Go, Mariners! Part III: You Get What You Pay For

Alvarez launches game-winner, Oct. 13.

	2022 Record	MLB rank (of 30)	2002 Team payroll	MLB rank
Seattle Mariners	90-72	9	$107 million	22
Houston Astros	106-56	2	$176 million	10

[MLB Teams With Highest 2022 Payrolls: Dodgers on Top | BetMGM]

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A Few Random Thoughts on “Drink the Kool-Aid” as a Political Metaphor

Recently, in the agonizing run-up to this God-forsaken election [1], I’ve been coming across the idiom “Drink the Kool-Aid” much more often than I’d like or even expect. Accordingly, I took it upon myself to express my indignation. Before clowns got creepy Then I thought: Do I even know what it means, really? Where did the phrase come from? I wasn’t sure, and I wasn’t sure people who have been using the phrase were sure. (I’ve become forgetful in my geezerhood.) And so, like so many of us do when we aren’t sure, I resorted to Wikipedia: "Drinking the Kool-Aid" is an expression used to refer to a person who believes in a possibly doomed or dangerous idea because of perceived potential high rewards. The phrase often carries a negative connotation. It can also be used ironically or humorously to refer to accepting an idea or changing a preference due to popularity, peer pressure, or persuasion. The phrase originates from events in Jonestown , Guyana , on November 18, 197...

The Astronaut and the Acid Head

The Astronaut and the Acid Head August 18, 2019 First, a short warning: This piece is about books, with only passing references to real life, (if there is such a thing. ) First, I recommend a book by Scott Kelly: Endurance: A Year in Space, A Lifetime of Discovery. This memoir was a lot better than I was expecting when I picked it off the Current Shelf at the local library. Scott Kelly spent a year on the International Space Station. (You might have seen the PBS documentary about it: ( https://www.pbs.org/show/year-space ). Meanwhile his identical twin, Mark (husband of Gabby Gifford), also an astronaut, stayed on the good old Earth. It’s a good mix of the gee-whiz tech stuff with the personal insights of an intelligent and talented man. Please don’t be put off if you’re not particularly interested in science or space. Actually, a second-hand recommendation might be more ...

Adventures in Reading Part I: Why I Don't Read Novels Anymore

February 18, 2022 Something on the Internet recently reminded me that this month marks the Centennial of the publication of the much-celebrated and seldom-read novel Ulysses by James Joyce. It may have been an article in the New Yorker : “Getting to Yes,” by Merve Emre, an Oxford scholar. [i] I read the article with an interest that was mixed with a specific nostalgia for the times (twice) that I read Ulysses (lo these many years ago), and a more general nostalgia for the times I read fiction at all. It seems I don’t read novels anymore and I wonder what happened. The last novel I read was A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles. According to my “Read (already been read)” [ii] list on Goodreads, I finished it in August, 2020, a year and a half ago. I’m fairly certain that’s the longest novel-free period of my life, at least since I started reading fiction while in junior high school, more than 55 years ago. I’m wondering now whether to star...

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