8.2.2025 – other edifice

other edifice
altruistic as lighthouse
built only to serve

Ran across this great quote attributed to George Bernard Shaw in the New York Times:

I can think of no other edifice constructed by man as altruistic as a lighthouse. They were built only to serve.

Sadly, while I searched for an attribution, I had no luck.

So I asked ChatGTP.

Here is the response I got.

The quote often attributed to George Bernard Shaw —”I can think of no other edifice constructed by man as altruistic as a lighthouse. They were built only to serve” — is widely circulated online, but there is no verifiable source confirming that Shaw actually said or wrote these exact words.

Key facts:
The quote does not appear in any of Shaw’s known plays, essays, or recorded speeches.

It is absent from authoritative quote databases and scholarly collections of Shaw’s work.

Some sources attribute a similar sentiment to H.G. Wells, Anne Lamott, or Virginia Woolf, but again, no definitive origin has been verified.

Most Likely Status:
This quote is misattributed or paraphrased from another source, possibly meant to reflect Shaw’s ideals but not directly from him.

8.1.2025 – allows the NFL

allows the NFL
to measure accurately
and efficiently

The official NFL Tweet states:

introducing the new virtual measurement system for first downs, which allows the NFL to accurately and efficiently measure the distance between the spotted ball and the line to gain.

As Herman Wouk wrote in his book, The Caine Mutiny:

You just have to develop an ear for Navy prose … for instance, note that split infinitive in paragraph three. If you want a letter to sound official, split an infinitive.

This new system is supposed to take only 30 seconds to determine where the ball should be while the old fashioned, been around since Moses played football, chain gang on the sidelines, takes 40 seconds.

This is real progress.

Yet I have to think that the new way will be less.

Think of the old Alfred Hitchcock scenario.

Talking about SHOCK vs SUSPENSE, the Director said take two guys and let them talk baseball and then set off a bomb and the audience is shocked and goes on … take two guys and let them talk baseball and SHOW THE BOMB under the table with 5 minutes on a timer and you got a theater full of people screaming LOOK UNDER THE TABLE for 5 MINUTES.

IN the old way, the Referee calls for a measurement and the chain gang drags their equipment out from the sidelines.

One little known piece of the equipment is a small white plastic disk with 10 holes around the edge with the numbers 0 5 10 15 etc for labels.

It looks a lot like an old telephone dial piece of plastic.

The disc is as wide as any of the yard lines that cross the playing field.

Each time the chains are move for a 1st down, the sideline ref takes the disk and clips it the chains where it crosses a yard line.

If the yard line is the 25, the Ref puts the clip through the hole marked 25 and then clips the disc to the chain so that it lays flat over the 25 yardl line

When the chain gang is called on the make a measure, they run out on the field and the ref puts that disk down on the 25 and the steps on it and then the two yard markers are stretched out mark the ball.

All in about 40 seconds, while everyone is one the edge of their seats in suspense.

Its a nice piece of melodrama if you ask me.

But its on the way out.

We will now have the Sony InstaCheck brought to you by some chiropractor that ‘always finds the right spot.’

Yessir, Sometimes I do hate the 21st century.

7.31.2025 – first they were just clouds

first they were just clouds
they swelled, swirled, hung very still …
then they broke open

My first thought seeing this cloud over Red Cedar Elementary School in Bluffon, SC was that someone finally stumbled upon that atomic bomb the US Air Force lost over Tybee Island back in the ’50’s.

My second thought was of that Alien spacecraft over Los Angeles in the movie, Independence Day.

Then I thought of the poem, Clouds, by Mary Oliver in her book, Why I Wake Early: New Poems (Beacon Press, Boston, 2005) and I thought that this is, I suppose, just one of the common miracles, a transformation, not a vision, not an answer, not a proof, but I put it there, close against my heart, where the need is, and its serves the purpose.

Clouds by Mary Oliver

All afternoon, sir,
your ambassadors have been turning
into lakes and rivers.
At first they were just clouds, like any other.
Then they swelled and swirled; then they hung very still’
then they broke open. This is, I suppose,
just one of the common miracles,
a transformation, not a vision,
not an answer, not a proof, but I put it
there, close against my heart, where the need is, and its serves

the purpose. I go on, soaked through, my hair
slicked back;
like corn, or wheat, shining and useful.

7.30.2025 – light mixed with it

light mixed with it
look with divided vision
see the reflection

Adapted from:

All our Concord waters have two colors at least; one when viewed at a distance, and another, more proper, close at hand.

The first depends more on the light, and follows the sky. In clear weather, in summer, they appear blue at a little distance, especially if agitated, and at a great distance all appear alike. In stormy weather they are sometimes of a dark slate color.

The sea, however, is said to be blue one day and green another without any perceptible change in the atmosphere.

I have seen our river, when, the landscape being covered with snow, both water and ice were almost as green as grass.

Some consider blue “to be the color of pure water, whether liquid or solid.”

But, looking directly down into our waters from a boat, they are seen to be of very different colors.

Walden is blue at one time and green at another, even from the same point of view.

Lying between the earth and the heavens, it partakes of the color of both.

Viewed from a hill-top it reflects the color of the sky; but near at hand it is of a yellowish tint next the shore where you can see the sand, then a light green, which gradually deepens to a uniform dark green in the body of the pond.

Like the rest of our waters, when much agitated, in clear weather, so that the surface of the waves may reflect the sky at the right angle, or because there is more light mixed with it, it appears at a little distance of a darker blue than the sky itself; and at such a time, being on its surface, and looking with divided vision, so as to see the reflection, I have discerned a matchless and indescribable light blue, such as watered or changeable silks and sword blades suggest, more cerulean than the sky itself, alternating with the original dark green on the opposite sides of the waves, which last appeared but muddy in comparison.

From Walden or, Life in the Woods, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau, (Houghton, Mifflin and Co., Boston and ; New York , 1897 Edition).