If they completely collapsed right now, fans of the Minnesota Twins would still have seen a better season than they have since 2010. If they could somehow continue playing at their current level, they could win 90+ games rather than losing that many as they have every season since then.
If they just win every other game (playing .500 ball), they’ll win 83 games and still end up with a much better record than they’ve seen in four years. They’re currently four games above the .500 mark — something fans haven’t seen since the end of 2010!
Whatever the case, the last few weeks have us jumping for joy!
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8 Comments | tags: Brian Dozier, Major League baseball, Minnesota, Minnesota Twins, MLB, Paul Molitor, Target Field, Trevor Plouffe, Twins 2015, Win Twins | posted in Baseball
Movies, for a variety of reasons, are hard to make. They’re even harder to get right. Science fiction and fantasy are also hard to get right — in addition to all the other challenges of storytelling, they require much more imagination and invention than fiction based on reality or history. This, in large part, accounts for the truth of Sturgeon’s Law.
It’s not often that a science fiction movie gets all the notes exactly right. Many are lucky if they have just a few good ones that make the film worth seeing. A very rare few get enough right to make an SF film notable. (For my money, Elysium and Oblivion are recent good examples, and Ender’s Game and Edge of Tomorrow weren’t bad.)
And once in a blue moon a film gets it so right that the horse sings.
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21 Comments | tags: Chris Pratt, Drax, Galaxy Quest, Gamora, Groot, Guardians of the Galaxy, I am Groot, James Gunn, LA Story, Marvel comics, Marvel movies, Peter Quill, Rocket Racoon, science fiction, science fiction film, Star Lord, The Fifth Element | posted in Movies, Sci-Fi Saturday
One Million Dollars!
Sometimes — and I guess I should count my blessings that it’s only sometimes — I’m really slow on the uptake. Slow, as in not noticing something that’s right in front of my face. Embarrassingly slow. For example, it took me forever to get the joke behind the Charmin bears hawking toilet paper.
And as much as I love puns, some of them have sailed right over my head without mussing my hair. For someone who tries hard to pay attention to stuff, it really lets the wind out of your sails.
So just imagine my chagrin when I was halfway through the second movie before I realized they both had “million” in their titles!
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2 Comments | tags: A Million Ways to Die in the West, baseball movies, Charlize Theron, cricket, Dinesh Patel, Jon Hamm, Lake Bell, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Million Dollar Arm, Rinku Singh, Sarah Silverman, Seth MacFarlane, The Million Dollar Arm | posted in Movies
Minnesota Twins fans have enjoyed a wonderful four-day weekend to begin the merry month of May! After a very rough and disappointing first week, the Twins have been playing increasingly better baseball, and topped it off by sweeping the Chicago White Sox in a four-game home stand.
The icing on the cake was an absolutely gorgeous spring weekend with sunny skies and temperatures in the 70s. The Thursday and Friday evening games were a little cooler with temps in the mid-60s, but Minnesotans are hardy people. We wear shorts and tee-shirts in 40-degrees!
The question with the Twins these days is: Can this possibly continue?
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13 Comments | tags: Chicago White Sox, Detroit Tigers, Major League baseball, Minnesota Twins, MLB, White Sox | posted in Baseball
For my money, Sir Terry Pratchett is the greatest fantasy author ever. That includes Tolkien, Verne, Wells, Burroughs, and Howard. (Martin isn’t even in this conversation to my mind, but then neither is Lucas.) Pratchett’s work has incredible social relevance. His keen sense of people, his deft hand with humor, and his ability to weave a rich, textured story as engaging as it is fantastic, gives his work a substance that sticks to the soul.
A recurring theme in Pratchett is the power — and the reality — of belief. Is Superman real? Or Sherlock Holmes? If millions believe in them, if so many stories are told about them, how can they not be real? One might say the same of all the gods we worship.
There’s also the bit about the frogs.
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85 Comments | tags: Agnes Nutter, American Gods, bromeliad frogs, Diggers (novel), Good Omens, Johnny and the Bomb, Johnny and the Dead, Johnny Maxwell, Neil Gaiman, Only You Can Save Mankind, Terry Pratchett, The Bromeliad, Truckers (novel), Wings (novel), xkcd | posted in Sci-Fi Saturday
We’re finally sliding into home plate in this series (it’s baseball season, so I get to use baseball metaphors now). After spending a lot of time looking into how Special Relativity works, we’re able to at last explore how it applies to the idea of faster-the-light travel.
Last time we saw that FTL radio seems hopeless — at least at communicating between frames of reference in motion with regard to each other. It’s possible there might be a loophole for FTL communication between matched frames. (If nothing else, it may be fertile background for some science fiction.)
Today we examine the idea of FTL motion — of “warp drive!”
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2 Comments | tags: ansible, Cougar Town, faster than light, FTL, light, light speed, light year, science fiction, Special Relativity, speed of light, warp drive | posted in Physics
Over the last five weeks I’ve tried to explain and explore Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity. We’ve seen that motion, velocity, simultaneity, length, and even time, are all relative to your frame of reference and that motion changes the perceptions of those things for observers outside your frame.
All along I’ve teased the idea that the things I’m showing you demonstrate how the dream of faster-than-light (FTL) travel is (almost certainly) impossible. Despite a lot of science fiction, there probably isn’t any warp drive in our futures.
Now it’s (finally) time to find out just exactly why that is.
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7 Comments | tags: ansible, causality, causality violation, Ender's Game, faster than light, frame of reference, FTL, light, light speed, light year, Orson Scott Card, science fiction, simultaneity, Special Relativity, speed of light, Ursula Le Guin | posted in Physics
This week I’ve focused on the relativity of time under motion, and we’ve seen that moving very fast allows “time travel” into the future. Very handy if you don’t mind the one-way trip. What’s more, a spaceship capable of such a flight is physically possible, so it’s a “time machine” we know works!
On Monday I described how fast-moving, but short-lived, muons created high in the atmosphere live long enough to reach the ground due to time dilation. That’s just one place we see Special Relativity actually working exactly as Einstein described. For another, fast-moving particles at CERN have decay times showing they, too, have slow clocks.
As we’ll see today, light’s behavior requires time appear to run slower!
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10 Comments | tags: Albert Einstein, clock, clock escapement, faster than light, FTL, grandfather clock, light, light clock, light speed, Pythagoras, space-time, Special Relativity, speed of light, tick of the clock, time, time dilation | posted in Physics
Last time we saw that Em non-paradoxically time-travels over three years into Al’s future by flying 12 light years at half the speed of light for just over two decades. Her journey completed, Em has aged only 20.8 years while Al has aged 24.
That may not seem like much of a gain, but Em was only moving really fast — not really, really fast. If she travels at 99% of light-speed, her round trip shortens to 1.7 years while Al doesn’t wait much longer than it takes light to make the six light-year round trip: 12.12 years! And at 99.9% c, Em’s whole trip takes her only half a year!
Today we break down dime tilation. I mean, time dilation!
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6 Comments | tags: Albert Einstein, Emmy Noether, gamma factor, length contraction, light speed, light year, space-time, Special Relativity, speed of light, time, time dilation, Twins Paradox | posted in Physics
So far this week we have Em taking a round-trip to planet Noether at half the speed of light. Upon her return she discovers that, while she’s aged 23.8 years, Al (who stayed home on Earth babysitting Theories) has aged 27. It took her well over twenty years to do it, but Em effectively traveled 3.2 years into the future.
Last time we saw that — so long as Em is in constant motion — there is symmetry between Al and Em with regard to who is moving and who isn’t. Both can claim the other is (or they are). Both views are valid. Until Em stops. Or starts, for that matter.
Today we look at Em’s “time shadow” — it’s a key to the puzzle!
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Leave a comment | tags: Albert Einstein, Emmy Noether, length contraction, light, light speed, light year, space-time, Special Relativity, time, time dilation, time-space diagram, Twins Paradox | posted in Physics
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