Category Archives: General

General, Uncategorized

Fan of sports?

Then you’re probably not a fan of these, the teams with the 50 worst seasons in Sports history:

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1170925-the-50-worst-seasons-in-sports-history

Many of them are familiar to me, but there were some very amusing ones I wasn’t familiar with.

Particularly amusing were some of the baseball teams of old mentioned, like the 1935 Boston Braves, who went on to a pathetic 38-115 record.  This team featured a nearly retired Babe Ruth.  Or the 1899 (yes, that 1899) Cleveland Spiders who managed a pathetic 20-134 record and 101 road loses (something that will never be equaled with today’s schedule).

Interesting, and at times hilarious, stuff.

General

Looking for a new car?

Chances are these are among the cars you’re not looking into buying:

http://247wallst.com/2012/05/03/the-cars-americans-will-not-buy/

Fascinating article, which uses a new car’s average length of time in a showroom to determine which ones are among those that sit the longest and, ergo, are probably the ones consumers least want to purchase.

What is even more interesting is some of the comments following the article, especially with regard to General Motor’s electronic Volt (which, by the way, DID NOT make this list).  Of late, Fox news and right wing pundits have made the car a punching bag of sorts, though the only reason I can see for it to be in their cross hairs is because President Obama a) helped the auto industry and b) actually had the temerity to talk positively about the vehicle.

I’m all in favor of electric cars, and hope that the Volt is only a prelude to what’s to come.

General

40 Weird Facts About the United States…

…read ’em all!

http://www.yolohub.com/facts/weird-fact-1

Fascinating stuff…though I admit being most curious about the saddest bits of information, such as:

Fact #2, #4, and #9.  66% of Americans are overweight?!  Supermarkets on average waste 3000 pounds of food each year?!  And we drink on average more than 600 sodas a year?!  All three facts seem to point out that we have an overabundance of food available to us.

Then you get to the equally sad fact numbers #5, #24, and #30.  The notion that 48% of people in the United States are considered living on low income or in poverty is very chilling.  Equally chilling are the later two facts, that 52% of children in Cleveland, Ohio also live in poverty and that of the roughly 313 million people in the United States, 46 million of them are on food stamps (or 15%).

Not all the information presented is depressing, and I could go on, but I’ll conclude on #14:  Jimmy Carter was the first U.S. president born in a hospital!

General

News of the very strange…

Saw this article the other day on Huffington Post.  A Seattle based attorney claims that, between the ages of 7 and 12, he was part of a secret U.S. government experiment into…

…wait for it…

Time Travel.

Further, he points out a photograph taken at Gettysburg wherein he is supposedly present.

Curious?  The full article is here:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/28/andrew-basiago-seattle-attorney-time-travels_n_1438216.html

There is an included video, which I have embedded below:

I find the whole concept of time travel absolutely fascinating, even as I find the above very, very hard to believe.

I’ve heard it said more than once that young authors, especially those interested in writing science fiction, should not bother with time travel stories.  Why?  Because there are so many of them out there and written by so many well respected authors, that you simply couldn’t possibly do any better.  Alas, I didn’t follow this advice and have written a few time travel stories, my favorite of which is Dreams Do Come True, available in my Shadows at Dawn collection of short stories. (Shameless plug ends in 3…2…1…)

In terms of the possibility of time travel, when one looks away from the actual science and physics of the matter, which so far point to time travel being impossible, and toward the philosophical, there are those who argue that time travel doesn’t exist because if it did, we would have some evidence of it already.

They’re talking about things like accidentally discarded material from the future that is found in ancient sites (ie, a Coca Cola bottle found in Athenian ruins, etc.).  Also, if people could travel back in time, why not alter things?  There is the idea that one can’t do so, that history is somehow written in stone, but I have a hard time accepting this.  If one could go back in time, why couldn’t one alter things?  The fact is that I could choose to do any number of things today that could change history, though perhaps in only small ways.  But if I could go back in time to 1899, and somehow make my way to Austria and find the infant Adolph Hitler, what is to stop me from stopping him?  (The film The Terminator is duly noted)

Which brings us to the biggest philosophical questions about time travel:  The so-called Grandfather Paradox.  I’ll quote the concept from the link to the left, which is from Wikipedia:

Suppose a man traveled back in time and killed his biological grandfather before the latter met the traveler’s grandmother. As a result, one of the traveler’s parents (and by extension the traveler himself) would never have been conceived. This would imply that he could not have traveled back in time after all, which means the grandfather would still be alive, and the traveler would have been conceived allowing him to travel back in time and kill his grandfather. Thus each possibility seems to imply its own negation, a type of logical paradox.

Makes your head spin, don’t it?

In some ways, (shameless plug begins in 3…2…1…) I worked around on the fringes of this type of logic trap with my Dreams Do Come True story, creating the “perfect” murder, with what I felt was an interesting twist.

In the end, I suspect that the philosophers and scientists who don’t believe in the possibility of time travel are probably right.  Doesn’t mean I don’t wish it were possible.  I think it would be beyond exciting to be able to witness first hand all those magnificent historical events or recover lost objects of art or literature or film.  It would also be amazing to have the chance to save a Jimi Hendrix or Jim Morrison or John Lennon and, subsequently, live in a world where more of their music exists.

It’s a lovely dream, but a dream nonetheless.

General

10 Mysteries of Human Behavior…

…that science cannot explain:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/5981311/The-10-mysteries-of-human-behaviour-that-science-cant-explain.html

Interesting, albeit a few years old article that lists things that we, as human beings, do without any clear scientifically recognized reason.

Most bizarre was item #6, picking your nose.  In that example, the article states: “ingesting ‘nasal detritus’ offers almost no nutritional benefit, so why do a quarter of teenagers do it, on average four times a day?”

Ugh.  Four times a day?!

I think back to my adolescence and can’t recall ever doing that.  And most certainly not that many times a day!

One of the more fascinating is #8, Altruism.  I tend to agree with the article when it says that giving away things is odd when considered in “evolutionary terms”, and it most certainly makes you consider how different humans are to many animals, although I suppose one can argue that there are examples of altruism in the animal kingdom as well.

Birds, for example, find/hunt for food which they then give to their young offspring.  Perhaps that could be considered a form of “altruism” that is framed in evolutionary terms.  The adult bird, after all, could take the food they track down and keep it for themselves.  However, if the bird doesn’t feed its offspring, the offspring die and, as a result, the bird’s species will die as well.

Anyway, fascinating stuff, if you’re interested.

General

Excessive Coca Cola Blamed in Woman’s Death

News of the bizarre, for sure:

Not too terribly surprisingly, Coca Cola issued a statement noting that the very excessive use/abuse of any food/drink product can produce serious health issues.

Still, very sad to read this, considering the woman’s relatively young age and the fact that she was a mother.  If one were to look for blame, I wouldn’t put it on Coca Cola the product, but rather on the family and friends of the woman in question.  They must have known that her health was in serious decline and should have done something to change her unhealthy habits.  Of course, the woman herself should have recognized her daily intake of Coca Cola was too much.  It certainly appears she developed an acute addiction to the product, something I didn’t think possible.

The full story is here:

http://www.aol.com/video/excessive-cocacola-blamed-in-womans-death/517340828/

General

That’s one way to beat a traffic ticket…

…although I suspect its a rather unique way:

www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/16/dmitri-krioukov-physicist_n_1429545.html

This article, concerning the way physicist Dmitri Krioukov managed to convince a judge -via mathematics!- that his ticket for failure to come to a complete stop at a stop sign was incorrect, has to be one of the more interesting ways to get out of a ticket.

It does bring up an interesting point:  I recall going to traffic school many years ago (I was cited for speeding…I was going five miles over the speed limit in a 30 mile per hour speed zone) and the police officer giving us the lecture asked something to the effect of: “How many of you have received your first traffic ticket?”

Along with my hand rising were several others.  One middle aged/elderly woman (she may have been in her late 50’s or early 60’s) not only raised her hand but noted with great indignity that in all her years of driving this was her first ticket.

“Why did you get the ticket?” the officer asked.

“They said I didn’t come to a full stop at a stop sign.”

The police officer shook his head and said the following:  “I don’t feel any sympathy for you.  Every day every driver on every street commits on average at least five traffic offenses.  You’ve been lucky that in all these years, this is the first time an officer caught you doing something illegal on the road.”

The statement, frankly, made my head spin.  Now, I can’t speak to the veracity (or lack there of) of the police officer’s statistics.  For all I know, he may well have made them up for effect or heard someone else say them and believed them to be true.  The opposite, of course, might be true as well:  Maybe we do break the traffic laws many times each day, maybe even more than five times.

Also, and to be fair to the officer, the quote presented above isn’t absolute verbatum.  Its been many years since I received that ticket and participated in the class and I don’t pretend to recall every single word the officer uttered.  Well, with the exception of that first line.  Yes, the man did say he felt no sympathy for the woman and her ticket.  And yes, he went on to quote that five time a day lawbreaking statistic and did pronounced her lucky for having only received one ticket in all these years.

But to my mind, the most important thing I came away with regarding his statement was questioning traffic laws in general.  If we are to assume those statistics cited by the officer were accurate and if the traffic laws are such that on average a driver breaks at least five rules each day, then the laws, I think it could be argued, are way, waaaay too tough and/or arbitrary.

I suppose that traffic laws, in the end, simply fall into much broader gray areas than other laws.  After all, in the eyes of the law if it is proven you steal, you’re a thief.  If it is proven you killed someone in cold blood, you’re a murderer.

If you’re traveling at 100 miles per hour in 30 mile per hour speed zone, you’re clearly a menace.  However, if you’re going 35 miles per hour in that same 30 mile per hour speed zone, you’re just as guilty of breaking the law.  While you may not be a “menace” to others and the nature of your “crime” isn’t quite as serious, you’re still breaking the law.

It’s an imperfect system but it is tough to think of good alternatives to it.  Though the police officer’s remarks to the woman might have been brusque, he may well have been right.  And yes, while traffic laws may be impossible to follow 100% of the time each and every day, should we get rid of them because of this?  And if we do, then what?

In the end, I guess we can swallow our collective pride and pay the fee for getting “silly” traffic tickets now and again, provided when we do drive we know that others on the road recognize there are laws on how we should follow, and those laws not only protect ourselves, they protect others on the road.

At least that way we don’t feel like anything goes.

General

Shuttle Exits and With It America’s Dreams?

Interesting article on CNN.com by Gene Seymour concerning the last flight, as it were, of the Space Shuttle Discovery on the back of a NASA jetliner as it makes its way to The National Air and Space Museum.  But the article, of course, isn’t just about the end of the Space Shuttle era.  It is a look back at the times that spawned the space race and the ideals of America.

The author wonders if America has, with the exit of the Space Shuttle and no apparent replacement in the wings, has to some extent lost its capacity to dream big, both in terms of space exploration and, possibly, the capacity to move forward in other ways as well:

www.cnn.com/2012/04/17/opinion/seymour-space/index.html

The article, to some degree, reminds me of the famous concept of the pendulum effect.  There appear to be times in history when we go in one direction, only to retreat and move in another direction a few years later.  In politics, this could be moving from liberal agendas to conservative ones.  In terms of scientific discovery, we may have moved from a period of exciting discovery to -maybe- a period of introspection.  It can be argued that following the Civil War (and perhaps even during the Civil War) exciting advances in science were initiated.  The Industrial Era also created a new and exciting move forward.  By the early part of the 20th Century we were on the cusp of having electricity in all households, which meant we were moving towards having television, refrigeration, air conditioning, and, yes, eventually computers.

Air travel was in its infancy, but it would blossom quickly in the 20th Century, the technology becoming rapidly refined in part due to two World Wars and in part due to our desire to move both people and merchandise more and more quickly.

The space race was just that at the beginning.  We had a common foe in the dastardly communists, and a fear that they would beat us in a technological war.  Thanks to that impulse, we made it to the Moon.

And then we appeared to stop.

I suppose partly the fault lay in President Nixon, hardly one of John F. Kennedy’s biggest admirers.  One of President Kennedy’s most recognized speeches involved our objective of reaching the Moon.  Nixon, who had lost a very close race to Kennedy, slashed the budget of NASA following becoming President.  But to blame him for NASA’s woes isn’t entirely fair.  The fact is that President Kennedy set a goal and, once it was reached, the American public seemed to lose interest in the whole space exploration thing.  Sure, the Shuttle got us excited for a while, but the Shuttle was never meant to go all that far out into space.

So what to do?

Going beyond the Moon was -and remains!- a daunting challenger.  The rest of our Solar System if filled with hostile planets, and taking a manned mission beyond the Solar system is, at this point, simply impossible.  Reaching Mars alone, in theory, would require “six months there, six months back (read more about that here).  That’s a very, very long time to be outside the confines of planet Earth.  And what exactly would be accomplished?  We have robot probes looking at Mars and, frankly, they can do the exploration we need -at least at this point- without the risk of lost lives.

Sure, robot probes aren’t anywhere near as sexy as manned flights, but it appears to me that until we get better technology (ie, rockets that allow for much quicker travel) NASA may have to settle on the far safer use of these robot missions to explore our little corner of space.

Perhaps with overpopulation and dwindling resources on Earth, space exploration may experience a rebirth.  It was born, after all, in the harsh shadow of the Cold War and reached its greatest success due to that very real impulse.  Perhaps we need another spark to get things going once again.

 

General

The real Black Dahlia

Count me among the many who is fascinated with crime in the city of Angels, circa 1920-60.  Why that particular time frame?  I suppose much of the interest arises from the works of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler.  Then there’s the wonderful era of the film noir crime movies, many of which were set in the Hollywood area.

But in terms of “real  life” crime drama, none are as paradoxically repellent and fascinating as the case of Elizabeth Short, a 23 year old woman whose mutilated body was found in a park back in 1947.  The case, whom the papers dubbed “The Black Dahlia” murder, was never solved.

The article linked to below is from Salon.com and focuses on Joan Renner.  She has an exhibit featuring historic crime in the L.A. area, including, of course, the notorious Black Dahlia case.  For those interested, its a good read:

http://www.salon.com/2012/04/09/the_real_black_dahlia/singleton/

General

U.S. Coast Guard sinks Japanese Ghost Ship

I posted an article a few days back concerning the Ryou-Un Maru, a Japanese “ghost ship” that traveled the Pacific since becoming dislodged by the tsunami that hit Japan a little over a year ago and was now approaching the Canadian shoreline.  (You can read that original article here)

The ship got close enough for the U.S. Coast Guard to sink it:

The full CNN article regarding the sinking of the Ryou-Un Maru can be found here:

www.cnn.com/2012/04/06/us/japan-tsunami-ship/index.html