Shots in the Dark

City Council candidate Mark Ciommo writes in the Allston/Brighton Tab about what Harvard should do in Allston. It may be the most boring letter ever written. If you can stay awake to the end, the gist of it is, You can’t trust Harvard.

Nevertheless, on the basis of his soporific writing, I say, Vote against Ciommo!

They win five out of six, and the one game they lose is a 0-1 gem pitched by Josh Beckett. But the Yankees win six out of six, and now they’re just 6.5 games back. It’s getting hot in that AL East!

On the Barry Bonds front, cudos to Curt Schilling for coming out and saying that Bonds used/uses steroids.

“If someone wrote that stuff about me and I didn’t sue,” Schilling said, “am I not admitting there’s some legitimacy to it?”

Actually, Schilling’s quote is pretty silly—there are lots of reasons not to sue even if something written about you is untrue—but the implication of it, that Bonds is a steroid-user, is certainly right.

One thing I like about A-Rod: For all his flaws, he’s never been suspected of being a steroid user. And he’s about to hit his 500th home run at an earlier age than anyone in baseball history. What would you pay him? (Or, better question, what will some owner pay him?)

$30 million a year?

Giant, or at least quite large, squid are invading the waters off California.

“Having a new, voracious predator set up shop here in California may be yet another thing for fishermen to compete with,” said the study’s co-author, Stanford University researcher Louis Zeidberg. “That said, if a squid saw a human they would jet the other way.”

The cool thing about the above statement is that it’s actually not true! The squid in question, known as the Humboldt, is in fact extremely aggressive, and has certainly been known to attack divers nutty enough to get in the water with them.

(By the way, the reason the squid’s feeding habitats are changing and they’re moving north? It’s thought to be either a consequence of global warming, overfishing, or both.)

Meanwhile, pythons are invading Florida! (And no, I’m not talking about developers.)

Oh, and one of my favorite new websites, swimatyourownrisk.com, reports that Larry King will be talking tonight with people who’ve survived shark attacks (too bad he can’t talk with sharks who’ve survived human attacks).

Swimatyourownrisk takes a hilarious perspective on shark attacks. (No, for real.) It revels in them.

Shark snacks on snorkeler in Hawaii! (Actual headline.)

The shark was apparently feeding on turtles and Miller says, unfortunately, he kinda resembles one.

Shark knocks man out of kayak!

“Everyone had been fishing for a while — for a good two, three hours,” said John Dale of Foster City, a member of the kayak fishermen’s club. “From what he told me, basically he was fishing and was adjusting a lure, and all of a sudden he was thrown from his kayak into the water. When he came up, he thought he had been hit by a boat, but when he looked the shark was still on the front of his kayak, latched on, gnawing on the kayak. He thought about it for a second and decided he better get back onto the kayak, even though it was still on the nose.”

Shark attacks boy in Australia! (Update)

He says he had his brother next to him during the attack and says he is glad he thought to punch the shark in the nose.

“If I didn’t punch it, then I would have lost my leg and if it got my brother, then he probably would have died, which is a lot worse,” he said.

It’s darn good summertime reading.
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* This is a little (very little) journalism joke.

So is this:

No, sirreee, those folks over at the paper of record are sharp as a tack and quick on the draw.

Days after you read about it on this blog—and I was late—the Times gets around to writing about whether the New Republic’s Baghdad Diarist is a fake.

Just who is the “Baghdad Diarist”? asks the Times.

Great lede!

And they wonder why the Times is a fading enterprise……

Five days later, the Grand Central explosion has all but disappeared from the news…but meanwhile, many of us still can’t get into our offices….

—”Of course they can beat Boston. Are you kidding me? Shoot, I bet those guys are already starting to look over their shoulders.“
—Goose Gossage, in the Hartford Courant

Last week, a shot of underwater towers; this week, a reef glade, filled with yellow snapper.

Anyone watch the Yankees this weekend? 45 runs in three games. Granted, it was the Devil Rays, a pathetic excuse for a baseball team. And granted, the Yankees lost the first of the four-game series. (What is wrong with Mike Mussina?) But still…the Bombers looked pretty good.

And so did the Red Sox, sweeping Chicago. Sure looks like they’ve come out of their swoon. John Lester—happily cancer-free—starts tonight against an Indians pitcher with an ERA of 6.

All boosterism aside, this race looks like it’s going to be a hot one…..

The rebellion against US News and World Report’s college rankings is growing…..

So I’m reading the new Harry Potter at a restaurant yesterday—a brief break from the grind—and a white couple in their 50’s, two tables away, call out, “How is it?” It’s good, I tell them. Then, going home on the subway, a couple Indian guys sit down next to me. “How is it?” they ask. Later, a young woman will see the book and smile at me before turning back to her own book.

Much has been written about how Harry Potter has encouraged young people to read more. (Some say it ain’t so.)

But it occurs to me that one of the very pleasant experiences of reading this book is that it returns you to a time when books were really at the heart of American culture, a mass experience. It’s wonderful to have complete strangers looking at what you’re reading and inquire about it. How often does reading a book connect you so easily to people you don’t know, across gender, ethnicity, and generation?

This isn’t likely to happen very often with books—Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows sold 8.3 million copies in its first 24 hours—so I’m enjoying the moment. In addition to the strange and creative stories that she has given us, this experience of being part of a community of readers is a wonderful gift from J.K. Rowling…..