'On August 2, 1907, I encountered the most threatening sight I ever saw in the ball field. He was a rookie, and we licked our lips as we warmed up for the first game of a doubleheader in Washington. Evidently, manager Pongo Joe Cantillon of the Nats had picked a rube out of the cornfields of the deepest bushes to pitch against us... He was a tall, shambling galoot of about twenty, with arms so long they hung far out of his sleeves, and with a sidearm delivery that looked unimpressive at first glance... One of the Tigers imitated a cow mooing, and we hollered at Cantillon: 'Get the pitchfork ready, Joe-- your hayseed's on his way back to the barn.'
...The first time I faced him, I watched him take that easy windup. And then something went past me that made me flinch. The thing just hissed with danger. We couldn't touch him... every one of us knew we'd met the most powerful arm ever turned loose in a ball park.'

In 73 seasons studied by Retrosheet president David Smith, just 213 teams came back from a deficit of four runs after eight innings. That’s out of 44,537 attempts, or a success rate of under 0.5%.

"The long balls are fun, but we're getting some great situational hitting, too, and doing things like going from first to third,' said Jonny Gomes, who had four hits. 'It's a lot more than just homers.'"

Psychologists refer to the information flowing into our working memory
as our cognitive load.

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/05/ff_nicholas_carr/all/1

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Creative people are generally creative when buzzed on pot or tipsy;
noncreative people are generally noncreative when buzzed on pot or
tipsy; and marijuana use often fills users with the self-illusion of
creativity.

http://www.slate.com/id/2254397/

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A new strain of populism is metastasizing before our eyes, nourished by the same libertarian impulses that have unsettled American society for half a century now. Anarchistic like the Sixties, selfish like the Eighties, contradicting neither, it is estranged, aimless, and as juvenile as our new century. It appeals to petulant individuals convinced that they can do everything themselves if they are only left alone, and that others are conspiring to keep them from doing just that. This is the one threat that will bring Americans into the streets.

Welcome to the politics of the libertarian mob.

US drug war has met none of its goals

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iLZNYd6C9SGpa2oeiZIqT-HKVrCQD9FMCM103

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I see you rolling your eyes. That's right, you: the one in the
fake-vintage rock 'n' roll T-shirt and thick-framed glasses reading
this on an iPhone at the sidelines of your daughter's soccer game.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2010/05/09/weekinreview/09aoscott.xml

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In a famous series of experiments in the mid-1960s, Seligman and his
colleague Steven F. Maier demonstrated that dogs that were subjected
to random, uncontrollable electric shocks usually became helpless over
time. That is, even if they were moved into an environment in which
they could prevent the shocks by pressing a lever or doing some other
trick, the dogs never learned to do so. The experience of random
punishment had rendered these dogs passive, and immune to classical
Pavlovian conditioning.

http://chronicle.com/article/Carol-Dwecks-Attitude/65405/

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