Hyperbole for 1000, Alex

Miguel Olivo

Rockies catcher Miguel Olivo is my new hero.  There’s playing with pain, and then there’s kidney stones.

DENVER — The ball rocketed off the shoulder of Rockies catcher Miguel Olivo during Tuesday night’s 12-1 victory over the D-backs. Purple-bleeding fans — plus those in purple pinstripes — couldn’t help but gasp.

Manager Jim Tracy left the dugout to see Olivo, who is making a positive impact offensively and defensively in his first year with the Rockies.  Olivo responded by breaking into giggles.

Sure, being hit by a foul tip hurts. It stings even more when you consider it was a deflection of a pitch thrown by Ubaldo Jimenez, baseball’s hardest thrower. But it was nothing compared to what Olivo had been through for the previous 24 hours.

Olivo said Wednesday morning that he had passed a kidney stone during the eighth inning of Monday’s 5-3 loss to the D-backs, yet he finished the game. And he passed another before extending his hit streak to five games Tuesday night.

Being smoked by a baseball was nothing after that.  “I told Jim, ‘After I passed those, I didn’t even feel the ball,‘” said Olivo, who revealed that he has passed several since 2003. “It hurt, but after it passed, everything was normal.  Believe me, it’s not fun. Sometimes when I have the pain, I just want to die. It’s crazy. Thank God I can handle all the pain.”

So it’s understandable that Tracy has a hard time describing the ruggedness that Olivo, who is hitting .319 with five home runs and had thrown out five would-be basestealers, brings to the Rockies.

“He is a presence,” Tracy said. “I don’t know that the word ‘tough’ is accurate enough to describe this guy. I think I’m doing him a little bit of a disservice by just saying that he’s tough. He’s way past that.”

On Olivo’s passing of the stones, Tracy said, “Good for him. Any of us that have done that realize it’s much easier said than done … But he just walked into the ballpark and said, ‘We’re fine and we’re ready to go.’”

(HT: Rockies MLB)

No need to communicate - I can text!

Here’s a great piece by Trudy Walsh at Government Computer News on technology and the death of books.  This pretty well mirrors what I’ve been thinking for awhile – that technology is taking away something important.  When was the last time you saw a couple of teens or young adults carrying on a meaningful conversation?  More than likely, one or both of them are too busy texting to talk.  I’m as guilty on occasion – it’s easy to sit down to blog and fritter away a couple of hours that could have been spent with family.

Is Kindle for BlackBerry a sign that we’re forgetting how to appreciate a book?

Amazon has released the beta version of Kindle for BlackBerry.  Now you can read Amazon e-books on your PC, iPhone, BlackBerry and of course, Kindle, if you have one. This gives BlackBerry device users access to Amazon’s full e-book catalog of 420,000 titles, including 102 of 112 New York Times bestsellers.

“Kindle for BlackBerry is a great way for customers to continue reading their current book wherever they are—in between meetings, at the grocery store or waiting in the doctor’s office,” said Ian Freed, vice president of Amazon Kindle.

This makes me wonder if we are taking this need always to be tethered to a smart phone too far. No need to go to a library to read, no need to close the study door to read, no need to slow down for an hour and open a book to read.

It used to be people had something called an “interior life,” where they could think what are called “thoughts.” Most people had “imaginations,” which is where you could watch little movies in your head, without even opening your eyes. It was better than YouTube, sometimes even better than a real movie. Reading could definitely facilitate your imagination, but when you were away from a book, for whatever reason, you could employ this ancient technology, the imagination. So while waiting in the grocery store line, you could think about what had happened that day or something that you were looking forward to, or worry or make plans or calculate strategies. All of this without booting up a device. Shocking but true.

Even more shocking, people used to talk to each other in the grocery store line. Sometimes they would strike up a conversation about the Bat Boy featured on the cover of the Weekly World News tabloid. Sometimes people tried to butt in line in front of you. But again, none of this required a device of any kind.

And while you were waiting in doctors’ offices, there would often be magazines neatly arranged on end tables. It depended on the doctor, but sometimes they would subscribe to The New Yorker or National Geographic or Highlights magazine. I’ve read some great articles waiting for doctor appointments without downloading a single byte.

And I know that the device that delivers the content doesn’t really change it, does it? If Aristotle was great on stone tablets, he’ll be great on an iPad tablet, right? It’s just a little mind boggling that you can download half the Bodleian Library onto your smart phone, right next to the Cat Photo Clock app. It seems a little, well, sacrilegious.

I don’t mean to sound like a Luddite, though that seems to be a recurring theme with the GCN Lab lately. I think it’s great that we can read 420,000 books on our smart phones. I love technology, I love my cell phone, and I wouldn’t have passed college math without a calculator. I’m deeply grateful for all our technological achievements. I know I daily access worlds my grandparents never dreamed of, even with their finely tuned imaginations. I just worry sometimes this obsession with the small screen is at the expense of our imaginations and social skills.

Op-Toons nails it:

Supreme Court Strikes Down Constitution

Washington, D.C.–The Supreme Court struck down the U.S. Constitution on the grounds that its Ratification Clause violates the separation of church and state.

Article VII of the Constitution provides that it was promulgated to the states for ratification on “the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of Our Lord” 1787. The Justices found that reference to Jesus unconstitutional.

“Because the Ratification Clause is unconstitutional, we must strike it down,” wrote the Justices. “And if the Ratification Clause of the Constitution is void, the Constitution cannot have been legitimately ratified.  And if the Constitution was not legitimately ratified, it is void in its entirety.”

When asked for comment on the decision, the American Civil Liberties Union said “We were unaware there was a written constitution.”

(It’s a joke, son!  Lighten up!)

Any pair of points define an infinity of ellipses and an infinity of hyperbolas.

The ellipses do not touch one another, nor do the hyperbolas.

But every ellipse meets every hyperbola at a right angle.

This is too cool – if you’re a math geek. (HT: Futility Closet)

I would much rather celebrate St George’s Day today than Urth Day, or Lenin’s Birthday, or whatever is is that smelly hippies celebrate these days.  George is the patron saint of England and of the British Boy Scouts.  He may or may not have fought dragons, but he was a pretty righteous guy.

Very cool pic of the volcano in Iceland, complete with static lightning.  My question – would anyone on the internet know the name of this volcano if it weren’t for cut-and-paste?

(HT: APOD)

This is for Karen.  Who knew that birds came to this planet in 1962?

(HT: Dark Roasted Blend)

Bacon and wool on the (cloven) hoof!  They’re called Mangalitza pigs and they come from Austria and Hungary.  The possibilities are endless – sausages, mittens, a nice comforter, pork chops, more bacon, seat covers, smoked ham.  Yeah, put me down a for a whole herd of them.

I guess the Eyjafjallajökull eruption in Iceland playing heck with flights in Europe, but now we get to see some most excellent eruption pics, courtesy of David Thompson.  I loves me some lava pics.