Bits & Pieces

No Spitting!

By Kim J. Harmon

A little potpourri on this pleasant summer morning –

Overheard at a recent Connecticut Babe Ruth state tournament baseball game in Southbury: “Jimmy, I don’t want to see you spitting again!” Come on, Ma, spitting and baseball have gone together since Harry Wright first laced ‘em up for the Cincinnati Red Stockings in 1869. Where would we be if there were no spitting or scratching in baseball, huh? Come on, Ma, lighten up!

Thanks to a district court judge, fans in the National Football League can now walk into any stadium in the league carrying firearms, knives, liquor bottles, explosive devices and any other sort of illegal contraband because it has been ruled – thanks to a season-ticket jerk in Tampa, a high school civics teacher – that security pat downs at the gates are unconstitutional. The judge said that the risks do not outweigh the need to protect the public from unreasonable searches.

Unreasonable? Is it unreasonable to hope that I can go to a football game without a drunken fan shooting or stabbing someone – maybe even me or someone in my family – or throwing batteries or glass bottles in the stands?

Crime or terrorism, the ACLU in Florida states, is a “perceived threat.”

Once again, I ask. If you have nothing to hide, then why would you worry about getting searched at the gate of a football game?

Record power use … record heat wave … Hezbollah fires “record” number of rockets at Israel.

“Hey, we just set a record for rockets fired in one day!”

“No fooling? High five!”

Why have we become so intent with setting standards for everything? Why do we need to quantify everything? Should I write a press release after it takes me a “record” amount of time to get through traffic on I-84? Or how about if I take a “record” number of steps from my car to the front door of my office?

Just seen today on yahoo.com, this July was the second hottest July on “record.” More than 2,300 daily temperature “records” were broken coast to coast. What does all that mean? It means that the average temperature in the 48 contiguous states was 77.2, three-tenths of a degree behind July of 1936 and one-tenth of a degree ahead of July of 1934.

Wow, those are significant numbers. Jeepers!

Think about this: On August 2 at 11:40, my car thermometer said it was 101 degrees outside. Well, it was 119 degrees in Kuwait City at 6:40 pm local time (the temperature would dip to a low of 94 somewhere in the middle of the night) and at Base Orcados in Antarctica at 12:40 pm local time it was –9 degrees … although the wind chill made it feel like –29 degrees.

Still think we had it bad?

Sign on I-91 in Vermont: MOOSE-CROSSING w

 

If you’re heading up I-91 in Massachusetts the Volleyball Hall of Fame in Holyoke. Now, volleyball is one of my favorite sports but I know only one name and I’m not even sure he is in (Karch Kiraly – he is). The place is only open four hours a day – but do we really need all that time to do through it. Be sure to stop by the 2006 induction ceremonies (October 17) of Bernard Raizman (who? Well, the FIVB player of the 20th century, that’s who!), Eugene George, Stanislaw Gosciniak, Cecilia Tait, Konstantin Reva and Ron Land. Make those plans now!

Why is it whenever a stiff breeze kicks up in the Atlantic the price of a barrel of oil spikes?

Just a few months ago hurricane “experts” at Colorado State University predicted a dire hurricane season, with three or four potentially devastating storms – ala Hurricane Katrina – predicted for the Gulf and Atlantic coasts. Well, now it appears it the hurricane season won’t be nearly as bad and that the chances of a monster storm like Katrina are “very small.”

Do they really have any idea, or are they just guessing?

And remember this – based on their original prediction, which was played up quite a bit, the price of a barrel of oil (and, hence, gasoline) spiked. Which probably helped Exxon make an extra billion over the last quarter.

On Thursday, July 27, the price of a gallon of regular unleaded was 2.89 in Vermont

Why is it that right after golf lessons your game gets worse?