Learning Something New, Blah Blah Fishcakes April 8, 2008

I went to dinner tonight at Black Lab Bistro (more on that at some point over at Chicken-Fried Caviar) with colleagues and a special guest to the college this week, Owen Gingerich, an astronomer from Harvard.

 

He was very cool and brought with him something I’d never heard of before: an astrolabe. I’ll let you click over to Wikipedia for the blow by blow, but this particular one was a 17th century Persian number (which he’d brought along to share with some students and faculty). It was fascinating, especially since I think it’s pretty rare to see something that’s over 400 years old right in front of you, and something that old actually “working.”

 

So, there you go.

 

Something I didn’t learn this weekend? That baseball can be very mean, in that one travels hours away from home in very cold weather only to see one’s favorite team blow a lead in the bottom of the ninth. However, they beat the Rays (and, I can’t decide if they’ve given up on the animal meaning for the sun emanation meaning; if they have, that’s dumb. While one doesn’t often root for slimy fishy things, one cannot root for something that doesn’t move or attack. My favorite example of this comes from high school; one of the teams we played often were the Marysville Pilchuk Tomahawks. Now, you can’t really root for a weapon very well, can you? And, granted, there is the whole Supersonics issue — not only inanimate, but an adjective for Christ’s sake — but they’ve always been my least favorite Seattle team and they might be leaving anyway.), so perhaps all is not lost.