Seven quotes, two adages, one anecdote
Quotes Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to. You will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do. I shall either find a way or make one.…
Category Blog
A slow runner’s tour of the University of Washington campus
Ordinarily I only run on the UW campus on weekends (those kids don’t need that visual of me in shorts as they make their way to and from class.) But since the students are on spring break, it’s our first…
I wish I had said that. Wait, maybe I did.
Well before the movie Yesterday I had the idea to use time travel to go back and steal one song from every renowned songwriter. Would Bob Dylan be any less of a genius if I stole Don’t Think Twice, It’s…
Your worldview is skewed
The Mercator Projection is the most recognized map of the world today. Developed by Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator in 1569, it revolutionized sea navigation. It quickly became the de facto view of the world, propogated into classrooms all over the…
Books, books, books
I read nearly one hundred books in 2023. Before you start planning my ticker tape parade, I should mention that they weren’t all War and Peace. [Editor’s note: None of them were War and Peace.] With that disclaimer, here are…
I internet so you don’t have to
Sometimes you stumble on one thing that makes it all worthwhile, like Dame Judith Dench reciting Sonnet 29, off the cuff: How does someone even come up with this? If it wasn’t for the Internet, how would we know the…
Fun with Photo Forensics
I thought it might be fun to take an old photograph off the Internet and try to identify details around the picture. I chose a baseball picture first because there is so much supporting data available on the internet around…
He must’ve had his reasons
What was this kid thinking? It all starts with this baseball scorecard from 1965: This has followed me around for fifty plus years , through I don’t know how many moves. I got curious and decided to carbon-date it. It…
Well, there goes two hours
Everybody’s got ’em – those movies that, if you stumble onto them while channel surfing, you’ll stop and watch the rest. Not your favorite movies; not the best movies; just your guilty pleasure movies. Here’s some of mine. Hombre Not…
Death to flying things
Nicknames in sports have been around as long as there have been sports. . But I firmly believe the best sports nickname of all time was retired way back in 1870 with baseball’s Jack “Death to Flying Things” Chapman. There…