Tag: Earl Weaver

Automobile Events Are Good For You

OK, today’s post title is a little tongue-in-cheek and some people wouldn’t be caught dead at any type of car show. That’s their prerogative. However, I do have a small amount of empirical evidence to back the claim made in the post title.

Not counting my treadmill workouts I average between 5,000 and 6,000 steps a day walking, according to my iPhone. (My phone is not on my person while I’m on the treadmill.) For example, in 2022 I averaged about 5,300 steps a day.

My wonderful wife and I have attended automobile events the last three days: Sunday at the Arizona Concours and Monday-Tuesday at the Barrett-Jackson auction. I averaged 9,300 steps a day for those three days, despite the fact that I did not feel well on Sunday. Yes, I did also workout on Monday and plan to do so today starting in about 90 minutes.

On average, adult Americans walk only about half as much as citizens of other developed nations. It’s not a coincidence that the US also has the highest rate of overweight and obese adults in that group of countries.

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Before I show some pictures from the past three days, it’s time to show some links to Why Evolution Is True.

 

Matthew Yglesias: Woke [my mark] language isn’t meant to improve society, but to increase inequality.

Ira Glasser: Why we need free speech, even if it’s offensive and hateful

From the second post: “Glasser has just published a very good piece in Spiked that I highlighted above (naturally it’s on a right-leaning site, for the Progressive Left is not so keen on free speech because it can include “hate speech”). It’s hard to get a defense of free speech published in a liberal place.” Oh, Glasser was head of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) for more than two decades. The ACLU has become among the worst offenders in trying to suppress free speech when it doesn’t adhere to the idiocy of woke.

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My wonderful wife sent me this picture:

 

 

OK, the source is not objective, but Buffett did say this, perhaps a little tongue-in-cheek, to CNBC’s Becky Quick in 2011. Of course, Congress would never pass such a law and I do think that on very rare occasions, the federal government may have to incur a deficit of more than three percent of GDP. From 1942 through 1945, inclusive, the US government deficit was about 11 percent of GDP. Since we were fighting in World War II I think that was OK, right? <end sarcasm>

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Time for (mainly) car photos:

 

 

The photo immediately above is a 1967 Corvette restomod. Everything about this car just looked right to me. Oh, I saw a person (but only one) wearing a “Save The Manuals” T-shirt. Like the vast majority of restomods for sale here, the Corvette above has an automatic transmission. Just like devotees of stick shifts are probably tired of seeing me write about the demise of the standard manual, I am tired of hearing people like Steve Magnante and even Bill Stephens drone on about how we need to save manual transmissions. In the US, the standard manual transmission is already dead, but no one has the decency to knock it over and give it a proper burial. The market share of new vehicles sold in the US with a traditional manual transmission is now less than one percent.

 

 

I have no idea if the item above, for sale by one of the many vendors in the Exhibitors Hall, is really an old radio or a reproduction. However, I have always been fascinated by very old electronic devices and we were very loyal to the Zenith brand in our house when I was young. “The quality goes in before the name goes on.”

One of the delights in attending car events is the experience of seeing and learning about cars that were previously unknown to me, such as the car shown below.

 

 

As shown on the car card, this is a 1989 Nissan Silvia convertible. Other than what’s on the card, I know nothing about this automobile and had never heard of it prior to yesterday. Like the title of a book by the late, great Baltimore Orioles manager Earl Weaver read, it’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.

 

#AutomobileEventsAreGoodForYou

#WokeIsACult

#Barrett-JacksonScottsdale2023

#EarlWeaver

#somanyCARSjustonelife

#disaffectedmusings

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Tuesday Coda

No, I did not misspell soda. A coda is the closing section of a music composition or literary work.

Yesterday I received the check for the significant amount due in the transaction in which I traded the Z06 for a new Mustang GT. The Z06 saga and purchase of its replacement is all over including the shouting.

Compared to what I had spent on repairs to the Z06 and buying the Cascada, I have recouped more than half that amount AND I now have a desirable brand new car. While I am still not flush with cash, I can breathe a little easier.

 

 

All I want is an ownership as free from hassle as possible. I will not have any modifications done even if they wouldn’t require ECM tuning. If 450 HP/420 LB-FT of torque in a 3,750-pound car is not enough for someone in his early 60s, then I really am hopeless. The sound alone makes owning the Mustang GT worthwhile.

 

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Here’s a video unrelated to automobiles:

 

 

This was, indeed, a precursor to an intense rainstorm yesterday. Mother Nature neither knows nor cares that the official end of the monsoon season was September 30.

Although the storm blew away many of the items we had in the front yard for bulk trash pickup week–which usually happens every four weeks–the rain was welcome, as always. I know that this year’s monsoon season did not deliver as much rain as last year’s as the 2021 version dumped so much rain on us that, at times, the level of our swimming pool actually reached the pool deck. That did not happen this year.

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Sorry, Lyle, but here is a photo of one of my favorite landmarks in the area, Four Peaks:

 

 

While lack of a view of Four Peaks cannot realistically be a deal-breaker when we move to a single-story house, it sure would be nice to have. It’s like a five-car garage; it would be great to have one, but such houses are not usually available in the range of what we would want to spend. Thanks to my wonderful wife for taking and sending me the photo.

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This remark from Robert Hutchins, former President of the University of Chicago, is right on the mark, in my opinion:

 

“A university is a community of scholars. It is not a kindergarten; it is not a club; it is not a reform school; it is not a political party; it is not an agency of propaganda. A university is a community of scholars.”

 

So many institutions of “higher learning” have strayed very far from this concept to the detriment of all of us, ultimately, although I will not live long enough to see all of the awful repercussions. A university…is not a political party; it is not an agency of propaganda. Amen!

Sadly, here is an example of how universities–in this case, its students–have become clueless; yes, the link is to Why Evolution Is True:

 

“Professor in Maine demonized for teaching that humans have two sexes; students walk out and demand her suspension.”

 

Although dozens of conditions exist that can cause a baby to be born with an ambiguous gender, as best as I can tell from my admittedly brief research, in no way does the proportion exceed 1% and some studies suggest the ratio is even smaller. It just speaks to the hypocrisy of ideologues that those who demonize climate change deniers as ignoring science do EXACTLY THE SAME THING when it suits their a priori beliefs.

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I do pay attention to the word counter at the lower left when writing a post. Yesterday, because of the word count I deliberately excluded mentioning the anniversary of Bobby Thomson’s (yes, I spelled his last name correctly) famous homerun (“The Giants Win The Pennant! The Giants Win The Pennant!”) in 1951 that did, indeed, win the National League championship for the Giants and send them to the World Series.

I am going to cheat the word counter by showing you something Bill James wrote in his legendary book, The Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract.

 

 

Yes, the Giants hit 11 homeruns against Ralph Branca in 1951 and beat him six times. The reference to Earl Weaver is that he was the first manager, as far as anyone knows, to make sure data was compiled on specific batter-pitcher matchups and to use that data in lineup construction and pinch-hitting decisions.

The first 2-3 years I worked for the Baltimore Orioles, the team Weaver managed although he was retired by the time I started working there, one of my job responsibilities was to maintain the “Weaver charts.” While the data was stored in a computer database by this time, I still had to manually look at every scorecard from every game and to manually input changes in the data. At some point, this task was given to someone in the Public Relations department. I never trusted the data after that, but that’s another story for another day.

Today, such data is probably available to almost anyone with a computer. It certainly is available to all major league teams. Remind me to write about my reports on Left/Right tendencies for the opposition before every home stand and road trip.

 

#TuesdayCoda

#DesertRain

#FourPeaks

#RobertHutchins

#EarlWeaver

#somanyCARSjustonelife

#disaffectedmusings

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