We gave our sports consultant Sarah Fillier, star forward for the NY Sirens of the Pro Women’s Hockey League, her first assignment for Owl Chatter: to assess the prospects of the Nats for the upcoming season. Spring training starts next week! Sarah is brilliant as well as beautiful, having played her college hockey at Princeton, and, to no surprise, her report was outstanding, if brief.
“The team plays its home games in Washington,” she writes. “Will let you know in my next report if that’s the West Coast or East Coast Washington.”
Thanks, Babe! No rush.
Other sources tell us the Nats should be competitive most days with a decent lineup, but will finish 4th in the NL East, at best. The Mets, Atlanta, and the Phils are just too damn good for the Nats to crack the top three. Have no idea how Miami looks. We’ll be missing closer Kyle Finnegan sorely — we love you Kyle! And starters Jedidiah Gray and Cavatelli ala Bolognese will be out of action for much of the season (that’s Josiah Gray and Cade Cavelli). Bullpen also seems a bit thin at this point, to put it mildly.
For those of you who look to Owl Chatter for trenchant political analysis (i.e., the heavy drinkers among you), please note we are predicting a U.S. military takeover of the Panama Canal by the end of 2025. A flimsy excuse was already laid down — we need to protect it from the Chinese.
The prospective loss of the canal comes on the heels of November’s disqualification of Miss Panama from the Miss Universe pageant. The official reason was that she broke some rule about leaving a room that she was not supposed to leave (?), but there were also rumors that she had an altercation with Miss Dominican Republic who was reputed to be an a**hole. Further complicating matters is the fact that Miss Panama’s first name is Italy. She is Italy Mora. She retains the title of Miss Panama. With that punim we’re fairly certain she’ll land on her feet.
Oh, no, hold on. That’s not her. Here she is. Much better. (Phil! Cut it out!)
I learned from the puzzle today that Georgia is the only state whose Wikipedia writeup indicates has a state “disambiguator.” I then learned from Miriam Webster that that means someone who clarifies things that are ambiguous. I’d say a lot of those states down there could use one, so kudos to the peach state!
The theme today was “backflips” as represented by four pairs of 5-letter words that flip their last two letters: quiet and quite, angel and angle, exits and exist, and venom and venmo. Rex’s sub Clare noticed that EXITS EXIST can be nicely re-split to read: EXIT SEXIST.
“Actress Emily of ‘Hannah Montana’” is Emily OSMENT, whom I only saw in a show on Netflix with Alan Arkin and Michael Douglas called The Kominsky Method, about an acting school. I think she was one of the students. She’s 32, from LA, and just got married late last year. Mazel Tov, Em! Her bro is Haley Joel Osment.
She was not happy working with Phil and simply refused to pose or smile. If looks could kill. . .
You’ll get the next one, Philly! No question!
In yesterday’s puzzle, the clue at 17A was “Obsolescent classroom wall fixture,” and the answer was BLACKBOARD. Rex noted that at his university, they are not “obsolescent.” Even though much has been modernized, he complained his area has not been whiteboarded yet.
It raised a pet peeve of mine. Here’s my post from yesterday. (My blogging name is Liveprof):
As a bit of a Luddite, I preferred chalk to markers. I did not like it when the classrooms were updated. I liked getting all covered in chalk dust like I worked in the mines. A student once came up after class to let me know I was all smeared up with chalk and I said: That’s okay, my wife worries when I come home and there’s NOT chalk all over me.
There were several responses. Dennis wrote: I’m with @Liveprof. I loved being covered in chalk dust at the end of the teaching day. It was definitive proof I’d done something.
Matt added:
Funnily enough, you’ll see BLACKBOARDs in a lot of new academic buildings because physicists and mathematicians explicitly prefer them to whiteboards. My university’s fancy new science tower, renovated two years ago, has blackboards in every classroom at the request of the faculty.
Chalk tends to be MUCH more expressive for equations and diagrams, and doesn’t suffer from the problem of old writing drying on, or of trying to write with a mostly-spent-but-not-enough-to-justify-throwing-out marker. After teaching in a room with a whiteboard for a semester, I’m very glad to be using a blackboard again.
Last, Aviatrix shared this memory:
I remember a professor explaining something to me after a lesson in the hallway, the walls of which were painted purple. He traced a diagram on the wall with his bare finger, and there was so much chalk on his hands that he only had to switch fingers a few times to complete the picture.
At 1D today, the clue was “Face covering with an opening around the eyes.” The answer was NIQAB, which was news to me, though I was able to get it from the crosses. Many folks stumbled with hijab first. Here’s how Gary put it: I suspect most everybody ran into the HIJAB/NIQAB dilemma and I went with the former. My knowledge of women’s fashion is a little iffy, ya know, outside of miniskirts and bikinis. Those I know.
1A was “Wandering soul” for NOMAD, and 28A was “Newly decorated” for REDONE. Here’s what egs did with them:
Itinerant Guest: Are all of your different colored bedrooms the same as when I was last here?
Hostess: No, we’ve REDONE the REDONE.
Guest: That’s OK. I’m NOMAD NOMAD.
At 43D, many loved the clue “Start to fall?” for EQUINOX. And at 6D, “Like donkeys and zebras” was EQUINE. Egs noted: Cross an EQUINE with a bovine and you’ll get an EQUINOX.
Headline in The Onion:
Megachurch Conducts Successful Nuclear Missile Test
Did you know sparrows squabble? Let’s close tonight with this poem by Hayden Carruth on just that point about them. It’s called “Sparrows” and was in The Writer’s Almanac on Sunday.
Spring comes and autumn goes,
Likewise in the town of sparrows.
Under the eaves and in the ivy
They wage dispute of polity.
If someone speaks, someone demurs;
They are indomitable bickerers.
One can easily imagine them
Asquabble in the copses when brave William
Led his band by, or even once
In the dust near Hannibal’s elephants.
Maybe in the primeval fire
They went at it: what’s his, what’s hers?
Apparently they do not welcome
Finality in sparrowdom.
See you tomorrow!
The Wellington Files 