Notes From A Bear's Journey

Police description of "wife-beater" outfit of alleged gang member      You've likely heard that old joke of two peanuts walking in the park: one was a salted.  Ha-ha, and it's something most of us can chuckle about because few of us have actually been assaulted, that is unexpectedly confronted, pushed and suddenly finding ourselves dodging punches or heaven forbid, knives or guns (and here I openly apologize to the millions of women and children who are victims of domestic violence and are indeed physically or verbally assaulted every day in their homes).  And one certainly doesn't expect this to happen when walking with your friends on a popular hiking trail, but that is exactly what happened.  Apparently, my friend had asked some girls to turn down their phone's music at a lookout by a lake, a place where pretty most everyone came to enjoy not only the view but also the quiet (there were people who thanked him for saying something to the girls).  Whe...

     Press photo of skating duo,  Frick & Frack       Don't worry, I am no good on the ice, nor am I a mathematician or scientist capable of explaining what a fractal is.  There are already plenty of people and algorithms working away to find the "perfect" shape, something partially credited earlier to  Buckminster Fuller  (think geodesic domes).  But fractals are quite different, but similar (what??).  Here's a quick explanation (and the only one I'll foist upon you) from  Scientific American :  Fractals are geometric figures.  They are difficult to define formally but their features and beauty make them accessible and intriguing.   One feature is self-similarity, which describes how fractals have patterns that recur at different scales.  In other words, when you zoom in, you will find a smaller version of a pattern you had seen initially.  When you zoom in some more, you will find an eve...

    Right off the bat (or club), I don't understand golf, which is not saying much because I don't understand a lot of things.  And if you chanced to read the last post, you already know that sports are quite low on the totem pole of my interests (no offense meant because I don'tunderstand how to read totem poles either).  Onsides, offsides, green lines, blue lines, birdies, double-eagles, black diamonds, Parkinson's...wait, what??  I'll get back to that in a minute; but have me watch a hockey or soccer game and I'll enjoy it even if not fully understanding it.  No harm, no foul.  But golf?  While most folks keep being told to tear up their sidewalk strips of grass and take shorter showers, I keep seeing bright green golf courses contrasted by players who are primarily Caucasian (and have the money to pay for the green fees).  As the late George Carlin asked, when have you regularly seen a black, brown, red, yellow (or whatever other col...

      Apologies to the popular NPR radio show  but in this case, it was the latter half of that phrase that caught my attention.  With the show, the meaning is one of not revealing the answer, as if to say, "wait, I know this and just give me a moment."  But it can also be a phrase of denial as when a doctor may walk in the room with your results and you simply say, "don't tell me."  Of course there's the mother that shows the dad the empty cookie jar (do such things still exist?) and the dad says with a roll of his eyes, "don't tell me."  The scenes of childhood are the memories of future years , wrote The Farmers Almanac ...in 1850!  And it was thus that I happened upon a rather large batch of both sports and motivational books being cleared out at my library.  It was seemingly all there, the "best" sports writings of earlier years, the "extreme" limits of professional athletes, the blah-blah-blah of sports.  Alas, I am so...