Word on the street is that A Cracked Bat is not going to give me a cut unless I sell the goods on my corner. -This was stated in no uncertain terms. So, if you don't want to see me get blog-slapped, PLEASE visit A Cracked Bat! To make this an easier sell, I've come up with a few different flavors for you to choose from. All paths lead home yo.
♒ Congratulations to A Cracked Bat for reaching its 100th post! ♒
The nature of blogging
means that older posts get buried under newer posts. There are many good blog pieces that I
would like to hang on to for future reference. To keep the Ernie
Banks gems from the blog necropolis, I am going to gather up the Mr.
Cub blog links and bundle them into bunches and post them here at Now and
Zen. This post will serve as hub central for The Ernie Banks Project post links.
Bloggers, if you see your blog listed above and you have added a new post for Ernie Banks, please leave a comment on your blog list (above) with the url of the new post you would like added to your list. Thanks.
Yesterday's mail came with a surprise pwe from Mark Germana from the Trading Bases group. The contents of this envelope were the cards needed to finish several Cubs sets.
1989 Upper Deck Cubs, finished thanks to these two cards. (6 & 14)
Also killed, was my entire 1989 Upper Deck want list because it contained both Chicago holos, and this Nolan Ryan card.
145
1991 Upper Deck Silver Slugger, Ryne Sandberg SS8 completes the '91 UD Cubs.
1986 Topps #588, Steve Lake. I actually already had this card and the complete '86 Cubs set, but my copy was so poorly cut that I wanted a replacement. The card Mark sent is a vast improvement.
Next is the final card for the 1984 Topps Cubs, Larry Bowa, #705.
The 1989 Fleer Cubs checklist was the final card for the '89 set. I like it when the checklists are sorted by team, otherwise I have no use for them.
Last, but certainly not least is this Ozzie Smith card from the 1987 Topps set, #598.
I haven't posted anything Buddhist related since February. So, whether you are feeling or thinking that you are having a good day or a bad day, this post is for you.
The first baseball movie I ever saw was the original Bad News Bears. It had kids in it, so my parents didn't have a problem with me going to the theater to see it. If they had seen it first, I would have been forbidden to watch it. This movie is what kids were like when I was growing up. Social commentary aside, this was THE baseball movie of my generation.
This week I have received my first card from a few different Topps sets. Though I have (so far) only posted images of cards that I own, the scans themselves are not always mine. So for some of these, my card is in better condition than the scan shown, and for others my copy is in poorer condition.
I have a few more scans I want to share from the box of goodness that arrived from A Cracked Bat last week. As far as sets go, a 1/1 for all of the team cards in a set is sad, but fun. Sad, because there is only one Cub card in the set, but fun, because completed sets are fun!
-Next up, a few shinies. I love the rainbow colors in Arrieta's card.
Not Jake from State Farm
Castro and Soriano, 2013 and 2010 respectively.
So, I figured the whole black hole ripping apart the universe thing was so last week, that I was simply going to move on and write like a mature, responsible blogger. But...
then...
this...
happened!
Evers has been lost! I repeat, Evers is lost. Will Evers ever be found, or is he lost forever?
Yeah, that was a groaner! Thank you Julie for the awesome cards. And a thank you to those of you who actually returned here to read the finale.
Today is the 80th anniversary of the tragic Hindenburg disaster. There is a good deal of news coverage scattered across the net right now. The AP interviewed the last remaining survivor, so I'll share some AP links on the story.
I take moocs whenever I come across a topic that appeals to me. All of the courses use online resources outside of the class site. Starting with my current mooc enrollment, I've decided that I am going to create one blog entry for each class, as a place to store the course links in one easy to find page. This seems to be the best way to organize the links. Creating files and bookmarking just wasn't working efficiently. Classroom access is not a forever thing, and even if it were, they do not have all the links gathered on one page.
For the most part, I take only one course at a time, so don't expect to see many of these resource blog posts. The posts will be edited each week to add new links, for the duration of the class.
⌖⌖⌖⌖⌖⌖⌖⌖⌖⌖⌖⌖⌖⌖⌖⌖⌖⌖⌖⌖⌖⌖⌖⌖⌖⌖⌖⌖⌖⌖
Introducing Robotics: Robotics and Society
Queensland University of Technology
Robots: The Journey Continues Video from Springer Handbook of Robotics
Nimble-Fingered Robot Outperforms the Best Human Surgeons Article MIT Technology Review
Do We need Asimov's Laws? Article MIT Technology Review
Humanoid Robot- Gemonoid HI-1- Android Prototype Video
⌬ Hiroshi Ishiguro The Man Who Made a Copy of Himself Article IEEE Spectum
Meet Erica, the world's most autonomous android Video at The Guardian
What's Mother's Day if you've been born in a machine and raised by robots? Article at The Conversation
Rossum's Universal Robot by Karel Capek Runaround by Isaac Asimov Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (Blade Runner) by Philip K. Dick Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies by Nick Bostrom Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future by Martin Ford Robot Nation by Stan Neilson The Second Machine Age by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee
Welcome to part II of Hitting a Grand Slam with a Cracked Bat. Julie sent a box of baseball cards to me. This box contained well over 300 cards! About half are Cubs, and the other half are White Sox. All but one (one!), are new to my collection, and that is awesome! So with this post, and another for Part III, I will show scans of some of these baseball beauties.
LET THE PARTY BEGINNNNNNN!
Without a doubt, Clark is the cutest MLB mascot. He was so happy to be pulled out the box. He was mumbling something about black holes and a crack in the space-time continuum, but I was too busy pinching his cute little cheeks to grasp what he was saying.
Ernie is just about as cute as Clark, and this card brings my Ernie Banks collection up to two cards. How apropos, as I heard Ernie say to Clark as he patted him on the back, 'Don't worry friend. We'll play two.' Clark smiled, and then hordes of players climbed out the box and laid out across the table. Once they settled into their proper card poses, things seemed to settle down. -With the single exception of Tony Kaufmann.
The Kaufmann philosophy states that any time is a good time to dance the Charleston. The only one who disagrees with this philosophy is Murphy, and nobody cares what Murphy thinks.
Frank Chance and Mordecai Brown. These fellas know how to climb out of a box and strike a pose! They make for beautiful cards.
And shy Billy Williams is another favorite.
Perhaps Billy is not shy, but is flinching from the bright white light that seems to be gunning for his card? Oh I know what will tone down that white light, a blue light. Not just any old blue light, but a Blue Light Special!
The Dream Team boys to the rescue! While they do their thing, I'll go do mine. An anthro class (Robotics and Society) started Monday and I need to finish this week's course work. I hope to post the final installment of Hitting a Grand Slam with a Cracked Bat before the end of the week.
On Monday, I had been checking on a tracking number throughout the day waiting for the 'Delivered at/in mail box' update. Having had enough of getting nowhere at the USPS website, I headed downstairs to check the mail for myself. I approached the great wall of metal boxes and slid the key into its matching lock, and then I turned it. As I pulled the little door open, a glorious light burst through the edges of the small mail box. In the center of this magnificent light, was a box. It seemed to be floating in there, with an apparent disdain for the law of gravity. Fancying myself an adventurous Chicago Jones, I clipped my bullwhip to my belt and reached into the light and pulled out the box. As soon as the box entered the daylight, the glow toned down and the box very nearly blended into the surrounding environment. Thankful that nary a soul was around to notice the transformation, I smiled a crooked grin, then tipped my hat back and bounded upstairs.
As I was breaking through the seal on the box, this happened. -
How such a little box could hold so much beauty... I'll never know. Julie at A Cracked Bat knows. She packed it. She sent it. And. It. Is. Glorious!
