren’t offering Garrett Gould for Dempster. They offered him for Carlos Lee and I trust what DJ said earlier (he’s been told he’ll likely be in a deal for Dempster).

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  26. @ mb21:
    Exactly. Sounds like they are taking the right stance. I wonder if Dempster still feels like a hammer.

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  27. @ mb21:

    Yeah, I’m pretty sure Kaplan is being fed exactly the line the Cubs want out there.

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  28. @ dylanj:
    Not fair compared to what the Braves were offering, but it’s more than fair compared to what Dempster’s value actually is. I’d definitely want another want, but I’d be happy with Gould.

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  29. @ dylanj:
    And desperation. The Cubs found the one team that was probably willing to pay more than what Dempster was worth, but it didn’t get done. Give ’em credit for that. Don’t think they’ll find another team.

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  30. @ BubbaBiscuit:

    I bet this hard line THoyer are taking with LAD blindsided his ass after his “feels good to be the hammer” comments of this morning. Dempster still has a contract with the Cubs and Theo can keep Dempster as let him rot here just as easily he can trade him to re-ignite the dynamic dick joke duo in LA.

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  31. @ BubbaBiscuit:
    I’m more than fine with that if they can’t get a decent deal. Dempster had every right to not accept a trade and the Cubs have every right to not trade him. Tough shit for the Cubs in one instance and tough shit for Dempster in the other.

    Hopefully the Cubs are talking to the Braves about Garza. Maybe they could get Delgado plus another prospect. Maybe Atlanta doesn’t want that extra year. Who knows?

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  32. I agree, the Delgado deal was wicked sweet for them to swing. Maybe they believe in their ability to draft really well in the new system with a high pick.

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  33. @ mb21:

    Yeah, there’s always a chance ATL wants a rental and not a guy like Garza who will cost them money. In that situation, that extra year of team control he has coud actually lower his value to a team like the Braves, so no guarantee they’d offer Delgado for him.

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  34. @ mb21:
    True, I agree with you, I want the best return for the Cubs, whatever that might be, and so far, everyone has acted well within their rights, so no anger towards anyone here from me. Holy run-on sentence, Batman.

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  35. @ Mercurial Outfielder:
    I don’t want the Cubs to do it to spite Dempster. That’s childish and probably not what’s best for the organization, but I couldn’t care less if Dempster has to pitch the rest of the season for the Cubs. If they can’t get a good deal, keep him. Simple as that as far as I’m concerned. I said it last week and it’s true now. I don’t want the Cubs making any trades just to make trades. If they do that they’re going to get fleeced and look pretty fucking stupid doing it.

    Anyone else a little surprised we haven’t heard more about tbe Cubs trying to trade Soriano? He’d probably be number 2 on my list of players to trade behind Garza.

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  36. @ mb21:

    Oh, I don’t think it’s to spite him. I just mean Dempster was talking big today, and I bet this is a bit of a reality check for him. I don’t think that figured into Theo’s stance, at all, though.

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  37. @ Mercurial Outfielder:
    Keep in mind Dempster’s first choice has always been the Cubs. I think he’d be relieved and perfectly happy to stick around Chicago.

    As for him talking big, these are professional athletes. It’s what they do. Frats, professional athletes and politicians have a lot in common. Each one has enough ego for a small village. (dying laughing)

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  38. I think Sori gets moved this off-season. I just don’t see any AL contenders with a hole at DH outside of the Rays and I think they are focused on other things that if they can’t get all of that lined up, a DH upgrade won’t make that much of a difference to them.

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  39. @ GW:
    I’d rather have a 21 year old Jay Jackson too, but we’re talking about Ryan Dempster. It’s not about how good he is, but whether or not he’s worth Dempster. Based on the scouting reports I’ve read I’d say he is. If they could get a little more, great, but I wouldn’t count on it.

    You couldn’t have traded Dempster for a 21-year old Jay Jackson. He was a top 100 prospect at that point and I don’t think the Cubs would have traded him.

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  40. As far as I see it, the Cubs have 3 options with Dempster.

    1. Wait and hope that Dempster would decide to go to the Braves, which requires that the Braves don’t acquire anyone else and would still be willing to part with Delgado.

    2. Lower their asking price to something more reasonable and get a deal done.

    3. Keep their price relatively high and if they can’t get a deal done then they keep him and offer him arbitration.

    If they really want to trade him, which I think they do, sometime tomorrow or the next day we’ll see the Cubs cave on their demands and take a midlevel prospect. Wouldn’t be surprised to see the Cardinals acquire him. Still think a deal gets done with the Dodgers though.

    I’m just some stupid blogger, but this really seems rather straightforward to me. It also seems like it’s time to begin focusing more on other players, but perhaps they have and we just haven’t heard about it. If some team wants Garza and is willing to give up something good, take it. You can still trade Dempster later.

    I’ve got a feeling the Cubs won’t mind waiting until Greinke is off the market to get serious about trading Garza.

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  41. @ mb21:

    no, they wouldn’t have. he was untouchable, if you remember correctly (which elicited quite a few guffaws from the prospect community). my point is that the numbers don’t even compare.

    big kid, low 90s fastball, evidently some scouts like him, but i wouldn’t place any money on him ever making a big league rotation…

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  42. mb21 wrote:

    If they could get a little more, great, but I wouldn’t count on it.

    me neither, at this point. but delgado is a better prospect than jackson was at that point. and i’m sure that’s what is sticking in thoyer’s craw, and why this thing is dragging out.

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  43. @ GW:
    I think it’s more like what we saw this offseason with Garza: THoyer have their valuation of a guy, and they won’t be moved off it. They’ll keep a guy and offer arb/extend him before they take less than what they feel he’s worth, regardless of what ATL offered. Dempster nullified any leverage the offer of Delgado gave Theo when he started saying he preferred LA.

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  44. 5.1 IP, 3 H, 0 R, 3 BB, 11 K. Two of those walks were in the 6th when he lost the handle on his breaking stuff. Impressive debut.

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  45. Hey guys, just got back from TDKR. Pretty good, except that stupid Batman voice is still just as annoying as in the first two. Thanks for the refresher, it was enough to jog my memory. I had seen Batman Returns by the way. I’m surprised they couldn’t get another Nolan sequel out of it, but I don’t know the comic series well.

    (I’d seen the Keaton and Clooney Batman’s too. It’s only the last 5-8 years that I’ve been way out of touch for movies.)

    I like how they were all chanting Mish Mish Mish at one point in the movie.

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  46. According to the interview with the manager, Ha doesn’t really speak English and I bet it would be hard to find someone to help in Korean in Jacksonville. That would be fucking scary to have happen in any account, and worse in a second language.

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  47. @ GW:
    @ GW:
    My office computer is still on Leopard too.
    EndNote, the version of Photoshop I have, GS+ and other stats packages, all work on PowerPC platform that didn’t translate well to Snow Leopard and Lion, and I didn’t want to pay for the upgrades.

    GW–if I have a species of tree that grows across a gradient in environmental disturbance, can you tell if certain genes may be activated in areas where the disturbance is more common? (Since you do gene sequencing stuff.)

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  48. @ Mercurial Outfielder:
    Sure, my neighbor in NC is a Spanish translator at the clinic here. But the hospitals in PR where I spend most of my year don’t have English translators, in most cases, or they only have one for the day shift. My guess is if Ha spoke Spanish he’d be fine in Jacksonville, but Korean, I don’t know.

    Still, imaging laying on a stretcher with all this stuff going on around you and not being able to understand what is happening. Even the simple “What is that thing for?” question may be easy enough for him to ask, but hard to get the answer. Coach Bailey did mention they’d sent someone with him whose English Ha was used to. That’s a start.

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  49. Based on the Wikipedia site for Jacksonville, it looks like most of the 36,000 people in Duval county of Asian descent are from the Philippines and Vietnam.

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  50. @ SVB:
    Jacksonville should be one of the largest cities in Florida so I imagine someone has to know Korean. I thought the Cubs were supposed to teach everyone in the system English though.

    But the fact that he is talking (or at least I am inferring this from what you wrote) is a good sign. Also from the linked story it seemed he was responsive to medical staff so that’s also good.

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  51. @ Rice Cube:
    Hey RC. Yeah, the Cubs are working on it, but if you listen to the interview with the manager, it sure sounds like Ha’s command of English isn’t really very good. And of course it’s one thing to be able to order your dinner at McDonalds and another thing to understand doctors and nurses after you’ve run your face into a brick wall. And a missed word here or there may not seem like much when you are hanging out, but it seems more important in this type of situation. And trying to get the medical staff to slow down would probably be tough too. I tried listening to the Smokies radio station, but they’ve switched to something that sounds like a national feed about college FB.

    When our daughter was born (in PR) the hospital we were in didn’t have much of a bilingual staff. My wife had a C-section, then later had to get up to nurse and was having trouble. The nurse in the nursery couldn’t explain how to do a better job with nursing the baby. I couldn’t go in to help because they didn’t let men into the nursing room. Super frustrating. The wife was super frustrated because she thought the baby wouldn’t get enough to eat, plus the pain from the surgery, etc. Nightmare. Guess I’m still sensitive to this stuff.

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  52. @ Rice Cube:
    Oh yeah, the radio interview link in the report linked above said Ha was communicating. Sounds like he bit through his lower lip. No word on concussion, broken jaw, etc.

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  53. not really my field, but i’ll give it a shot.

    SVB wrote:

    GW–if I have a species of tree that grows across a gradient in environmental disturbance, can you tell if certain genes may be activated in areas where the disturbance is more common? (Since you do gene sequencing stuff.)

    sure. you’d ideally want multiple trees in a controlled environment, that sort of thing. microarrays give you transcript (mRNA) levels across thousands of genes. i would guess that there are chips out there for plants, but all the stuff i’ve ever been around is mammalian. the results you get are typically just data dumps: these 300 genes were upregulated, these 250 were downregulated. these 50 were upregulated a lot, they are known to be involved in systems x, y, z, possibly indicating that the plant is responding via my new favorite pathway to study. the weaknesses are that changes in transcript levels are not necessarily proportional to responses. some small changes might have big effects, and vice versa. the better you know your organism, the more you can make sense of the data.

    RC and CDW (I believe) might be of more help than i am, not sure.

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  54. @ GW:
    Thanks GW. What I’d like is to take samples from the field, across the gradient, to see if presence or expression of certain genes related to a plant hormone response to disturbance are more common in the more frequently disturbed areas. In the old days, I think we’d have used allozymes for that. But no one even breathes the word allozyme anymore, do they?

    RC, CDW, (others) want to chime in?

    I’m beginning to think this blog is all academics and lawyers.

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  55. @ SVB:

    is it a peptide? if it’s a small molecule, you’d have to check on a gene involved in synthesis or a receptor or something.

    if you can extract it, you could work up some sort of functional assay for the levels and avoid the genes altogether.

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  56. @ SVB:
    If it makes you feel any better, our son was born via emergency cesarean and the nurse also couldn’t explain very well how to do breastfeeding. Except, you know, English was her first language. And she wasn’t so much a nurse as a breastfeeding consultant. I could see a language barrier magnifying what’s already a difficult task, yeah.

    SVB wrote:

    I’m beginning to think this blog is all academics and lawyers.

    I like bugs and drawin funny pictures.

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  57. GW wrote:

    sure. you’d ideally want multiple trees in a controlled environment, that sort of thing. microarrays give you transcript (mRNA) levels across thousands of genes. i would guess that there are chips out there for plants, but all the stuff i’ve ever been around is mammalian. the results you get are typically just data dumps: these 300 genes were upregulated, these 250 were downregulated. these 50 were upregulated a lot, they are known to be involved in systems x, y, z, possibly indicating that the plant is responding via my new favorite pathway to study. the weaknesses are that changes in transcript levels are not necessarily proportional to responses. some small changes might have big effects, and vice versa. the better you know your organism, the more you can make sense of the data.

    RC and CDW (I believe) might be of more help than i am, not sure.

    Can I use this to season my cast-iron skillet?

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  58. WaLi wrote:

    I can’t view the results for some reason.

    Because the blog is a piece of shit, remember? That’s why you love it.

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  59. @ WaLi:
    Here are the results:

    Obstructed View Readers
    90% male
    60% aged 25-39
    68% live in the Midwest
    42% have 4-year degree
    39% have Masters, Doctorate or Professional Degree
    If they were stuck on an island with one Obstructed View founder, 39% chose Aisle 424

    You can actually find that on the Advertising page, but it’s exactly what I just posted here.

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  60. About 44% of our users use IE7/8/9
    36% use Safari
    16% Firefox
    2% Google
    1% are still using Netscape (didn’t know it still existed)

    Adding IE versions together it’s the most popular, but the single most popular browser is Safari.

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  61. 2% of our visitors are from Canada
    1% from Puerto Rico
    76% US
    21% Unknown (many of which would presumably be from the US)

    I could get more detailed info on the countries elsewhere, but don’t care all that much right now. MIght look later.

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  62. What the matter with that lazy 3% of people who have 4-year degrees but not graduate degrees?

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  63. I’m not sure if this image will show up, but it’s a perfectly useless chart showing what resolution people are viewing this site in.

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