Some guy, possibly Matthew Spitzer, has set a new record for the shortest time taken to open 12 beer bottles with a helicopter. Some Japanese folks have video-taped and narrated the feat.
No, he isn’t opening them with the rotor blades. He has a traditional bottle opener attached to the right skid, and he hovers the ‘copter to open them. This is amazing.
(via Gizmodo)
The apostrophe isn’t a complicated entity. It is used to indicate two things in English: a possessive or a contraction. For example, in the preceding sentence, “isn’t” has an apostrophe in it because it is a contraction for “is not”, and the apostrophe indicates the missing “O”.
The apostrophe should never be used to indicate plurals. (The only possible exception to this rule is a purely stylistic one which I utterly loathe, and that is in the case of reference to a decade; e.g. “The 1970’s”. That usage grates on my brain something awful.)
The apostrophe should also never be randomly inserted into words that, by pure coincidence, end in “S”, especially not when you’re writing a story about education. Hint to Dan Bewley: in the following sentence, not only should an apostrophe not be used to pluralize a word (a very common and disgusting error), but “guarantees” isn’t even plural! It’s the third-person present indicative tense of the verb “to guarantee”.
Organizers of J.O.N.A.H., Joint-religious Organizing Network for Action and Hope, are hoping to expand the city’s legacy scholarship program that guarantee’s tuition to Kellogg Community College for Battle Creek or Lakeview school graduates.
Gaaaaaaaaaaaah!
From Freep sportswriter and funnyman Michael Rosenberg’s game summary:
Of course, you can’t win with pitching alone. The Tigers kept getting offense from unlikely sources. Omar Infante had a walk, a single and a stolen base in his postseason debut, despite the pressure of replacing future Hall of Famer Alexis Gomez.
Leyland can’t go wrong. After all, this is the same guy who, “for his next trick, will train his dog to hit a slider, then pencil him in to bat leadoff.”
Kenny Rogers, he of the infamous late-season and post-season collapse, pitched the Tigers to another solid victory over the A’s tonight in Detroit, giving the Tigs a 3-0 lead in the ALCS. Let’s take a moment to reflect on this performance.
Rogers is 41 years old. When he came to Detroit, everyone said he was washed up, couldn’t control his temper, and didn’t win games after the All-Star break, much less in the postseason.
In two postseason starts this year, Rogers has pitched 15 innings and allowed all of seven hits and zero earned runs. Not particularly known as a strikeout pitcher (averaging just under one strikeout every two innings this season), he has fanned 14 batters in those 15 innings.
In his first start, against what pundits widely described as a “modern-day Murderers’ Row” Yankees lineup, Rogers worked 7-2/3 innings, giving up five hits and striking out eight. In his second start, against an Oakland A’s lineup that thoroughly obliterated what was arguably baseball’s second-best pitching staff (the Minnesota Twins) in a three-game sweep, he worked 7-1/3 innings, giving up just two hits and allowing only one runner past first base. He also tacked on six more strikeouts, including two of Milton Bradley and another of Frank Thomas, who is now 0-for-forever against the Tigers in the ALCS.
Barring an epic collapse (see “2004 New York Yankees”), the Tigers are on their way to the World Series for the first time since 1984, and the way they’re playing now, have a decent shot at winning it in a sweep. Should they win tomorrow, they won’t have to travel again for almost two weeks and will have nearly a week off before Game 1 of the Series, which is a huge advantage to their already killer pitching staff and would allow Jim Leyland to set up whatever rotation he wished for the Series.
Nate Robertson pitched a solid game tonight, and the Tigers’ bullpen — by far the best in the major leagues this season — did a bang-up job in four innings of relief. The Tigers’ bats generated enough offense to take a 1-0 lead, but the real story isn’t so much the Tigers winning it. The A’s managed to make baseball history by tying two records they surely wanted no part of. They tied the record for most double plays in a championship series by hitting into four, and very nearly hit into a fifth but for a conservative (and smart) play by Placido Polanco in the bottom of the ninth. Worse, the A’s continued their terrible batting with runners in scoring position — they’re batting just .086 (3-for-35) in the playoffs this year — and tied an all-time playoff record by going an astounding 0-for-13 with runners in scoring position tonight. The Tigers are going to have to do a better job of keeping the A’s off the basepaths in Game 2, however, as the A’s stranded nine runners, and six of those were on two at a time with none or one out. Credit Robertson for pitching himself out of those jams with some key strikeouts.
Fun trivia note: the last time a team turned four double plays in an LCS game was when the Giants did it exactly 19 years ago, which was also the last year the Tigers made the playoffs.
For those of you hiding under a rock, the Tigers extended their streak of holding the Yankees scoreless to a full 20 innings before Jeremy Bonderman finally surrendered a run in the seventh, after pitching five perfect innings to start today’s Game 4. Steinbrenner’s $200 million men are headed home early for the third straight postseason after an 8-3 Tigers’ victory.
The roar has been restored, baby. Next stop: Oakland.
Those sneaky reporters over at the Associated Press are going to face the Wrath of Shaq after this one.
On a related note, someone should remind Shaq that 100 years ago, basketball was only 15 years old, and the NBA was founded in 1946.