Just needed a little somethin-somethin to find beauty in

 

 

Enjoy the October Puget Sound Sunset!  Memories of a Honeymoon.  (Dash Point, WA)

There's more...

I'm glad I survived the wolves. :-)

My Syster

If you know her, she'd love a Christmas letter (Lund, Sweden)

Winter Sunsets

After spending all of the summer looking for them, they magically seem to appear, and always just when all you have is a camera phone (La Jolla, CA)

Voicing our opinions

Voting day gives us an opportunity to express our opinions. Some express them better than others... on facebook.

Some of the best facebook status updates I have seen in a while:

"B thinks that by Wednesday morning, the Republican Party is going to resemble post-Soviet Afghanistan. The good news is that makes Mitt Romney a warlord."

"D just voted and is eager to see if Obama will be the next Lincoln or the next Carter."

and then there are those who really have their priorities straight:

"Y looks forward to the end of the election season so he can start paying attention to things that really matter, like Georgetown basketball."

More to come as the day progresses...

Update:
Some even express opinions about how others express their opinions

"A is getting stressed out by the urgency with which the anchors on CNN make projections and instead prefers the quiet calm of the NYT's pop-up dashboard."

some are just bitter:

"Pennsylvania is an ugly state anyway."

some have new experiences:

"M did what he thinks is right. Which is rather new"

Which they think point to a conspiracy:

"J voted and it took like 2 seconds...then I filled my tank for $20.00......seriously??? Something smells fishy."

Where have you gone Jimmy Foxx?

The A's lack good hitters. What else is new?

Finding Beauty

There is beauty everywhere.  Sometimes it takes a little more time to find it.  Each place is a little different, and each place has its beautiful features.  San Diego's is it's ocean views.  Here are two that I love:

The view from my office...once I'm tenured at UCSD (Social Science Building, UCSD, La Jolla, CA)

 

The view from the road.  (La Jolla Shores Rd., La Jolla, CA)

An Election to be grateful for

Coming across this quote made me smile, but when looked upon in the context of this years election, it makes me glad.

"A democracy predicated on the ability to 'throw the rascals out' is far less convincing when it exists only in the abstract than when it is backed up by periodic examples of rascals actually flying through the doors."

-T.J. Pempel, Prof of Political Science at UC Berkley, 1990 (Then at U. Washington)

The result this November will probably be among other things, a testimony to the Democracy of the United States of America.

Forgetfulness breeds opportunities

As soon as we saw the lights on the fountain, we wished that we had not forgotten the camera in the car.  After we saw the result, we were glad we had what we did.

Livin' it.  (Balboa Park, San Diego, CA)

Lovin' it. (Balboa Park, San Diego, CA)

A Baseball Voice

Can I just say that I love to listen to Vin Scully?

I'm not a Dodgers' Fan, but I think he just has a wonderful voice for baseball broadcasting.

I think there are just a couple of voices that seem so perfect for listening:
Carl Kasell
Garrison Keilor
Vin Scully

and of the three I have heard the least of Vin Scully. Growing up on NPR, I have heard countless broadcasts of Prairie Home Companion and All Things Considered on long car rides back from Bangor, but only in the last couple of months as I've had more time to listen to the occasional Dodger game on the radio or through MLB.tv have I had the chance to really listen and appreciate Vin Scully. The contrast with the Padres broadcaster Ted Leitner is astounding. I will continue to look for voice samples, but if you could hear the difference, you'd understand.

UPDATE:
Voice Samples of
Garrison Keilor
Carl Kassel
Vin Scully (1)
Vin Scully (2)

UPDATE II
I also can't stand the voice of Angels TV announcer Rex Hudler. Terrible. How two teams in the same city have such a contrast!

Innovation in a Wedding

We are in the middle of marriage season.  Proposals, engagements, weddings.  At one point I was keeping track, and was up to 14 weddings of friends and acquaintances between March and August.  I've gotten more since.  This past weekend was my friend L's wedding.  Apparently she and her now husband have a thing for photo booths, and so for a guest book they rented a photo booth and told everyone to get their picture taken.  Here's A and mine's contribution.

You might also consider these our first engagement pictures.  I think they are some of the first ones we've taken since we got engaged last week.  That's a story, but not a blog story.  (San Carlos, CA)

 

I promise we'll have real engagement pictures before too long :-)

Baseball Theology

After watching the full 15 innings of the All-Star game, including this amazing throw by Nate McLouth of the Pittsburgh Pirates to Russell Martin of the LA Dodgers to get Dioner Navarro of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, I want to explain some of the reasons I think baseball is a wonderful game.

This is a game to be savored, not gulped. There's time to discuss everything between pitches or between innings. ~Bill Veeck

Baseball is for the leisurely afternoons of summer and for the unchanging dreams. ~Roger Kahn

When watching other sports you're always afraid that by getting up to do something in the other room you'll miss the action. If you're not always closely attentive you'll miss the amazing shot by the point guard, or the hard check by the left defenseman, or whatever. With each pitch and with each play there is time to think, talk about it, get nervous about it, and then savor it. And then if you miss it, there's always enough time inbetween pitches to watch replays of it.

You can't sit on a lead and run a few plays into the line and just kill the clock. You've got to throw the ball over the goddamn plate and give the other man his chance. That's why baseball is the greatest game of them all. ~Earl Weaver

Baseball is unique. There are no other sports (beside baseball's cousin cricket) where the defense has the ball. No team can ever say, as Vince Lombardi once did, that they never lost, they just ran out of time. Every team has their chance. Strategically it's fair.

Baseball fans love numbers. They love to swirl them around their mouths like Bordeaux wine. ~Pat Conroy

Baseball can be statistically measured in ways that other sports just can't. There are even stats that most people haven't heard of, such as Batting Average for Balls in Play, or Defensive Zone Ratings. With the rise of Sabermetrics, anything and everything can be measured, analyzed, and considered. If you haven't read Moneyball, it's worth a read.

The great thing about baseball is that there's a crisis every day. ~Gabe Paul

Baseball is played every day. Day in, day out. It's there. Not every third day, or once a week or once every two weeks, but every day. It reflects the daily grind. To truly excel in life doesn't require greatness every so often, but consistency and dedication and work every single day of your life.

Baseball is the only field of endeavor where a man can succeed three times out of ten and be considered a good performer. ~Ted Williams

At the same time, what is most important is that you keep trying. Most batters don't get a hit. Most fielders don't touch the ball in an inning, the important thing is that you are ready and always there.

Baseball? It's just a game - as simple as a ball and a bat. Yet, as complex as the American spirit it symbolizes. It's a sport, business - and sometimes even religion. ~Ernie Harwell, Broadcaster for the Detroit Tigers, "The Game for All America," 1955

Just some Political thinkings

"I run because it angers me ...... All you Minnesotans take a good hard look at all three of us. And you decide: If you were in a dark alley, which one of the three of us would you want with you"
-Jesse Ventura, July 9, 2008

Yes, Jesse Ventura is at least seriously contemplating running for Senate in Minnesota.
I'm not sure what to think. A comedian who isn't really funny, a wrestler who tries to be serious but fails, and a schmoozer. Can I just say I love Minnesota? Politics there are fascinating to watch. You have to wonder what goes through a Minnesotans' mind when they see these three and realize that they are picking between them to have one of them represent them in the U.S. Senate. How it just makes me smile.

Then there's also this in response to Ventura's quote:

First of all, Ventura just told us that he's angry, and we know he's pretty huge. And if I remember correctly from watching the WWF as a kid, he's kind of shiftless and unpredictable. For all I know, he'd take advantage of the darkness of the alley to whack me with a folding chair.

For all of you voting in Minnesota. Just don't get whacked by a folding chair. Then again, my Governor was also in The Predator.

Charlie Finley's type of Baseball

Orange baseballs, midgets, and now switch pitchers vs. switch hitters
Wonderful!

True Maine Traditions

The one time I raced this as a kid, my foot was numb for a month from being so cold.

We've missed the flowers

I had all the intentions of going out to Anza Borrego this spring break when the flowers were out, but missed it.  But these were on campus outside the Libraray.  (La Jolla, CA)

When I was at Pomona and running XC, whenever there was a particularly smoggy day with the smog pegged against the San Bernadino Mountains, one runner would always claim it was the marine layer rolling in.  This is the real marine layer rolling in.  (La Jolla, CA)

In case you haven't been paying attention...

You can catch up on the entire Democratic Primary in about 7 minutes... except that there is no policy substance in it.



Enjoy

I'm in Trouble

I received the following email today

------------------------------
From: UCSD
To: UCSD All Staff

ALL ACADEMICS AND STAFF AT UCSD

SUBJECT: Electronic Certification of Effort Reporting

------------------------------

I didn't read the rest of the email, but I'm going to stop surfing the internet now and go do work.

Aprils' Fool

My roommate's idea of April Fool's is April's Rent coming in coin.  $500 in coin.

The landlord wasn't too happy.

 

It was over 60 lbs. in change.  I was sorry for the bank teller and for A who had to carry it back from the bank in his bookbag.

April Fool's 2008 (La Jolla, CA) 

Balboa Park on a Sunday Morning

I would like to take my family here too on a beautiful spring morning (San Diego, CA)

A Laugh

This made me laugh this morning

Oversized apes are turning up everywhere these days, from speeches by politicians to articles in newspapers. These 800-pound gorillas -- along with some that are a little smaller, or a lot bigger -- are favorites of talking heads who apply the cliché to powerful people, companies and even movements.

Search the Web for just about every weight of gorilla in 100-pound increments from 100 to 900 and you'll find a lot of hits. (One of my favorites: "The Psalms are the 800-pound gorilla of evangelical worship.")

The gorillas divide, combine into one, lose weight and gain it back again. In a search of New York Times archives, I found a consultant, speaking about the Bell Atlantic-Nymex merger: "If you take one 250-pound gorilla and combine it with another 250-pound gorilla, you could end up with a 500-pound gorilla with fat thighs who may move slowly." About a law-firm breakup, a lawyer opined, "In reality, once the dust settles, the 800-pound gorilla simply becomes two 400-pound gorillas." A campaign consultant said of a politician, "He's not an 800-pound gorilla now, he's a 600-pound gorilla." (In 1999, American Journalism Review gathered gorilla sightings in the press.)

The Wall Street Journal has had fewer gorillas in its pages in recent years, but some of those that have appeared have been enormous. A letter last year referred to a 10,000-pound gorilla. And a 1996 article about PC games included a quote referring to Microsoft as the 6,000-pound gorilla. I asked the Journal's style guru, Paul R. Martin, about the apes. He told me he was "impressed that the appearances of the gorilla in the Journal were in direct quotation, so we weren't directly complicit in perpetuating the expression. As clichés go, I don't consider this one rampant in the Journal -- so far."

There doesn't appear to be any limit to just how big these gorillas can get. Several years ago, Willie Brown, then mayor of San Francisco, called the dot-com industry the 100,000-pound gorilla, though I'd like to see an updated weigh-in. In 1995, the Charlotte Observer called a passenger jet a 200,000-pound gorilla, which may have been an accurate weight but an incorrect species. Closer on both counts, the Associated Press once dubbed King Kong the 500,000-pound gorilla. Denver mayoral candidate John Hickenlooper was also a 500,000-pound gorilla, an opponent's campaign manager told the Denver Post in 2003. Mr. Hickenlooper won a run-off election with 69,526 votes, or one for every seven pounds.

Last year, the Roanoke Times & World News called car-tax relief "the 900 million-pound gorilla running amok in the Capitol." The Women's National Basketball Association was once improbably called a billion-pound gorilla, and in 1999, a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel columnist called Microsoft "the 900-billion-pound gorilla of computer operating systems." The biggest gorilla I could find is the U.S. economy, which former U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky in 1998 called the "seven-trillion-pound gorilla" -- one for each annual dollar of activity.

These gorillas clearly have been bred in captivity and fed a high-fat diet. Microsoft, the WNBA and the U.S. economy each dwarf the total weight of living, breathing gorillas, whose numbers have been dwindling even as their metaphorical counterparts expand. Bill Weber, a gorilla expert with the New York advocacy group Wildlife Conservation Society, says that adult male silverbacks, typically the biggest gorillas, usually weigh about 400 pounds. These estimates are imperfect, because as Dr. Weber notes, "It's difficult to get weights in the wild. They don't like standing on scales."

Just 650 to 700 mountain gorillas remain in the wild, along with four to five thousand eastern lowland gorillas and 50,000 to 100,000 lowland gorillas, Dr. Weber says. Even if all of them were typical silverbacks, they'd weigh about 40 million pounds together -- a far cry from Virginia car-tax relief.

Another way to Pick a President?

What a tie!
Fresh off it's hit piece, the NYT published this photo along with an article about possible VP candidates to join McCain's campaign.
I also blogged about it over at my new political gig. Check it out if you get a chance.

A new way to pick a President

In the midst of studying the new ways to influence voters through media, I have never seen nor heard of any effects from staring contests.

Pictures

A good friend maintains a photo blog. I've sent him some pictures in the past, you can see one of my favorites here

He's got some great stuff, I highly recommend it, if you have some time. Or if you don't.

How are you doing...

on your New Year's Resolutions?

How about spamming your email box with reminders to keep it up?

Just don't hassle me...

President Hinckley

Just my first viable memory, probably because of the reference to Fred Snodgrass:

"In all of these, someone dropped the ball. [Fred Snodgrass] had the self-confidence, possibly even the arrogance, to think that he didn’t really have to try, that he could make it with only half an effort. But the ball passed through his hands and hit the ground, and he gave away the game. Or [Roy Riegels] thinks he makes a smart catch of someone else’s fumble and runs the wrong way, only to give victory to his opponents.

"It all points up the need to be constantly alert. It points up the importance of unrelenting self-discipline. It indicates the necessity of constantly building our strength against temptation. It warns us against the misuse of our time, especially our idle time."

-President Gordon B. Hinckley, October 1994

He will be missed.

Messing with Nature's head

This poor tree is all confused if it's fall and should shed it's leaves or if it's spring and should sprout blossoms.  That's what happens when you don't have a winter. (La Jolla, CA)

If you don't like Baseball just skip this

A couple people were getting on me for not posting more, so in honor of them I will share with you one baseball link that made me realize how utterly pointless it is to follow rumors of trades and other possibilities like I have been doing for the last couple of months since baseball ended in October.
And so I give you the breaking news:
The Kansas City Royals have traded for Johan Santana. (If I'm going to say it, I might as well blow it even more out of proportion.)

A Year Flows By

I just thought this was a beautiful and not too cold way to end the old year.  (Lynn Run State Park, Ligonier, PA)