Ted is dead. Yes, that’s right. In “Here’s Brett, Don’t Fret” I stated that after Robert Novak died, I picked Ted Kennedy for the next death. Don Hewitt passed, but now the last of Kennedy boys is gone. The Kennedy brothers could’ve easily been a dynasty if Rob wasn’t killed in 1968, he could’ve beat Richard Nixon for the election. And obviously Ted would’ve been a more reasonable choice for Prez instead of Jimmy Carter. And both of those eras would be similar to the Camelot era, with JFK. At least the anxiety and tension about when he will die part is over. Believe me, I thought he was dead in that lunch in late January after Obama’s swearing in. Not even close. Kennedy was an extremely courageous patriot. He was disciplined, determined and intelligent. He was also a dog person. Which is why I am typing with my golden doodle Rafa. Where’d he go? Oh there he is. Ok, he betrayed me for a rubber bone, but let’s not think about that. Poor Ted. He was the last of the Kennedy dynasty. And here's what Obama has to say about Teddy. His patriotism is underrated. That’s too bad. But as all people, he lost his battle with the devil, cancer (We have got to find a vaccine for that epidemic). G.B.T.K
Celebrate good times! I totally forgot about the 100th anniversary of the root beer float. It’s been a week. Sorry A&W and MUG. I worship you guys. You’re my second favorite soda, barely trailing Dr. Pepper. I love floats more than black cows, sundaes or even banana splits or crème brulee. And I like the bananas foster milkshakes from Cheeburger Cheeburger a lot too. And I forgot what Baked Alaskas taste like. Either way, the entrepreneur who thought of a root beer float is genius. Hail root beer floats.
Hey, it’s been 500 years since Galileo Galilei’s ingenious notion of a telescope. Nice thinking, Galileo. We got a man on the moon because of that building block. Even though the 500th anniversary was yesterday. I was going to write about the root beer float and Galileo last night. Apparently curfew beats blogging in my parent’s perspective.
You know what I just heard happened. My sister’s friend and neighbor, was at Cunningham Falls the exact same day we were there, and she was attacked by a swarm of bees too. Spooky stuff, eh? A Hollywood director might as well take this coincidence, elongate the story and make up parts to it, and turn it in to a Rated R horror film. For more drama in this paragraph, click this hyperlink, and it will take you to Beethoven’s 5th symphony. Beeware of the swarm!
The Rockies keep on coming. In 10 innings Colorado beat LA. The Rockies are now 2 games below LA.
Now I'm having another poll: What website are you rooting for in the search engine war: Google, Bing or Ask. Even though it's mostly between Google and Bing I wanted to see if anybody would say Ask. Don't be shy. Speak your mind. I'm for Google.
C ya
4 comments:
Great blog entry!!! What writing.
OK, so I'm placing my vote for GOOGLE! Here's why: I searched Google, Bing, and Ask for "Zac Lowy" and for "Z zone Zac" and ONLY GOOGLE came up with the RIGHT SITE!!! My son would have me mention that ASK got the Epic Failures blog, at least, but BING got NUTHIN. So Google it is!
Fantastic blog! A seamless odyssey from Ted Kennedy's passing to search engines, with amusing and insightful stops at Galileo, root beer floats, and MLB along the way.
As I'm a gmailer, and Blogger.com is part of Google, I'll vote for them, even though I don't like them reading my mail and suggesting ads. Kind of creepy. And as an Apple/Mac guy, I can't root for the evil empire of Microsoft.
Hi Zac;
My name is Vin, and I am an old friend of your parents'. We go back to your dad's law school days, about 1985. Actually, your dad and I were in college together, too, but we didn't know each other then. We sort of lost touch for a few years, but recently reestablished contact.
Anyway, your dad told me about your blog, and I had to see it for myself. I'm very impressed. You have a well-developed sense of humor, a robust wit, and what appears to be an insatiable curiosity about the world. Your commentaries have about them a depth and breadth which speak volumes about your intellect.
At present ,I am grief-stricken about the death of Ted Kennedy. He was an inspiration to me as long as I can remember. He is irreplaceable and will be missed as no other statesman in our time.
Sorry to read about your unfortunate encounter with yellow jackets, wasps and bees. I fight a constant battle with wasps who love to nest on my porch. The kicker is, I am allergic to their stings. I might not have survived a swarm like yours.
Anyway, keep up the good work with your blog. I will follow with interest.
uptsh
Zac-man:
I've been enjoying catching up on your blogs. Great, amusing, perceptive blurbs, er, blogs.
This year, as you noted, is the 400th anniversary of Galileo's telescopic observations. We astro-fanatics are celebrating this year as the International Year of Astronomy (IYA). The development of the telescope was very much a group effort, though much credit is given to a Dutch spectacle-maker named Hans Lipperhey. You've heard of him, right? Galileo got ahold of one of Lipperhey's "spyglasses" and improved it. Galileo's lenses gave sharper, more magnified images, but they were still crummy by today's standards. You could make a better one out of junky magnifying glasses and a cardboard tube. In fact, if you had done that 400 years ago, the four moons of Jupiter that Galileo discovered might now be named the Zacilean moons, not the Galilean moons. Spectacle lenses had been around for hundreds of years before Lipperhey and Galileo started messing around with them, but the big deal about Galileo was that he pointed his telescope UP. Then, the REALLY BIG thing he did was to say that the way to discover how the universe works is to LOOK AT IT and THINK ABOUT IT. If he could, he would have blogged about it. Galileo made lots of observations, and promoted the DANGEROUS IDEA that when you can see for yourself how the universe works, it doesn't matter what Aristotle or St. Thomas Aquinas or Rafael Nadal (I put him in to see if you were paying attention) thinks about it. That idea, plus the fact that he couldn't resist calling a yahoo a yahoo, got him into a boatload of trouble. He spent the last ten years of his life under house arrest in a small villa outside of Florence, across the street from a very nice restaurant where Judy, Susanna, Rachel and I had dinner during our trip to Italy last year. Really. I have pictures.
All this stuff about Galileo PALES IN COMPARISON to your big news that this year is the 100th anniversary of the root beer float. I had no idea. As my less-than-athletic physique might lead you to suspect, I am a root beer float fan from way back. When a milkshake seems too heavy and a plain soda too soda-y, the root beer float is a thing of beauty. My grandfather was a fan, too. He called them "Boston coolers." Susanna and Rachel have been making fun of me for reading the "Book of Useless Information," often in the bathroom. It's a series of (so far) four books with snippets of fascinating and demonstrably useless information. I recommend it to you unreservedly. Your root-beer float anniversary belongs there.
Finally, and most importantly, I want to tell you that I really enjoyed your visit. You and your dad are on my (shrinking) short list of "people I'm a big fan of." I hope that all Lowys and Nunziatos of both the two-legged and four-legged type will visit us soon and often.
Even more finally, here's the URL to the Davis family website, in case you want to check it out:
http://web.me.com/victor_davis/The_Cosmos_According_to_Victor
Bing is bogus. Give me Google.
Uncle Victor
Post a Comment