Cyclones off to a good start.

I hope my posting this doesn't jinx them, but the Brooklyn Cyclones, the Mets' Class A New York - Penn League affiliate, have opened their season by winning a series with their across-the-Narrows archrivals, the Staten Island Yankees. This is a promising beginning to the second stint of Edgar Alfonzo as manager. (Edgar should not be confused with his brother, Edgardo, a former Met who now plays for the Long Island Ducks. Venezuelans seem to have an odd penchant for giving their sons similar names. Endy Chavez has a brother named Ender, who formerly played for the Cyclones.)

Update: Cyclones have now won two series in succession, the second from upriver rivals Hudson Valley Renegades, so their record now stands at 4-2.

Joe Martini (see "comments" below) offers this testimonial:

My Dad often goes to Keyspan Park with the rest of his cronies from Avenue U. It's a great experience. Young kids getting their first taste of professional ball and that great ocean view.

Joe may be the only commenter on my blog who can link "Grand Opera" with "Port-o-San."

Solstice

A breeze batters branches;
the honey locust whispers,
¡Esperanza, esperanza!
On the harbor, tugs flit
on fathomless errands,
and beyond, the dentate skyline
no longer bears the memory
of Yamasaki’s towers, their image now
recumbent in brass at my feet.
A squirrel, brazen, fixes me with blank eyes

while lithe young women, bobbing in tandem,
do pushups against a park bench.
Toddlers screech and stumble,
as nannies share news in lilting
island accents. The sun arches
on its marathon course as I turn
toward home. A gust rattles
the gingko: “It’s all downhill from here.”

Dolly Lyon

Since I first posted this, I've learned more about Dolly Lyon's singing career, and obtained some of her recordings, so I've been able to rewrite this extensively.

With her sparkling wide set eyes and radiant smile, she looked ready to take the world by dint of sheer charm. But that demure face belied a powerful, though honeyed, alto voice. There's little information available about this talented singer who was active in the mid to late 1950s. The most I've been able to find is here.

Evidently, her earliest recordings were as a singer with Erskine Hawkins and his Orchestra. Through web searches I was able to get two 45 RPM Erskine Hawkins records on which she's the vocalist on one side of each. These are both Decca promotional records (i.e. distributed free to DJs); one is identified in a discography as probably dating from 1956, the other, from its slightly higher sequential number, I presume is from about the same time. Hawkins' big band (best known for originating "Tuxedo Junction", although the version by the all white Glenn Miller Orchestra unfortunately eclipsed the Hawk's--in my opinion--superior rendition) broke up in 1953; after that, he played with smaller groups and his style evolved from the big band swing popular in the 1930s and '40s to the jump blues and bop that began to dominate the dance scene after World War II.

The two Hawkins records featuring Lyon as vocalist are "Waltz in Blue", which has a strong R&B flavor, and "Nobody Plays Piano Like Sacramento", an uptempo number which, as its title implies, has lively piano accompaniment. The piano is by Ace Harris, who had been with Hawkins since the big band days. Unfortunately, these records are well worn, obscuring the quality of Lyon's vocal performances.

Probably as a result of her work with Hawkins, Lyon came to the attention of Charles Merenstein, then of Apollo Records. He is nowadays remembered for having penned, along with Otis Blackwell and Jimmy Jones, "Handy Man", which was a hit for Jones in 1959 (love the Triumph TR roadster in the background) and later covered by Del Shannon and James Taylor. Merenstein recorded Lyon doing two songs released as a single in 1957, "Palm of Your Hand" and "Call Me Darling".

"Palm of Your Hand", the "A" side of the single, is a steady rocker that kicks off with two drumbeats, then joined by piano and sax, then by Lyon, whose voice is seductive and smoky, reminiscent of Peggy Lee but warm where Lee is cool. The sax is in a style like that of Willis "Gator Tail" Jackson (hear him on Papa Daddy accompanying his then wife, Ruth Brown). Indeed, it may have been him, as he was one of the artists who recorded for Apollo. "Palm" also includes a lovely, languid guitar bridge. (Thanks to cadlagh1 for the clip.)


"Call Me Darling" starts with Lyon's voice, initially a capella, sounding the words "call me", then joined by snare, piano, bass, and sax. Over this standard R&B accompaniment, her voice soars, dips, and sways, with occasional vibrato, at once flirtatious and precatory. This is slow dance R&B at its hug-your-sweetie-tight-and-shuffle-your-feet best. The song was also recorded by, among others, Peggy Lee, Tennessee Ernie Ford, and Ann-Margret.

Despite Merenstein's enthusiasm, neither "Call Me" nor "Palm" ever charted, though "Palm" made the "new records to watch" list at Chicago's WJJD for the week of October 13, 1958.

Merenstein later had Lyon front the Cellos, a five man doo-wop group out of the old Charles Evans Hughes High School on Manhattan's West 18th Street, on a song titled "Don't Wait", which could have been a contender for hottest teen romance novelty song of 1958, but was not released. It's the second song on the clip above, following the Cellos, sans Lyon, doing "Doo Doo Wah," (If you want to go straight to "Don't Wait," go to 3:06.) On "Don't Wait," Lyon's voice builds on the seductive quality heard on "Palm", and she manages to make the words "first date" sound like the prelude to a Neronian orgy. Maybe the song was just a little too spicy for its time. It's now available on a Cellos compilation CD that came out in 1992, "Rang Tang Ding Dong" (Relic 7029).

Prowling the back alleys of the web I managed to find one more Dolly Lyon 45: "Memories of You" and "Chattanooga Cha-Cha", on the Buzz label (this is evidently a long defunct indie label that was based in New York and not related to any similarly named outfit existing today, of which there are several). The record is badly worn, but it is possible to make out that Lyon's voice has taken on (I'm assuming, though there's no date on the record, that it was made after her Apollo recordings) even more of a smoky quality, edging into Billie Holiday territory. "Memories" is a standard slow R&B number, while "Chattanooga" is a shameless attempt to cash in on the cha-cha craze of 1957-58 by taking a jazz standard (see a clip featuring the Glenn Miller Orchestra, Dorothy Dandridge and the Nicholas Brothers here) and setting it to a cha-cha beat, which only makes it sound silly. It's an unfortunate end to what was a promising career. (There may have been a later recording. A record dealer in Michigan lists “Dolly Lyon—’I Feel It / Stop’ white disc jockey copy , xol ,Doe 104” in his inventory; however, when contacted, he said he couldn’t locate the record and may have sold it.) Update: thanks to Andrew Bohan, I now have a YouTube clip (audio with a still of the record label) of Lyon doing "I Feel It" on the Doe label:


"I Feel It" is a pedal-to-the-metal rocker featuring a frenetic vocal and a wailing tenor sax bridge. Lyon's voice sounds fresh, without the sultry, smoky quality it has on "Don't Wait" and on the Buzz recordings.

While Dolly Lyon is largely forgotten in her own country, judging by hits on my blog off web searches since I first posted this, I can say that she has something of a fan base in Europe and Britain, particularly in the north of England, where "Palm of Your Hand" is considered part of the Northern Soul canon, and in Belgium, where "Palm" is part of a popular but hard to define genre called popcorn.

Pride of Baltimore II visits New York.

A few days ago I saw Pride of Baltimore II docked at the North Cove, Battery Park City. This evoked a bittersweet memory. In the summer of 1983, I was visiting Vancouver, and saw the first Pride of Baltimore docked there. Three years later, she was lost in a severe storm at sea, along with four of her crew.

Pride II, like the first Pride, is a replica of a ship named Chasseur which, under the command of Thomas Boyle, raided British shipping during the War of 1812. Chasseur exemplified a type called the Baltimore clipper, a topsail schooner with sharply raked masts set well aft, a long bowsprit and raked stern, and deep draft giving excellent ability to sail close to the wind. These characteristics made the clippers well suited for privateering, as well as for transporting aspiring prospectors around Cape Horn to California during the 1849 gold rush. Unfortunately, they also made them adaptable for the slave trade.

Reversal of fortune.

August, my taking up your suggestion had the effect you wanted. (And now I know why you made it.)

Kudos to Reyes, Perez and Gomez.

Red Sox won, too. Unfortunately, so did the Braves.

Before the Yankee game, Tim Marchman delivered a trenchant analysis of the Mets' situation.

Update: Today's game? In the immortal words of Warren Zevon, "I don't want to talk about it."

6/19 update: Mets/Yanks season series ends in a tie, just like last year. Mets bounce back against Twins at Shea, with Maine showing good form. Marchman, however, has an unsettling analysis of the prospects for Carlos Delgado, who homered last night.

Meanwhile, down in kudzu korner, Schilling gets shellacked as the Red Sox fall to the Braves. No help there. Sorry, Twiffer, and dearest wife.

6/21 update: Martini on the Mets.

We were at the game Wednesday.
No hitting.
No pitching.
Five errors (Easley muffed an easy chance but the scorer found it in his heart to call it a hit).
AND $6.75 FOR A BEER!

Say it ain't so, Joe!

Homeland Security

Keeping close watch on the action outside the Damascus Bakery on Atlantic Avenue.

Before you do the war, do the math.

The ever-popular Cosmic Log provides a link to a University of Georgia press release announcing UGA assistant professor Patricia L. Sullivan's publication of a paper in which she describes a statistical method for predicting the outcome of a war. She claims an eighty percent success ratio in using her method to "predict", ex post, the outcomes of the 122 conflicts that have ocurred since World War Two, and which have involved one of the great powers against a weaker adversary. She says her method shows that the probability of U.S. success in the first Gulf War, i.e. of realizing its objective of driving Iraqi forces from Kuwait, was 93 percent. Similarly, the chance of the U.S. achieving its primary objective in the second Gulf War, the removal of Saddam Hussein's government from power, was about 70 percent. However, the likelihood of success at the longer term goal of maintaining a stable Iraqi government is now only 26 percent, and likely to take ten years to accomplish.

Sullivan also concludes that the Soviet Union had only a seven percent probability of prevailing in its war in Afghanistan. The press release doesn't state what her finding was with respect to the U.S. Afghan war, in which the long-term outcome still seems in doubt. If I had to hazard a guess, I would say that the probability of success with respect to overthrow of the Taliban government was high, given the existence of allies on the ground there. The likelihood of long-term stabilization may be less.

Of course, to apply Sullivan's method ex ante, you need accurate information concerning the various factors that affect the statistical determination. If your intelligence is faulty, your prediction of your chance of success may be off the mark. In other words: garbage in, garbage out

By popular demand, another baseball post.

August (see comments to this post) asks, in a friendly way, if I would mind posting about the streak the Mets are on now. Well, uh, yeah. But, then, he makes this useful suggestion:

Could you predict that we'll tank and lose 30 straight? ... Because that might be helpful. Thanks!

All right. I, CLAUDE SCALES, DO HEREBY PREDICT THAT THE METS WILL TANK AND LOSE THIRTY STRAIGHT.

There. That feels better, already. Kinda like blamin' it on the Stones.

6/13 update: I think I misread August's intention when he suggested that I predict a thirty game losing streak for the Mets. I thought he was convinced that, as soon as I made it, the Mets' fortunes would reverse (they didn't). What I'd forgotten is that he's an Orioles fan (see "comments" below).

A heartening thought: The Cyclones start their season in less than a week.

The banality of heroism.

I've counted myself lucky that, at the age of 61, I could only recall three instances in which I was, or believed myself to be, in immediate danger of death. The first occurred when I was seven, living in rural England. I was taking a walk one summer day and spotted Bonnie, our neighbors' draft mare, grazing in pasture. Full of boyish spirit, I decided to have sport with her. I ran a couple of figure eights around her legs, crisscrossing under her belly. Her response came on my second or third iteration: I can still clearly picture in my mind the leg lifting a few inches and the precisely calibrated flick of the hoof, enough to knock me away and cause a small abrasion to my shin, but no more. It's what I think of now whenever I hear the expression "surgical strike." I've since had great respect and admiration for horses, though I've never owned one or learned to ride.

The second was the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. I was sixteen, a junior in high school in Tampa, within easy range of the missiles in Cuba. We lived about a mile from MacDill Air Force Base, an obvious target. One night, my parents and I were in the living room, watching TV news, when a siren began to blare nearby. I looked at my father, a retired U.S. Air Force officer, and said, "Do you think this is it?" He looked back at me, and I felt a chill when I saw on his face an expression I had never seen before, one of hopeless resignation, as he said, "Yes, I think maybe it is."

The third was when I was 24, driving on an interstate highway near Binghamton, New York in a torrential rainstorm, when I saw a sign for the exit I wanted and jerked the wheel. The car went into a spin; I could see other cars close behind, but, fortunately, none hit me. Almost before I knew what had happened, I found the car stopped, pointed directly onto the exit ramp I needed to take.

Now, thanks to this article, I know of one other instance, of which I was unaware at the time, in which I dodged the bullet (as did millions of others). While it is not certain that, had Lieutenant Colonel Petrov reported the radar sighting up the chain of command, this would have resulted in a thermonuclear strike against the U.S., the probability seems high given the reported paranoid mindset of the Soviet leadership at the time (see here).

What I find interesting about this story, besides its obvious relevance to my present day existence, is the fact that the person at the lowest point in the relevant chain of command, the one I would think most likely to want to prove his worth to his superiors by quickly reporting any suspicious sighting, instead exercised restraint. As a military veteran, I can't but wonder how I, having been trained to react quickly and aggressively to any perceived threat, would have acted had I been in Petrov's place.

Origins of a couple of well-worn phrases.

1. Keep it under your hat. I'm now reading Agincourt - Henry V and the Battle That Made England, by Juliet Barker (Little & Brown, 2005). At page 88, she describes the makings of the English long bow:

The best bow-staves were cut from a single piece of straight-grained yew, imported from Spain, Italy or Scandinavia, and shaved into shape. Unstrung, the bow would be some six feet long and tapered, with the softer, more flexible sap-wood on the outside and a thicker layer of heart-wood on the inside, a combination that gave the bow its natural elasticity. ... A regular maintenance regime of waxing and polishing ensured that the bow did not dry out or crack under the pressure of being strung or fired. Bow-strings, made of hemp or gut, were also waxed or oiled to keep them weather-proof, though this was not always successful. ... The English, perhaps because they were more accustomed to rain, had learned to deal with such possibilities. According to the French chronicler Jean de Vennette, they "protected their bows by putting the strings on their heads under their helmets," a habit that is said to have given rise to the expression "keep it under your hat."

2. Got the shaft. Nothing to do with bows or arrows. Paul Hoffman, late Lion's Head regular, wrote a book back in the early 1970's titled Lions in the Street - the Inside Stories of the Great Wall Street Law Firms. In his chapter on Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, he recounted the time when the firm had its offices in the old Equitable Building at 120 Broadway, which was built before air conditioning and consequently was designed in an "H" shape, with two large air shafts facing to the east and west. Anyway, the story went, when a lawyer fresh from law school started with the firm, he (as it almost always was in those days) was put in a "bullpen", a large room where he and other young associates had individual desks but otherwise shared space. After a few years, a winnowing would happen. The associates would be given individual offices. But, herein hangs a tale. Those who had been judged worthy of eventual partnership would be given offices with windows facing a street, while those destined to be asked to find other employment were given offices facing an airshaft. So, after these annual separations of the wheat from the chaff took place, word would rush throught the bullpen: "Did you hear about Joe? He got the shaft!"

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.