Rant

The Hypocritical Hall of Fame Electorate

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In 1965, the Astrodome opened to the public in Houston. The world had never seen a stadium like it before, leading some to call it the Eighth Wonder of the World. Houston’s fledgling baseball team, the Colt ’45s, was renamed the Astros. Although they finished 9th with a poor record of 65–97, attendance was quite high as people came from all around to see the Astrodome. Judge Roy Hofheinz’s vision of major-league baseball in Houston was fully realized.

Fifty years later, there will finally be a plaque in Cooperstown with an Astros cap as Craig Biggio was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Continue reading →

On Being Stubborn

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A couple years ago, we switched TV providers in part because we weren’t able to watch the Rangers on a regular basis with our previous provider. Before we went with that option, my wife looked into MLB.TV to see if we would be able to get the Rangers games that way. I’m pretty sure she looked online for information about the service, but I envision her experience as a conversation that might have gone something like this: Continue reading →

Facebook is Taking Over Our Lives

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Before you ask, no, I’m not going to quit Facebook. As I’ll point out shortly, that wouldn’t fix this problem.

Lots of people spend way too much time on Facebook. For better and for worse, it’s the most popular social network on the internet, and the #2 most popular website overall (as of May 10th, 2011), behind only Google. While I won’t bother to find sources for my conjecture (because, really, it would take longer than I care to spend researching it), I’m pretty sure Facebook has changed many lives—again, both for better and for worse. Continue reading →

Daylight Saving Waste of Time

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This last weekend, we observed the “spring forward” part of Daylight Saving Time. And it occurred to me that this is a waste of time, and causes more trouble than it’s worth. Now, I’m all for making better use of daylight. But consider the following:

  • Daylight Saving Time this year runs from March 13 to November 6. That’s almost 8 months. We spend nearly twice as much time under DST as we do under “standard” time. There’s something intrinsically wrong with this.
  • Twice a year, everyone has to go through all the clocks in their house and reset them. They have to adjust their internal body clocks.
  • Systems all over the world must keep up to date with the rules, when they take effect, and if they change. Not following the rules precisely can have dire consequences.

Continue reading →

American English is Greener

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Consider the following words: colour, flavour, honour, neighbour, rumour, labour, humour.

Those are all British spellings of the words Americans spell color, flavor, honor, neighbor, rumor, labor, humor. Each of them has an extra ‘u’. Whenever an American uses one of these words, or a whole host of others that fit the category, he takes a little less time to write it or type it, and takes up a little less room on the page. Continue reading →