One of the Season Highlights for the White Sox

The Chicago White Sox employee-of-the-month threw out the first pitch last night. "Unfortunately, it didn’t exactly go well."



Comments:

1) Actually, the pitch had a decent velocity and was thrown level and straight; the direction needed work.

2) The throw looks like my golf drives--not much arc and way off line.

3) Prediction: this will be one of the season highlights for the White Sox, currently 25-29.

Get This Story Out of the News, United

When we first saw the video of the passenger being dragged off of United Flight 3411 at O'Hare, we, probably like you, had three reactions:

1) he was brutally treated by the airline;
2) the passenger could have behaved better;
3) there were other ways the airline could have opened up a seat without reaching this point.

Modern journalism insists that we know more. The video will not stand on its own; we need to fill out the backstory. Was the passenger basically a victim or a partial instigator? (The answer does not change our judgment of the airline's actions, however.)

First reaction: he doesn't sound like a good guy. LA Times:

[David] Dao had previously been convicted of six felonies related to his medical practice in 2004, in which he was accused of illegally prescribing painkillers to a patient in exchange for sex.

He was given five years of supervised probation.

Dao surrendered his medical license in 2005

Second reaction: he was trying to turn his life around.

[Dao] applied for reinstatement, telling regulators it was a matter of “family honor.” In a 2014 letter, his attorney described Dao as "a grandfather, an active participant in his local church" who supports an organization that helps the homeless in his community, Elizabethtown, Ky.

Third reaction: he had mental challenges that the United police likely exacerbated.

Dao has a history of mental health problems, including depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder, for which he has received treatment. A 2011 psychological evaluation of Dao concluded that he "lacked the foundation to navigate difficult situations, both inter-personally and in a complex profession.” [snip]

But another psychological evaluation administered in 2013 concluded that Dao “emotionally was free of debilitating anxiety, depression, or psychological turmoil to the extent that it would affect his ability to function in activities of daily living or manage the practice of medicine.”

Regulators cleared Dao to return to medical practice in 2015, in which he was initially restricted to working one day a week, supervised by another doctor.

From sin to repentance to making amends to a violent encounter with authority--a progression that resonates during Holy Week. Settle at any cost, United, and get this story out of the news.

Hell Froze Over

Cubs first baseman Anthony Rizzo begins the celebration.

Like "when hell freezes over," Cubs win World Series has been a short-hand expression in science fiction time-travel to show how unexpected (or ridiculous) the future turned out to be. Last night was also a time to re-acquaint Americans with history. The Fox Sports announcers commented on who was alive in 1908, the last time that the Cubs won the World Series e.g., Mark Twain, Thomas Edison, and Alexander Graham Bell. The SF Chronicle made other gee(zer)-whiz observations:

At the time, Theodore Roosevelt was president, New Mexico, Arizona, Alaska and Hawaii were not yet states, and the first Ford Model T car was two weeks old.

The science-fiction writers will now have to come up with a different metaphor. By the way, given the advances in genetics, I wouldn't give "when pigs fly" a long shelf-life either.

November, Full of Portent, Begins

a person should say "rabbit, rabbit, white rabbit", "rabbit, rabbit, rabbit", "rabbit, rabbit" or simply "white rabbits" upon waking on the first day of each new month, and on doing so will receive good luck for the duration of that month.

It's been over four years since I uttered "rabbit, rabbit" on the first of the month---and I'm not particularly superstitious---but the end times may be near and we're going to need a lotta luck.

There's a realistic chance that a loudmouth businessman with no political experience is going to be the next President. It shows how bad things are that I am considering voting for him.

Italy, the center of Western Christendom, has been hit by a wave of earthquakes.

"David Levy, an artificial-intelligence expert and author of “Love and Sex with Robots,” believes humans will be having sex with interactive robots within the next year or so, falling in love with them after that and marrying them by 2050."

There's a realistic chance that (11/2 Update!) the Cubs will win the World Series.

Every Cat Has Its Day

Cat shelter built so strays would come back. (WSJ photo)

Sometimes circumstances are sufficiently dire that one considers actions that run contrary to one's principles, for example a pacifist buying a gun to protect her family, or an anti-drug crusader dispensing free needles to reduce the spread of disease.

Not on the same level as life and death, but important to sufferers, is the plague of rats that Chicagoans are experiencing and the solution that seems to be working [bold added]:

Chicago is awash in rats. A mild winter last year allowed broods of baby rats to survive, leading to an explosion of the critters, terrorizing residents as they run around their yards and dumpsters. By September, there had been 27,000 rat complaints, a 40% increase from 2015.

This is turning the alley cat, once considered a rabid urban menace threatening small children and pets, into a prized possession.

Comments:
1) Our former neighbor two houses away used to let her pet cat roam free at night. It kept the whole neighborhood rat free, but now that she's moved away we've sighted the occasional roof rat (thankfully, not at our house).
2) We've been longtime supporters of the Homeless Cat Network (HCN), which traps, neuters, and returns feral cats to the wild. HCN also feeds the cats in their Bay habitat and has a perhaps-surprising ally in the Audubon Society due to the reduced killing of Bay wildfowl.
3) It's in a way unfortunate that HCN has been so successful---we have no cats to export to Chicago.