Thursday, March 7, 2019
Wednesday, March 6, 2019
From Dust You Came...
Ash Wednesday begins the season of Lent, in which Christians prepare to properly celebrate and observe what we consider the single most important event in the history of...well, everything. If your choices include the observation of Lenten discipline, may it bring you closer to Christ.
If they don't, or if you are a person who takes a pass on your friendly blogger's traditional Christian theism, give a thought to checking out one of that faith's outlets in about 40 days. And please forgive me if I'm praying you change your mind.
If they don't, or if you are a person who takes a pass on your friendly blogger's traditional Christian theism, give a thought to checking out one of that faith's outlets in about 40 days. And please forgive me if I'm praying you change your mind.
Tuesday, March 5, 2019
The Mistress of Disguise
That would be Chinese makeup artist He Yuhong, whose skill at her craft allows her to transform her face into any one of dozens of others, from living performers to the subjects of paintings. Several photos of her finished products can be found at this item at Bored Panda. She also publishes YouTube videos showing how she works and has other pictures on her Instagram site.
Some of the transformations are pretty startling, and even when she details them on a video you still want to ask her how she did it. Which I suppose I'll ask if I ever meet her in person.
Unless I already have met her and didn't know it...
Some of the transformations are pretty startling, and even when she details them on a video you still want to ask her how she did it. Which I suppose I'll ask if I ever meet her in person.
Unless I already have met her and didn't know it...
Monday, March 4, 2019
Captain Ahab Not Happy?
The good news of the recovery of the bowhead whale in the oceans near Alaska carries with it an odd extra feature: Some of those whales may be more than 200 years old.
The bowhead's extra-thick blubber made it a prime target of the whaling industry of the 19th century. While there were only 1,200 of them as recently as the mid-80s, scientists today estimate their numbers as high as 14,000 (Apparently the bowheads spent the 90s having a lot of fun). Evidence suggests the whales may live very long lives when not menaced by one-legged rage monsters, and the author points out some of today's bowheads may have been alive when Herman Melville was writing Moby-Dick in 1851. Which would make some of those older bowheads some seriously swinging cats if they were part of that population surge in the last 20 years.
Of course, Ahab's nemesis was a sperm whale that he finally encounters in the southern Pacific Ocean, but anyway...
The bowhead's extra-thick blubber made it a prime target of the whaling industry of the 19th century. While there were only 1,200 of them as recently as the mid-80s, scientists today estimate their numbers as high as 14,000 (Apparently the bowheads spent the 90s having a lot of fun). Evidence suggests the whales may live very long lives when not menaced by one-legged rage monsters, and the author points out some of today's bowheads may have been alive when Herman Melville was writing Moby-Dick in 1851. Which would make some of those older bowheads some seriously swinging cats if they were part of that population surge in the last 20 years.
Of course, Ahab's nemesis was a sperm whale that he finally encounters in the southern Pacific Ocean, but anyway...
Sunday, March 3, 2019
Number Trouble
I was among those who enjoyed the fact that Oklahoma University quarterback Kyler Murray was already signed to play professional baseball for the Oakland A's when he won the Heisman Trophy. I appreciate football and follow several teams, but it's one of the games I stop watching when my teams are done. I prefer baseball, but that's just me. If you think differently, well, it's a free country and you are entitled to be as wrong as you want to be.
At some point, someone convinced Murray he should give the National Football League a try. No one truly knows his reasons. I have heard people speculate that a football payday could be larger than the one he had guaranteed with the A's, but I haven't really followed the matter closely enough to know if that's true.
If it is so, however, someone might want to make sure that Murray knows what the athletes in different sports are actually paid. On hearing that the Philadelphia Phillies will pay Bryce Harper $330 million over 13 years, Murray said, "Everyone makes a big deal of him making $300 million. There's quarterbacks making more per year than him."
Harper's money is guaranteed. Whether he has one at-bat for the Phillies or a thousand, one thing is certain: Come 2032, Bryce Harper will have paid Uncle Sam a substantial portion of $330 million.
Aaron Rodgers made $33.5 million last year, which is certainly more than the $24 million per year Harper's contract averages, but Green Bay will not be paying Aaron Rodgers $33.5 million for the next 13 years. Atlanta quarterback Matt Ryan has $100 million of his $150 million guaranteed. No NFL player, according to sources cited in the story, has ever made $300 million from the NFL.
And the chances are pretty good that the first player to do so won't be a 5'-10', 195-pound quarterback with only one full college season under his belt.
At some point, someone convinced Murray he should give the National Football League a try. No one truly knows his reasons. I have heard people speculate that a football payday could be larger than the one he had guaranteed with the A's, but I haven't really followed the matter closely enough to know if that's true.
If it is so, however, someone might want to make sure that Murray knows what the athletes in different sports are actually paid. On hearing that the Philadelphia Phillies will pay Bryce Harper $330 million over 13 years, Murray said, "Everyone makes a big deal of him making $300 million. There's quarterbacks making more per year than him."
Harper's money is guaranteed. Whether he has one at-bat for the Phillies or a thousand, one thing is certain: Come 2032, Bryce Harper will have paid Uncle Sam a substantial portion of $330 million.
Aaron Rodgers made $33.5 million last year, which is certainly more than the $24 million per year Harper's contract averages, but Green Bay will not be paying Aaron Rodgers $33.5 million for the next 13 years. Atlanta quarterback Matt Ryan has $100 million of his $150 million guaranteed. No NFL player, according to sources cited in the story, has ever made $300 million from the NFL.
And the chances are pretty good that the first player to do so won't be a 5'-10', 195-pound quarterback with only one full college season under his belt.
Saturday, March 2, 2019
Sundries
-- Friedrich Hayek's personal copy of Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, complete with Hayek's own penciled commentary and annotations, will be up for auction at Sotheby's later this month. Such a doubly concentrated dose of the rationality of a free-market economy and the irrationality of the thought that human beings can plan an economy might be enough to overcome the ignorance of public officials who think otherwise. But there's only one copy and there's a whole lot of ignorant administrators and legislators.
-- Jesse Singal, writing at Reason, suggests that we not feel as though some kind of justice was done when a young adult fiction fan mob succeeded in getting writer Kosoko Jackson to pull his debut novel. We might tend to feel that way because Jackson was a part of a similar effort that wound up causing first-time author Amélie Zhao to pull her book. Both of them, it seems, were insufficiently woke. Singal is right, of course. All of the wonderful schadenfreude covers up the fact that books are being pulled for some weird reasons, protested by people who may not even have read them. That Jackson finds himself hoist on his own petard is not cause for amusement. OK, not much amusement. OK, first feel upset about the censorship and then you can feel some amusement.
-- SpaceX successfully launched its Dragon Crew capsule into orbit to rendezvous with the International Space Station. It carried a fully-monitored test dummy named Ripley in order to record what kinds of g-forces and other stresses a real flight crew would have and make sure those weren't dangerous to flesh-and-blood folks. It'll be nice if SpaceX succeeds with this project and we can stop hitching rides into space on Russian Soyuz craft. In fact if we keep it up, one day we'll be able to lament the state of modern technology by truthfully saying, "If we can put a man on the moon...," which is something we can't do right now.
-- Jesse Singal, writing at Reason, suggests that we not feel as though some kind of justice was done when a young adult fiction fan mob succeeded in getting writer Kosoko Jackson to pull his debut novel. We might tend to feel that way because Jackson was a part of a similar effort that wound up causing first-time author Amélie Zhao to pull her book. Both of them, it seems, were insufficiently woke. Singal is right, of course. All of the wonderful schadenfreude covers up the fact that books are being pulled for some weird reasons, protested by people who may not even have read them. That Jackson finds himself hoist on his own petard is not cause for amusement. OK, not much amusement. OK, first feel upset about the censorship and then you can feel some amusement.
-- SpaceX successfully launched its Dragon Crew capsule into orbit to rendezvous with the International Space Station. It carried a fully-monitored test dummy named Ripley in order to record what kinds of g-forces and other stresses a real flight crew would have and make sure those weren't dangerous to flesh-and-blood folks. It'll be nice if SpaceX succeeds with this project and we can stop hitching rides into space on Russian Soyuz craft. In fact if we keep it up, one day we'll be able to lament the state of modern technology by truthfully saying, "If we can put a man on the moon...," which is something we can't do right now.
Friday, March 1, 2019
Who Needs the Twilight Zone?
2017 Alabama United States Senate special election: You probably couldn't get any weirder than me, what with all of the crazy stuff alleged against GOP nominee Roy Moore that let a Democract win this seat.
2020 Alabama United States Senate regular election: Hold my beer.
2020 Alabama United States Senate regular election: Hold my beer.
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