Author Archives: Richard

Detroit – 5

Every major city is going to have some sort of art museum and a science museum. If the place is old enough, it will have a history museum, too. Being a first class city, Detroit has all three. I don’t know if they planned it that way, but all three are in the same neighborhood. You can even see all three of them if you stand in the right spot. Not that I’d try and visit all of them in the same day. Well, you could, but you’d have to rush through them and you’d miss a lot.

Let’s take the Detroit Institute of Arts first.

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Detroit – 4

Comerica Park is conveniently located downtown on the site of an old law school. Seems like no one uses that name; everyone I heard referred to it as “Tigers Stadium”. Maybe the block of land the place is on is the “Park”, while the building itself is the “Stadium”. Whatever. What I do know is that it’s still very appropriate to call it “Tigers Stadium”; there are plenty of tiger statues around.

Photo (tweaked by me to bring out details) of one of the many tiger-head “gargoyles” around the stadium exterior. Note the baseball in its mouth.

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Detroit – 3

It is truth universally acknowledged, that the best thing to do in a city you are visiting for the first time is to take a walking tour led by a local guide. Well, it’s acknowledged by me, anyway. I booked a downtown tour with City Tour Detroit. Lorrie was the guide for our group of about 10 people; she was very knowledgeable and pleasant.

We started in the Guardian Building, an art-deco masterpiece known as the “Cathedral of Finance” (since it started as the Union Trust Building), in comparison to the Woolworth Building’s “Cathedral of Commerce” moniker. The style – both exterior and interior – belong to that subset of art deco called “Mayan Revival”. Lots of rectangular shapes, bold colors, mosaics…. At the far end of the main lobby is a giant fresco with a stylized depiction of Michigan, showing all the industries that power the state’s economy.

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On the Paris Olympics

I didn’t follow them that closely – as you can tell from the previous and subsequent posts, I was distracted. But I did catch a couple of events, and keep an eye on the press articles.

Paris and France did a great job with everything; I didn’t hear of any real complaints. The few that were made – like the quality of the water in the Seine – were the sorts that come with trying to put on an extravaganza at that scale.

“Scandals” of the sort that seem to pop up every time at the Olympics were mostly absent this year. I saw nothing about cheating or biased officials. Maybe I just wasn’t paying attention, but let’s instead go with the belief that everything on the fields of competition was honest, fair, and above-board. Such griping as there was had more to do with a perhaps too strict enforcement of the rules than from people trying to evade them.

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Detroit – 2

If you must know, I stayed at the Hollywood Casino Hotel in Greektown. I don’t know why it has the “Hollywood” name; I never noticed any connections with Hollywood. “Greektown”, on the other hand, is a small neighborhood that was settled by Greek immigrants in the early 1900s (after the Germans who arrived in the early 1800s moved out). It’s a very small neighborhood – maybe four blocks, at most – but there’s a very high concentration of Greek restaurants and bars. And not your basic “Hellenic” diner places; these are real honest-to-Zeus Greek restaurants. Don’t let the tourist propaganda fool you – if there’s no festival or event happening, the place is fairly ordinary.

It does happen to be rather centrally located in “downtown” Detroit, within easy walking distance of a lot of attractions.

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Detroit – 1

This year’s big vacation is a trip to Detroit. Now you’re probably asking “Why Detroit? Isn’t it a dump?” Well, maybe so, but it has a couple of advantages. First, I’ve never been there before. Changing planes at the airport doesn’t count. Second, it’s home to a major league baseball team – so I can take in a game or two. And finally, there are direct flights from my local airport to Detroit. Put it all together, and it makes a little sense.

As always, I’m going to pad my post count as much as possible.

So before I arrive in the “Motor City”, my tips on packing and other travel-related stuff. Continue reading →

Pond in a Jar – 6

There’s a good deal of new growth in the plants – those tall, thin things weren’t there a couple of months ago. I’m not sure how healthy they are; some of the leaves are a little discolored. The top ends of the older plants seem to have been bitten or cut off. They come to an abrupt end with no “tapering off” of their leaves. Curious. There’s no sign of any animals in there that could do it.

There are quite a few dust mote sized swimming things. One of which ls large enough to show some color – I call it “Bluey”, because it is clearly a dark blue. There are also at least three tiny snails; maybe four. It’s rare to see more than two at the same time. One of them is the size of a sunflower seed. I can make out details with my little pocket magnifying glass, but nothing to give me a clue as to what species it might be.

There are also a lot of dark flecks that don’t move (at least when I’m watching). They might be dirt, they might be dead things, they might be their own organisms. They are too small for me to tell.

I’m honestly surprised that it’s lasted this long.

I think it’s time to add a little more water.

Book Review: If it Sounds Like a Quack

If It Sounds Like A Quack: A Journey to the Fringes of American Medicine
Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling
Public Affairs Books
Copyright 2023 by the author

It starts out innocently enough. Maybe you see the rare occasion when an old “folk remedy” actually works. Or the lifestyle changes you promote (usually diet and exercise) along with your treatment help the patient heal themselves while your treatment does nothing. Or maybe it’s just the placebo effect. In any case, the end result is the one you hoped for. So you become convinced that you have the One True Cure that can fix all the things that ail people. You go into business promoting and selling it, and an understaffed FDA (and other government agencies) can’t get out of the way of its own bureaucracy fast enough to stop you.

Word spreads, and people dissatisfied with the current health care industry (which often seems more concerned about profits than patient care) buy your One True Cure. What can go wrong, especially now that the money is coming in?

Multiply this by the Internet which gives everyone both a platform to hawk their wares and a way to find out about these “treatments”, health care “deserts” in rural and poor regions that push people to seek out cheaper alternative treatments, and a political party that encourages “individual freedom” over the needs of the society as a whole, and you’ve got a story that, in the hands of Hongoltz-Hetling, is both funny and infuriating.

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On the 2024 All Star Game

Well, that was a game. In that it followed the rules of Baseball. I can’t call it exciting, since there wasn’t that much to get excited about. As has become typical for an All Star Game, pitchers aren’t allowed to be in for more than one inning, and batters rarely get more than two trips to the plate. So you’re not going to have to worry about pitchers getting tired or batters trying for three hits. You know, the usual things that add a bit of interest to the average game.

At least we did get to see the matchup that everyone was talking about – Paul Skenes vs Aaron Judge. Frankly, it’s a travesty that we even had to worry about whether it would happen or not. Look, I get that Skenes is a “hot young stud” and you don’t want to break him, but if you’re worried about him pitching more than one inning, make him a reliever and keep him in bubble wrap between appearances. Also, get over the thing about making sure every player on the roster gets to be on the field. It doesn’t matter if they get in the game or not; they are still an All Star. Right?

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The Bobby Richardson Award – 3

With the introduction of the “wild card” in the playoffs, it became more likely that a mediocre team could make it into the World Series just by getting hot at the right time. While it is true that there are more “meh” Series now 2006), there are still plenty of all time Classics (2016) to provide some deserving winners of this award.

1995: Atlanta Braves 4, Cleveland Indians 2

Reliever Jose Mesa got the win in Game 3 and a save in Game 5.

1996: New York Yankees 4, Atlanta Braves 2

John Smoltz got the win in Game 1, and gave up only a single run in eight innings in Game 5. Continue reading →