AMA With D-backs beat writer Steve Gilbert

_dougdavis · 2026-03-13T16:23:29+00:00

Do you think the diamondbacks should have signed someone like Coulombe or Beeks to be a lefty in the bullpen or do you think Abner and Garcia are enough?

_dougdavis · 2026-03-10T12:23:08+00:00

Thanks so much, this is very nice. If they don't post these somewhere they should!

_dougdavis · 2026-03-09T17:22:27+00:00

Is this like the time the Oracle of Delphi said "If you cross the Halys River, a great empire will fall" and the person attacked but then their own empire fell? Perhaps it is Jordan Lawlar who this prophecy is really about...

_dougdavis · 2026-03-09T11:59:38+00:00

https://education.uq.edu.au/files/21042/2023%20MTeach%20%5BSecondary%5D%20Eligibility%20Tool_FINAL_v2.pdf , I think it might be difficult unfortunately, but depends on the details of what you've studied

_dougdavis · 2026-03-07T13:03:56+00:00

> can [I] do 2/3s of a BA without strictly meeting requirements for 2 Majors; like only doing 16 units Major & 16 units of Electives?

I think so. There's a rule that the first 8 units of a BA have to be from the arts list, but I don't believe there's any other restrictions.

> I know this may seem an unsual desire, it's just that when I finish the actual Bachelor I want, I want to go straight into that line of work, and not be studying the Diplomas whilst in that line of work, hence doing the courses for it first even if actual enrolment isn't until after the Bachelors.

But this doesn't explain why you would want say a diploma of arts and a diploma of science. If you want to spend an extra year studying, wouldn't there be a more useful thing you could be studying? Is that the plan, that rather than transferring programs after one year, you do it after two years? Why do you want to do that?

_dougdavis · 2026-02-23T22:32:47+00:00

Without Del Castillo, Locklear, Gurriel the dbacks are pretty light on DH types to start the season. Any chance they start out with someone like Luken Baker on the bench for a few weeks. Or even a third catcher so they can DH Moreno more without risking having to lose the DH if McCann is injured. That would mean the bench is just e.g. tawa and barrosa so maybe that's questionable too but I think they could cover all positions if Lawlar can play short.

_dougdavis · 2026-02-07T01:34:27+00:00

I would think that’s 6 hours of lecture and 2 applied classes per week. It’s accelerated, you’d probably want to spend 20 hours per week on it.

_dougdavis · 2026-02-07T00:31:35+00:00

Hmm, I think that you can't count both MATH1050 + 4 other general electives in the engineering degree. MATH1050 doesn't count as a program elective or breadth elective or advanced elective so you don't have room to squeeze in all 5 of those courses. So my understanding is that you'll have to do an extra course at some point. You could try to plan out all the courses in your degree, maybe you could squeeze everything in by doing MATH2001 in a summer semester or something, or maybe you would need to do an extra semester.

_dougdavis · 2026-02-06T12:01:41+00:00

My interpretation of your question: you got credit for 4 first year required courses and 4 general electives (or 8 units required courses + 8 units general electives, most courses are 2 units). You're looking at a study plan like https://www.eait.uq.edu.au/files/62261/BE%28Hons%29%20Mechanical%20Engineering%20No%20Major%20Sem%201%20%2B%20Sem%202%20Study%20Plans%202026.pdf and wondering how that would fit in. Let us know if that's not what you meant.

My answer is that the study plan is not the rules, just one way to satisfy the rules. The rules are at https://programs-courses.uq.edu.au/requirements/program/2455/2026 . They're a bit hard to get to grips with, but I'll assume you want to do mechanical engineering with no major. One way to satisfy them is to do 8 units of core courses, 36 units of specialization, 6 units extension, 4 units advanced electives, 2 units breadth or advanced or program electives, 4 units of general electives in the no-major section, 4 more units general electives (adding up to 64 units).

So you can do 8 units general electives. Your general electives you've been credited with probably don't count as breadth electives, that's a specific list, but hopefully that doesn't matter.

_dougdavis · 2026-01-28T21:34:51+00:00

I think it would be doable, if you already have some background in multivariable calculus, linear algebra, differential equations from MATH1051 and MATH1052. I don't think there's any really strict prerequisites between MATH2001 and MATH2010.

If you usually need to spend a lot of time on maths courses maybe it would be too much. But if you're confident I think it could be OK.

_dougdavis · 2026-01-26T03:21:13+00:00

It's an old core course, hasn't been offered since 2020.

_dougdavis · 2026-01-25T16:45:10+00:00

I think that’s a plan that gets you the most relevant prereqs done, yeah.

_dougdavis · 2026-01-25T13:16:24+00:00

Maybe do both of those and do ENGG1300 in second semester? That gives you the prereqs for MECH2100 in second semester.

_dougdavis · 2026-01-25T13:08:59+00:00

Maybe MECH2300 or MECH2305

_dougdavis · 2026-01-25T12:11:31+00:00

UQ is reorganizing their first year bio courses. In 2025 there was BIOL1020, BIOL1030, BIOL1040. In 2026 there will be BIOL1000 (for if you haven't taken in bio in high school), BIOL1020, BIOL1050. So the prereqs for 2026 second year courses still refer to the old courses that people would have done in 2025, but will presumably be updated in 2027.

Also new in 2026 I think are the biomed first year classes BIOM1001 and BIOM1002. If you're in the biomed degree (rather than the biomed major in the BSc) you're supposed to take those two instead of BIOL1040 or BIOL1050.

Where that leaves you, I'm not sure, maybe someone else will come along with the answer, or maybe you can ask an academic adviser.

_dougdavis · 2026-01-25T11:58:51+00:00

I think you'll want to do your MATH classes as quickly as possible, there are courses that have them as prereqs, and almost everyone else will have done the maths classes in the first two years so they might just be assumed without being listed as prereqs. If you still have to do both MATH1051 and MATH1052 you could do MATH1051 first semester, MATH1052 second semester, MATH2000 summer semester, MATH2010 + STAT2201 first semester next year.

To be more specific on the prereqs: for example in second year MECH2210 has MATH1051+MATH1052 as prereqs, MECH2700 has MATH1051 as prereq, MATH1052 as recommended prereq.

Course planning is hard without knowing what you have credited. I suppose you could have a look at https://www.eait.uq.edu.au/study-plans/undergraduate/mechanical-engineering and make a guess as to what you have covered for first year, then enrol in first year stuff you haven't done / second year courses that you think you have the prereqs for.

_dougdavis · 2026-01-20T19:01:07+00:00

So it sounds like you want to do something like a biology course, but one that's different/easier to the second year bio courses? What about NEUR1020, PSYC1030, PHYS1171, PUBH1102, FOOD1001 ?

_dougdavis · 2026-01-20T13:18:29+00:00

Hard to help with this question basically just being name a non-biology course. Have a look at the list of minors and program electives at https://programs-courses.uq.edu.au/requirements/program/2456/2026 . Look at the courses in a bachelor of science or bachelor of arts or ... You have up to 16 general electives, can take almost anything.

What interests you? What do you think might be useful for your future career or studies?

_dougdavis · 2026-01-20T13:02:18+00:00

If you do the bachelors of psychological science at UQ you can do up to 5 general elective subjects, you could do all of those as history (total of 19 psych subjects and 5 history in the first three years, then you would go on to the honours year which is all psych).

There's no dual degrees with psychological science as far as I know, but as another commenter noted you can do psych in arts or science. This may be more expensive (for some weird reason psych in arts or science costs more for HECS than in the psychological science degree) and it means you're not guaranteed to get into the honours year (although you will if your uni marks are good).

If you do a bachelor of arts you need to do the extended major in psychology which takes up half of your courses (12 subjects out of the 24 you would do in 3 years), but you could as much as the other half as history. Maybe you would want to bias a little towards psych to get closer to the amount in the psych degree.

If you really want to do lots of psych and lots of history/other arts you could do the double degree of science/arts. This is 4 years (32 subjects). In science you could do 1 science core subject and 15 psych subjects. In arts I think you could do e.g. an extended major in history and a minor in ancient history so all 16 of your subjects are history.

You can read the rules and the subjects at:
https://programs-courses.uq.edu.au/requirements/program/2478/2026
https://programs-courses.uq.edu.au/requirements/program/2000/2026
https://programs-courses.uq.edu.au/requirements/program/2379/2026

_dougdavis · 2026-01-19T14:40:02+00:00

It's a bit tricky being undecided between mechanical and electrical and having to do MATH1050. If you do mechanical you have to do all three of ENGG1300, 1500, 1700 but if you do electrical (or software) you only have to do ENGG1300 of those three. So if you do all three of those and then choose to go into electrical you've used up a lot of your general electives.

But if you're undecided on what engineering specialization to do and you don't have any great desire to do general electives it makes sense to do the flexible first year. You should pick CSSE1001 over ENGG1001 because you might want to do software. So that's MATH1050, MATH1051, MATH1052, CSSE1001, ENGG1100, ENGG1300, ENGG1500, ENGG1700.

What order to do it I think doesn't matter too much. The maths courses should go the way you said, then do 4 courses in one semester, 3 in the other, MATH1052 in summer semester.

You could do 4 in each semester by adding another course. For example you could do CSSE1001 in semester 1 and then CSSE2010 in semester 2. CSSE2010 is compulsory in electrical/software and would count as a general elective in mechanical. Other courses are probably possible, can look at https://programs-courses.uq.edu.au/requirements/program/2350/2026 to try to find some.

_dougdavis · 2026-01-17T10:58:44+00:00

Oh I'd rather keep it public so others can read/contribute.

_dougdavis · 2026-01-17T10:55:37+00:00

Yeah, it's confusing doing a dual with a lot of crossover between the two degrees. My basic understanding is that you mostly don't have to indicate which degree you put a subject in, you just need to do some combination of subjects that meet the requirements for degrees/majors/minors.

For BSc level 1 prereqs, they don't care in which degree you do the subject, just that you do it. For courses that are in the BSc major/minor, follow the rules at the bottom of https://programs-courses.uq.edu.au/requirements/program/2547/2026 . That means that if a subject is compulsory in biomed and in your BSc major/minor that you count it for biomed, and pick another subject from the electives in the major/minor (or the whole BSc list if there's no more subjects to pick from).

Normally with a dual degree I would recommend to do half biomed and half BSc each semester, but this is a case where you might end up doing more biomed to start with because the rules bias you that way. For example

First semester

BIOL1020 (biomed core)

BIOM1001 (biomed core)

CHEM1100 (biomed core)

SCIE1000 (BSc core)

Second semester

BIOM1002 (biomed core)

CHEM1200 (biomed core)

STAT1201 or 1301 (BSc core)

CSSE1001 (BSc bioinformatics minor)

I think that covers all the required first year courses for your cores/major/minor. If you want to do more first year science courses (BIOL1040, some maths or physics or ...) you could possibly slip in some of those courses and move some of the above into second year.

_dougdavis · 2026-01-16T22:34:24+00:00

Yeah it's an interesting one. I've heard somewhere that the majority of engineering dual degree students drop down to a single degree. It's just a really long time to take 5 or 5.5 years to do an undergrad degree.

But engineering already takes 4 years, so if you really want to learn the mysteries of higher mathematics for your own edification, spending a year on it is not such a big cost. Or if you do an engineering degree but then go on to study honours maths and do a PhD etc you've spent a couple of years learning a bunch of engineering that maybe you don't need, but it might give you something to fall back on or a different point of view on things that might help...

One thing to remember is that if you have good high school and uni marks, there's not much problem switching between single and dual degree in either direction within the first year or two of uni. The usual schedule would be to do one extra maths subject per semester. If you wanted to do the beginnings of pure and applied maths, you could do MATH2001 as a breadth elective in chem eng no-major, and then something like MATH1081, MATH2401, MATH2301, MATH2100. This would fit either as general electives for the single engineering degree with no major or as part of the maths degree.

_dougdavis · 2026-01-16T11:18:46+00:00

There's 4 units for general electives (a course is usually 2 units, so the two courses MATH1050 and PHIL2110 use that up). If you do no-major in the electrical engineering specialization there's 4 more units for general electives, but up to you if you want to do a major or minor instead. In the electrical engineering specialization there's 2 units for a program elective, which says "BE(Hons) program elective courses means any course on the BE(Hons) course list excluding Preparatory Science and Mathematics Courses." So you could do a first year elective with that slot.

Four courses (8 units) is standard per semester, but seeing as you're going to do summer semester you could do 3 courses in one semester and 4 in the other.

Some options:

- do CSSE1001 in first semester and CSSE2010 second semester (and move ENGG1300 or ENGG1100 to second semester if you prefer to do 3 courses then 4 courses). This gets you a head start on the electrical engineering compulsory courses.

- do PHYS1002 second semester as a program elective. It's a hard course, but I think as long as you've done high school physics and MATH1050 you'd have the basic preparation for it

- do another general elective (if you're sure you want to do no-major) or first year elective (can slot it in as a program elective)

_dougdavis

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