The Usefulness of Intellectual Pursuits

Virginia Woolf- "I will cut adrift—I will sit on pavements and drink coffee—I will dream; I will take my mind out of its iron cage and let it swim—this fine October."

...

What a great sentence to have in Pete Rose's obituary!

"Had Shakespeare written about baseball, he might well have seized on the case of Rose, whose ascent to the rarefied heights of sport was accompanied by the undisguised hubris that undermined him."

And there were two paragraphs on one of the greatest plays in baseball history. If he didn't make that play, the Phillies may not have won the 1980 World Series.

"In the ninth inning of the final game, the Phillies led, 4-1, but the Royals had loaded the bases with one out. Frank White of the Royals lifted a pop foul toward the first base dugout, and the Phils’ catcher, Bob Boone, slid over to make the catch, but as the ball came down it ticked off Boone’s glove, and for a moment it seemed that the Royals were being given the gift of an extra out — under the circumstances a harbinger of good fortune as palpable as pixie dust.

"Astonishingly, however, Rose, who was playing first base, had also edged toward the dugout, and when the ball jumped from Boone’s glove, as though a payoff for years of hustling to back up a play, he was close enough to snatch it out of the air. White was out, and moments later the series was over."

Beautiful. I learned a lot from that play! I think about it all the time, in varieties of ways, in every sport I've ever played. I think about it when I bobble the soap in the shower!

And sure, he never made it to the Hall of Fame, but the obituary did start with this: 

"One of the sport’s greatest players..."

No doubt. I'd take that! And since his lifetime ban is now over, let's put him in the Hall of Fame.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/30/sports/baseball/pete-rose-dead.html

October 1, 2024

...

Well the vice presidential debate is over and I don't think it's going to move any needles. Vance certainly wins on truth-telling. A week ago he said that he would make up things in order to prove his points, and he was true to his word.

October 1, 2024

...

The Roman historian, Sallust, was born on this day in 86 BC.

"Among intellectual pursuits, one of the most useful is the recording of past events."

...

Yosemite National Park was established by the U.S. Congress on this day in 1890, allowing people like Alex Honnold to climb El Capitan to risk their lives climbing it without climbing gear.

...

The Japanese have word for the practice of owning more books than one can read- tsundoku. We don't need our bookshelves to be monuments to the books we have read. Instead, they can be aspirational.

...

I just overheard an irritated Goodwill employee talking really loudly to another one. I almost thought they were fighting, but she was just griping.

"I don't care what she says! I'm not putting that on the shelf. A jigsaw puzzle of BAKED BEANS??? Who wants that? It's not quality."

I almost want to go back in an hour and buy something when she's at the register. When she asks me if I found everything okay I can say, "We'll there's this one thing I've been dreaming of, but I've never been able to find it..."

October 1, 2022

...

Let's take the argument for Sosa, McGwire, and Bonds to its logical conclusion. Imagine a super-steroid that helped someone hit twice as far, but it was 10 times as bad for the body. The Phillies could bring Steve Jeltz out of retirement so he could hit 150 home runs next year, he could die of cancer in 5 years, and a bunch of people would be shrugging with their arms akimbo saying, "It's legit!"

I'm making a prediction- today's the day that Aaron Judge becomes the legitimate single season home run king.

October 1, 2022

Postscript: Today happens to be Mark McGwire's birthday, born in 1963. I have six of his 1984 Olympic rookie card.

Rich Donnelly on Mark McGwire- "He hit a popup against us one day that went so high, all nine guys on our team called for it."

...

Would you believe me if I told you that Obama created more jobs per month in his second term, than Trump did in his first term, up to when coronavirus started?

October 1, 2021

...

Does this seem like an abuse to anybody? I checked Trump's website for his plan to the future... months ago he didn't have one, and I wanted to see if that was still the case. (It is.) I never gave my phone number to Trump campaign (as you might imagine), but right after I visited his site, this text came in.

October 1, 2020

...

You know what would be 100% more reasonable and ethical than withholding military aid from a country (that needs that aid to fend off Russia) in exchange for a personal political favor against a major political rival??? Answer- simply robbing that rival's headquarters like Nixon!

October 1, 2019

...

Sallust again- "If a man is ambitious for power, he can have no better supporters than the poor: They are not worried about their own possessions, since they have none, and whatever will put something in their pockets is right and proper in their eyes."

...

If we have 10 trillion cells in our bodies, then every second they live a collective 317,098 years.

October 1, 2017

...

Bad news- Emma was robbed at knife-point. Good news- she's fine. Eager to see her soon.

October 1, 2011

...

I like laughing at the people at the New Holland fair, and I like that they're laughing at me too.

October 1, 2011

...

Emma's mom just used the term "ingmar bergmanish"... and she couldn't have possibly used it more correctly.

October 1, 2011

...

...

Babe Ruth either did or didn't call his shot in the fifth inning of the 1932 World Series at Wrigley Field, on this day.

...

Nazi leaders were sentenced at the Nuremberg trials on this day in 1946. Seventy years to the day later, I turned my calendar to discover that some prankster commemorated the halfway point to the leader of the Third Reich's birthday.

...

The words In God We Trust first appeared on U.S. paper currency on this day in 1957. And everything has been great ever since.

...

Texas Chainsaw Massacre was released on this date in 1974. 

...

The Las Vegas strip shooting occured on this day in 2017. Almost more crazy than fifty-eight people getting killed is that another 869 others were injured (about half by gunfire.) The gunman, Stephen Paddock, commited suicide. Nobody knows his motive.

...

Jimmy Carter was born on this day in 1924. Imagine how pleased his parents must have been of him. In fact, here's something his mom said:

"Sometimes when I look at my children I say to myself, "Lillian, you should have stayed a virgin.""

...

On this day in 1928, George Peppard was born. I'll bet his parents loved it when their plan came together.

...

Essayist and journalist, E. B. White, left on this day in 1985. From Charlotte's Web:

"After all, what's a life, anyway? We're born, we live a little while, we die."

...

Curtis LeMay died on this day in 1990. We are fortunate to have outlived his ilk. Or have we?

"There are no innocent civilians. It is their government and you are fighting a people, you are not trying to fight an armed force anymore. So it doesn’t bother me so much to be killing the so-called innocent bystanders."

...

Other notable birthdays- Julie Andrews (1935), Rod Carew (1945), Zach Galifianakis (1969)

...

Another notable deathday- Louis Leakey (1972)

...

Great article on human nature!

You Are Not So Smart, by David McRaney

The Illusion of Asymmetric Insight

The Misconception: You celebrate diversity and respect others’ points of view.

The Truth: You are driven to create and form groups and then believe others are wrong just because they are others.

http://youarenotsosmart.com/2011/08/21/the-illusion-of-asymmetric-insight/

October 1, 2011

...

A group of protesters in front of a physics lab:

“What do we want?”.

“Time travel”

“When do we want it?”.

“Irrelevant.”

...

Esquire- Trump Completely Undermined His Own Secretary of State on North Korea

Oh boy. Now I don't believe I've ever agreed with North Korea on anything, but it does at least seem like they were correct in assessing that we've already declared war on them. In what other capacity would diplomacy be deemed futile? Just like the article said... I had a small sigh of relief when I heard we were negotiating behind the scenes, but now this.

http://esqr.co/l4aHcJH

October 1, 2017

...

Chicago Tribune Commentary: Ken Burns’ ‘Country Music’ dispels the arguments against cultural appropriation by James Huffman

TRUE! Dig a grave for cultural appropriation. Might as well be against sharing.

"In his moving and entertaining film, Burns demonstrates that country music became what it is and will become something different by bringing together diverse musical traditions and people of different cultural backgrounds. That’s progress, not cultural appropriation."

https://www.chicagotribune.com/opinion/commentary/ct-opinion-ken-burns-country-music-cultural-appropriation-20190930-mzo4pbdndbhhderzscuxdpkzv4-story.html

October 1, 2019

...

Night of the Living Dead premiered on this day in 1968, at the Fulton Theater in Pittsburgh. There was no movie ratings back then, so kids were free to go see it on a Saturday afternoon.

Roger Ebert said at the time:

"I don't think the younger kids really knew what hit them. They were used to going to movies, sure, and they'd seen some horror movies before, sure, but this was something else." According to Ebert, the film affected the audience immediately. "The kids in the audience were stunned. There was almost complete silence. The movie had stopped being delightfully scary about halfway through, and had become unexpectedly terrifying. There was a little girl across the aisle from me, maybe nine years old, who was sitting very still in her seat and crying... It's hard to remember what sort of effect this movie might have had on you when you were six or seven. But try to remember. At that age, kids take the events on the screen seriously, and they identify fiercely with the hero. When the hero is killed, that's not an unhappy ending but a tragic one: Nobody got out alive. It's just over, that's all."

...

Fairmount, Indiana, from this day in 1995. Photo by Lenny.

...

Jack Kerouac:

The bus roared on. 

I was going home in October. 

Everybody goes home 

in October.

...

Confucius- "When anger rises, think of the consequences."

...

Epictetus- "Circumstances do not rise to meet our expectations. Events happen as they do. People behave as they are. Embrace what you actually get."

...

Michel de Montaigne- “He who fears suffering already suffers from his fear.”

...

Carl Sagan- "Nothing distubs me more than the glorification of stupidity."

...

Pythagoras- “It is better to be silent than to dispute with the ignorant.”

...

Sallust, yet again- "Only a few prefer liberty- the majority seek nothing more than fair masters."

...

Socrates- “The only true wisdom is in knowing that you know nothing.”

...

Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams- The virtuous man contents himself with dreaming that which the wicked man does in actual life."

...

Miguel de Unamuno- "The less we read, the more harmful it is what we read."

...

Charles Addams- "It's hard to say. Sometimes people have had terrible childhoods. And sometimes they just haven't found their special place in life. And sometimes they're dogs from hell and must be destroyed."

...

Stephen King, Doctor Sleep- "FEAR stands for fuck everything and run."

...