If this article is picked up on Fark, it is guaranteed to bear an, “It’s a Trap!” joke in the headline.

Link compliments of Dave Barry.

Update: Fifth comment.

Scott posed the question first… Will Jason Marquis start Wednesday’s game against the Toronto Blue Jays, P and DH (spit)? Apparently not, according to the “Quick Hits” of the game preview: Marquis is hitting .343 with a .571 slugging percentage, but he will not get to hit in the American League ballpark. Too bad. Jeff called me up after Carpenter’s shutout tonight, and we discussed the possibility.

Two questions:

If a pitcher starts as both designated hitter (barf) and pitcher, can his role as DH (union_pork) be pinch hit for without effect to his role as pitcher?

Has there ever been a situation where a catcher fielded a bunt on the first base side, the pitcher covered home, and a baserunner scored by taking out the pitcher? I’ve never seen it.

As much as I’d love to see Marquis hit for himself, as an athlete ought to do, I’d hate to see him get hurt running the paths or taking a beanball just to spite the American League.

Updated: After the game tonight, I was reading the USA Today Sports section and found this article about interleague play for next season, in which NL parks would play by AL rules and AL parks would play by NL rules. That way, NL fans get to see the whole AL team that’s visiting.

Also in today’s USA Today sports section, but completely unrelated was an article about Nick Saban, whose LSU team beat the bejeesus out of Illinois in Kurt Kittner’s senior year. Just a throwaway comment, but he’s installing a 3-4 defense, a configuration that’s coming back in style, and for good reason, I think.

Arthur Chrenkoff posted a slew of good links on Monday to different posts around the ‘sphere, not to be confused with his most recent installment of Good News from Iraq (V. 29).

First, arithmetic. There seems to be a new textbook for people wanting to be math teachers called Rethinking Mathematics, in which fifth-grade level mathematics is to be taught as a technique for teleologically arriving at conclusions that support a leftist, activist worldview. This post does an excellent job of explaining why this is a Bad Idea:

[W]hen you step up to [the task of mathematical analysis with an agenda], then you fall consciously or unconsciously fall into a trap of skewing the numbers.

Amen, brother (or sister). “Science” has gotten awful unscientific lately because of this, as this article describes. I imagine this book will, in spite of its worthlessness, be received with acclaim in Education departments around the country. This is imaginable since my stereotype of both education majors and fifth-grade teachers holds that both sorts of individuals are crappy at math. A funny interlude: my fifth grade math and science teacher told us that gravity is caused by air pressure, and that’s why there’s zero gravity in space, since there’s no air. She was a cute lady though, so we let it slide. Back to arithmetic, at the end of Roaring tiger’s post on Rethinking Mathematics is a link to a hilarious post about people being crappy at arithmetic, and the general decline in expectations for arithmetic ability. In it is discussed the weird stigma attached to people who can do basic arithmetic in their heads. That, and the first comment reminded me of the time when my radiator hose blew up just before Thanksgiving half an hour outside of town. I had to order a tow truck to drive down from town to pick me up and drive me and the car back up to a mechanic’s. There’s a per-mile charge for getting the tow, and the driver called the mileage in to the main office with his cell phone to have the fee totaled. I had watched him fill out the paperwork, so I knew how many miles we’d travelled and read the per-mile charge off the form, so I had already done the arithmetic in my head (involving fractions!!!), and told him what the charge would be about ten seconds before they calculated it back at HQ. He looked at me like I was Rain-Man, but I don’t think the driver took offense at all to my showing off. If you really want to be impressed, you’d have to check out my dad’s calculating skills. He carries a slide-rule in his briefcase, and knows how to use it.

Totally unrelated, but another link from this post of Chrenkoff’s was to an Adventure of Chester post, Zimbabwe and the Kitty Genovese Incident. I wasn’t familiar with the reference, so dug up this page on Kitty Genovese. Dear Lord! Reading her story deeply enraged me. That her killer is still alive is a travesty.

That’s enough rambling for now, as I’m missing Carpenter’s return to Toronto (although I see we’re already up 3-0).

I saw Star Wars again on Saturday and liked it less the second time around. There’s just too much silliness. By far, the worst part is when Vader stumbles around at the end and says, “Nooooooo.” (Link only funny in IE).

Few seconds later update: Also of interest in that link, is how they got the audio for making Vader say the names of the letters. For example, they simply took Vader making an ‘m’ sound and used that for the letter m. The very first concatenative speech synthesizers tried to use a similarly simple minded technique, where you record one sound for each phoneme and stick them together. The speech produced from such synthesizers is unrecognizable, disconcerting gibberish.

Today is the most beautiful day I’ve seen in quite a while. It’s been hot and dry lately. My lawn wasn’t enjoying it. Yesterday after work, I thoroughly weeded my vegetable garden. I’m starting to get peppers already. It’s early for that, and the plants are a bit immature, so I’ve been pinching the flowers off the pepper plants when I see them, but you can’t get ‘em all when they’re growing that fast, I suppose. Last night, we had a violent thunderstorm. It’s the hardest rain we’ve had in quite a while, my street was running water several inches deep. My roof held perfectly dry, so I’m going to officially pat myself on the back for a repair job well done, for the last time. The rain cooled things down quite a bit, and today the sky is perfectly blue with gigantic, puffy white clouds. Truly a thing of beauty, a joy to behold.

I started back at work yesterday, although my lab was so cold I could barely get anything done. Brought a jacket in today, which is working wonders for productivity. My building has a fairly unusual HVAC system, at least to folks like me who don’t have much experience with very large building complexes. The university has its own power plant, so steam is piped all over campus to provide heat in the winter. Forced air in the building is heated from those pipes or cooled from cold water pipes, so at all times, the air coming out of the vents is a mixture of cold and hot air. It’s inefficient and a real pain in the ass, called a Dual Duct system. It’s about 56 degrees in my lab. With the jacket on, work’s getting done, though. I’m editing the Spanish audio I’d recorded in the studio over the past month or two for a book a professor is writing. Exciting, tedious work.

Disturbingly, I find myself infatuated with Danica McKellar. It’s shameful, I know. I never watched the Wonder Years much. Didn’t like TV when I was a kid, except for cartoons. Nothing’s changed, I still only like cartoons and sports. Seinfeld was funny. And Mr. Show with Bob and David. There was a gal in high school that was said to bear a resemblance to Winnie. She was quite an attractive gal, I recall. Anyways, Danica’s in next month’s issue of Stuff Magazine, one of those “men’s” magazines that feature sexy pictures of mostly clothed women. Porn for dudes too wimpy to bear their postman’s contempt. Wow, she’s purty. I’d recalled that she studied–and published research in–mathematics while in college, and Jeff (who’s on a roll today) found a copy of her paper at her website. I had a good time reading the “Math Tutoring by Danica” feature (can’t link to it directly, since it’s a flash site, but go here and click on “mathematics” in the left sidebar.) In the fan mail section, someone asks her why she studied math, and she answered: “I don’t have a good answer, except to say that I like the way my brain feels when I’m doing [math]!” And then I fell smitten.

Drooling over hot, smart celebrities should be forgiven this week. It’s better than talking about that one pederast creature.

Cards lost last night. Harry Roy “Doc” Halladay pitched a hell of a game. I was able to watch the last few innings, so got to see Eldred’s not-so-triumphant return. It was great to see him back. He threw some nasty pitches, but the ump wasn’t giving him the upper part of the zone on his curveballs. Whatever happened to that high strike, anyways? Did anyone notice a flat slider low and away that seemed to dart back over the plate late? I couldn’t believe the ump called it, it was such surprising movement. Tonight will be Carp’s triumphant return to Toronto. I intend to watch the whole game, then hit the cages for a few swings.

My wee sister’s wedding is this weekend, and it’s looking to be a great time. Unfortunately, this will leave me the lone bachelor in my family, so I’m mentally preparing myself for a barrage of foolish questions about when am I gonna get married and how come I think I’m so special and what’s the big idea with you not spawning a brood yet, and so forth. The plan is to do some wild dancing at the reception (with backspin), to pre-emptively answer those questions.

Back to editing.

Do not–I repeat–DO NOT start playing this game.

You’ll get absolutely no work done. I haven’t even read the book, but I know enough after getting sucked into that to be able to fake it.

Time to quit fooling around and write some code.

Found at the Corner: nearly 40% of Frenchmen want to get pregnant. Not in the wierdo new-man dialect, as in, “Guess what? Susie and I are pregnant!” But in the Stan from Life of Brian sense of the word:

STAN: I want to be a woman. From now on, I want you all to call me ‘Loretta’.
REG: What?!
LORETTA: It’s my right as a man.
JUDITH: Well, why do you want to be Loretta, Stan?
LORETTA: I want to have babies.
REG: You want to have babies?!
LORETTA: It’s every man’s right to have babies if he wants them.
REG: But… you can’t have babies.
LORETTA: Don’t you oppress me.
REG: I’m not oppressing you, Stan. You haven’t got a womb! Where’s the foetus going to gestate?! You going to keep it in a box?!
LORETTA: [crying]

More related Gallic silliness here.

Oh Yeah: The Germans are foolish too.

Just on a whim, I checked out the Post-Dispatch hockey index. Lo and behold: a salary cap agreement has (reportedly) been reached.

Jeff Gordan offers his thoughts on the development in his column for today.

Hopefully this’ll improve hockey enough to make the lost season worthwhile. “They had to destroy the season to save hockey.” It looks like a damned good start.

In slightly related news, they showed Keith Tkachuck at Tuesday’s Cards-Sox game, rooting for the Sox. It appeared that the fans around him weren’t giving him the shamefully hard time that he got in the World Series, which is a relief. His kids were wearing Sox jerseys and Cards caps though. I probably would have razzed him a bit for that. Given the $31 million dollar cap in player salaries, it remains to be seen whether he remains with the Blues for this season.

He did it so you don’t have to. Be grateful.

Dee Brown is likely to return to Illinois for his senior season after breaking his foot.

That movie was called Gus.

They don’t have it at the video store by my crib, unfortunately.

David Wells was awesome tonight shutting out the Cards 4-0. Of his 94 pitches, 73 were strikes. His curveball was consistently thrown for strikes. He had quite a night. I was hoping the Redbirds might score at least a run against Foulke in the ninth, alas, runners were stranded at first and second by Edmonds.

Although I like few things more than Cardinals’ wins, dropping this game was a bit of a relief. I’d assured my Sox fan brother-in-law that the Cards would win at least as many against the MFYs as we would against the Sox (so that the mild travesty of interleague play wouldn’t disrupt their divisional aspirations), and two sweeps in a row against such quality teams would have been a tall order. I think the Red Sox fans got to see the Cardinals team that didn’t show up in the World Series, and that’s all I cared about (aside from the NL central race). So bring on the Yankees! Something funny to folks of my maturity level: two of the Yankees pitchers who will be playing at Busch this weekend have names that are euphemisms for the hangdown.

Fox Sports Midwest was carrying a satellite feed from Tikrit, where some Missouri National Guardsmen are deployed with the 1035th and watching on the Armed Forces Network. (I believe–based on the signs they were showing to the camera: “We miss Bud Light, love 1035th”) They put on some pretty hilarious antics.

StLCardinals dot com put up a story about Ray King today that clears up what was the “personal issues” caused him to leave the team for a few days earlier in the season, and describing the bounce-back that I noticed especially in Tuesday’s game, but also today, when he was very effective with the exception of a home run hit by Renteria. The fan who caught the ball threw it back on the field, a foolish tradition begun by Cubs fans that I despise. Hopefully Renteria got the ball though, which will be the second happiest memory he can take from this series after the standing ovation, in a list of happy memories having length: two. Perhaps the fan was thinking the same thing, and not emulating Cubs fans–I suspect that’s an overgenerous interpretation of his motivations, though.

You scored as Yoda. General Grievous 67% Yoda 67% Chewbacca 56% R2-D2 53% Clone Trooper 50% Anakin Skywalker 50% Obi Wan Kenobi 50% Darth Vader 47% Mace Windu 42% Padme Amidala 39% Emperor Palpatine 22% C-3PO 17% Which Revenge of the Sith Character are you? created with QuizFarm.com

Found the quiz at Sports Lady’s.

(Here’s an StLCardinals.com story about the first round picks)

First Round

With the 28th pick, we took Colby Rasmus, a (graduating) high school senior. Left handed center fielder.

With the 30th pick, we took (James) Tyler Greene from Georgia Tech. Right handed shortstop.

With the 43rd pick, we took Mark McCormick from Baylor. Right handed pitcher.

With the 46th pick, we took Tyler Herron, another kid out of high school. Right handed pitcher (with “killer curveball”).

Second Round

With the 70th pick, we took Josh Wilson, another high schooler. Right handed pitcher.

With the 78th pick, we took Nick Webber from Central Missouri State. Right handed pitcher. 6’7″ 210 lbs.

…

6th Round

Wilfridio Pujols!

Belly Scratcher dug up this article about Wil, with photos. Wowie!

I found this article about the Yedizi peoples of northern Iraq and Turkey quite fascinating. My minor as an undergrad was in Philosophy and Religion, so the discussion of their basic mythology was very interesting to read.

I can’t describe how relieved I was during last night’s excellent win by the Cardinals over the defending champions. The absolute worst thing about the world series sweep was that the Boston fans never got to see what a great team we had last year, with our bats going dead cold when it counted, and our pitching struggling to keep up with the ferocious swings of the Boston lineup. I couldn’t have asked for anything more from last night’s ballgames. The Cardinals won the first game (the rubber game) of the World Series rematch, the Cubs lost to Toronto, and the Yankees lost to the Brewers behind some genuinely lousy pitching from Randy Johnson. After ESPN2′s presentation of the Cards games, they switched over to the ninth innings of both of those games, and although I thought that the commentary in the Cards-BoSox game couldn’t have been worse, I found out that it could get a great deal worse. I’ve never heard such nonsensical blather as was puked mike-ward in the Yankees-Brewers game. I’ll be watching tonight’s game on FSMw at a bar somewhere. I remember Clement pitching well against us last year. Can’t wait! Tomorrow’s game should be excellent as well, with Chris Carpenter taking the mound. A bit of a look at what could have been.

And I think it might be about time for Walt to start talking to Morris about signing a contract extension to keep him a Cardinal for the next two or three years.

OF Skip Schumaker. Roger Cedeno is on the fifteen day DL.

And there was great rejoicing.

Also, Grudzielanek will be batting second today. Larry Walker had been our regular 2nd hitter, and hasn’t been performing. Edmonds started there yesterday, which made sense to me. I think today’s lineup will work out nicely.

Game’s on the Deuce here, and I’ll be watching the whole thing. Except for when I’m grilling meat.

An executive was in a quandary. He had to get rid of one of his staff. He had narrowed it down to one of two people, Debra or Jack. It would be a hard decision to make, as they were both equally qualified and both did excellent work. He finally decided that in the morning whichever one used the water cooler first would have to go. Debra came in the next morning, hugely hungover after partying all night. She went to the cooler to get some water to take an aspirin and the executive approached her and said: “Debra, I’ve never done this before, but I have to lay you or Jack off.” Debra replied, “Could you jack off, I have a terrible headache.”

There are more like it here, but I enjoyed that one especially. Found them from k’alebøl, which is full of funny stuff, well-written stuff.

Other things I noticed today while not working: Barack Obama gave a fine commencement address at Knox College in Galesburg, IL.

My alma-mater for undergraduate study, Truman State, apparently has higher in-state than out-of-state tuition, adjusting for aid.

It’s hard to buy regular sized band-aids. What passes for “regular” band-aids are now wee band-aids. It took a while to find some decent sized band-aids. I blame product downsizing. And they want you to buy the multi-packs, so you get a whole slew of useless, tiny band-aids when all you’ll end up using are the ten or so big band-aids. The box of 1 X 3 band-aids I ended up getting were marked-down, which makes me suspect that they won’t be stocking them anymore. I’m going through three a day to keep the blistas on my fingas covered up. Should have bought a few extra boxes while the chance was still there.

The George Foreman grill is a completely useless appliance, and has sat on one of my top kitchen shelves since I moved in to my current digs three years ago. It dries and shrinks the food you’re trying to cook. My friend Kelly pointed out a very good use for it: quesadillas. For that purpose, it’s an excellent machine.

My collared greens all grew back with a vengeance, and the rabbits haven’t come back for them. This leads me to believe that rabbits don’t like collared greens. Hopefully they didn’t like them enough that they’ll steer clear of my lettuce, too.

Seeing people cry disturbs me, especially when it’s adults crying. A colleague sent me a link to a website that’ll help cure me of this, so that one day I’ll react to people crying with uproarious laughter. It’s called Crying, While Eating, and consists solely of a set of thirty second quicktime clips that people filmed of themselves crying, while eating. Each includes a note of what they were eating and what they were crying about. The best, obviously, is Dan’s. He’s eating pork roast with mashed potatoes and is crying about his failure to plan ahead. He’s also sitting on the toilet with his pants down around his ankles while eating the pork roast, which is funny. And he’s not getting all the food into his mouth, his sorrow runs so deep. Hilarious! The top rated clip, Ryan’s, is also fantastic for not getting the food in the mouth, and for the convincing wailing. Davide’s feeling of loss over a childhood friend has him flailing about and stuffing handfuls of Goldfish into his maw, a film that gave me a laugh too. Elliot’s production is high quality, featuring maudlin background music while he eats powdered nutmeg and cries over his failure to connect with modern cinema. That’s some funny stuff.

Camping trip was outstanding. This campsite and river are far superior to bass resort. The weather was fantastic, and consequently I have a pretty severe first degree burn over the entirety of my body. My back, shoulders, and arms are bright, glowing red. On Friday night, I wisely picked up a flaming log to move it around the bonfire, using my bare hands. It had just been tossed in there, so I assumed it would still be cool. Surprise, surprise, it was blazing hot. I tossed it from hand to hand for a few seconds before chucking it back into the fire. Consequently, I have third degree burns on the first three fingertips of my right hand. This makes typing difficult, since my index finger in particular is thoroughly trashed. My mom had visitors this weekend, and when I stopped in at her house on my way home, one of those visitors turned out to be a nurse. She checked out my fingers, advised me on how to treat it, and scolded me for lancing it with a butterfly knife.