Self-Absorbed Boomer

"[A] delightfully named blog", (Sewell Chan, New York Times). "[R]elentlessly eclectic", (Gary, Iowa City). Taxing your attention span since 2005.

Tuesday, April 03, 2007

El Duque can hit.

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In tonight's game against the Cards, he contributed two hits and two runs batted in to the Mets' 4-1 victory, which assures a series...
2 comments:

The right reporter on the beat.

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Today's New York Times lead article on the Supreme Court's decision concerning carbon dioxide emissions is by ... Linda Greenhouse...
Monday, April 02, 2007

Must I give up backing the Florida Gators now?

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After all, I've always had this thing for underdogs.
1 comment:
Sunday, April 01, 2007

Mets win opener.

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They win it, 6-1, on the road, against the Cards, their nemesis in last year's NLCS. It wasn't as easy as the score indicates, with...
2 comments:
Thursday, March 29, 2007

The Battery Park turkey lives!

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Late last November, I was surprised to find a large, healthy looking turkey calmly enjoying the sun in Battery Park, at the southern tip o...
4 comments:

Best subway ad of the year, so far:

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Tuesday, March 27, 2007

"Duck!" "Where?"

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Flying over the North Cove, Battery Park City breakwater: Splashdown:
1 comment:
Sunday, March 25, 2007

Right! The lizard-fish conversion. Very easy.

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We have good clues about how fish evolved into land-dwelling animals, but how about those great aquatic reptiles of the Mesozoic, the ichth...
1 comment:
Saturday, March 24, 2007

Three cheers for Joe Queenan.

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From his op-ed, "Life in the Mean Seats", in today's New York Times , discussing proposals to ban booing (I'm not making t...
1 comment:
Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Harbinger

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A few days before tonight's equinox, I saw this fellow above my path through the small wooded area adjoining the South Cove at Battery P...
2 comments:
Monday, March 19, 2007

One galaxy, over easy.

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This image, taken from Astronomy Picture of the Day , is of a nearby (only 60 million or so light years) group of galaxies called Hickson 44...
Sunday, March 18, 2007

Is blogging like baseball?

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There's an interesting parallel between this post on blogging and marketing by Kathy Sierra (found through a link posted by bEnder on ...
3 comments:
Saturday, March 17, 2007

Chicken soup for the universe.

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We may have been taught that the universe is 99.99...% hard vacuum, but according to this New Scientist article, which I found through a l...

It's looking grim for the Mets.

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OK, they were split squad games, but losing to the Nats 13-1 and the Orioles 9-0 looks awful in any event. I'm not so worried about Par...

Silly science Saturday redux.

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Bad Astronomy links to a "snarky celebrity site" (and I link to Bad Astro linking thus; so does the Great Chain of Being advance ...

Someone in Alameda, California asks ...

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... "how to get along with a self-absorbed man". I'm sure s/he left this site just as perplexed as when s/he arrived.
Monday, March 12, 2007

A Dutch subject, but in a French style.

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This photo of Holland America Lines' Noordam , making her way at twilight past Staten Island towards the Narrows and the ocean, taken fr...
Sunday, March 11, 2007

Sal's retired, but the Erie Canal still hauls freight.

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I've got a mule, and her name is Sal, Fifteen miles on the Erie Canal. She's a good ol' worker an' a good ol' pal, Fifte...

The headline is comforting ...

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... but the story beneath it is a bit unsettling. Consider how fortunate was the Tunguska event. If the most likely thing had happened, th...
Friday, March 09, 2007

Postscript to "Silly science Saturday"

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As a follow-up to my earlier post about the Fair Education Foundation and its argument concerning the "Kabbalistic" foundations o...
Tuesday, March 06, 2007

Does the spring training record matter?

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The conventional wisdom seems to be, "Not much." But, here I am, just shy of a week into the Grapefruit League season, pondering ...
3 comments:
Saturday, March 03, 2007

Highly recommended reading.

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In my immediately previous post, I touched on a particular hobby-horse of mine, which is how the terms "liberal" and "conserv...
1 comment:
Friday, March 02, 2007

Is corporate greenery undemocratic?

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Since the news about the TXU deal came out, I've been waiting for the "conservative" reaction. It came on February 28 in thi...
2 comments:
Monday, February 26, 2007

Mais où sont les neiges d'antan?

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We haven't had much snow in Gotham this winter; mostly evanescent dustings that tantalize kids but don't leave enough to make decent...
2 comments:
Sunday, February 25, 2007

More Florida weirdness.

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Whenever I go there, I get the feeling I'm going back to the Mesozoic, where an encounter with Allosaurus fragilis in the thin forest s...
Thursday, February 22, 2007

Lenten stuff.

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Yesterday, I did something I hadn't ever before. I went to an Ash Wednesday service at my (Episcopalian, though it's now questionab...
Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Eye of the beholder.

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A friend and I were browsing in the Metropolitan Museum of Art gift shop when he said, "Publishing this was sure a risk." He was ...
Saturday, February 17, 2007

Silly science Saturday.

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Going through today's New York Times , I saw two items that led to the caption of this post. The first takes us, once again , to the T...
6 comments:
Friday, February 16, 2007

Readme, John McWhorter

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(See his column in yesterday's New York Sun .) No "recreational hostility" here. This blog guaranteed 100% snark-free. Adden...
2 comments:
Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Sauron's eye?

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This is the Helix Nebula, in Aquarius, photographed by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope (named for the late astrophysicist Lyman Spitzer, ...
5 comments:
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About Me

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I was born in a city renowned in Vaudeville humor, Altoona Pennsylvania. My dad was in the military, so we moved many times in my childhood. We lived in rural England from the time I was five until I was eight, and I began my formal education in a county council school, where my being American is likely all that saved me from having my bottom caned. When I was eleven my father retired from the Air Force, and we settled in Tampa.I graduated from the University of South Florida and Harvard Law School. Since then, apart from two years' active Army duty, I have lived in New York City; and have lived in the Borough of Brooklyn for many years. I'm married to Martha Foley, an historian and archivist. We are proud of our daughter, Elizabeth, and our granddaughters, Ada and Sigrid.
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