Author: Jon

A fallen hero

SI.com – MLB – Poll: Big Mac in HOF? Don’t hold your breath – Monday November 27, 2006 9:01PM

The Associated Press surveyed about 20 percent of eligible voters, and only one in four who gave an opinion plan to vote for McGwire this year. That’s far short of the 75 percent necessary to gain induction.

In the late 80’s, before I became an Orioles’ fan, I loved the A’s.  I think I’ve mentioned it here before, but Mark McGwire was my favorite baseball player.  This skinny little first baseman who hit 49 home runs as a rookie, hit the home run that provided the A’s only win in the ’88 World Series, how could you not like him?

I was pulling for him to break Maris’ record.  That was a fun season of baseball.

But then the steroid allegations came out.  I know he’s never actually been caught doing it (Neither has Barry Bonds, but everyone knows he’s been on something), but it’s pretty hard to believe that he was totally clean.  I don’t trust Jose Canseco any further than I can throw him, and I believe that he would make up stories to sell books.  But there’s too much pointing to steroids, and McGwire never really did anything to clear his name.

I know the player’s union would kill him if he undermined the work they did by volunteering for steroid tests, but they’re going to shoot themselves in the foot.  What good is protecting the players’ rights if people lose faith in the integrity of the game and stop watching?

However, I think the whole thing may be moot.  Even assuming that McGwire was clean, I don’t think he deserves to be in the Hall of Fame.  His career average was .263.  He had a total of four seasons where he played 100 games and hit over .280.  Yes, he hit a lot of home runs, but that’s all.  Generally, admission to the Hall of Fame requires a more well-rounded player.

So, we’ll see.  But I don’t think he makes it in, and I don’t think he deserves to.

Nano is over

I just hit 50,000 words. For some reason, the text file validator at the Nano site decided to give me 2,000 extra words, but since what really matters is less than vs. more than 50,000, and I’m definitely more than 50,000, who cares?

So now I spend some time with my wife, finish getting the condo ready to sell, then maybe work on my 2003 novel. Next week. That sounds like a plan.

Edited to add: I’m disappointingly not that excited about finishing this year. Yes, it’s my fourth time out of five finishing. Yes, I know I can do it. But last year was more exciting.  Perhaps it’s because I’m now firmly convinced that I need a new challenge (Like finishing a novel instead of just starting them).

256 gigs on a sheet of paper

Techworld.com – Storage News – Store 256GB on an A4 sheet via Kurzweil AI

Files such as text, images, sounds and video clips are encoded in “rainbow format” as coloured circles, triangles, squares and so on, and printed as dense graphics on paper at a density of 2.7GB per square inch.

An Indian engineering student has figured out a way to print encoded data on a piece of paper. This sounds pretty cool. Having a sheet of paper with 256 gigs on it isn’t necessarily all that great, but the applications that could come from this are exciting.

Edited to add: All this would be exciting, that is, if it were true. Now posted in the middle of the article I read is this:

Update: But following this article and widespread coverage of the claims, the claimed storage technology has been widely and roundly dismissed as not possible.

Thanks, Cheryl, for pointing that out.

November is almost over

Only 2471 words to go.  I have no ending in mind at all.  The story has completely gone off into random plotlessness.  I don’t really like it anymore.  I had high expectations for this story, but they have not come to fruition.  But that’s fine.  I still have my 2003 novel to finish, and I really do like that one.  I might even put this year’s up here for people to read if they want to.  That’s how I first read John Scalzi and Charles Stross.   Of course, they put up PDFs of finished novels that have since been published by real publishers, while I’ll put up a rambling first draft of lofty expectations and not much else.

We’ll see.  Keep an eye out, maybe I’ll post it here.  It still needs a title.  Maybe if I post it, someone will read it and think of a title for me.

Wood floors

The wife and I have decided that the new home we’re planning to buy is going to have to have wood floors somewhere.  If you’ve never chased a cat across a wood floor, watching her try to get traction on the slick surface, you really haven’t lived.

_No cats were harmed while getting inspiration for this post. _

A great tradition

I went to a funeral this morning. My cousin Jonathan (The oldest son of my grandmother’s sister, I can never remember what that’s called, but I’ve always thought of his as just plain cousin, not ‘removed’ or ‘second’ or whatever the proper term is) died on Tuesday. It was a nice funeral, and I got to see some family I don’t see very often. While it would be nice to see them more on happier occasions, it’s still nice to see them.

Jonathan was from the Jewish half of my family, and there’s a great tradition at Jewish funerals. The service beforehand is not terribly different from Christian services that I’ve been to, and that most of you are likely to be familiar with. But those who haven’t been to a Jewish internment are missing out on a great tradition. They have a little shovel and a little pile of dirt by the grave, and family and friends line up and each toss a little dirt on the coffin. It’s one last little good deed you can do for the person you cared about, and I think it’s a great way to give the mourners a sense of closure, that they’ve helped put the person to rest.

One of Jonathan’s best qualities was that he always remembered to ask about the people who weren’t there. And more than just ask, he honestly cared how they were doing. If I saw him, and my siblings weren’t there, he’d want to know how they were doing. It’s one of those things that seemed small when he was alive, but now I realize how much I appreciated it.

I’m glad I went to the service, and got to do one last good deed for him. He will certainly be missed.

Nano – 40,000 words

I passed the 40,000 word mark earlier this evening.  I’m currently at 41,047.  For a little while the story was kind of sucking, but maybe I’ve saved it.  Maybe not.  It’s not as good as my 2003 novel.  And it’s not exactly what I had planned.  But it’s not totally without positives.

I’m ready to be done, though.  There’s a lot of stuff I’ve been kind of putting off that I’d like to stop putting off.  I read a short story by Charles Stross recently (I’ve read a few of his novels already), and it has me wanting to write science fiction.  The problem is that I don’t know enough of the science to make the fiction work.  I don’t want to make up stuff (Like I’m doing with this Nano novel).  I want far-future-but-realistic, if that makes any sense.  So I think I need to do some reading of some real science, and then I can take a shot at science fiction.

It would also be nice to be done because I think my wife has been a little neglected.  She’s a good sport about it, but that doesn’t mean I should push my luck.

Michael Chertoff doesnt understand what better off means

Homeland Security to require passports for U.S. entry – CNN.com

“Each of these steps raises the bar to an attack. None of this is perfect. None of them is foolproof. But we’re always better off when we build higher levels of security,” [Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff] said.

It becomes increasingly clear that Chertoff seeks to lull the entire nation into a false sense of security.  Requiring everyone entering the country to show a single document so that security officers only have to worry about recognizing that one document does not make us safer.  In fact, it makes us less safe.  It’s like taking all the passwords you have for your bank, your credit card, your email, your whatever, and making them one long, random string of characters.  It’s really hard to break that string.  But if someone breaks it, or steals it, they know everything about you.

It doesn’t matter how hard it is to forge a passport.  It’s not necessary to forge one.  Just steal one.  All terrorists are Arab guys with beards and turbans, right?  And don’t they all look the same?  How do you know that the guy coming through your security checkpoint, most of his face concealed by a beard, is actually the guy pictured on the passport he hands you?  And do we honestly think that no one is capable of recruiting someone with a clean passport to blow up a plane or something?  We can’t possibly believe that we have a list of everyone who might ever wish to do the United States harm.

Someday, I hope people look back on this time in our history and realize how stupid we’re being.  And I hope it happens before we’ve done irreparable harm to the country.