Monday, September 06, 2010

Volleyball in paper


Weather-wise, it didn’t get much nicer than this weekend.

And it was an even nicer week for the Washington volleyball team.

The Panthers went 4-0 including a title victory at the Limestone Invitational on Saturday.

Third-year coach Chuck Heinz is quick to credit the experience of his team.

“We’ve been able to expand on what we did last year,” said Heinz, who noted this is his deepest team of his tenure.

And also, his setters.

Sarah Misselhorn, Cori Venegonia and Taylor Kuykendall have been dishing out assists to a number of hitters.

Take the three matches on Saturday: Leixie Barra, Emily Heurmann and Haley Houser all took turns leading the Panthers in kills.

“It’s usually somebody different every night, which I like to see,” Heinz said. “That means our setters are doing a nice job of being dynamic and running different hitters. The credit has definitely got to go to the setters.”

However, one thing Heinz isn’t exactly sure on is his libero.

Splitting time in the different colored jersey are Mary Gabbert and Brittany Spurgeon.

“Both of them are making it extremely difficult for me to make a decision,” Heinz said with a laugh.

Sounds like a nice problem to have.

Midland Regroups: It wasn’t the best start to the season for Midland.

The Timberwolves went 1-3 at the Eureka Invitational getting its only win against LeRoy.

This week was an entirely different story. Midland beat both Lowpoint-Washburn and LaMoille to even its record at 3-3.

“We’re starting to play very well as a team,” Midland coach Matt Butcher said. “That’s our focus for the season. We are realizing that it takes everybody’s help to play good volleyball.”

The second-year coach has already started to turn the program around.


In his first season, the Timberwolves went 8-18-3 in 2009 — that doubled 2008’s win total.

With four returning seniors, including outside hitter Haley Hrovat, Midland is well on its way to making positive strides in 2010.

“We are working on communication,” Butcher said, “and understanding that constructive criticism only makes us all play better.”

Friday, July 30, 2010

I actually read Moby Dick

By the way, I finished the novel. 20+ years in the finishing but I did it.

You can read all about my adventures with the book, and my continuing pursuit of understanding its placement in the literature canon, here at MyMobyDick.blogspot.com

Cheers.

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Found another Hitchcock

Downhill, a silent film from the 1920s. Also known as When Boys Leave Home. Found online at http://www.archive.org/details/Downhill_1927

Still looking for others from 1920s and 1930s. IMDB page on Hitchcock seems to have changed names of some of these early titles.

Thursday, July 01, 2010

String Theory invented by comic book writer

If, according to the Wikipedia page on STRING THEORY:

The theory has its origins in the dual resonance
model
- first proposed in 1969 by Gabriele Veneziano -
which described the strongly interacting hadrons as strings.


Then will someone please explain comic book author Gardner Fox's Flash story (taken also from Wikipedia):

Fox's script for "Flash of Two
Worlds
!", from The Flash #123 (Sept.
1961), introduced the concept that the Golden Age heroes existed on a parallel
Earth named Earth-Two.

Remember, there were two Flash superheroes in the comic books. The Flashes figured out that the parallel worlds were only separated by vibrations.

How did Gardner Fox learn of this? I know the man was a genius and a real reader and gatherer of information, especially science information, but where then did HE get the idea?

Also, unrelated, Star Trek had an episode called "Mirror, Mirror" that brought up this parallel universe idea and that was first broadcast October 6, 1967.

Apparently, Jorge Luis Borges may have done some inventing of this idea back in 1941. From Wikipedia:

"The Garden of Forking Paths" (original Spanish title: "El Jardín de
senderos que se bifurcan") is a 1941 short story by Argentine
writer and poet Jorge Luis Borges. It
was the title story in the collection El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan
(1941), which was republished in its entirety in Ficciones ("Fictions") (1944).
It was also the first of Borges's works to be translated into English when it
appeared in Ellery
Queen's Mystery Magazine
in August 1948.

Sunday, March 28, 2010

Students from the past

Sometimes I actually make an impact.

One student. That's fine. If this one student is all that I helped then my job would be done. I just try to do this with every student.

Just recently, one of my old students from Bremerton found me on Facebook. I remember this student a great deal. We did not get along well at first either. It came around though.

She first requested me as a friend and asked if I remember her. I told her that of course I did, that she was one of my favorites.

Julia Ligmann commented on your wall post:

"That is an honor! I learned so much in your class! Although it was a long
time ago i still remember the part of Othello I had to memorize for your class.
And I have my essay I wrote about The Giver in your class as well. You really
made an awesome impact on my schooling, attitude, and my life. I will be forever
thankful!"