SmokeSound

Two articles in today's news stand in sharp contrast. A particularly dense star exploded and collapsed into a new black hole, about 3.7 billion light years away.  That is to say, it took the light 3.7 billion years to get to earth.  Or, to say it another way, we just saw what happened--there--3.7 billion years ago. The second article reports that the Texas Board of Education is all upset--again--that a proposed biology textbook makes assertions about science and evolution that are contrary to what it says in the Bible.  Or, to say it another way, they are still talking Turtle Talk in Texas; you know, the earth rests on the back of a turtle, or on a Mesopotamian creation myth. It becomes clearer and clearer that much of what we call, "religion", is just a recitation of how our ancestors understood the world before the birth of scientific thinking.  Coyote the Creator here, the earth floating on the back of a turtle there, gods fornicating with their human p...

Yesterday, I had an enthusiastic patch of skin cancer removed from my cheek.  The procedure involved cutting out what was obvious, then checking the sample in the lab to see if it had all been gotten.  While the lab checked, I caught up with magazines left over from World War II or III. It is late November, and I had been thinking more of convenient clothing to wear at the clinic than of staying warm, and dermatologists apparently prefer chilled patients.  Finally, I went outside to stand in the sun. "Odd!", I thought.  "The doctor keeps asking me if I spent a lot of time outdoors when I was a child."  I have the impression that I did, but that was a long life ago.  I know that she was calculating radiation damage from the sun.  "And here I am, in the middle of multiple minor operations for skin cancer, standing in the sun." "Crop rotation!", I thought.  I am just getting the next crop ready." It is difficult for someone from West...

The people who are ranting and raving about the "failure" of the computer system for the Affordable Care Act--"ObamaCare"--obviously do not know shit from Shinola about computer systems.  Anyone with any knowledge about computer systems knows that they are infernally complex, and that extremely large computer systems are guaranteed to have problems.  Whose Law was it that stated that if anything can go wrong, it will? I am fortunately old enough to remember that every large computer system began as a disaster.  They have millions of lines of code, any one of which is capable of producing an unintended data train wreck. Worse, the Affordable Care Act is dependent on interfacing with innumerable independent health care systems (the insurance companies), as well as huge, ancient government systems that have not had the funds or the opportunity to use the best systems we have:  they are starved of the funds needed to use the best computer technology and programmi...

It is because of what happened to Lee Moser that the TOTs play with two home plates.  The extra plate, a few feet east of the batter's box, is for runners coming from third.  The catcher uses the regular plate, and outs are determined by the ump's decision as to whether the runner touched home before the ball got to the catcher at the other plate.  Tagging is not necessary. Why?  Because about eighteen years ago, when Lee was catching, and focussed on the ball being thrown to him, a runner of considerable size and determination hit Lee like a locomotive.  It was ten or twelve days before Lee knew what hit him.  He lay in a coma at the hospital. The brain surgeon told Lee's sons and daughter that the collision had done terrible things to his brain, knocking it around like a bean bag.  Hoping for the best, the doctor and the family waited.  Then, finally, the doctor said, "Either we operate tonight, or Lee won't be here in the morning." ...

If you were a horse in the Northern Hemisphere, which I assume you are not, your birthday would be on January 1.  If you were a horse, and thought about it for a long time, you might realize that some one-year-old horses were 1 day old, and some were 364 days old, but that both would celebrate their first birthday together.  They would be "yearlings".  And, in another year, they would compete against each other in a race for two-year-olds, for instance. In the Southern Hemisphere, where they have chosen to have summer when the Other Half of the world has winter, horses have their birthdays on August 1.  That isn't exactly six months apart, but it is close enough for a horse.  Most horses never figure that out. And that is why people who are not horses, but only partial horses, work so hard to get their kids into the first grade as soon as possible:  they love handicapping their colts and fillies. The Tucson Old Timers--the Oldest Ball Club in the ...

It is November, and turkeys everywhere are edging over to the far side of the confine.  The Short, Happy Life of Francis Macomber comes to mind whenever I see turkeys in November. But that is sad.  I also think of Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz,  when she turns to Toto and says:  "I don't think we're in Kansas, anymore." In spite of endless days driving from the Midwest to Arizona, I have never lived in Kansas.  Actually, once, a lifetime ago, we stopped in Liberal, Kansas, and visited the literary launching pad for Alice and her most excellent adventures. Another ad in our local Tucson newspaper reminds me that this is not Kansas, either. I cooked tripe, once, when we lived in Minnesota.  We had a party, almost every year, to celebrate one or another absolutely obscure "Day" someone had proclaimed around the end and beginning of calendar years.  I believe it had something to do with "Pepper Pot Day"--some such thing--and I had found a recipe r...

The TOTs Blue/White Night Game It might be said that the TOTs played a night game under the lights, but it wasn't very light.  At least eleven of the lights on the poles around the field were burned out.  In the photo, above, the pole to the left has exactly one of its six lights burning. "It got better after a while", one of the players said.  That is a little like saying that one can get used to being partially blind. It is a parable of government.  Not that government is dark and evil, but that a government starved of financial support cannot afford to replace the public lights when they burn out.  Government is not the problem--Thank you Ronald Reagan for starting us down that dismal, dark road!--but when government comes to be seen as the dark menace instead of the middleman of desirable and necessary services, then all of us have a problem. Who is going to put up and maintain lights for the public good?  Your local, Goober, Grub and Gadget ...

Our star--the Sun:  "Sol"--lives in a galaxy like the one at the left; on an arm, out toward the edge.  We have given our galaxy a name:  The Milky Way. I recall, as a child, trying to understand that the band of stars stretching across the sky, rather like a gauzy belt, was what our galaxy looks like when we look toward the center, which is a very nasty place to be.  There is probably at least one massive black hole there, pulling everything it can in to a crushing end of time and space, and spewing out awful radiation. All of that was a bit vague.  It still is.  What was much clearer was what our religion told us.  We understood that we were on a very special place--earth--created by God just for Adam and Eve and us.  The sun and the moon and the stars were created for us, too; light for the day and night, and to light the path to the outhouse.  Somebody had thought of everything about five, six, or seven thousand years ago.  Ou...

The Old Boys of Summer have worked their way into November; believers still that the fence is an attainable goal.  And sometimes it is, mostly as a way to keep the ball from rolling away. Tim--big, strong Tim--is the only regular threat to the right field fence but, while hope may not spring eternal in the hearts of the ordinary mortals who make up most of the team, it does occasionally raise its head. The TOTs--Tucson Old Timers--play ball the year around, moving the morning starting time up an hour in the summer to avoid midday heat, and back again in the fall to allow the sun to dry out the Park District watering schedule. Later this week, I think for the first time, the team will play a night game, just for the fun of playing under the lights.  Friends and relatives who have not reached the age when they might be eligible to join the TOTs (60), have been invited to see what baseball after 60 looks like--or more astoundingly--what a first baseman can do at 88. ...