Early this morning, the Colorado Rockies defeated the San Diego Padres 2 to 1 after 22 innings of play. 22 INNINGS!!! It took them over 6 hours to finish the game.
Wait a minute.
So is it a big deal because the game ran so late, 1:21 AM? Or is it a big deal because they played for over 6 hours? Both?
I'm on my feet and moving around for more than 6 hours on a regular basis. And I've been on my feet and moving around for longer than that and past 4 AM a whole bunch of times. Aren't these guys professional athletes? I guess most of them couldn't hang in the bar and restaurant industry.
Yeah, the story's good in the confines of Major League Baseball news but it's not much in the way of human performance. There is some excellent stuff here, though:
"This was a good game to get outside yourself," Hurdle said. "About the 16th inning, I said, 'Hey boys, no matter what's in front of us, there's a world of people out there who've got harder rows to hoe than we do. No matter what happens the rest of the night, have some fun with this thing.' "
Now that's something I can respect. Even if it's just a game it's still a real battle that you really want to win. Go through some tough times with a bunch of other people and you'll be bonded to them. That's something that interests me. The men on those baseball teams went through something intense and real that night, and probably some unreal stuff, too. Imagine slugging it out under all those lights in front of all those people. I bet all those guys slept well after that.
Maybe the game was a testament to man's ability to stave off boredom.
Anahata (Sanskrit: अनाहत, Anāhata) is the fourth primary chakra according to the Hindu Yogic and Tantric (Shakta) traditions.
In Sanskrit the word anahata - means unhurt, un-struck and unbeaten. Anahata Nad refers to the Vedic concept of unstruck sound, the sound of the celestial realm. [Anahata]
If I didn't know better I'd have thought this was from one of William Gibson's novels:
When Verizon upgraded Charles Whiting's telephone service, his wife's voice, saying, "Catherine Whiting," disappeared from his voicemail system.
She had died in 2005 and Whiting said he listened to her voice every day for comfort. He blamed Verizon for the loss, saying, "Now they took her voice away."
There's a whole novel waiting to be written based on that little story, Lost Voicemail of Man's Dead Wife Restored by Phone Company. It really is touching, and not just touching in a sci-fi and cyberpunk sort of way. That man took joy and happiness from being able to hear is dead wife's voice. Verizon accidentally took it away and they oh so nobly returned it...almost like bringing his wife back from the dead. Verizon says, "We have your dead wife on our computers. Would you like to talk to her?"
In other real-life cyberpunk tales, Wired's Threat Level blog has this cautionary tale, Industrial Control Systems Killed Once and Will Again, Experts Warn.
On June 10th, 1999 a 16-inch diameter steel pipeline operated by the now-defunct Olympic Pipeline Co. ruptured near Bellingham, Washington, flooding two local creeks with 237,000 gallons of gasoline. The gas ignited into a mile-and-a-half river of fire that claimed the lives of two 10-year-old boys and an 18-year-old man, and injured eight others.
Wednesday, computer-security experts who recently re-examined the Bellingham incident called its victims the first verified human causalities of a control-system computer incident.
Computers killed people!?
But the factor that intrigues Weiss and fellow researcher Marshall Abrams, a scientist at MITRE, is a still largely unexplained computer failure that began less than 30 minutes before the accident and paralyzed the central control room operating the pipeline, preventing workers from releasing pressure in the line before it hemorrhaged.
An unexplained computer failure
? Malicious and/or stupid hackers could've done that. Perhaps hackers backed by a rival company. Perhaps hackers backed by a rival country. Perhaps they were both. Perhaps there's no difference. I'm just sayin'...
Recently I registered for my first class at Pensacola Junior College in my quest to get an Associate in Applied Science degree in Electronics Engineering Technology. Talk about a career change: switching from being a restaurant/bar work to an electronics technician. Given my epicly bad academic history, it'll be interesting to see how this particular academic adventure goes. I think it'll be a good one.
The class I've registered for is called Introduction to Computers in Technology.
A first computer course, geared to providing technology students with a working knowledge of computer hardware and software related to their vocation. This course focuses on five concepts; basic keyboarding, word processing, computer hardware, operating systems, and basic computer maintenance.
I just hope the class is up to date because farther down in the description it says the student will learn to operate Windows 3.1. Windows 3.1!? That's what I had on my computer when I graduated from high school 14 years ago.
From the world of food and drinks to computers and circuit boards. Woohoo!!!
Yahoo! recently posted an article about CO2 emissions in the US, Where Global Warming Begins. The following, insanely interesting video is embedded in the article. Created by the Vulcan Project at Purdue University, the animations in the video bring to life the climate-altering mechanical breath of a nation.
For my Gulf Coast readers, check out how much CO2 emissions are coming from around our seemingly pristine beaches. Looks to me like the air and water of the Gulf of Mexico are an international dumping ground. Also notice that the graphic in the Yahoo! article show that the rapidly growing Southeast is increasing its CO2 output as the Northeast decreases. Great. Here in Pensacola we're right in the path of the growing plumes of pollutants coming from Southeast Texas, New Orleans, and Mobile. And it appears we're creating plenty ourselves.
Wouldn't it be nice if our region could grow responsibly, in a sustainable manner?
Oh, that's right...growth
, as we know it, is unsustainable.
Is collapse inevitable?
Will we change our ways and be better citizens of Planet Earth? Videos like the one from the Vulcan Project go a long way towards educating people on the consequences of our technologies and reminding us that we are part of a global community.
