Speaking of big strike outs, my Minnesota Twins continue to slog along at the bottom of the pack. Things actually got a bit exciting just before the All-Star Game break, but the last week or so suggests the Twins are reverting to the hapless form from the first few months.
The Twins played their 108th game of the season back on August 4th. That’s two-thirds of a season. As of their first third, things were looking uglier than ever in their history. Fortunately, the second third here was significantly better, and July was even kinda awesome.
The batting has definitely improved, but the pitching is just killing us.
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3 Comments | tags: American League, Atlanta Braves, baseball season, Major League baseball, Minnesota Twins, MLB, Tampa Bay Rays, Texas Rangers, Twins 2016 | posted in Baseball
To the dismay of physics geeks everywhere, theoretical particle physics struck out at the plate this year. Three swings, three misses. (Well, maybe one wasn’t really a swing. More a taken ball the umpire called a strike.) It was a crushing disappointment for those of us hoping for a rule-change to the game.
On the other hand, cosmology geeks got three recent home runs, so there was victory (with more coming!) for those who peer at the big and distant. On the other other hand, none of those were game-changers either. (They were just, you know, awesome.)
Since I follow both physics and cosmology, win some, lose some.
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8 Comments | tags: ATLAS, CERN, CMS, dark matter, Dawn mission, diphoton bump, experimental physics, gravity wave, higgs boson, IceCube, LIGO, LUX, NASA, neutrinos, New Horizons, new physics, pentaquark, Pluto, Pluto is a planet, sterile neutrinos, supersymmetry, theoretical physics | posted in Physics
When the world hits your eye like a nasty pigsty… that’s not amore, that’s Weltschmerz (best English translation: “world pain”). It’s a term I’ve been meaning to post about for years, since it — or rather what it defines — lies at the heart of most of my Rant posts. (Yeah, this is another Drafts post I’m finally setting free.)
Fundamentally, it speaks to a disconnect or gulf between what one feels ought to be true in the world compared to what actually is true. Implicit in the term is a moral bias regarding the ought; it doesn’t, for example, apply to the gap between wishing you were rich while being poor.
It seems to me very much a word for our times.
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7 Comments | tags: scam artists, stupid people, stupidity, Weltschmerz | posted in Life, Rant
And whiplash from SMH!
I’m having a tough year; damn near everything pisses me off these days. I’ve never been angrier at the human race than I am lately. My disdain for people is at an all-time high, and that’s a sick way to be. It’s not at all natural for me.
In fact, retirement brought me a long-time-coming epiphany of sorts. I’ve long been known as one of those angry, critical types. A high school friend once named me “the angry young man” (so this has been going on a while). I’ve always accepted it as true. What I finally realized is that it isn’t me…
It’s you.
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11 Comments | tags: Anyone But Trump, democracy, democratic society, Dunning-Kruger effect, face palm, John Cleese, lemon juice, modern life, Operation Breakthrough, shaking my head, social change, social issues, social media, social mores, stupid, stupid people, stupid stupid stupid, stupid TV, stupidity, Trump is a loser, Trump is a monster, whales | posted in Politics, Rant, Society
Now that I’m retired and no longer motoring around the hallowed halls of The Company, it isn’t the annoyance it once was, but this post has been sitting in my Drafts folder for well over three years. As something that annoyed me considerably for 30+ years, it’s worth recording (to me, I mean).
I find that it still does sometimes occur on the highway, and when it does, it reminds me and keeps the rant alive. In any event, I’ve been wanting to use the next line for years! (Just needed the right post.)
You know what bugs me? Well, lots of things, but in this case it’s…
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4 Comments | tags: annoyances, annoying people, car traffic, driving, foot traffic, hallways, human obstacles, obstacles, pedestrian traffic, pet peeves, throughway | posted in Rant
There are some notes that laid on the top of my possible next posts pile for a long time. Like the notes I posted recently, these clearly migrated from the same old boxes that I’m now excavating more seriously.
The ink is faded, and I can identify a fountain pen I used decades ago. I apparently thought they had potential. But as little statements on life — being from a younger me — they now seem trite and bumper sticker simplistic. Yet they’ve had just enough flavor to keep them out of the wastebasket.
I’m tired of looking at them. Here they are.
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1 Comment | tags: big world, Dunning-Kruger effect, gravel, idle thoughts, old notes, USENET | posted in Writing
Fair Warning: Next week I have some political and social foaming at the mouth to do over current events and modern society, but that can wait. The weather recently has been too nice for my hot-collar wardrobe. The swelter is supposed to return next week; the forecast is for serious ranting with scattered raving.
For the weekend, for Science Fiction Saturday in particular, for all my disdain of movie and TV science fiction (especially TV SF, most of which does nothing for me), literary science fiction is very alive and quite well!
Recently I’ve been enjoying three authors in particular…
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10 Comments | tags: Diaspora, Greg Egan, Hannu Rajaniemi, Neal Stephenson, Permutation City, Seveneves, Snow Crash, The Quantum Thief | posted in Books, Sci-Fi Saturday
Come over here. Go over there. Let’s go over the bridge, over the wall, and over the plan (while we still have a roof over our heads). But let’s not get over-confident and allow our enthusiasm to spill over. (For that might over-turn the apple cart and we won’t get a do-over!)
Something can be over — that is to say finished, done. And one can be over something (finished with it, done with it). I’ve been struck, lately, by a number of things that are over as well as by the realization that I’m over some things.
The former make me a little bit sad, and a couple of the latter, especially one, took me a bit by surprise!
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15 Comments | tags: Anthony DiNozzo, Bernie Sanders, cable news, Castle (TV series), Michael Weatherly, NCIS, Person of Interest, Rizzoli & Isles, Star Trek, Supergirl, The Good Wife, Ziva David | posted in Politics, Society, TV
A long time ago (nearly four years!) I wrote a post about my high school English teacher, Mrs. McGee (see The Love Connection) and a short story I’d written in her class. I complained in my post that she’d given me a low grade on the story because she objected to its conclusion.
Turns out my memory about the objection is correct, but she give me an ‘A’ on the paper anyway. (In fact, she compared the writing to Chekhov’s The Seagull … kinda sorta.)
I wanted to share it years ago, but didn’t know where it was. I found it just last week, and here it is:
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9 Comments | tags: English class, Phyllis McGee, science fiction | posted in Sci-Fi Saturday, Writing
Nearly (but not quite) identical!
Yet another bit of flotsam washed ashore, this one from the mid-to-late 1980s I’m guessing. Another part of the same note has a file system diagram that, in part based on the “DOS” directory, confirms the era.
Back then I participated a lot in two online groups: Star Trek and Feminism. (Both were topics of avid interest to me!) This note seems to address a topic that sometimes arose as party line in the latter group, but which I thought missed the point.
It’s about examining versus ignoring differences…
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4 Comments | tags: differences, female, gender, male, race | posted in Writing
Logos con carne 