Category Archives: Uncategorized

Adventures in Bird Listening

If you pay attention to your local birds for any length of time (or with any amount of interest), you’ll soon find that some species have distinctive calls. All it takes is for you to clearly see one singing its characteristic call, and then you should be able to instantly say “Oh, there’s a blue-crowned dinglebird in the area” the next time you hear it.

Seems that some of the more easily identifiable birds are among the more common in near-urban and suburban environments. The “caw” of the crow, the screech of the blue jay, the however-it-goes of the cardinal, the sort-of-mewling of the catbird…. With a bit more experience, one can readily pick out robins, chickadees, and (in the right environment) red-winged blackbirds. Some, like house sparrows and mourning doves, are generally nothing special – but so common that they become a default soundscape.

I bring this up now because this summer, it seems my neighborhood has been invaded by song sparrows. Their call has become ubiquitous, even though I can’t ever seem to spot one. They are quite loud for such a small bird, too. Unless they have an ability to pick out a stage where the acoustics serve to amplify their song. I have no idea how they do it. The volume suggests they’re right outside my window, but other aural characteristics tend to put them many dozens of yards away.

One of these days I’ll catch one at it. Maybe I’ll ask them about it.

This, but LOUDER:

Yeah, it’s been a slow summer and I’m just padding things here. What are you complaining about? You’re getting this for free…..

On the 2023 All Star Game

Well, that was….a game.

I really have to wonder who MLB is expecting to buy the special All Star Game uniforms. Sure, there are some fans in the stands wearing them, but will they be on sale next month in the team stores afterwards? I’ve railed before about how it makes it nearly impossible to identify the players on the field. I would also like to note that in the time-filling promotional spots where they have players in an “airport” and “coffee shop”, they are wearing their actual team uniforms. It’s clearly important for a promotional aspect, so why are there totally new and different uniforms for the game?

I gather that at least some players are OK with them – but you’ll always find good employees who will say they like whatever they are told to like. And it’s not like it’s impossible to tweak the regular uniforms into special All Star versions. One could, for example, keep the regular uniform but simply replace the team / city name on the front with “American” or “National”. At the very simplest, put stars at the sides of the number on the back of the uniform.

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Picking the All Stars

We’re in the thick of the All Star Team selection process, and I’m already seeing LOTS of whining in various comment sections on the order of “How can you choose this player over this one?”

I suspect a lot of these people are forgetting some very important things. First, you’re not simply selecting the Top 30 Players By Wins Above Replacement (or whatever number you want). You’ve got to field a team. What use is having six shortstops when you only have one first baseman? And there are a few other good rules, too.

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The Worst Teams Ever

Thanks to ownership that doesn’t care and has been selling of the team piece by piece, the Oakland A’s are currently on pace to have one of the worst records ever for a major league baseball team. Up to now, the worst baseball teams over a full season have been:

Team Wins Losses W-L Pct
2018 Orioles 47 115 .290
2003 Tigers 43 119 .265
1962 Mets* 40 120 .250
1935 Braves 38 115 .248
1916 A’s 36 117 .235
1899 Spiders 20 134 .130

 

* Expansion team in their first year

The Cleveland Spiders are a bit of a special case. The team’s owner also was a part owner of a team in St. Louis. Since St Louis was a bigger market (with a bigger stadium) than Cleveland, whenever a player started getting good for the Spiders, he was “traded” to St. Louis for a player who was underperforming. After a while, all the talent was in St. Louis, and Cleveland had the dregs.

In a way, though, the A’s ownership shenanigans are similar. This Oakland team is on pace for a record of 41 – 121, for a winning percentage of .250. It should be noted that they are being given a “run for their money” by the Kansas City Royals, who are on pace for a record of 46-116 (a winning percentage of .282). Since the Royals’ ownership isn’t holding a “Moving Sale”, one might actually have to consider them the worse on-the-field team.

I’ve been wondering – what are the worst teams ever in the other major sports? Continue reading →

Deckard and the Replicants

There was a recent interview with Harrison Ford as part of the promotional tour for Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. Ford was asked about quite a few topics related to his career and the characters he played.

One of the questions had to do with his performance as Rick Deckard in 1982’s Blade Runner. He was asked if he thought Deckard was a “replicant”; one of the androids constructed by the Tyrell Corporation.

It’s one of those movie questions that fans love to talk about, expending a not inconsiderable amount of time and effort in pointing out all the little hints in the movie to support their contention.

You know, I’d have thought the matter would have been settled by now. In fact, I maintain that it should have been settled within days after the movie’s initial release – indeed, within a few minutes after the question was first asked.

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Let’s Kill Hitler!

The opening scene of the Doctor Who episode “Let’s Kill Hitler” (Series 6, Episode 8) ends with a secondary character (Melody Pond) holding a handgun and saying to The Doctor, “I’ve got a gun, you’ve got a time machine. What the hell, let’s kill Hitler!”

Aaaaand instead of some serious contemplation of the ethics of killing a person – even someone like Hitler – or The Doctor lecturing on how “You can’t rewrite history! Not one line! Believe me, I know!”, they wind up converting the episode into “Let’s Quickly Shove Hitler Into a Closet, and Spend the Rest of the Episode Doing Character Development”.

It was a real disappointment.

One of the most popular “alternate histories” is that where Germany / The Nazis win the Second World War. It’s justifiable to remind us of the evils of Nazism / fascism, but it’s at the point of being so overdone it’s boring.

What would be more interesting to see would be how WWII or even the rise of Nazism could be avoided in the first place.

What if you could go back in time, and stop Hitler? Continue reading →

Adventures in Car Buying

My 2012 Ford Fiesta never gave me any serious trouble. I bought it brand new – the dealership took care of regular maintenance, a local mechanic dealt with the few urgent matters that came up, and a regional chain of tire stores handled tire replacement. Other than tires, brakes, and a new battery, nothing needed replacement – or even tinkering.

So when the “Check Engine” light turned on this February, I was a little bit concerned. The car was getting on in years and miles, so…. I brought it to a nearby parts store that offered a free “Scan for the fault code” service. The report produced said it was something that didn’t make much sense to me (I forget exactly what it was). The car was still running well, so I figured I’d keep an eye on things until my next scheduled maintenance, which wasn’t too far off.

After a while, though, the light turned off. “Hooray!” I thought. “It was just a sensor glitch, or something equally innocuous.” After another week or so, it came back on. Then it turned off for a few days. Then it came back on – and this time, there was an obvious and major problem The car didn’t seem to be able to run in any gear other than “reverse” or “first” (or “low”). My local mechanic ran the diagnostic, and said the “transmission control module” was shot.

Time to call the dealer….

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Watching Baseball at the Office

Now, I really can’t watch any games. There’s no TV in the office, and even if I had a subscription or the like that let me watch them online, I doubt they’d let me get away with it – even if it wasn’t bothering my co-workers or interfering with my work.

Fortunately, there are at least two websites that effectively track games in real time, and display enough action so that it’s kind of like listening to a game on the radio. Sort of. A good enough equivalent, at any rate. Continue reading →

And See Who Salutes

You probably missed it, but Utah has a new state flag, replacing its old cluttered and frankly ugly one:

Utah’s old flag


Utah: NEW AND IMPROVED!

A good number of other states are considering redesigns as well, and not just to remove traces of the Confederacy or other things of “questionable” merit. It’s that most state flags are crap. Vexillalogists Vexillololiphiles Flag buffs describe most of them as “S.O.B.s”, meaning that they are nothing more than the state seal on a blue field. Which does very little towards making a flag distinctive, which is one of the most important things you want in a flag.

Anyone with a minimal design sense can slap together a decent flag, as long as you follow a few basic rules: Keep it simple, have no words or numbers, make it distinctive, and give it some connection to what it represents.

Since I have at least a minimal design sense, there’s nothing to stop me from having a go at the flags of the two states that I have called home. And as it happens, they’re both SOB’s that cry out for a redesign.

Continue reading →