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Saturday, December 31, 2011
skippy's saturday night music club
Labels: music, san francisco, skippy's music club, youtube
welcome jon swift fans!
secondly, if any of you are wondering, here's the explanation of blogroll amnesty day.
happy new year, and let's hope 2012 doesn't end with a mayan prophecy!
auld lang syne
the 5 dumbest things republicans have done this year
the worst tv of 2011
the year in science
the year in lies
the 10 worst economic ideas of 2011
the top 10 gop moments of 2011
the most under-reported stories of the year
the best celebrity tweets of 2011
10 winning moments for the 99% in 2011
and don't forget 2011: the year in extreme animals
Friday, December 30, 2011
skippy's friday night music club
Labels: 2011, music, skippy's music club, youtube
friday night
"sex and the single girl" turns 50
1,100 year old mayan ruins found in north georgia
we hope you all enjoyed your last christmas...ever!
Thursday, December 29, 2011
skippy's thursday night music club
Labels: music, skippy's music club, youtube
love the irony
Labels: gingrich, gop, thom hartmann, vote, voting integrity
calling governor bobby jindal
a volcano in alaska's aleutian islands sent up an ash cloud thursday that prompted scientists to increase the alert level for commercial aircraft traffic.
the alaska volcano observatory said satellite images at 4:02 a.m. alaska time showed cleveland volcano had spewed ash 15,000 feet into the air in a cloud that moved east-southeast. u.s. geological survey scientist-in-charge john power called it a small explosion. - cbs
a new poll from the pew research center for the people & the press out yesterday shows that "progressive" is the most positively viewed political label in america, with 67 percent holding a positive view compared to just 22 percent who view the term negatively: - think progress
Labels: democrats, polls, progressives
some advice for chuck norris
we're #1!
and rest in peace tarzan's pal, cheetah
jon stewart
see more Lolcats and funny pictures, and check out our Socially Awkward Penguin lolz!
Labels: animals, cats, comedians, jon stewart
looking back at 2011
good food news of 2011.
the political scandals of 2011.
osama bin laden's death most impactful story of 2011 (say aol voters)
top corporate governance stories of 2011.
the bbc wants to quiz your knowledge of top stories of 2011.
npr's top songs of 2011. can you hum a few bars of these?
time's top 10 of everything in 2011
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
skippy's wednesday night music club
Labels: music, skippy's music club, youtube
wednesday girl
newt gingrich failed to register newtgingrich.com, which is now a dem parody site
buying insider trading information from congress - and getting rich
what's going on with voter supression and the doj?
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
barely out of tuesday
and rebuttal thereof
pot arrests drop in nyc
why we need the consumer financial protection bureau
Monday, December 26, 2011
happy boxing day
what they won't tell you about pepper spray
time's person of the year: the photo you didn't see
and here's the great gop hot air balloon race
orthocracy speaks
"although no well organized orthocracy allows the rules of rule be made explicit, one can infer the outlines of a system of rules behind the veil -- a ruling system."
"the 13 rules of rule
"1. keep them weak.
"2. keep them dumb.
"3. keep them scared.
"4. control all their resources.
"5. divide them, conquer them.
"6. control their rhythm and pace.
"7. control their chemistry.
"8. control their sex.
"9. jack them around.
"10. use coercion routinely, brute force when necessary.
"11. use deception routinely, the big lie when necessary.
"12. none of this can show.
"13. this is the system; there shall be no other."
Labels: oligarchy
Sunday, December 25, 2011
The Only Modern Xmas Story
I arrived, headed for my favorite barbecue stand and, en route, noticed that Mel Tormé was seated at one of the tables.
Mel Tormé. My favorite singer. Just sitting there, sipping a cup of coffee, munching on an English Muffin, reading The New York Times. Mel Tormé.
I had never met Mel Tormé. Alas, I still haven't and now I never will. He looked like he was engrossed in the paper that day so I didn't stop and say, "Excuse me, I just wanted to tell you how much I've enjoyed all your records." I wish I had....
I waved the leader of the chorale over and directed his attention to Mr. Tormé, seated about twenty yards from me.
"That's Mel Tormé down there. Do you know who he is?"
The singer was about 25 so it didn't horrify me that he said, "No."
I asked, "Do you know 'The Christmas Song?'"
Again, a "No."
I said, "That's the one that starts, 'Chestnuts roasting on an open fire...'"
"Oh, yes," the caroler chirped. "Is that what it's called? 'The Christmas Song?'"
"That's the name," I explained. "And that man wrote it." The singer thanked me, returned to his group for a brief huddle...and then they strolled down towards Mel Tormé. I ditched the rest of my sandwich and followed, a few steps behind. As they reached their quarry, they began singing, "Chestnuts roasting on an open fire..." directly to him.
A big smile formed on Mel Tormé's face — and it wasn't the only one around. Most of those sitting at nearby tables knew who he was and many seemed aware of the significance of singing that song to him. For those who didn't, there was a sudden flurry of whispers: "That's Mel Tormé...he wrote that..."
As the choir reached the last chorus or two of the song, Mel got to his feet and made a little gesture that meant, "Let me sing one chorus solo." The carolers — all still apparently unaware they were in the presence of one of the world's great singers — looked a bit uncomfortable. I'd bet at least a couple were thinking, "Oh, no...the little fat guy wants to sing."
But they stopped and the little fat guy started to sing...and, of course, out came this beautiful, melodic, perfectly-on-pitch voice. The look on the face of the singer I'd briefed was amazed at first...then properly impressed.
On Mr. Tormé's signal, they all joined in on the final lines: "Although it's been said, many times, many ways...Merry Christmas to you..." Big smiles all around.
And not just from them. I looked and at all the tables surrounding the impromptu performance, I saw huge grins of delight...which segued, as the song ended, into a huge burst of applause. The whole tune only lasted about two minutes but I doubt anyone who was there will ever forget it.
Go read the whole thing. The rest of us have to abide with this:
If you liked this, please consider joining me in donations to Oxfam America or Heifer in honor of others. Which will still deliver an e-card in time for the 25 December thingie.
*The other was, of course, sung without the slightest sense of irony at soup kitchen being run at a homeless shelter by the cast of Glee.
environmental news stories sunday
trees in trouble: grim future for frankincense. - frankincense is still used today — for perfumes, incense and traditional medicines — but a new study suggests that its future looks grim - weekend edition (npr)
northeast holds front line in climate change war. - up and down the connecticut river valley in massachusetts colleges and major research universities have expanded their course offerings to address the growing interest in meeting the challenges of a 'carbon-constrained' future and other questions of environmental sustainability - springfield republican
add vitamin d to scotland's food: experts. - international experts are calling for food in scotland to be fortified with vitamin d, in an attempt to cut the large numbers of people who develop multiple sclerosis at sunshine-deprived northern latitudes - london guardian
fractured earth, polluted water? - in new mexico, water is precious. until we know more about how fracking can impact water supplies, state regulators should require more information about the chemicals being pumped into the ground. new mexico would be better off safeguarding our water before drilling starts, not after. - santa fe new mexican
global warming and malaria: it's kind of complicated. - al gore's "an inconvenient truth" may be the first place a lot of people heard about it, but scientists have been worried for a long time about how climate change will affect infectious diseases - climate central
don't take bath this christmas as drought order is issued. - people in the south east are being asked not to take a bath over christmas to save water after the first winter drought order in almost 10 years was imposed - london daily telegraph
reindeer are fading into holiday myth. - in the barren lands of the far north, where caribou numbers have undergone natural fluctuations over decades, the question is whether the declining populations will have the chance and the space to rebound as their ranges face mineral exploration, mine, oil and gas development, and a changing climate - new york times
green christmas more frequent due to global warming. - there was time in the great white north when dreaming of a white christmas would almost always be a dream come true. - canadian press
mercury rule is president obama's christmas gift to america. - the obama administration delivered a last-minute christmas present this week. on wednesday, following a tortured history, the epa finally released new standards that sharply reduce the emissions of mercury - mother jones
sony's bio battery turns waste paper into electricity. - sony has unveiled a paper-powered battery prototype in japan. the technology generates electricity by turning shredded paper into sugar which in turn is used as fuel. if brought to market, the innovation could allow the public to top up the power of their mobile devices using waste material - bbc
great lakes funding & christmas tree debate. - people who are working on cleaning up the great lakes got some good news this week. after months of negotiations, the 2012 federal budget contains $300 million for the great lakes restoration Initiative - environment report
the best christmas gift ever: saving santa from the watery north pole. - this christmas, think about a donation to the 'where will santa live?' campaign, where your dollars will be put to the best use possible for santa and his crew as they get ready to face their new reality of a warmed up north pole. - scientific american
columnist objects to ads depicting santa as a homeless climate refugee. - "where will santa live?" the ad asks. "santa's workshop is sinking." actually, it's okay, kids. santa's coming next saturday night just as he always does - toronto sun
endangered reindeer. - reindeer – also called caribou – are ubiquitous in the world's northern latitudes, but the populations closest to the north pole are dwindling because of climate change. now there is a push to list the large deer as endangered - living on earth
real christmas trees save water. - fake christmas trees might be convenient and seem eco-friendly at first glance, but their environmental costs – measured in greenhouse gas emissions and landfill space – far outweigh their benefits, say conservationists who urge consumers to "stay real" this holiday season - national geographic news
Labels: christmas, climate change, drought, england, environment, food, global warming, gore, new mexico, scotland, trees, water
oh little town of blogleham
attacks on obama policy shames christianity
"and unto them a snowy-white albino kiwi was born"
newt gingrich's letter to virginia, regarding the existence of santa and claims he said otherwise
and christwire presents 5 christmas things gays have ruined
it's not christmas
merry xmas
Saturday, December 24, 2011
the blog before christmas
nearly 1/3 of americans are arrested by age 23
say hello to the world's smallest frog
all we want for christmas is democrat with a spine
Friday, December 23, 2011
And So Happy Xmas...Now with Canadian Content
This year, the 100 stocks in the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index with the highest dividend yields are up an average of 3.7% before dividend payouts, according to Birinyi Associates. The 100 lowest-yielding stocks are down an average of 10%.
Is this a good idea? I understand the move to dividend-paying stocks—companies that admit they don't know what to do with their excess cash are almost by definition better-run than those that hoard it without announcing future plans for its use (hi, MSFT!). And some companies have a lot of excess cash right now.
But there is a difference between paying a dividend because it's the best use of funds for your investors and having a high dividend yield. Don't believe me? Ask Bank of America shareholders ($2.56 Annual Dividend, just under an 8% yield) ca. 2008:
Or those who bought The Big C for its $2.08-cents-per share Annual Dividend (around 6-7% yield) in late 2007*:
Of course, banks might be the except. But here's the past five years of Toronto Dominion, which was paying around a 3% p.a. Dividend** around the same time period:
What would have happened to your overall investment if you had gone for the higher-paying firms? It's not pretty:
I like dividends; they're an admission from a firm that it doesn't know better than its owners what to do with some of its cash. But high-yielding dividends are often a sign of bad management giving away "excess" cash in good times.***
The first rule of finance: when something appears too good to be true, it probably is. Caveat emptor and may all your investments for 2012 be good ones.
*The graphic scale and dividend amounts were distorted somewhat by the 10:1 reverse split earlier this year.
**An annual dividend of US$2.28, with the stock trading around US$70-75 per share.
***This is not an unusual story, sadly. The collapse of LTCM, for instance, occurred after the fund gave much of its investment monies back to investors and then count not remain solvent for so long as the market remained irrational. (The contemporary equivalent is MF Global.)
Labels: financial markets, investments, stock market
grandma got run over by a blogger
here's a bi-partisan bill that makes any company that moves its call centers off-shore ineligible for federal loans or grants
anonymous donors pay off strangers' layaway accounts
but some wal-marts in texas didn't let the accounts get paid
and doug j of balloon juice punks politico
Thursday, December 22, 2011
silent blog, holy blog
ceo pay shot up in 2010
7 facts about veterans that will shock you
and other facts that republicans fail to grasp
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
say hello
o blog all ye faithful
meet the budget the media doesn't want you to know about
pew finds most americans blame republicans for the do-nothing congress
and neil pollack knew christopher hitchens better than you
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
jingle blog jingle blog jingle all the way
what you can do to occupy the holidays
holiday gifts for the activists o. your list
gov. scott walker is costing wisconsin 18,000 jobs a year
Monday, December 19, 2011
new moon on monday
gop wants to harness the power of social media
tea party politico issues racist facebook rant calling for obama's assassination
it's the pepper spraying cop tumblr!
Sunday, December 18, 2011
sunday sun
don't support the salvation army, they support anti-lgbt policies
"people like me are the only thing that stands between us and auschwitz," sez newt gingrich
probation officer fired for signing pro- pot petition
and rip christopher hitchens
Saturday, December 17, 2011
say hello
saturday night special
"you're a mean one, newt gingrich"
9 demands of the 99%
voyager 1 is in the stagnation zone
Friday, December 16, 2011
thank god it's friday
meanwhile tens of thousands march on koch industries for suppressing voting rights
rats free each other from traps, then share chocolate
you should hate the mental welfare state
gay chinese penguins raise chick, get married
Thursday, December 15, 2011
thursday's child
an open letter to pixar
a strong middle class is the key to economic growth
scooby doo is "veggie tales" for secular humanists
and rip producer of "easy rider," "five easy pieces," and "the last picture show" (and father of the monkees),bert schneider
we apologize for calling a racist a racist
we humbly apologize. even if it's all true.
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
wednesday morning, 3 a.m.
there's a pretty bad oil spill off the coast of brazil
invented peoples for mitt romney
cbo sez dems jobs plan creates more jobs than gop plan
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
church on tuesday
christmas gifts for rationally curious
if ron paul is the third-party spoiler, which campaign will he spoil?
sure, august j. pollack designed our 'roo logo, but now ted rall drew suburban guerilla's new header
Monday, December 12, 2011
skippy's monday night music club
Labels: music, skippy's music club, youtube
stormy monday
dem. rep fires staffers after they make fun of him on twitter
paypal sucks
morgan stanley exec calls for more taxes on the rich
today is the day to occupy west coast ports!
Sunday, December 11, 2011
skippy's sunday night music club
Labels: music, skippy's music club, youtube
environmental news stories sunday
baltimore harbor: unseen sewage leaks pollute waters. - heavy rains routinely trigger big sewage overflows in baltimore, but there is growing evidence that chronic leaks from the region's aging, cracked sewer lines are a bigger threat to public health. even on sunny days, storm drains discharge raw sewage because of fissures and breaks in old infrastructure. - baltimore sun
quake exceeded tepco's 'once in 10,000 years' scenario. - the movement of the bedrock under the fukushima no.1 nuclear power plant during the great east japan earthquake was larger than pre-quake estimates used by the plant's operator in its disaster planning, according to government simulations - asahi shimbun
shale gas pipelines pose challenges to state's forests, wildlife. - the 8,500 miles of gas pipeline running under pennsylvania could quadruple within the next two decades, according to a forthcoming study, raising questions about how the work will affect forests, wildlife and even the suburbs around pittsburgh - pittsburgh tribune review
water demand 'will outstrip supply.' - businesses, farmers and householders need to take steps to become more water-efficient as climate change and population growth increase pressures on resources and lead to more droughts, two reports have warned. - press association
researcher sees a biological regime change under way in alaska. - is climate change pushing alaska toward another major abrupt shift, similar to the transition from grassy steppe to peaty tundra that took place thousands of years ago? - climatewire
outrage at uk's $1bn loan deal with brazil oil giant. - a british government decision to underwrite a billion-dollar loan to one of the world's biggest oil companies came under fire from environmentalists last night. - london independent
billion-dollar disasters 'harbinger' of future extreme weather: noaa. - the 12 $1-billion-plus disasters that hit the united states this year are most likely not simply a matter of the stars aligning against us, according to the head of the national oceanic and atmospheric administration, who implicated climate change as a contributor - livescience
city faces choice on next wastewater treatment level. - cities like flagstaff that have become dependent on reclaimed wastewater to relieve pressure on drinking water should seriously consider upgrading treatment to the next step - flagstaff arizona daily sun
u.s. bans boaters from dumping sewage in lake ontario. - u.s. officials have declared lake ontario a "no-discharge zone," banning boaters from dumping sewage on the american side of the lake. - toronto star
pfc levels decline in residents' blood samples. - a bio-monitoring pilot project in minnesota has found declines since 2008 in perfluorochemicals (pfcs) in the blood of st. corix valley, mn residents. health department researchers concluded that efforts to reduce drinking water exposure to pfcs have been effective - stillwater gazette
aquatic pesticide use gets go-ahead. - despite concerns from lake tahoe water providers, pesticides could soon be used to combat the lake's aquatic weed problems. the lahontan regional water quality control board approved rule changes wednesday that will allow the agency to permit the use of aquatic pesticides under certain conditions - douglas county record courier
mideast water shortages threaten millions. - due to increasing populations, climate change, poor infrastructure and inefficient use of resources, serious water shortages are threatening the lives and livelihoods of millions of people across the middle east - voice of america
carbon credits save sierra leone's gola rainforest. - as of saturday, the gola rainforest, which lies within one of the world's most important biodiversity hotspots, is now a national park. and it could soon bring sierra leone, one of the world's poorest countries, a new income stream from the sale of carbon credits. - christian science monitor
Labels: arizona, brazil, canada, climate change, earthquake, england, environment, global warming, great lakes, infrastructure, japan, nasa, oil, pollution, water, weather
sunday bloody sunday
students hit hard by voter id laws
9 demands of the 99%
politifact's lie of the year candidate is 100% true
and here's john cole's answer to megan mcardle's holiday gift guide
Saturday, December 10, 2011
skippy's saturday night music club
Labels: christmas, music, skippy's music club, youtube
saturday in the park
sheriff joe arpaio's office ignored years of child sex abuse cases
plan b stands for backlash
pepper spray cop meets baby jesus
Friday, December 09, 2011
friday on my mind
#occupywallstreet is time magazine's top story of the year
the advent calendar of physics


text:
As season-ending home runs go, Aaron Boone's eleventh-inning shot for the Yankees against the Red Sox last October looks pretty unimpressive in retrospect. Watch the video replay once more: a paunchy, goateed pitcher, his cap pulled down low, begins to wind up for what appears to be a practice pitch—hasn't a batter stepped in already?—and releases the ball from a contorted claw's grip, right pinkie finger extended, with a prim, abbreviated follow-through, the right foot landing in quick succession after the left, as though in a limp. The miles-per-hour indicator flashes "69" at the top of the screen as the ball floats, then hangs. If you didn't know better, you might not believe that the Boston pitcher—he's quietly walking off the field now, as Yankee Stadium erupts with joy—intended to get Boone out, or that he had any business being on the mound in a post-season Game Seven in the first place, much less during extra innings. In fact, though, Tim Wakefield, the pitcher in question, had beaten the Yankees more often than any pitcher all season by doing much the same thing. Sixty-nine m.p.h. is routine for a sophomore in high school; it is on the fast side for a Wakefield delivery.
The Yankees and the Red Sox are engaged in what is often called an arms race. This past off-season, the two teams, already possessing stratospheric payrolls, went about adding more firepower to their rosters. The Sox, most notably, added a couple of hard-throwing All-Star pitchers (New York allowed fewer runs last season), while the Yanks added a couple of All-Star sluggers (Boston scored more). In Fort Myers, on the first Sunday in March, the Yankees arrived at City of Palms Park (Florida's Fenway) to play the Red Sox in a meaningless early spring-training game that was nonetheless billed by various players and writers as "Game Eight"—the continuation of last fall's epic series, which seemed merely to have paused for the winter. Before the game, several fans paraded around the grandstand carrying signs taunting Alex Rodriguez, New York's studly new third baseman (he'd recently posed with his wife for Sports Illustrated's swimsuit issue), and alluding to the simmering steroids controversy (the Yankees' new right fielder, Gary Sheffield, was among those called to testify before a grand jury). Obscured by all the commotion was the fact that, in this cold-war buildup, the weakest arm may still make all the difference.
Two miles down the road, at about the same time, a twenty-four-year-old former art student named Charlie Zink was throwing from a practice mound at the Red Sox' sprawling Player Development Complex, while the rest of the hundred or so minor-leaguers in the Boston organization, spread out over five diamonds, took batting practice and shagged fly balls. Zink was twelve when he first saw Wakefield—then a rookie with the Pittsburgh Pirates—pitching in the National League playoffs, in 1992. Now, although he is capable of throwing standard-issue jock heat, Zink was trying to mimic the Wakefield delivery as well as he could, right down to the apparent lack of exertion and the junior-varsity speed. From a side view, there was nothing at all remarkable about Zink's pitches, except that occasionally the catcher didn't catch them. In those instances, the coach who was standing behind the mound tended to exclaim, "That is outstanding!" Zink, who went undrafted as a fast-ball pitcher, is, at the Red Sox' urging, reinventing himself as a rare specialist: a knuckleballer. With Wakefield, one of only two knuckleball pitchers currently on a major-league roster, and now Zink, the Red Sox are cornering the market on low-grade weaponry. Project Knuckleball is only just beginning its second year, but, according to Baseball Prospectus, a leading baseball-analysis Web site, Zink is already the Red Sox' top-rated prospect.
The knuckleball—also known as the knuckler, the fingernail ball, the fingertip ball, the flutterball, the floater, the dancer, the bug, the butterfly ball, the moth, the bubble, the ghostball, the horseshoe, the dry spitter, and, curiously, the spinner—has been around, in one form or another, for nearly as long as professional baseball itself, though for much of that time it has been regarded with suspicion. Spinning is precisely what it does not do. In fact, a lack of spin is about the only identifying characteristic of the pitch. There is no right way to hold a knuckleball when throwing it (seams, no seams; two fingers, three), and no predictable flight pattern once it leaves the hand. "Butterflies aren't bullets," the longtime knuckleballer Charlie Hough once said. "You can't aim 'em—you just let 'em go." The pitch shakes, shimmies, wobbles, drops—it knuckles, as they say. Which is doubly confusing, because the term "knuckleball" is itself a kind of misnomer, a holdover from the pitch's largely forgotten infancy.
Depending on how you look at it, the first knuckleball was probably thrown in the late nineteenth century, by a bricklayer named Toad Ramsey, or shortly after the turn of the century, by the famous junkball ace Eddie Cicotte. Ramsey, who pitched for Louisville in the old American Association, severed a tendon in his left middle finger (that was his pitching hand), and thereafter adopted a peculiar grip, in which he curled his middle fingertip on the top of the ball, exposing the knuckle. His newfangled pitch probably more closely resembled what is now known as a knuckle curve—a pitch that, despite the name, bears little in-flight resemblance to Wakefield's floater. (The knuckle curve, thrown today by the Yankees' Mike Mussina, is released with top-spin, or overspin, and so does not even belong in the flutterball's extended low-spin family.)
Cicotte, for his part, discovered early in his career that by pressing the knuckles of his middle and index fingers against the ball's surface, and steadying the ball with his thumb, he could produce a spinless pitch, which would behave erratically and set batters on edge. In 1908, pitching with the Red Sox, he took the nickname Knuckles—by which point others had already begun to figure out that the same flitting effect could be achieved, and with greater control, by simply clamping down on the rawhide with one's fingernails. The actual use of the knuckles in pushing the ball plateward has essentially been out of style for ninety years.
All told, there have been about seventy pitchers who have entrusted their livelihoods, at one point or another, to the vagaries of the knuckleball (by the count of baseball writer Rob Neyer). Some have preferred to throw a faster, harder-breaking version of the pitch, which arrives in the seventy-to-seventy-five-m.p.h. range, exhibiting only minor turbulence en route to a crash landing. Others have favored a more arcing, directionally indecisive floater—the Pittsburgh Pirates slugger Willie Stargell called it "a butterfly with hiccups"—which takes care to obey interstate speed limits. Neither enterprise is a growth industry. In the past fifty years, the fluttering ranks have dwindled to just a few per generation.
Once comfortably ensconced in the flourishing community of oddball pitches—spitball, palm ball, shine ball, eephus—the knuckleball has fallen victim, in recent decades, to a prejudice against deception and a fear of the unknown. If a kid throwing ninety-five m.p.h. has a bad outing, scouts chalk it up to growing pains; at least he can bring it. If a knuckleballer flounders, it is proof, somehow, that the craft itself—just look at it—is unreliable.
"Catchers hate it," Jim Bouton, the author of "Ball Four: My Life and Hard Times Throwing the Knuckleball in the Big Leagues," said recently. "Nobody likes to warm up with you. Coaches don't respect it. You can pitch seven good innings with a knuckleball, and as soon as you walk a guy they go, 'See, there's that damn knuckleball.' "
The pitch is minimally taxing from a physical standpoint, and thus affords its practitioners the ability to pitch in virtually any situation, on any day. Knuckleball pitchers seldom need to ice their arms after working. They lift weights only sparingly, and almost never get injured. The knuckleball favors old age—or at least doesn't discourage it—and forgives weakness. These are considerable advantages, yet the pitch is, for the same reasons, taken as an affront to the entrenched jock ethic of blood, sweat, and tears.
"Baseball science isn't rocket science," Robert K. Adair, a professor emeritus at Yale and the author of "The Physics of Baseball," says. "It's a lot harder." To understand how a knuckleball works, it helps to have a basic familiarity with Bernoulli's principle, the Magnus effect, and the Prandtl boundary-layer theory, for a start. This much is easy: the stitches on a baseball interrupt the flow of air around the leather surface. Then it gets complicated. The air meeting the ball speeds up as it's disturbed, to compensate for the initial holdup. This increased airspeed causes the pressure (on the side of the interrupting, forwardmost stitch) to drop. The ball follows the lower pressure.
That's the short story, at least. Wake, drag, aerodynamic regime changes in midflight: all these and more come into play. When the knuckleball is dancing with particular verve and inspiration, as Wakefield's did (pre-Boone) against the Yankees last fall, batters and their fans tend to argue, only half in jest, that it is unfair—unhittable, even. ("You're better off trying to hit Wakefield when you're in a drunken stupor," the Yankees first baseman Jason Giambi said recently.) This may in fact literally be the case. "A knuckleball can change so close to the batter that he cannot physiologically adjust to it, so in some sense it's impossible to hit a breaking knuckleball," Adair says. "I mean, you can close your eyes and swing, and you might hit it . . ."
Grumpy catchers may well have a point, too: maybe all those passed balls are not their fault. "The fastest possible voluntary reaction time of a person is about a hundred and fifty milliseconds," Adair says. "And during that time the ball can change its direction so much that you can't catch it." Adair's conclusion: "When Tim Wakefield is on, it's pretty tough—tough to hit, tough to catch."
And when he's off? "All you need to know is that if you put any kind of a spin on it at all it'll travel about four hundred and seventy-five feet in the opposite direction," Bouton likes to say.
Tim Wakefield was not supposed to be a major-league pitcher. He was a standout high-school ballplayer in Melbourne, Florida, where he still lives. Like most good young players, he pitched some, but mainly he played first base. He was a power hitter. In college, at nearby Florida Tech, Wakefield broke the school home-run record, and in 1988, his senior year, he was drafted by the Pirates. He reported that summer to Watertown, New York, where the Pirates had a Class A minor-league affiliate, and promptly set about proving to the club that selecting him had been a mistake: he hit .189 and struck out more than once every three times at bat.
Woody Huyke, one of Pittsburgh's developmental coaches, saved Wakefield's career. He saw Tim playing catch one day in the spring of 1989, during warmups, when many players goof around with sideline knuckleballs. (Like card tricks, everybody's got one.) Tim's ball was visibly of a different order from any garden-variety stunt pitch. "I thought, Jesus Christ," Huyke recalled recently. "I didn't say anything, I just played dumb. And then two days later we had an organizational meeting, because, you know, he was on the bubble as an infielder. I said, 'Before you let him go, I'd like to see him on the mound, 'cause he's got a good knuckleball.' So they kept him around. They told him, 'Either you pitch or go home.' "
Wakefield, as a boy, had learned about the knuckle-ball the hard way—by trying to catch it. ("You don't catch the knuckleball," Yankees manager Joe Torre, himself a former catcher, has said. "You defend against it.") His father, at the end of their back-yard throwing sessions, would invariably end up pitching him butterflies. "Dad comes home from work, and I'm, you know, 'Let's go play catch,' " Wakefield told me. "He was tired, and he wanted to go inside. So the knuckleball was his way of trying to tire me out, 'cause I didn't want to have to catch it—it'd go by me and I'd have to go pick it up. It was kind of a subtle way of Dad saying, 'Time to go, let's quit.' "
At the time of Huyke's intervention, there were just two knuckleballers in the bigs—Charlie Hough, who was then forty-one and pitching for the Texas Rangers, and Tom Candiotti, thirty-one and with the Cleveland Indians—and no promising apprentices. "We are, unjustly, in the twilight of an era," one premature eulogy, by the former Rangers consultant Craig Wright, read. "We may be witnessing the last days of one of baseball's most baffling, most charming, and most effective pitches."
Reluctantly, Wakefield took to the mound—and within a few short years, as if by some kind of extended practical joke, there he was on national television in 1992, the rookie ace, in young Charlie Zink's living room, winning two games in the playoffs. Then, just as suddenly, he lost it. Flutterballs are exceedingly difficult to control, and the ability to land pitches anywhere near the strike zone with consistency is what separates a true knuckleballer from a Sunday-afternoon showoff. Wakefield walked twenty-eight batters over a three-game stretch in April of 1993. He spent half of that season, and all of the next, in the minors, trying to regain his confidence; he lost twenty games and won just eight. In the spring of 1995, two years after he had been the Opening Day starter, the Pirates handed him his pink slip.
It seems fitting that a pitch as fickle as the knuckleball would produce a career filled (in the early going, at least) with herky-jerky ups and downs, but it would be a mistake to think that this volatility reflects the person. Wakefield is a quiet, studious-seeming man, who does everything—from walking to playing the guitar to singing harmony—with visible deliberation. (One of his favorite songs is "Take It Easy," by the Eagles.) He likes to call himself the "blue-collarite" on the pitching staff, a label that is reinforced by his friendship with various country musicians. Last winter, he made a guest appearance on the reality show "Average Joe."
"It's not a macho-type thing," Wakefield said recently, about his unlikely livelihood. "I had to come up with a way to get outs, and that's the bottom line as a pitcher. It doesn't matter if you roll it underhand, as long as you get outs." He works hard, still, at practicing his fastball and curveball, each of which he throws between five and ten per cent of the time, to preserve at least some element of surprise. "I've hit eighty on the radar gun maybe half a dozen times," he said, cracking a restrained smile. "That's a huge accomplishment for me. I get high fives when I get to the dugout."
Wakefield was picked up for cheap by the Red Sox shortly after the Pirates cut him loose, and the accidental pitcher is now, improbably, starting his tenth season in Boston, which makes him the longest-serving member of the club. In the history of the Red Sox franchise, only three pitchers have appeared in more games or struck out more batters. Wakefield is thirty-seven, an age that spells retirement planning for ordinary players, and he is just entering his prime.
"I plan on pitching as long as I can, as long as I'm having fun," Wakefield told me earlier this year. He said that last season was the most fun he'd ever had in his baseball life. "I kind of look at it now as something special. It's an art. It's something that may be a lost art here, soon, if somebody else doesn't come up and start throwing it again."
Knuckleball pitchers are not just a rare but also a close-knit breed—the Fraternal Order of Knuckleheads, bound by their shared experiences of alienation and finger cramps. "We always root for each other across the miles," Bouton says. "We all understand we're a little weird."
Barry Meister, Wakefield's agent, also represents Steve Sparks, the other knuckleballer currently pitching in the majors. (Sparks, who is thirty-eight, has enjoyed less success than Wakefield, shuttling from team to team. He began this season as the fifth starter, and spot reliever, for the Arizona Diamondbacks.) "It's like some strange disease—they all hang out together," Meister told me, before the start of spring training. "I called Sparks last week and he said, 'Hey, I'm out in California, staying at Charlie Hough's house, playing golf.' "
The uniform number 49, worn by Wakefield, and previously by Hough and Candiotti, serves as an unofficial pledge pin, honoring Hoyt Wilhelm, the most famous mid-century knuckleballer, whose career reflects many of the perks and humiliations of the tribe. Wilhelm was a few months shy of his thirtieth birthday when he was finally called upon to throw his first big-league pitch, for the New York Giants, in 1952. Over the course of twenty years, serving reliably as both a starter and a reliever, he was released four times, sold twice, traded four times, and offered up once to the expansion draft. Yet when he retired, just a week before his fiftieth birthday, he'd managed to pitch in more games than any player in history, and he was later inducted into the Hall of Fame.
Now that Wilhelm is gone (he died in 2002), the undisputed Grand Poobah is Phil Niekro, or Knucksie, as he is known among his brethren (though not to his brother Joe, another knuckler; together they amassed five hundred and thirty-nine wins, the most of any sibling pair in baseball). Knucksie won two hundred and eight games—of his career three hundred and eighteen—after turning thirty-five. He is now sixty-five, and the resident prankster of the crew, an amateur magician always eager to impress with his sleight of hand.
Over the years, despite their scar-city, the knuckleball bunch have produced more than their fair share of bizarre and noteworthy feats. The last pitcher to start both games of a doubleheader, Wilbur Wood, was a knuckleballer. (That was for the White Sox, against the Yankees, in 1973. He lost both games.) And who can forget Eddie Rommel, a bug-tosser for the Philadelphia A's? On July 10, 1932, having already pitched on each of the previous two days, the thirty-four-year-old Rommel threw batting practice, took a breather for the first inning, and then came out of the bullpen, in the bottom of the second, to pitch for what turned out to be seventeen straight innings over four hours, along the way yielding twenty-nine hits and fourteen runs. (He won, 18–17. It was the last win of his career.)
Baseball manicures are a popular topic of conversation when any two or three from the gang get together. Knucksie once recommended that Sparks scuff his nails on concrete before pitching, to achieve the ideal gripping texture—a strategy that backfired when Sparks shattered one of his nails in the process. Others have tried laminating their nails with horse-hoof solution as a sort of reinforcement. "I did all sorts of things," Bouton told me. "I even tried filing saw teeth in my fingers to sort of get, like, an alligator grip on the ball, but the little points would break off—and they weren't too popular in bed, either."
The weather—artificial or real—comes up frequently, too. Most knucklers agree that wind in the face is good (anything to add resistance and turbulence), while wind blowing from behind spells doom. Heat and humidity are welcome, unless you're pitching in a dome; for whatever reason, the consensus seems to be that central air-conditioning can work wonders. Boston's Doug Mirabelli, who catches Wakefield exclusively (knucklers often get their own personal backstops), has observed that the SkyDome in Toronto causes an extra hiccup per pitch. And in the Astrodome in the seventies, conspiracy theorists will swear, the temperature was always suspiciously cool—the A.C. set to full blast—on days when Joe Niekro was starting for the home team.
All that's missing is an actual frat house, a fact that hasn't been lost on Bouton. "I just hope that one day there may be a home for aged knuckleball pitchers to go to," he said. "You know, like polka meetings, the Friars Club. That'd be nice. You could spend your final days rocking on a porch talking about some of the great games, laughing at all the broken bones that you've created for catchers, broken backs for batters trying to swing and swat it."
Charlie Zink, the Red Sox' knuckler-in-training, had two main ambitions as he entered his late teens, neither of which was to be a pro baseball player. He thought he might like to join the P.G.A. Tour—golf suited his laid-back demeanor—or else get involved with law enforcement. "My parents were both wardens at Folsom State Prison, and I was thinking of doing something like that," he said this spring. "But then art school came along."
Art school was the Savannah College of Art and Design, known to its students as scad. Zink had been attending junior college in Sacramento, and playing on the baseball team there, but he found the atmosphere too competitive. "I was kind of burned out on baseball," he said. "I just wanted a change of scenery. I was looking for something easier at the time, and scad seemed like a good fit."
scad had a baseball team—a perfectly uncompetitive Division III team—whose coach, strangely, was Luis Tiant, the nineteen-seventies Red Sox star famous for his pretzel-twist pitching motion. Tiant took a liking to Zink, who seemed game to try anything—even turning his back on home plate during his windup, as Tiant himself had done. Though Zink graduated with roughly twice as many losses as wins on his record, Tiant got him a spring tryout with the Red Sox in 2002. Zink at least had a strong arm—he could throw ninety-four m.p.h.—and, well, he had a distinctive pitching motion; it was worth a shot.
Zink's reincarnation story, set in the summer of 2002, is similar to Wakefield's, only more vivid. "I was just getting ready to throw one day, messing around like everyone else does, and our trainer asked me to throw a knuckleball," he told me. The trainer was not wearing a mask, and Zink's pitch—inspired by that long-ago glimpse of Wakefield as a rookie on national TV—danced its way squarely into his eye socket. "Our pitching coördinator was there to see it," Zink went on. "He told me to throw it a few more times, and I hit a few more guys in the chest."
If the black eye sealed Zink's conversion from Tiant protégé to Wakefield disciple, he didn't realize it at the time. He even went home to California for the winter and hit the gym ("All off-season, I was just lifting my butt off"), hoping to increase his arm strength and velocity for the following year. When he showed up in camp last spring, the Red Sox had new plans for him, and an increase in velocity was not among them. Wakefield told him, in a private knuckling tutorial, that in those infrequent instances when he'd be throwing fastballs, he ought to throw them slower than he was capable of—he ought to throw them from a half-assed knuckleball windup, that is, not a Tiant Twist—so as not to tip the batter off.
"The only thing I don't like about it is I still think of myself as an athlete," Zink, who has broad shoulders and an effortless grace that disintegrates when he throws his knuckler, told me. "And most people don't think of knuckleballers as athletes, which kind of makes me upset." A little early success goes a long way toward erasing such concerns. Late last summer, Zink was promoted from Class A Sarasota to Class AA Portland, where he twice carried no-hitters into the eighth inning. "My first double-A game, I was pitching in Binghamton against the Mets," he said. "And the second hitter I faced pulled a rib-cage muscle from swinging so hard. He had to get taken out of the game. I mean, that was one of the funniest things I've seen." Zink has even started having dreams about the knuckleball—about different grips and release points, and the inimitable flight patterns they can produce.
It takes a certain kind of seven-year-old—possessed of an extraordinary sense of his own limitations, or else an unimaginative fantasy life—to watch a professional baseball game and immediately identify with the oldest, slowest person on the field, the guy who, if not for the uniform, could plausibly pass for a math teacher. Sean Flaherty, of Englewood, Florida, was that kid. In April of 1993, the expansion Florida Marlins played their first-ever game, and Sean's dad pulled him out of first grade to watch at a local sports bar. The Marlins' starting pitcher that day was the leather-faced forty-five-year-old Charlie Hough, still hanging on after all those years, throwing ghostballs in slo-mo.
"Sean was just mesmerized," Mike Flaherty, his father, remembers. "From that point on, he grew his nails out, and we played catch every day. I had bruises all over my body."
Sean Flaherty is now a senior in high school, and possibly the only full-fledged knuckleballer pitching for any secondary school, anywhere. (Like Wakefield, he throws knucklers at least eighty-five per cent of the time.) He is five feet ten and not an obvious athlete—his aspect is that of a firefly chaser—but next year, against all odds, he will be suiting up for the University of Miami, a Division I powerhouse. Sean is also hoping to become the first of his breed ever to be selected in the amateur draft, next month. (And also, presumably, the first pitcher ever drafted who cannot hit eighty on a radar gun. His knuckleball ranges from forty-five to sixty-eight m.p.h., and his fastball tops out in the seventies.)
The day of Tim Wakefield's first appearance this spring, Sean's team, the Lemon Bay Manta Rays, had a game of their own in Fort Myers, against the local Riverdale Raiders. Sean arrived at the field late, wearing a tuxedo. He plays tuba in the Florida West Coast Youth Symphony and was coming straight from a performance.
"Sean's journey has been unique," Mike Flaherty said, sitting in the bleachers. "He's a pioneer—he really is." During the regular season, Mike said, he and Sean catch all of Wakefield's starts on satellite TV at the same sports bar where the journey began. Last year, they also made regular trips to Sarasota and befriended Charlie Zink. (Sean, who has been throwing the knuckleball for much longer, offered Zink some pointers.)
It was the fourth inning, and Lemon Bay was down, 10–3, by the time Sean took the mound. Riverdale, as it happened, was coached by the former Red Sox left fielder Mike Greenwell. (His son Bo is a freshman first baseman.) Greenwell, who said he'd hit knuck-leballs quite well during his playing days, imparted what wisdom he could to his players: "Swing under it—the ball will always drop. Try to lift it." (This undoubtedly beats the famous hitting coach Charlie Lau's advice: "There are two theories on hitting the knuckleball. Unfortunately, neither of them works.") Sean warmed up to the song "Eye of the Tiger," played on someone's boom box, and then floated his bubbles: three innings, four strikeouts, one run allowed.
After the game (Riverdale won, 11–5), I joined Sean on the field for a crash course in knuckleball catching. When I'd told Dave Clark, an amateur flutterball fanatic who sent me his "Knucklebook" manuscript, that I planned to play catch with a serious knuckleballer, he said I should make sure to wear a cup. "Wear a mask, too," he added. "And stand behind the backstop." I had neither a cup nor a mask, nor an oversized softball mitt (which is what big-league knuckleball catchers traditionally use), but I took my chances, and tried to remember the advice that Doug Mirabelli had given me earlier in the day: let it travel as far as possible; don't reach out to meet it, or you're asking for trouble. The first pitch did a little jig about midway, and then darted down and to my right. I got some glove on the ball, but not enough to squeeze it. On two occasions, the ball swerved particularly late—I'd like to believe these were instances such as Professor Adair described, where it is physiologically impossible to react—and struck my unprotected throwing hand.
"How's it moving?" Sean called out at one point, to my surprise. Then I recalled something Wakefield had told me. "I can't really see it," he'd said. "They say it shakes a lot—it goes back and forth. The only thing I can see is the break down or the break to the left or to the right." For the full visual effect, catcher is where it's at.
"We call that one the spinner," Sean said at another moment, after the ball he'd just thrown forged a path almost like that of a roller coaster turning over. The "spinner" is what Hoyt Wilhelm used to call his corkscrew knuckler, perhaps because the pitch itself—not the ball—appears to spin around an invisible axis. Accomplished knuckleballers manage to throw it once in a while, usually by accident—it seems to require a lone, slow rotation of the ball while in orbit. It is, in a sense, the profession's prize elixir—"If you could bottle one up, that'd be the one you want to keep," Steve Sparks says—and catching it is a slightly nerve-racking and dizzying experience. Not just for a novice, either: Mirabelli warned me that the corkscrew "kind of hypnotizes you."
The first pitch of this season's ongoing Yankees-Red Sox showdown was thrown by—who else?—Tim Wakefield: a lazily arriving called strike. Boston won the game, 6–2, and the Yankees' three heaviest hitters, Alex Rodriguez, Gary Sheffield, and Jason Giambi, failed to register a hit. Notwithstanding the Game Seven relief appearance, with its Boone misfire (home-run balls remain his Achilles' heel; no Sox pitcher has allowed more dingers in his Boston career), Wakefield has now beaten the Yankees in four consecutive starts, holding New York's batters to a pathetic .163 average.
"I don't want to see that thing again," Giambi told reporters afterward, and later quipped, "They should pitch him every day against us."
Wakefield didn't lose his first game until the beginning of May, when he was outduelled on ESPN by an unheralded Texas Rangers pitcher named R. A. Dickey, who lacks an ulnar collateral ligament in his right elbow. Dickey, seemingly an unwitting descendant of Toad Ramsey, throws a specialty knuckle-gripped pitch that he calls "the Thing," which Boston's general manager, Theo Epstein, described to me as "one-third knuckleball, one-third breaking ball, one-third split-finger."
More than once, while I was in Fort Myers, I heard a rumor that the Yankees' owner, George Steinbrenner, fed up with watching his high-priced stars flail helplessly at Wakefield's flittering moths, had ordered his legions to produce a knuckleballer of their own.
In the meantime, the Red Sox are slowly approaching the day when Giambi's suggestion might not be so far-fetched. As of this writing, Zink is leading Portland in innings pitched, and in the last week of April the Sox signed the left-handed pitcher Joe Rogers from the discard heap—forgettable news, if not for the fact that Epstein had told me that the club planned to convert him immediately to the Zink regimen. Rogers, who is twenty-three, was relieved of his fastball-throwing duties with the St. Louis Cardinals organization at the end of spring training, and he has now been assigned to Boston's Sarasota affiliate, where, throwing mostly knuckleballs, he allowed just one earned run in his first seven innings of work. "We're trying to remind ourselves that there are lots of ways to get guys out," Epstein said. ♦

subset: commoncrawl


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Frank 'The Dream' Weaver hits career Ace #4 @ Hole 5, Shawnee Mission Park. 175g Red Rhyno is the instigator.more on this later.. dammit Frank ô¿ô
Hit my second ace ever last night, at Swope. Hole# 9, bout half hour before league started! Van watched it go in.


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Vanities & Benches
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text: Main Content House Bill 4923 (2015) rss? friendly link printer friendly Friendly Link: http://legislature.mi.gov/doc.aspx?2015-HB-4923 Sponsor Winnie Brinks (district 76) (click name to see bills sponsored by that person) Categories Individual income tax: credit; Children: child care; Individual income tax; credit; child and dependent care credit; create. Amends 1967 PA 281 (MCL 206.1 - 206.713) by adding sec. 272a. Bill Documents Bill Document Formatting Information [x] The following bill formatting applies to the 2015-2016 session:- New language in an amendatory bill will be shown in BOLD AND UPPERCASE.- Language to be removed will be stricken.- Amendments made by the House will be blue with square brackets, such as: [House amended text].- Amendments made by the Senate will be red with double greater/lesser than symbols, such as: <<Senate amended text>>. (gray icons indicate that the action did not occur or that the document is not available) Documents House Introduced Bill Introduced bills appear as they were introduced and reflect no subsequent amendments or changes. As Passed by the House As Passed by the House is the bill, as introduced, that includes any adopted House amendments. As Passed by the Senate As Passed by the Senate is the bill, as received from the House, that includes any adopted Senate amendments. House Enrolled Bill Enrolled bill is the version passed in identical form by both houses of the Legislature. Bill Analysis History (House actions in lowercase, Senate actions in UPPERCASE) Date JournalAction 9/29/2015HJ 76 Pg. 1720introduced by Representative Winnie Brinks 9/29/2015HJ 76 Pg. 1720read a first time 9/29/2015HJ 76 Pg. 1720referred to Committee on Tax Policy 9/30/2015HJ 77 Pg. 1726printed bill filed 09/30/2015


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Changing cabinet hardware, adding open shelves and refinishing an old vanity are some easy ways to update a bathroom quickly and without the mess of a full-scale renovation.
To begin, consider the existing style of the bathroom to integrate some changes into the current design as much as possible. Choose a color palette that will coordinate with the main elements, such as tile, fixtures and architectural features. If the bath has a distinctive period look, accessories may be added that are reminiscent of a previous era.
New Look for the Vanity
Painting a vanity is a quick fix that homeowners can undertake to give their bathrooms an updated look, but it will require products that will stand up to the moist atmosphere of the bath. HGTV recommends using a high-adhesion primer, followed by semi-gloss latex paint and finished with a non-yellowing, water-based polyurethane are the paint products homeowners should use to make an old vanity look new again.
A simple change in the hardware on bathroom cabinets can change the look of a wood vanity and storage closets from contemporary to traditional, or vice versa. Knobs and drawer pulls come in a variety of metal finishes, ceramic, glass or wood that can be stained or painted to match the cabinets.
Warmer Bath
To give bathrooms a warmer look, home decorators can add texture to the walls by hanging fabric rather than wallpaper, the website suggests. Soaking fabric in liquid starch will cause it to adhere to the wall easily, which can later be removed just as easily with water and a sponge. Cotton works best in a moist environment.
Nothing provides comforting warmth to a bathroom better than heated towel racks that supply warm towels to bathers as soon as they step out of the bath or shower. Installing towel warmers is another easy change that adds luxury to a home bath.
Functional, but Stylish Shelves
Some ideas for open shelving include free-standing floor-to-ceiling units, adding a marble shelf along the tub or encasing large tubs or whirlpools with wall shelving at both ends. A series of glass "floating" shelves can be installed in a vertical or horizontal configuration. The additional storage space for towels, as well as items such as candles and bath oils, is both functional and attractive.
"Open shelving is now being integrated into bathroom designs as another architectural element, particularly in line with today's modern decorating style," Deborah Burnett, spokeswoman for the American Society of Interior Designers (ASID) told HGTV.
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For the first time in many years, Americans can travel to Cuba. But what is the best way to travel there? For travelers looking for a safe and culturally immersive experience in Cuba, an Azamara cruise is a perfect fit.
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Havana is the cultural hub of Cuba, and we'll dock in the heart of the city. You'll find great food, lively music and dance, trendy art galleries, and beautiful art deco architecture that will have you pulling out your camera at every turn. Literature lovers will want to visit Ernest Hemingway's two favorite watering holes, La Bodeguita del Medio and La Floridita.
Are you a sports lover? Catch a baseball game! The game won't be your only form of entertainment – people-watching offers just as much excitement. Cubans are very passionate about baseball, so be prepared for some lively debates!
There is no easier, and no better way to immerse yourself in the mystique of Cuba than by joining us on an upcoming cruise.
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Official: Bomb blast on passenger train kills 5 in southwest Pakistan
QUETTA, Pakistan – A Pakistani government official says a bomb struck a passenger train in the country's southwest, killing five people.
The official says the remote-control bomb was planted on the railroad tracks near the town of Dera Murad Jamali in the district of Naseerabad in Baluchistan province.
The district's deputy commissioner, Sohail Rehman, says the bomb exploded on Monday morning, killing five people and wounding 10. It also derailed four railcars.
The town is roughly 300 kilometers (186 miles) east of the provincial capital, Quetta.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.
The province has been affected by a low-level insurgency by separatist groups, who want more shares in the region's natural resources. Al-Qaida linked Sunni militant groups also operate there.


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One of the most complete sets I've ever seen. 1 hour, 40 minutes worth:
Live at Music Hall of Williamsburg (NYC, NY) 05/16/12
Great expectations
Old white Lincoln
American slang
The diamond church street choir
We came to dance
Even cowgirls get the blues
The '59 sound
Film noir
Miles Davis & the Cool
Blue jeans & white t-shirts
The patient ferris wheel
I'da called you Woody, Joe
Biloxi parish
Wherefore art thou, Elvis?
The queen of lower Chelsea
Here's looking at you, kid
The backseat
The spirit of jazz
She loves you
Baba O'Riley


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This Week at Physics
|<< Fall 2013
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Event Number 3117
Friday, January 24th, 2014
- Physics Department Colloquium
- Validation of Quantum Devices
- Time: 3:30 pm
- Place: 2241 Chamberlin Hall (coffee at 4:30 pm)
- Speaker: Matthias Troyer, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich
- Abstract: About a century after the development of quantum mechanics we have now reached an exciting time where non-trivial devices that make use of quantum effects can be built. While a universal quantum computer of non-trivial size is still out of reach there are a number commercial and experimental devices: quantum random number generators, quantum encryption systems, and analog quantum simulators. In this colloquium I will present some of these devices and validation tests we performed on them. Quantum random number generators use the inherent randomness in quantum measurements to produce true random numbers, unlike classical pseudorandom number generators which are inherently deterministic. Optical lattice emulators use ultracold atomic gases in optical lattices to mimic typical models of condensed matter physics. Finally, I will discuss the devices built by Canadian company D-Wave systems, which are special purpose quantum simulators for solving hard classical optimization problems.
- Host: Sue Coppersmith
- Poster: http://www.physics.wisc.edu/twap/posters/2014/3117.pdf
- Add this event to your calendar
- Validation of Quantum Devices


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Join us Tuesdays at 10:30am for Science Time for Tots! Let your little learner get hands on with science activities at their level.
Science Time for Tots is an interactive program aimed at children between the ages of 3 and 5. The kid's won't just watch demonstrations, rather, they'll be getting interactive with science activities, and will often get to take part of the activity home! They'll have fun while getting familiar with scientific words, principles, and ideas. Start those STEM skills brewing early!
Adult supervision is required.
Never miss out on news about Tots! Sign up right here for our Tots Update emails.


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Icelandic Long Shank
The Icelandic bits are unique in the equestrian world. The mouthpiece is attached to the shanks in such a way as to allow movement in all directions.
The special feature of the Icelandic bit is the loose chain. The chain is not fastened more than needed to make the shank angle at 90° - 100° from the mouth and it is often looser. The chain on the Icelandic bit is set so that it touches the horse only slightly or not at all when the horse is vertical flexed at the poll. If the horse moves its head upwards and against the rein the chain immediately takes effect and the horse feels an increased pressure, which in turn guides the horse to seek the position where there is no pressure and it is comfortable.
A well-educated horse will become even better when ridden with an Icelandic bit, but a badly trained horse can become even worse.
The Icelandic Long Shank is best suited to the experienced rider with soft hands.


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Lindsay Lohan went on a Twitter tirade early Thursday morning against her estranged father, Michael Lohan, claiming he verbally and physically abused her and her family.
"Someone, which i've mentioned in the past, fell back into the person they used to be when they'd verbally&psychically abused&hurt me," Lindsay wrote in a Tweet – a post she has since deleted.
"it reminded me of when my father would verbally/literally HURT my mother, brothers, sister Aliana…now, as scary for me-->mind, body&sould- it's been, why, i ask u? why me? i've worked so hard, and still work so hard in life-i try to do as," she continued in her almost incoherent post. "fmuch as i can to put my fathers lack of appreciation-towards his family, friends, co-workers, dhioner towards himself , his denituy"
Lindsay then posted a link to her video, "Confessions of a Broken Heart (Daughter to Father)" saying, "that was for my ex-father".
Later on, Lindsay claimed that Michael contacted her about her early morning Tweets.
"My father just sent me this as I was leaving my gym 'I told you to stop Linds this is the last time… and take down the tweet about me HURTING MOM.. U will be getting a call from SOMEBODY today to end you,'" she wrote.
Lindsay also attended a taping of "American Idol" on Wednesday.
As previously reported on AccessHollywood.com, Michael said he was astounded to find out that some media outlets – including Access – have prepared obituaries for Lindsay should her behavior reach a tragic end.
"What's going on with her personal life and drug use and prescription drugs and other antics that are going on, I'm not going to stand for it. I'm not going to let my daughter die," he told Access on Wednesday. "I don't even want to think about [her obituary.] Do I think about it, her dying from the drugs? You have to."
Related Content from AccessHollywood.com:
VIEW THE PHOTOS: Tanorexic Celebs: Stars Who Shine Bright
VIEW THE PHOTOS: Celebrity Parents Gone Nuts
PLAY IT NOW: Michael Lohan On Lindsay: 'I'm Not Gonna Let My Daughter Die'
PLAY IT NOW: Lindsay Lohan Takes A Late Night Tumble (March 23, 2010)
MORE ACCESS ON THESE TOPICS: Lindsay Lohan - Media - Michael Lohan - Twitter - TV


text: the speed limit on RT.1 / forbes ave is only 25 but almost every car going around the curve by the condo is doing much faster. and tailgating cars turning in to the condo complex . contacted the state about it they have done nothing , can local cops put up speed traps to get people speeding around the curve??? or maybe speed humps so it will slow everyone down and prevent another car accident..


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Pat Dillon necesitaba un nuevo diseño de logotipo y lanzó un concurso de diseño en 99designs.
Un ganador ha sido elegido entre 71 diseños de 29 diseñadores freelance.
Patrick Dillon Photography is looking for a fresh new logo to be incorporated into our new web site, business cards, etc.
Patrick Dillon Photography
The logo should be able to be used for multiple places: website, business cards, packaging stickers, folders, etc. This is a new business venture so it could be Photography by Patrick Dillon or Patrick Dillon Photography. I would like it to be unique, elegant, and simple. I use a Photojournalist style...not the modeling type, fashionable stuff, my style is more natural, story telling
I like neutral colors, black, gray and white. However, I also like dark rich greens such as an emerald green. One thought I had was to incorporate the lion from the Dillon family crest but changing its color from red to emerald green. But I couldn't think of a way to make this modern. I definately want to see designs that do and do not incorporate this item.
- The name should be:Patrick Dillon Photography or Photography by Patrick Dillon - I am open to different combinations of upper/lower case lettering schemes
- I'd like to see some samples with shapes and patterns too
- I would like the font to be provided as well
- I need the vector file for the final design, also in jpg & png format
- Will look great on a business card
- Can stand alone as a brand.
- I do not want anything that feels really corporate
- No Cameras, Aperture Blades, or Graphics of "Polaroids" in the Logo please
Descubre cómo funciona un concurso de diseño u obtén más información sobre nuestros servicios de diseño de logo.


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Breakups, Betrayals, Backsliding: The Soap Opera World Of Olympic Cereal Boxes
By Barry Janoff
August 16, 2012: Michael Phelps used to grace cereal boxes for Kellogg's, but they dumped him so he now finds his image on a cereal box for rival General Mills, with whom he had a relationship in 2004.
Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh have won three consecutive Olympic gold medals and have been beach volleyball teammates for more than a decade, but they are now rivals in the cereal aisle, with Misty on the cover of a new Wheaties box and Kerri no where to be found due to her endorsement deal with rival Kellogg's.
In the world of General Mills versus Kellogg's, it is business as usual down to the last bite of cereal.
General Mills' Wheaties, aka "The Breakfast of Champions" said it would honor the accomplishments of Phelps and May-Treanor, two gold medal athletes "who have changed and elevated their sports through ground-breaking performances.
Limited-edition Wheaties boxes with Phelps and May-Treanor, respectively, were officially unveiled today, and will be available nationally beginning next month.
Phelps, arguably the greatest U.S. Olympic athlete of all time, is no stranger to cereal boxes. He was on the cover of Wheaties following the 2004 Games in Athens, but subsequently signed a deal with Kellogg's.
Kellogg's put him on the cover of both Corn Flakes and Frosted Flakes in 2008 following his gold medal record-setting showing during the Summer Games in Beijing. But Kellogg's chose not to renew its alliance with the swimmer in February 2009 following the release of a photo showing Phelps using a bong. So eventually he swam back to General Mills.
May-Treanor, meanwhile, gets a solo spotlight with Wheaties following her gold medal showing in beach volleyball, her third such honor with longtime teammate and friend Walsh, who was by her side in 2004 at Athens, 2008 in Beijing and earlier this month in London.
But Walsh is part of Team Kellogg, so the two cereal giants have done what countless opponents have not — split apart one of the greatest tandems in Olympic history.
Wheaties is not an official sponsor or supplier of the U.S. Olympic Committee, so their boxes cannot feature Olympic emblems or the gold medals that Phelps and May-Treanor have won.
But Kellogg is an official USOC partner. As such, the cereal maker has carte blanche access to Olympic symbols.
So when the company releases a Corn Flakes box in September featuring the U.S. gymnastic Fierce Five — Gabby Douglas, McKayla Maroney, Aly Raisman, Kyla Ross and Jordyn Wieber — it will show each of them holding a gold medal. And Gabby Douglas will get her own limited-edition Corn Flakes box this fall, complete with symbolic Olympic adornments.
Prior to the Games, Kellogg unveiled a limited-edition Corn Flakes box featuring swimmer Rebecca Soni, who earned two gold and one silver medal in London. Soni and others on Team Kellogg also starred in Kellogg's Olympic-themed marketing, "From Great Starts Come Great Things," which included a TV spot that aired during the Games.
But being on a cereal box does not make athletes and their endorsement deals immune to controversy.
Phelps may be the most notable, but he certainly is not alone in Kellogg's Olympic cereal box infamy.
Marion Jones had a cereal box cover in 2000, when she was regarded as the "fastest woman in the world." Her image on Frosted Flakes coincided with the Summer Olympics in Sydney, during which she won five medals in track and field. She has since forfeited those medals following her admission in 2007 that she used performance-enhancing drugs.
Wheaties is expecting no such downfall from Phelps and May-Treanor.
"Michael Phelps and Misty May-Treanor have inspired others to get out and achieve their own personal best," Jim Wilson, Wheaties marketing, said in a statement. "Wheaties is proud to honor them and to fuel athletes everywhere."
According to Phelps, "I received a lot of comparisons throughout my career, but I always wanted to be the best that I could be. I wanted to do something that nobody else had done before and I wanted to change the sport of swimming. Thanks to Wheaties and their support of my Foundation, I hope that my accomplishments will help inspire others to pursue their dreams."


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An old man stumbles around a dingy psychedelic living room in a fever dream.
To either side of him sit strange creatures hunched over their electronic equipment, spidery plastic dreadlocks hanging over big black goggles covering their dim leather faces.
Behind them flicker discs of light and dark shifting purple shapes. The air fills with the sound of creepy drum machines and circus freak show keyboards.
A guitar erupts like the scream of a tortured animal. The melody is ugly yet somehow beautiful: a sure sign. This is a Residents show.
No one knows who The Residents are. No one has ever seen their faces.
For forty years they have only performed in elaborate, grotesque costumes like giant eyeball heads in dancing tuxedos.
We don't know exactly how many people are, or have been, in the band. We don't even know their genders.
But one thing is certain, no other band makes music like theirs.
The Residents may well be the strangest band in rock and roll. Their history has been one of unrelenting freakishness.
From their clashing horn sections to Snakefinger's twisty guitar, their albums stand mutated and unique.
Bowie may have claimed to be from outer space, but it wasn't till I heard songs like "Easter Woman" and "Constantinople" that I realized aliens had actually landed on earth and started making rock and roll.
Songs like "Blue Rosebuds" can co-mingle lush soundscapes of tranquility and horror all in one five-minute piece of music.
They have a long list of classic albums such as "The Third Reich And Roll" and "The Commercial Album" which is composed of forty sixty-second songs.
People like Les Claypool may have covered their songs but no one can sound anything remotely like the Art Brut majesty of the actual band.
The three piece ensemble that performed at the regal Rio Theatre in Santa Cruz on Saturday night was the most melodic and musical incarnation of the band that I have heard so far.
While a guitarist and keyboardist with a laptop wove lovely collages of otherworldly sound, the lead singer had a different voice and character for every song.
Dressed as a decrepit old man, he sang harrowing stories in a voice that could go from a gurgle to a shriek to a growl.
After starting with a song from "Demons Dance Alone," they went thorough a semi-retrospective of their entire career.
It was hard to tell because many of their songs were presented in versions so radically different from the originals that they'd be halfway through a tune before you recognized even a familiar one.
This complete reinvention of their songbook was one of the show's strong suits.
Sometimes two or three songs were mashed together into one huge psychedelic suite that was staggering in its intensity.
Songs could launch from places of celestial calm to pure avant-garde excess in a matter of seconds.
They did a masterful "Gingerbread Man" and a chillingly haunted version of "Six More Miles to the Graveyard." The orchestral "Semolina" was a particular standout.
The music was dense and complex, and almost every song took you to a trippy lysergic place of ultimate unease.
But these fearful emotions were fed to you with a lush sonic poetry that was, at times, breathtaking.
Few things in life have moved me as much as The Residents' music. They sing about the dark places with melodies beautiful and strange.


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Hell, Skyward Descent is pure win!
I kill you in the name of DELICIOUS!
No, no, he did. In the everything else section, at least. Officially, this makes him king.
Martyk is a handsome fish.
This dolphin is delicious.
<Sgore> Martyk, mentally I always picture you as like, our forums bartender.<Neoadept> I've always pictured you trapped in a tuna net
Bioshock?I don't know why you're so uppity about it. A lot of games don't have player death anymore. That said, you can be downed and there are penelties.
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There's this comic you've never heard of before and it's called "Saga" #1 by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples.
I kid, of course. Brian K. Vaughan's return to comics, with "Y: The Last Man" and "Ex Machina" having both concluded, has been getting some attention over the past year. It also goes without saying that as high as people's expectations are going to be over "Saga" #1, they'll never be met. It's simply not possible. Fortunately, while "Saga" might not be able to turn water into wine and cure your ingrown toenails, once you shed the hype that's built up around it, you end up with a very good first issue of a comic book series.
Vaughan drops us right into the middle of Marko's and Alana's story, two from opposite sides of an age-long war that's spanned half of a galaxy. By beginning the issue with the birth of their child, it's an obvious opening point, but also spares us any tedious first chapter where the main characters haven't met until the final page. Instead, Vaughan gives us their back story in part through briefings and conversations, but makes it feel reasonable instead of an information dump. Everything we need to know for "Saga" #1 is included in "Saga" #1, and you don't feel lost.
It helps that "Saga" has a narrator in the form of the newborn child, who is presumably telling her life story at a much distant point in the future. She explains the long-standing war between Landfall and Wreath, and how it spread to other planets across the galaxy to avoid wiping out both worlds in a mutually-assured-destruction attack. It's a good storytelling technique and it helps build the drama because the child knows the bad things to come even if the protagonists don't.
One thing I found myself quickly appreciating is that Vaughan isn't playing a "good side/bad side" game here. Neither race comes across as heroes or villains here; they're both clearly seeing themselves as the good ones of course, but both sides make choices that put them in the "to be feared" camp. Vaughan's introductions of hunters from the two sides' armies to hunt down our protagonists also promises to be interesting and not just because Alana's people are more science-fiction while Marko's are more fantasy. It's giving us an additional viewpoint character for each side of the war, one that still believes in the war itself and the fight to wipe out the other race. I'll be curious to see how well they're integrated into the overall story, and what happens once their paths finally collide with our heroes.
I've enjoyed what little I've seen of Staples' art up until now; the interiors for "North 40," or covers for "DV8: Gods and Monsters" and "T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents." This is the largest single dose I've seen of her art and I'm impressed with the end result. To me she falls into the same school of art as creators like Leinil Francis Yu with delicate lines framing characters with large, bold figures. Staples is able to mix the familiar and the foreign together in her character designs; from big, hard-to-miss features like horns of unicorns and rams, to little touches such as the different clothing styles. It feels like a visually cohesive universe from start to finish, and that's not something easy to find.
Staples also takes some of the moments that could potentially scare off readers (like two supporting characters having sex) and makes them feel like they're not out of place. I think that's part of Staples' skill as an artist, having everything feel like it's there for a reason. Massive hairless cat? Robots with televisions for heads? Under Staples' pen the world of "Saga" feels like it's got room for just about everything, somewhere and it's definitely something she brings well to the table.
"Saga" #1 was a strong introduction to Vaughan and Staples' new comic. Where it goes from here is, of course, anyone's guess. With a double-sized opening chapter, I feel like readers should have more than enough of a feel for if they're going to like the comic. Somehow, I suspect most readers are going to stick around for #2. This is yet another great debut from Image Comics.


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Everyone sits in or stands next to a chair making it very comfortable to exercise. There is no floor work and no heavy breathing in this program that is offered to women mid-life and older.
Tuesday and Thursday January 3rd – March 30th
Price: $65.00


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Wrestling: VVS, Cazenovia, Morrisville-Eaton have good days at M-E Duals
MORRISVILLE - For four rounds, Vernon-Verona-Sherrill's wrestling team defied the odds and led the Morrisville-Eaton Duals. Coach Mark Peavey's Red Devils were without five starters - and were forfeiting 99, 113 and 120 in each meet - before facing CBA/J-D in the last round for the outright title. CBA/J-D pulled out a down-to-the-wire 33-31 victory to create a three-way tie in the standings with VVS and Cazednovia. Tiebreaking criteria left CBA/J-D and VVS to share the title.
"I'm pleased," Peavey said. "It shows how well balanced we are. We had to work for it."
VVS almost pulled out the last meet. Bryce Cipollone and Jette Collins started things with pins for a 12-0 lead before CBA/J-D's Nigel Knox-Shellman edged Arik Prichard 14-9 in a wild 138-pound match that featured plenty of throws and counters in the beginning.
Kasey Proper broke back with a hard-fought 4-2 win at 145 for VVS then CBA/J-D ground out two decisions before Simon Breckenridge used an arm bar and nelson ride in the last period to hang on for a 1-0 win at 170. That put VVS up 18-9 and Eddie Bentley's equally gutsy win at 182 pushed the lead to 21-9. CBA/J-D quickly tied it with two pins but VVS 285-pounder Zach Legler rallied for a pin to give VVS a 27-21 lead.
VVS' last hope was 106-pounder Austin Vanderhoof. Peavey had him move up to 113 to give his team its only chance for a win - the eighth grader needed to pin - and it almost paid off. Vanderhoof pushed his record for the day to 5-0 but CBA/J-D's Sebastian Ramirez lost just 9-1. He avoided two late headlock attempts to give his team a share of the crown.
"I thought it would be Caz, J-D/CBA and VVS," LeBlanc said of the meet's likely contenders.
VVS began with a 60-18 win against Section IV's Walton and followed it with a 49-31 win against Cazenovia, one of the other favorites in the six-team affair. VVS then beat East Syracuse-Minoa 46-31 then the hosts 48-19 to set up the dramatic final.
CBA/J-D lost its opener to Cazenovia 47-34 and bounced back with a 46-34 win against M-E then beat Walton 53-21 and ES-M 52-27. Cazenovia was also 3-1 at that point. Coach Dale Petroff's Lakers followed the split in the first two rounds with a 46-36 win against M-E and a 51-33 win against Walton.
He lamented the VVS loss a bit afterward.
"Against VVS we were down and they were up," Petroff, an M-E alum, said. "We gave up too many pins."
In Saturday's other meets, ES-M beat M-E 48-33 in the first round, ES-M beat Walton 52-36 in the second round, Cazenovia beat ES-M 72-12 and M-E beat Walton 45-30 in the final round.
Though it didn't figure into the race for first, the latter score drew plenty of interest as M-E coach Duane LeBlanc had his team face his son Paul's team from Walton. Paul LeBlanc coached CBA/J-D last year before taking a new teaching job in Walton.
M-E's Seth Newman, Pat Ashcraft, Brett Lewis and Wyatt Morris went 5-0 for the day as did Nick petroff and Dylan Evans for Cazenovia and Breckenridge and Vanderhoof for VVS. Despite his team going 1-4 for the day, Duane LeBlanc was pleased.
"We gave away 24 points in forfeits each match," the M-E coach said."I thought we all wrestled great today compared to the other day against RFA."
C-NS tourney
CICERO - Zack Zupan won the 182-pound title and Jacob Morris won at 285 to lead Canastota to third place at the Andersen tourney on Saturday. The Raiders' 165 points were bettered only by South Jefferson (205.5) and Fulton (175.5).
Zupan beat Greene's Christian Dieterich 13-5 in their finals while Morris edged Elmira's Sean McGinley 4-3 in their titler bout.
Connor Russ and Joe Tiller took third and Marshall Bruggeman was fifth for Canastota's other highlights.
Chittenango Duals
CHITTENANGO - Home won Chittenango's Dual Meet Tournament with a 5-0 mark Saturday. The hosts were second at 4-1. Casey Placito's pin at 285 clinched the Bears' closest win for the day, a 40-35 decision to Whitney Point.
Chittenango opened by beating New Hartford 42-27 then WP before losing 56-16 to Homer. The Bears broke back with a 56-18 win against Onondaga and a 41-32 win against Marcellus.


text: Taped at the Orleans Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas on November 18th 2012 this special celebrates over eight decades in show business of one of the most beloved entertainers of our time: Jerry Lewis. It's Jerry Lewis in performance - telling stories through narrative, musical performances and TV and Film montages including rare and never-before-seen film clips from his personal and private film vaults. The show also includes a tribute to Jerry's 87th birthday.