Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy ...

... (or team). I know, I promised no more baseball posts for a while, but this is just too good to resist.

I never thought I'd say it, but I'm actually beginning to feel sorry for the Yanks. Not, mind you, sorry enough to want them to win this weekend's series with the Red Sox.

6/10 update: When I looked at this post the morning after committing it to the ether, I felt a nagging sensation that I ought to delete it. A couple of days ago sydbristow (see "comments" below) pointed out that, since I posted, the Yanks had won five straight (it's now six). He tactfully did not add that the Mets have gone into a vertiginous tailspin.

Ye Gods! Forgive my presumption. I will never say I'm sorry for the Yankees again.

6/12 update: Twiffer, ever solicitous of my mental well being, tries again to cheer me up (see "comments" below), pointing out, inter alia:

they [the Yankees] have dangerous bats, but apparently streaky ones. and still don't have trustworthy pitching.

Hmmm ... what other New York team fits that description to a tee?

And visitor number 5,000 is ...

... someone in Mountain View, California who got here by way of a Google search for "Eisenhower Locks map". Massena, New York is a long way from California. I hope you enjoy the trip.

Anyway, unlike most of the people who get here via
Google searches, you were actually able to get what you were after by following one simple link from my blog. I'm tempted to say that should be reward enough, but, seriously, if you happen to read this and if your travel plans ever include New York City, I'll be delighted to buy you a drink (or, if you're off the sauce or just not in the mood, a genuine Brooklyn egg cream - if you're allergic to eggs or lactose intolerant, no worries, as it contains neither egg nor cream).

Bite (see "comments" below) asks: How do you know the city and town the guy was from?

If you scroll down to the bottom of my blog, on the left side of the page you'll see a button that says "Sitemeter". Double-click on that, and you'll get a list of the last twenty visits to the blog. In most cases, as you can see, the list includes the location from which the hit came. Some computers are cagey and only disclose what country they're in, some others simply say "unknown".

I'll admit that there's some uncertainty over the actual location of my 5,000th visitor. The Sitemeter says "Mountain View", but I get an awful lot of hits from that location, which suggests that there may be a large corporate server (or two or three) there that serves a number of locations. For example, if I were to visit someone's blog using the computer in my office, which is in lower Manhattan, and that blog had a Sitemeter, my hit would be shown as coming from Philadelphia, because that's where the central server for the firm is located. So, when I say my 5,000th visitor was from Mountain View, I'm really making a semi-educated guess based on the best information I have.

What I really don't know is that this visitor was a guy.

The Canadian nuclear family.

On weekend mornings, I've gotten into the habit of walking to the north end of the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, then down Squibb Hill, across Old Fulton Street and under the Brooklyn Bridge to the Empire-Fulton Ferry State Park. There, I've been encountering this trio, usually near the south edge of the Park, next to the east tower of the Bridge.


Here's a close-up of the young 'un.

Decoration Day

This morning, as usual, I woke up to WQXR, the New York Times affiliated radio station. The 7:30 news included an item about a group of people who set out to identify and (in some cases literally) uncover all of the burial places of Civil War veterans in Green-Wood Cemetery. They expected to find about 200 such missing graves; the actual number was close to 3,000. Having identified and located these graves, they are now replacing missing markers (see the Newsday story here) and, today, the Cemetery hosted a gathering of descendants and relatives of these veterans, many of whom who will now be able to leave flowers and other tokens of remembrance. In this connection, the WQXR announcer mentioned the original name of Memorial Day, "Decoration Day".

The Civil War was, not surprisingly, the deadliest war for Americans, with more killed than in all other wars in which this country has been involved, combined. The total number of dead was approximately 620,000.

Another solar ship proposal.

A while back, I posted about a small vessel that made what was heralded as the first solar powered crossing of the Atlantic. Now, New York institution Circle Line has announced plans to put a solar powered ferry into service on its enormously popular Battery Park to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island route. Below is an image (from the New York Post, via Tom Turner of NYC Maritime) of the proposed vessel.


In my earlier post, I noted that sailing vessels could be said to be "solar powered", as wind is created by solar energy. The Circle Line design makes use of wind as well as solar cells, by placing the cells on a rigid "wing" that stands above the vessel like a sail and can be rotated to secure maximal wind assistance. There is also a "cheat" to reflect commercial reality: auxiliary diesel engines.

The mother ship's the one.

See here (lyrics by Don Van Vliet, a.k.a. Captain Beefheart).

Another baseball diatribe.

Thank God the Red Sox won. Otherwise, I'd be in a much worse mood.

The horror of horrors is happening: the Mets' starting rotation is collapsing. Maine has been shellacked twice in a row. Glavine was lucky to get a win in his last outing. Now Sosa, who, like Maine, began so promisingly, has joined the parade of failure. And, of course, against the hated Braves.

I'm going to avert my eyes for a while; I suspect things are about to get very ugly. For those of you who could care less about the game, I promise no more baseball posts for a while.

Update: In an apparent effort to get me out of my funk, Twiffer asks when Pedro's due back. Well, according to the Mets' official site, he could be back by August. I shudder to think how big Atlanta's division lead will be by then.

Another update: OK, I said no more baseball posts for a while, but, in my mustelid fashion, I'll be quick to point out that I didn't rule out multiple updates. Anyway, Joe Martini, who is both a Mets and a Met fan (and thereby a worthy fellow indeed) takes a page from Douglas Adams and advises me, "Don't panic." (See comments below.) OK, we did rebound from losing another series to the tomahawk choppers by besting the flopping fish, with El Duque coming off the DL and providing a strong showing on the mound. Maybe there's hope. Tonight we see if Maine has recovered from his funk.

Joe also accuses me of giving this blog a tautologous title. Any thoughts?

5/29 update: Rhonda Byrne's theory looking shaky! How 'bout the power of negative thinking to produce positive results? See, I knew that if I wrote that the Mets are toast, they'd turn right around and go on a big winning streak, just to prove me wrong.

Of course, my writing this probably assures that they will now go into a death spiral.

5/30 update: one of my pet theories is also in trouble. I used to believe in the "curse of the ex-Met"; i.e., that players traded away by the Mets or allowed to go as free agents would be poison when the Mets played their new teams. Now, it seems like they can be candy.

5/31 update: Do I now have to worry about the curse of the Met who never was?

We're approaching a milestone.

According to my sitemeter, S-AB will soon have its 5,000th visit.

What would be an appropriate gift for my 5,000th guest? Some possibilities:

1. an autographed copy of Charles Reich's The Greening of America;

2. a vinyl LP of Full Sail, by Loggins & Messina;

3. an art nouveau style poster advertising a concert featuring Quicksilver Messenger Service and It's a Beautiful Day, at Winterland; or

4. a non-autographed copy of Theory of Value, by Gerard Debreu.

Actually, I don't have any of these, except 4.*, which I'm not about to give up (I'm still trying to make my way through Chapter 1, "Mathematics", of which the author says, "Its reading requires, in principle, no knowledge of mathematics." (Emphasis in original.) Wonderful words: "in principle". )

Anyway, you'll get some kind of recognition, even if (as seems likely) you're someone from Bulgaria who happened on my site by doing a Google search for guitar tablature for "Strong Boy" by the International Submarine Band. And, if you're ever in my neck of the conurbation, I'll be glad to buy you a drink.

*I'll admit, though it pains me, to having once owned 2.

Yanks 6, Mets 2

Yuck.

As a long suffering Mets fan, I (1) knew this would happen, and (2) know that the only conclusion to draw from this is: the Mets can still lose the season series against the Yankees. Well, that, and maybe Maine has fallen into some vortex of doom from which he will never return.

Bright note: Red Sox took two of three from Braves.

Update: Twiffer accuses me of sounding like a Cubs fan. The Mets, like the Cubs, have a way of disappointing their fans; nevertheless, I'll admit that the Mets have, at least, participated in four, and won two, World Series within the memory of many living Americans. Also, I'll confess, Tim Marchman's characterization of Mets fans fits me well. (Perhaps I should consider, too, the possibility that Rhonda Byrne is right; that my negative thoughts are actually contributing to John Maine's inability to locate his pitches.)

Meanwhile, August says, "we can all be glad we're not from Pittsburgh." Well, I was born not too far from Pittsburgh, and did briefly come out of a baseball latency period (which began in 1957, when the Dodgers went to L.A.) to root for the 1960 "Beat 'em Bucs!" Pirates, who rewarded me with a historic Series victory over those horrid Yanks before sinking once again into oblivion. (Actually, I can recall the Pirates being a halfway decent team in the late '80s and early '90s, when I would occasionally think, "If only Bobby Bonilla was a Met ... ".)

Mets 10, Yanks 7

As a long suffering Mets fan, I know that the only conclusion to draw from this is: the Mets will win their first series this season against the Yankees.

Kudos to Wright, Chavez and Heilman.

Bosox: Great first game, but what happened in the second?

Mets 3, Yanks 2

As a long suffering Mets fan, I know that the only conclusion to draw from this is: the Mets will not be swept in their season series with the Yankees.

Kudos to Perez and Chavez.

More news on the alternative energy front.

I have a reflexive distrust of scientists who claim to be victims of misunderstanding, and compare themselves to earlier "crackpots" like Galileo or Einstein. Nevertheless, I found this story interesting, if only because Professor Woodall is on the faculty of a respectable university* and I'm beginning to believe just about anything bad about the executive branch of the federal government these days. This does seem to have more traction than cold fusion, even if, like the solar powered ship, practical application seems a way off.

It's not so far off, however, as any prospect of our tapping into the ultimate source of clean energy.

Meanwhile, it's nice to know that you can do a little bit for the environment just by sucking down a tube of Foster's.

*Yeah, I know, there's a guy at Harvard who believes in alien abductions.

Galactic demolition derby.

Further to an earlier post about the eagerly-awaited Milky Way/M31 (Andromeda) smashup (don't hold your breath), here's an interesting piece about what sometimes happens when galaxies collide. (The image above, by Max, Canalizo and deVries of the University of California at Santa Cruz, taken with the Keck 2 telescope in Hawaii, is an infrared picture of NGC 6240, a system of two galaxies in collision.)

The problem with interleague play.

I've never been keen on it, but not as intolerant of it as I am of the designated hitter rule. With his usual acuity, Tim Marchman lays out three bad reasons and one very good reason for hating it.

I may feel differently if the Mets sweep the Yanks this weekend. I also take comfort in seeing that the Braves will be at Fenway.

Update: Schadenfreude supports my opposition to the DH (click on "comments" below), but Twiffer rehashes his old and unpersuasive argument for it (see our dialogue here - unfortunately, this is from the time when Blogger Beta was labeling all comments "anonymous").

How are blog posts like fine red wine?

They improve with age. One of the delights of the electronic medium is one's ability to go back and edit what one has already published. For example, earlier today I posted on Brooklyn Heights Blog about a play some neighbors of mine are producing and directing. After hitting "post", I went to the blog and re-read what I'd done, noted a few punctuation glitches, and corrected them. Then the Blog's Editor-in-Chief read it and made a few changes, including adding some category tags. Next, I e-mailed a link to the play's producer, who responded that she liked the post very much, but added a factoid of interest that I didn't know. This I added to the post. A few minutes ago, I went back to it and re-read, finding a few infelicities of wording that I corrected. So, a post that first was published at about 1:30 this afternoon has already gone through four revisions.

Of course, one can also append updates, addenda or corrections to posts, as I often do, usually because of comments I've received. Blogging should, at its best, be a collaborative effort.

Update: I've already made one correction to this post (capitalization typo corrected) less than ten minutes after it was first published.

Swiss solar ship succeeds.

Sun 21, shown above, arrived at the North Cove yacht harbor, Battery Park City, on May 8, having begun her somewhat circuitous voyage in Basel, Switzerland, last November. She sailed down the Rhine to the North Sea, around the west coast of Europe and up the Guayaquil River to Seville, Spain, back to the Atlantic and the Canaries, across the ocean to Martinique, up the Antilles to Miami, and up the U.S. east coast to New York. You can see video accounts of her voyage using an interactive map on this site.

The immediate practical significance of this isn't great; much remains to be done to make solar power of the type used on Sun 21 (using solar panels to power electric motors) economical for large commercial vessels. Indeed, the claim that hers is the first "solar powered" crossing of the Atlantic isn't strictly true: since the wind is caused by the sun's heating of the atmosphere, all sailing vessels can be said to be "solar powered". Still, it's an encouraging development.

Exile to the exurbs.

That could be our fate. The good news is, we have five billion years to prepare.

Time to eat some crow.

Was I really so dismissive of Oliver Perez's potential when the Mets got him in a trade for Xavier Nady last year?

Was T. Rex a basso profundo?

Get the low-down here.

Brooklyn Bloggers Convene

Thursday evening, about one hundred mostly Brooklyn based bloggers, including me, gathered at the Old Stone House for the second annual Brooklyn Blogfest, organized by Louise Crawford of Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn.* In addition to bloggers, representatives of mainstream media, including the New York Times and Washington Post, were there.

The Times reporter had to sit through some barbed criticism of the Grey Lady's coverage of Brooklyn in general ("they report the murders and the fires, but not the interesting stuff", complained one blogger) and the Atlantic Yards development (for my nuanced view on this issue, let me tax your attention span here). Three of the featured speakers, Lumi Michelle Rolley of No Land Grab, Robert Guskind of Gowanus Lounge and Norman Oder of Atlantic Yards Report, all oppose the development, although Gowanus Lounge is not primarily, or even mostly, an anti-Yards blog.
>Writer Steven Berlin Johnson (photo above), who has his own blog, spoke about his new project, outside.in, the object of which, he said, is to "organize the web geographically." The site allows you to find your location on a map, click on it and see what local bloggers are discussing. Johnson tested it on a recent visit to Denver, where he located his hotel and discovered that the hot topic in that neighborhood was the architect Daniel Libeskind, best known in New York for his master plan for the World Trade Center site. Reading some of the local chatter, Johnson learned that Libeskind had designed the recently completed addition to the Denver Art Museum. He then went to the window, pulled the curtain open, and saw that very building in front of him.

Johnson also talked about his recent survey that rated Clinton Hill, Brooklyn as America's bloggiest neighborhood. He admitted that he had fudged the results in one way: had he listed the top ten localities in order, six of them would have been in Brooklyn. Since he wanted more geographical diversity in the list, he decided to include only the top Brooklyn entry. He said the most salient common factor of "bloggy" neighborhoods is gentrification; of the top ten, six are undergoing that process.

After the formal program, bloggers gathered downstairs to socialize over margaritas and Mexican snacks. This gave me a chance to meet Gary, of runs brooklyn/brooklyn runs and his wife, Kate. (Thanks for the kind mention on your blog, Gary. Astrophysics is always exciting; I'm hoping that the condition of the Mets' starting rotation doesn't become so.) I also had a pleasant chat with Pastor Daniel Meeter of the Old First Reformed Church, who turned out to be something of a train buff, and learned of his blog, Old First, which I will add to my links as soon as I have the energy to undertake the tedious process Blogger has created to do this.

As it turns out, not only did the Times reporter, Sewell Chan, endure the bashing his paper took; he wrote a comprehensive article about the Blogfest, which was published online. Mr. Chan is surely among the few who think my blog is "delightfully named"; for that, and the mention in his article, I'm most grateful.

*The title of Ms. Crawford's blog is a play on the title of a Thomas Wolfe short story (later also used for a novel by Thomas Boyle), "Only the Dead Know Brooklyn". The couple who now own the Cobble Hill house where Wolfe was living in the basement apartment when he wrote that story, Gene and Pam Moore, are friends of ours, and have a daughter, Maia, who is the same age as Liz. As was reported several weeks ago in the Brooklyn Heights Press, one day some years ago Gene was surprised to hear a woman's voice coming through a bullhorn in front of the house. He went outside and found a tour group from Asheville, North Carolina, Wolfe's home town, who were visiting all of the Wolfe sites in New York. Gene, who had Maia (then about four) next to him, invited them to come in and see the basement where Wolfe had lived. Opening the bathroom door, he said, "this is where Mr. Wolfe shaved." For a long time after that, Maia was afraid to go to the basement, for fear she might find Mr. Wolfe shaving.

Adios, Cuauhtemoc

Cuauhtemoc, the tall ship that trains future officers of the Armada de Mexico, sailed into New York Harbor and tied up to Pier 17 at the South Street Seaport last Friday, just in time to celebrate Cinco de Mayo. (My photo of her, taken last Friday from the Brooklyn Heights Promenade across the East River, was posted on Brooklyn Heights Blog.)

The photo above, taken from Pier 16, shows her departing today, assisted into the East River by the tug Margaret Moran, with Brooklyn Heights in the background. Mariachi music was blaring from speakers on her masts as she sailed, but the sailors balanced on the spars fortunately resisted any temptation to start dancing.

"Nuts to you!"

I encountered this critter near the southern end of Battery Park City, so I can't help but wonder if it's a descendent of the one I met back in the 1970s and wrote about here (somehow, my typo on "immigrant" made it through the Times's vaunted copy editing).

Anyway, this one seemed more self-sufficient. Have supply-side economic policies had a salutary effect on the squirrel community?

Queen Mary 2, yet again.

Here she is, seen from the Battery Park City Esplanade, looming over Governors Island as she's docked at the Brooklyn Cruise Ship Terminal.


And here she is, viewed again from the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, with her "red duster" prominently displayed at her stern.

Foresight is everything.

A colleague sent me this gem of a "supposed quote" from former Orioles manager Earl Weaver:

If you are going to hit into a double play, you should have the good sense to strike out.

Times Square, crossroads of the sky.

The twin turboprop has probably just taken off from La Guardia, heading somewhere south. The jet leaving the contrail is flying north, perhaps Miami to Montreal.

Oh, to be a Brooklyn Dodger!

The baseball team was at one time called the Trolley Dodgers (and before that the Bridegrooms; see here) because of the dense network of trolley lines that traversed Brooklyn a century ago, some of which lasted into the 1950s (see photos here). The trolleys pictured above sit forlornly on track between the water and the nineteenth century Red Hook warehouse building that now houses a Fairway market. The two nearest cars, which are of the PCC type actually used in Brooklyn before the last of the Borough's trolley lines shut down, were acquired as surplus from the Boston MTA's "Green Line", but have been repainted to match the color scheme worn by their erstwhile sisters in Brooklyn. The white car at the rear is of German manufacture and is on lease from the City of Oslo.

These cars were acquired by Bob Diamond, whose plan to restore trolley service along the Red Hook waterfront was thwarted by city bureaucracy. You can read the story here.

Update: Topazz says that, if a movie is made about the Red Hook trolley story, I should get the Jeff Goldblum part. I see that Jeff and I are both natives of western Pennsylvania. Nevertheless, he has a lot more hair than I do.

A note to a reader in San Francisco.

To whoever got here via a Google search for "sea level rise and Brooklyn Heights Promenade": believe me, if all the arctic and antarctic ice were to melt, the Promenade would still be above water.

This isn't to say we're not concerned about climate change here. After all, most of us work in lower Manhattan, which lies much closer to sea level. Moreover, we'd hate to lose the piers that will support much of the new park planned below the Promenade.

Incidentally, the Heights are a product of the last Ice Age. We sit on the lower boundary of the continental glacier at its maximum extent, and the high ground consists of debris pushed southward by the glacier as it grew, then left behind as it melted.

Red Sox 7, Yanks 6

That almost makes up for the Mets losing to the Braves.

4/21 update: Perfect baseball (and perfect spring) day today, as Mets and Sox win and Braves and Yanks lose.

4/22 upchuck: I can sense Ray Glier's keystrokes as he pounds out his piece procaliming the restoration of proper order to the planet; the rightful NL East champions once again rule, the unworthy upstarts are relegated to ruin. (Yeah, I know, it's a long season ... )

When I saw the Braves ahead 9-6 in the bottom of the ninth with one out, I heaved a great sigh. My daughter asked if I was all right. "No," I said, and told her why. "Oh, get over it, Dad," she said. "It's just baseball, a game guys get paid millions to play while kids are starving in Sudan." OK, I'll go to my room and sulk.

Any hope for salvaging this day now rests on the arm of Kaibutsu. (Thanks to Twiffer for letting me know Daisuke's Japanese nickname, which is so much better than Dice-K.)

4/22 uplift: Sox sweep!

At least no pundit will be crowing about the restoration of the proper pecking order between New York teams.

Palms in the Catskills?

No, this isn't a global warming alarm. It seems that there were palm-like trees growing in that region in the Middle Devonian, some 380 million years ago (see here).

Update: Geology maven Twiffer points out that, in the Middle Devonian, the bit of tectonic plate on which the Catskills now sit was at a latitude comparable to the present-day Caribbean, so the presence of palms, or something possibly ancestral to them, is not surprising.

Although I'm confident that Twiffer is right about this, statements about ancient geological dispositions bring to mind a quotation from Mark Twain's Life on the Mississippi, which he presented as a critique of scientific speculation, but is actually an attack on simple-minded extrapolation:

In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Lower Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. That is an average of a trifle over one mile and a third per year. Therefore, any calm person, who is not blind or idiotic, can see that in the Old Oolitic Silurian Period, just a million years ago next November, the Lower Mississippi River was upwards of one million three hundred thousand miles long, and stuck out over the Gulf of Mexico like a fishing-rod.

Fearful symmetry.

The image is of the Red Square Nebula, recently discovered in the constellation Serpens by astronomers using the Palomar and Keck telescopes in California and Hawaii, respectively. Credit for the photograph, which I downloaded from AOL News, goes to Peter Tuthill of Sydney University and Palomar/Keck; James Lloyd of Cornell University is credited as co-discoverer of the Nebula.

Like the Helix Nebula featured in an earlier post, the Red Square is debris from a dying star; however, it's very neatly distributed debris. You can read more about it in New Scientist here.