Hi Everyone:
Every year around Christmas time we have a get together with Tara‘s sisters and cousins. For whatever reason this Christmas we didn’t get to do it. So instead my sister-in-law rented out a tiki boat in Port Washington. My general rule when it comes to boozing is to not do it so early in the morning. But every once in a while you have to make an exception.
I have to say though, this was one of the coolest things I’ve ever done. It was so mellow, just Chillaxin on the water.
Of course I had such a good time I completely forgot to post this on Sunday. I don’t know that wasn’t until I started making notes for this week‘s blog that I realized I hadn’t finished writing last week‘s blog. Ha!
So anyway, here’s what happened last week….
SPACE- A Long Time Ago, in a Galaxy far Away
Photos from the James Webb telescope were released last week, and the images that were sent back were breath taking, considering that these pictures are billions of years old.
How is that possible? I wondered that myself.
The James Webb telescope, which has been in development since the beginning of the century at least, has the capacity to see 13.6 billion light years away. A light year is approximately 1 trillion miles.
I saw on NBC News website this week a good way to explain this: When we look up at the moon, anything that we would see up there actually happened 1.3 seconds ago. Light travels fast but because the moon is so far away, there's that 1.3 second delay in it getting back to earth. With me so far?
So now, we are looking at pictures taken trillions of miles away, and because of that distance, it takes the light all that time to travel to us here in the Milky Way, so these pics are from billions of years ago.
Unbelievable.
The Carina Nebula is considered a birthplace for many of the stars in our galaxy. The Hubble Telescope, which is the one I heard about growing up, was able to send back images of this phenomenon back in the day. But this Webb telescope has sent back much clearer, more focused pictures. It's been able to show stars being born, stars that have died out long ago. Webb also captured Stephan's Quintet, a 5 galaxy cluster 240 million light years away. If you've seen "It's A Wonderful Life" Stephan's Quintet is shown when George Bailey is praying in the beginning.
It's always a good thing when we put our brains and ingenuity into something positive like this. We can use the information we glean from this telescope to figure out things that happened in the beginning of our universe. I really can't wait to see what else these scientists are able to come up with. On this we can all agree, right?
Here's where I'm sure we all won't agree
POLITICS: The January 6 Hearings:
Two people testified in person on Tuesday. One was a former Oath Keepers national spokesman Jason van Tatenhove. The other Stephen Ayres, who pleaded guilty to disorderly and disruptive conduct for his actions oh January 6, 2021.
While I found their testimony compelling and their remorse for their actions heartfelt, the testimony that had me shaking my head was regarding the meeting that took place one week before Christmas, December 18, 2020 in the Oval Office.
There Captain Orange met with Michael Flynn, lawyer Sidney Powell, Rudy Giuliani, and for reasons known only onto them, the chairman of Overstock.com, Patrick Byrne.
Former White House council Pat Cipollone's videotaped deposition was played at the hearings.
"I don't think any of these people were providing the President with good advice, so I did not understand how they had gotten in", Cipollone said.
If that's not the understatement of the year.
The meeting, became a mess of name calling and finger pointing, not to mention some of the crazy ideas that Powell and Flynn were coming up with. Flynn wanted to declare Martial law for crying out loud!
Flynn may have been a great general at one point, but now he belongs in a padded room somewhere. I mean as bad as it is that Trump is being advised by the guys who run My Pillow and Overstock.com, Flynn is at best a guy whose lost his mind and at worst a traitor to our nation. And you're not going to get an argument from me if you tell me he's both.
(We’ll discuss last night’s hearings in our next blogpost)
BASEBALL: At the All-Star Break
TRIVIA QUESTION: What genius said the following...
I still find myself anxiously awaiting the start of the season later on this week, even though I'm not optimistic about either of NY's teams chances this year.
Good thing I save these posts right?
Both teams are once again making me look silly. especially the Yankees.
Their starting pitching has been great, with Nestor Cortes pitching to an under 3 ERA so far. Who saw that coming? Garrit Cole has been solid so far as well. I know Yankee fans want to see him do this in October, and I don't blame them, but so far so good. The rest of the rotation has been good too.
Aaron Judge, who turned down a huge contract extension prior to the season, is making that look like an inspired decision. He is on pace to catch Roger Maris, and while officially that would be merely the Yankee record, count me amongst those who still consider the Rajah the all time champ. I don't want to jinx it, but Giancarlo Stanton has stayed relatively healthy this year, so he's been hitting homers along with 2021 trade deadline acquisition Anthony Rizzo. The other deadline day deal for Joey Gallo hasn't panned out, which is good, because Yankee fans always need something to call the FAN and complain about, and with a 64-28 record, and a 13 game lead in the AL East, that's about all they can complain about.
As for the Mets, well, not much to complain about there either. All they have done is win almost every series they have played this year. They have been no huge winning streaks, but also no huge losing streaks either. Some of my fellow Met fans have complained that we had a 10.5 game lead over the Braves on June 1, that was down to 1.5 games going into their series vs in Atlanta last week. Some were calling it a "collapse" Not really, the Mets played well enough, the Braves just went nuts from June 1st on, they were 29-8 coming into the series with the Mets. I feared the worst, but sonofagun if they didn't take 2 out of 3 to leave Atlanta still in first place and 2.5 up.
And they have done all of this without Jacob deGrom and without 7 weeks of Max Scherzer. Tijuan Walker, Carlos Carrasco and Chris Bassit have been a solid 1-2-3, and they have had solid pitching from David Peterson and before he got hurt Tylor Megill.
Jeff McNeil is back to raking singles and doubles, Pete Alonso is once again one of the top power hitters in the game, as he told us all at the All-Star Game last year, and Francisco Lindor the $30 million man, has almost 70 RBI's.
The best part with the Mets is that, they have many times hit away from the shift, been able to manufacture runs without home runs, and aren't striking out a million times a game. In other words, thanks to Buck Showalter, they are playing entertaining baseball as well as winning baseball. They have also had a bunch of come from behind wins to celebrate. And I can't believe I'm saying this, but their best player just might be (nah I'm not gonna jinx it...you know who I mean, the other guy we got in the Cano trade).
And speaking of Cano, the highlight of the season might have been when the Mets released him and ate his salary. When Sandy Alderson said that Steve Cohen told the front office to "make the best baseball decision" and not worry about the money, that was EXACTLY what us Met fans have been waiting to hear for years. To me, anyway, that was an awesome and welcome development.
Sorry again for the delay. Most of this was written before last Sunday. We’ll get the next one out Sunday night/Monday morning.
Maybe 😁
Stay Safe
and Have a Great (rest of the) Week
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