Doug Mejia

Baseball 📺

I love baseball. I don’t mean that I’m a statistician. I don’t only care who hit the most home runs in the 1900s or which left-handed pitcher threw the fastest pitch in history. I mean I love the game of baseball. I’m the guy who can sit for hours watching games even when my favorite team isn’t playing. I’m the guy who loved playing baseball as a kid and still loves listening to a good game on the radio. Yes, like my dad, a good old AM/FM pocket radio is all I need.

Don’t get me wrong, turning on the night’s game on my iPad and watching MLB.TV in full HD is always a great experience too. But that’s just a perk. I’m perfectly fine just sitting back and listening.

I also love going to watch a game live. The excitement of the crowd, the crack of the bat, the questionable calls that make things interesting… all of it makes for a perfect night in my book.

Not surprisingly, I love Ken Burns' Baseball. It’s a slow-paced, fact-filled documentary that chronicles the game from its very beginnings to the most exciting and controversial moments in its history. It’s divided into nine “innings,” and it’s done so very well. By that, I mean that it neatly wraps up a decade or so worth of history into a nice package.

For me, it’s like a comfortable blanket. I’ll turn it on and watch a segment or two on a rainy day or a Sunday afternoon. Often it’s so good that I get enthralled with it and binge-watch, but then I slow down because I don’t want it to end.

I think all baseball fans or students of history should watch it at least once. Me? I revisit it every once in a while, and I plan to continue doing so for as long as I can.

Why can’t we feel the Earth moving?

Right now, you’re zooming through space at incredible speeds. As just one of all the living creatures on Earth, you’re along for the ride…

If the Earth is moving, why don’t we feel it? This is exactly the kind of question my students ask, and it’s a completely logical one. After all, Earth isn’t sitting still. It’s traveling around the Sun at over 67,000 miles per hour, while simultaneously spinning on its axis at roughly 1,000 miles per hour. So if Earth is in constant motion, why don’t we feel it?

The short answer: we don’t feel it because we’re moving with it at the same speed. Gravity holds us securely to the surface, preventing us from flying off into space. Like the article points out, think of it like Earth giving us a constant “hug.”

Another helpful analogy, from the article, is air travel. When you’re on a plane cruising at hundreds of miles per hour, you don’t feel like you’re moving. It’s stable enough to walk around, read a book, or enjoy a drink. You only notice the motion when the plane encounters turbulence or changes speed suddenly.

Earth works the same way. It moves at such a smooth and constant pace that we never feel it. However, if it suddenly slowed down or sped up, we’d definitely notice. Fortunately, that hasn’t happened (at least not to my knowledge).

Here’s something even more mind-blowing: the Sun is also in motion, traveling at approximately 514,000 miles per hour as it orbits the center of our galaxy.

That makes sense when you consider its massive size. In fact, about 1.3 million Earths could fit inside the Sun.

What’s even crazier? Our Sun isn’t even one of the largest stars in the universe.

Learning these facts really puts things in perspective. It reminds us just how small we are in the grand scope of the cosmos.

Meet Vader, our family’s eight-year-old pug. He used to be pure black, which earned him his name, but age has given him a distinguished peppered look. His life philosophy is simple: sleep as much as possible. His favorite treats are apples and popcorn, and he’s extremely loyal, friendly, and loving. He’ll come sit beside you and settle in to keep you company, content just to be near.

What makes Vader truly special is his emotional intelligence. When any of us are having a rough day, he always seems to know. He’ll find you and remind you, in his quiet pug way, that everything will be okay. He’s more than a pet. He’s a great friend who has earned a permanent place in our household and our hearts.

My wife always says I have expensive hobbies, like photography and ham radio, and now I’m afraid I’m falling into another one: the analog world of premium notebooks, paper and pens.

I’ve always loved notebooks and writing things down, no matter where I am. But I’ve always stuck to cheaper options from Target or Barnes & Noble. I never actively sought out anything fancy because I was afraid I’d buy something beautiful and then never want to write in it. My goal has always been simple: have something where I can jot down thoughts as a temporary holding place before moving them somewhere more permanent, maybe even digital. At the same time, I’ve always appreciated the beauty of leather-bound notebooks and fountain pens. Right now, that’s where my interests are leaning.

I always carry a Field Notes notebook with me. I have one in pretty much every bag I own: my laptop bag, my iPad sleeve, you name it. But I’ve always wished these little notebooks had one feature: the ability to move pages around or tear them out without damaging the staples. Well, I think I found something that might work for me.

It’s from a company called Plotter, and they sell leather-bound binder systems ranging from pocket size to full notebooks. I’ve been eyeing them for about a year now but never pulled the trigger because they’re pretty pricey.

Today, that changed. I decided to go for it and ordered the Plotter Mini, which is about the same size as a Field Notes notebook but features a five-ring (or is it six-ring?) metal spine that accepts their refills. Along with the Plotter Mini, I grabbed some unlined refills, grid refills, blank refills, and a lifter (basically a hard plastic divider that protects your paper, while giving you a solid writing surface). Plotter says it’ll take about five to six days to prepare the order before shipping, so I’m expecting it in the next two weeks. or so

I’m excited to try it out and see how this system works for me. I think it’ll be a perfect match since it’s flexible: I can refill, change papers, or move things around as needed.

Hey, at least I didn’t go down the route of expensive fountain pens, yet. Maybe that’s next?

This retina implant lets people with vision loss do a crossword puzzle

Thirty-eight patients in Europe received a PRIMA implant in one eye.

I’m always on the lookout for articles or videos about the latest technology to improve vision loss, suffering from it myself. This particular technology consists of a chip implanted in the human eye, designed to provide vision gain using an external camera mounted on a pair of glasses. It allows someone with peripheral vision but no central vision to make things out.

In this particular study, researchers implanted the chip in 38 different people. On average, participants were able to read five more lines on the eye chart, each line getting progressively smaller.

That’s amazing to me because even seeing one line below my current level would be a Herculean feat. I assume it’s the same for these people suffering from low vision.

It reminds me of Ray Kurzweil’s book The Singularity Is Near, where he argues that the technology we have as humans will one day merge with us to create a superhuman. He continues by saying that eventually, we will lose our humanity and human traits and become all cyborg, if I remember correctly. I don’t like that part, but I do subscribe to the idea of using advanced technology to improve our quality of life, like in this case.

I understand it’s not perfect because it requires a chip implanted in your eye as well as an external camera to help you see. But if you’ve ever met or spoken to someone with a visual impairment, you quickly discover that we already have to use a lot of external technology, and usually, it’s very bulky and extremely expensive because it’s in that vertical market.

I have my hopes set high for this kind of study and these trials. To me, it always seems like this field is stagnant, but that’s only because I want it to speed up and come up with a permanent solution for all people with visual impairments.

Scientists open untouched Apollo 17 lunar samples from 1972 — they may hold clues about the moon’s violent origins

When the six Apollo missions that landed on the moon returned home, some samples of lunar rocks and regolith they brought with them were stored, pristine and unopened. This is because scientists wanted to preserve them for a later date when more advanced instruments could be used for their analysis.

This is amazing. I can’t even imagine the excitement that these scientists must be feeling to study these samples. It is like going back in time in more ways than one. First, they are taking a short trip back to the Apollo missions of 1972. Then, continuing thousands of years as they make new discoveries of the different chemical signatures they find in each layer of rock sample. I hope that waiting for today’s technology will prove worth it for them.

We went out for an early dinner at this little tavern that’s been around since 1988. They almost shut down last month but somehow pulled through and are still open for business.

As we were walking out, I noticed a corner of the tavern that reminded me of a scene from The Godfather. It has that old-world charm and atmosphere. Although it’s not as old as the movie, it feels frozen in time.

For a moment, it didn’t feel like we were anywhere local. We could have been in a different part of the country entirely. It was a great experience, and I plan to visit again soon.