Author: Brendan Barry
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Back to Boston’s Beginning
And I don’t mean the city’s. No, 125 years ago today, the Boston Americans, later to be renamed the Boston Red Sox, played their first home game. Not at Fenway Park, mind you, but their original home—the Huntington Avenue Grounds. I decided to make a graphic comparing Huntington Avenue to Fenway, but could not find…
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Just a Little Annoying
To be clear, this is a comment on a hero graphic—not an actual graphic representing data. Nevertheless, it does represent the borders of states within the United States. Most obviously, because there is not a giant state called Mosquita occupying the centre of the United States. (Fun fact: there is a Mosquito Coast located in…
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The Broad Street Run
This past weekend, Philadelphia hosted the Broad Street Run, a 10-mile run from the “top” of the city’s Broad Street in the north to the end at the bottom in the Navy Yard, a length of—you guessed it—10 miles. And congratulations to my sister for not just running it for the first time, but completing…
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Damon the Bad
I guess we’re going to stick with the baseball this week. I forgot this year is the 20th anniversary of the Doug Mirabelli game. For those unfamiliar with the story, the Red Sox long employed knuckleballer Tim Wakefield, one of my all-time favourite pitchers. The knuckleball, however, is very difficult to catch because its lack…
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AC to Philly Expressway?
And I am not talking about Atlantic City. No, on Saturday, the Red Sox fired their manager Alex Cora and his entire staff. Or, rather, the staff loyal to him. I wrote about that on Monday. Little did we know that Saturday night, Alex Cora and the chief of baseball operations for the Philadelphia Phillies,…
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Revenge of the Nerds
This past weekend I thought I would be writing about something else, and perhaps I still will later this week, but for now we turn to the Boston Red Sox firing Alex Cora, their manager; Jason Varitek, beloved Sox icon and in the dugout as game planning and run prevention coach; Ramon Vazquez, bench coach;…
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Words. Words. Words.
This year—and last—I have been making a more concerted effort to read more and use social media less. I just finished reading an Isaac Asimov novella, Lucky Starr the Moons of Jupiter, but that interrupted my reading of The Carpathians, a non-fiction book about the history of the northern slopes of the Carpathian Mountains—the Polish…
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An Arch to Nowhere?
Last week the New York Times published an article comparing the proposed triumphal arch by President Trump to other triumphal arches both in the United States and abroad. Firstly, it ought to be pointed out, as my title alludes, significant questions remain about the legality of the proposed arch. Personally, I’m still waiting for Infrastructure…
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Here Came the Sun
Sorry, George, had to change the verb tense. As I alluded to on Friday, today we are looking at some space weather news. This past weekend, the Sun put on a light show over Canada and northern US states with the aurora borealis. Of course the grandeur and spectacle is not a thing that comes…
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A House by Any Other Address
Yesterday, the BBC reported a William Shakespeare expert’s research into unrelated materials uncovered the lost address of a home owned by the Bard in Central London. Ironically, the very spot the researcher, Professor Lucy Munro of King’s College, identified is presently marked by a blue plaque—a marker system used in the UK to identify sites…