Web Log Archive, October 15th through October 28th, 2006
Saturday, October 28th, 2006
Why have the obituaries been called the 'Irish
Sports Pages'? What is it about death that so
fascinates those of us with Irish grandparents?
Whoops! Someone has just published a book with
that title!
Joe Niekro has died. Along with his older brother, Phil, he was
known for his 'knuckleball'.
The knuckleball is thrown in such a way as to minimize its spin. For reasons I
won't pretend to understand, this 'spinlessness'
causes the ball to interact chaotically with the air through which it is
thrown so as to make its motion (its 'trajectory')
difficult to predict (and to see). Joe was sixty-one and his death
(from a cerebral
aneurysm) was unexpected.
Well...I suppose you'd have to say that, after all, his death was certainly
expected. It's just
that he was not known to be ill.
Now...if you're fresh out of things to worry about: according to the information
in the preceding link, about one in twenty of us is thought to have 'some
type of aneurysm in the brain'. But there's
good news! A cerebral aneurysm almost never causes any symptoms...except sudden
death.
Friday, October 27th, 2006
A blonde, suspecting her husband is cheating on her, buys a handgun at a local pawn shop. When she gets home, sure enough...she finds him in their bed...with another woman! The blonde grabs the gun out of her purse, loads it and points it at her own head. Her husband starts screaming at her not to shoot herself. The blonde replies "Shut up, stupid! You're next! "
Thursday, October 26th, 2006 Happy Birthday, Ernie!
Selected Collected Quotes by Nicole:
Did you ever stop to think and forget to start again?
This day was a total waste of make-up.
Just because I don't care doesn't mean I don't understand.
I don't know what your problem is, but I bet it's hard to pronounce.
Act your age, not your shoe size!
Never try to teach a pig to sing; it will waste your time and annoy the pig.
If you try and don't succeed, cheat. Repeat until caught. Then lie.
I'll try being nicer if you try being smarter.
Don't make him your priority if you're only his option.
I still miss my ex...but my aim's improving.
Wednesday, October 25th, 2006
This one has a beard:
A man who'd had a little too much to drink was driving home from
the City one night and his car was weaving violently all over the road.
A cop pulled him over.
"So," says the cop to the
driver, "where have ya been?"
"Why, I've been to the pub of
course," slurs the drunk.
"Well," says the cop, "it looks like you've
had quite a bit to drink this evening."
"I did all right," the drunk
says with a smile.
"Did you know," says the cop, standing straight and
folding his arms across his chest, "that a few intersections back, your wife fell
out of your car?"
"Oh, thank heavens," sighs the drunk.
"For a minute there, I thought I'd gone deaf."
Tuesday, October 24th, 2006
Good Morning!
Monday, October 23rd, 2006
"Nobody enjoys the company of a
braggart. Don't oppress people with dramatic stories of your exploits. Nobody
cares about your war stories and dramatic adventures, though they might indulge
you for a while to appear polite. To speak frequently and excessively of your
own achievements is tiresome and pompous."
Epictetus, 55-135
Sunday, October 22nd, 2006
"We will stay in Iraq, we will fight in Iraq and we will win in Iraq."
"Our goal hasn't changed, but the tactics are constantly adjusting to an
enemy which is brutal and violent."
Saturday, October 21st, 2006
Dr. Wayne Kendal just published a cheerful study of the suicide 'risk' for people in the United States with cancer. Among his findings are these:
Overall, the suicide rate for cancer patients is low, although
it is about two and half times higher than the rate in the general
population. [The overall rate of suicide is about
24 per 100,000 cancer patients per year, compared with 10.6 per 100,000
for the general U.S. population.]
Male cancer patients were about five times more likely to commit suicide
than female patients (a ratio that matches the male-female suicide ratio in the
general U.S. population).
Both men and women were more likely to commit suicide if the cancer had already
spread at the time of diagnosis. [Surprise?]
Blacks had a lower risk of suicide, as is [also] the case in the general U.S.
population.
Friday, October 20th, 2006
“There
is a bit of a battle between people who say, 'Hey, your tax cuts wrecked our
war' and people who say, 'Hey, your war wrecked our tax cuts.' ”
David
Frum
Thursday, October 19th, 2006
"Only in an election year this
complicated can Republicans be happy that Mark Foley knocked the Iraq war off
the front page.”
Mark
Campbell
Just posted a new version of Over Now.
Interesting factoid from today's
Molly Ivin's column: "Combining the last three
Senate elections, Democrats have actually won 2.5 million more votes than
Republicans. Yet now they hold only 44 seats in that 100-person chamber because
Republicans dominate the less populous states that are so heavily
over-represented in the Senate. [If] you treat each senator as representing half
that state’s population, then the Senate’s 55 Republicans currently
represent 131 million people, while the 44 Democrats represent 161 million
people.”
Data from Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson, in their book, 'Off
Center'.
Wednesday, October 18th, 2006
This guy, on his first airplane trip, was told not to worry
because the plane he was in had four engines so when, shortly after takeoff, the
first engine gave out, he was reassured by the Captain's announcement that there
was no danger: that arrival would merely be delayed by a half hour.
When a second engine went out, the Captain announced that it would mean a
two-hour delay.
When the third engine quit, the Captain announced that the delay had
risen to four hours.
At this, the newbie traveler turned to the passenger sitting next to him and
said: "Gee, if the fourth engine fails,
we'll be up here all day!"
Tuesday, October 17th, 2006 The 17th anniversary of the Loma Prieta Earthquake
At ~3:25 this morning, an earthquake rumbled through here. Haven't yet seen it reported in the news.
Frederic Chopin died on this day in 1849. He was only 39 when he succumbed to tuberculosis, which he is thought to have contracted on his first visit to the British Isles at the age of 27. A native of Poland, he lived most of his adult life in France.
Monday, October 16th, 2006
So...I
saw a specialist (an orthopedist)
this afternoon about my foot and I suppose I'm supposed to be relieved. The
doctor was bored. He had no recommendations except that I return to see him in
six weeks. I sure don't know why. No cast. No 'walking boot'. No surgery.
After making me wait for more than half an hour, he spent fewer than ten
minutes squeezing and poking and taking a few (extra) x-rays while his beleaguered
receptionist argued with the referring doctor's office assistant about why insurance
authorization and/or x-rays from last week had not been 'pre-forwarded'.
Geez!
I asked when I could go jogging again and the doc said, stifling a yawn, 'in
two months'.
Last night the foot felt like a Roman
Centurion was, at irregular intervals, driving a stake through
it.
"Would you mind crossing your feet? I only have
one nail left."
Sunday, October 15th, 2006
Not a Sexy Subject
A cane, rather than a pair of crutches, is used when someone has
one leg that is weaker than the other. The cane contributes to the vertical
force necessary to keep a person upright.
But what, if anything, is intuitive about the use of a cane? Suppose you
find yourself, for the first time ever, in need of a cane. How should you use
it? In which hand should it be held?
If you type "How to walk with a cane."
into a search engine, then the advice you are most likely to find will be that
the cane should be held next to the stronger, not the weaker, leg. The
reasoning is that you want the cane pushing back on the ground whenever the
weaker leg alone is being asked to support the upright body, a situation that
obtains whenever the stronger leg is raised to take a step forward. This
is equivalent to saying that the cane must take up the work of the stronger leg
(when that leg is not on the ground).
But I see no error in reasoning that the cane should be held on the weaker,
not the stronger, side. In this alternate view, the cane will supplement
the force of the weaker leg whenever the stronger leg is raised.
My analysis is simplified by making no reference to angles...no reference to
forces not directed up or down.
Said another way: I have made no reference to balance...and balance
is a not unimportant factor in considering how to make use of a cane.
Bulletin: I have just just been
informed by officials at the Chicago
Tribune that my recent (today's!) entry has resulted in my being selected,
from among thousands of contestants world-wide, to be one of ten
semi-finalists in competition for this month's Most
Boring Blog Contest!
Quite an honor! I have been a finalist only once before, in December of 2004,
when I wrote about the properties of flare-nut wrenches: metric and
standard. Alas, in that competition, I lost out to a guy from Passaic,
New Jersey, who had blogged about how to use a tape measure.