Baseball writer Keith Law—suspended from tw**ting by the television sports network ESPN for reasons that are unclear, but almost certainly had to do with his Twi**ter battles about evolution with the creationist pitcher Curt Schilling (also an ESPN employee)—is back. Law, who eloquently defended evolution against Schilling’s stupidities, was given a forced hiatus from Nov. 19 to Nov. 24.
And here’s his first tw**t after the suspension—quite appropriate. I’m sure the folks at ESPN have no idea what it means:
Harvard boy! Law also has a website that is quite diverse, covering baseball, books, board games, and. . . food!
Nice!! ( But almost certainly apocryphal …)
Bravo! (And yes I gather the eppur si muove
(Man, my autocorrect hated that phrase) is apocryphal, having just slogged through Heilbroner’s very convoluted book on Galileo. And the previous sentence is also needlessly convoluted – mi dispiace:-(
Good on him. And the football/TV complex is a truly deleterious entity.
And sub..
I’m sure that Curt hasn’t a clue as to the originator of the quote.
There’s some doubt Galileo actually said that, but it is a great comeback line.
Great line though it is, I would rather not rely on it for a comeback to the Inquisition. I’m quite attached to the single degree of freedom of movement in most of my joints.
Italian – and yet it moves
Although, Galileo probably didn’t say it, you can bet he thought it.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t it take until 1994 for the Church to “forgive” him – as if there was something to forgive. They’re the ones who should be looking for forgiveness.
And I’m still waiting for them to excommunicate even one Nazi war criminal. Of course, they continue to excommunicate those who leave abusive spouses (or is it spice?).
They also chose the wrong knickers to get in a twist with. A brazilian priest was recently thrown out for supporting homosexual marriage. They have yet to throw out even one of their pedophile priests…
1992 – if this weren’t an old post, I’d make a sardonic remark about not giving the RCC credit for those two years (out of 4×10^2).
I guess ESPN will know soon because it is already a story on Google. The cyber world sure moves fast sometimes.
I would have expected evolution to have zero defenders among known sports writers. So seeing that there is at least one is pretty cheery news to me.
I think there may be some pretty bright sports writers out there. Novelist Richard Ford used to be one.
He is also a big time foodie! Check out his Thanksgiving menu at https://www.facebook.com/KeithLawWriter
What a bunch of dufuses at ESPN
Maybe we could convince Keith Law and Jerry to do an onstage interview about science, food and fighting ignorance! How about it Jerry?
OMG, people should go to that site and check out the menu here. A man after my own heart!
p.s. I added a note to Law’s FB page asking him about the wines, and he responded!:
Keith Law: Craft beer (we have a great local scene) and cocktails. I’ve never been much of an oenophile.
You are right, Jerry, a bone-dry chilled Fino is one the great unsung glories of the wine world ….
Good thing more people don’t know that or the price would shoot up. Fino, and good sherry in general, is one of the world’s great wine values.
+1
Why does that link just take me to MY FB page?
Even I knew that ESPN is some sort of spurts network, and therefore deduced that it is fronted by idiots, talking to other idiots about idiotic things.
I got buttonholed a couple of weeks ago in the shopping centre (EN_US : “mall”?) by some dude trying to sell me 98 channels of boxers punching footballers, or something (I wasn’t paying attention) for the price of one first-born child per year and my last remaining shred of self-respect. When I started filling out the form proffered by crossing out boxes and writing “cancel my existing contract” and “I do not want to support this repulsive waste of time” across his sheet, he still really could not understand that the concept of sport on the TV, invading my own home could possibly be repellent.
Seriously, it’s the same level of incomprehension that I ‘get when I laugh in the face of Mormons in the street. They don’t just “not get it”, but they don’t get that there’s an “it” to not be got. Existing outside that slack-jawed ranting milieu of sports fans is beyond their comprehension. [Here endeth the rant. I would advise not lighting the smouldering blue touchpaper. Trying to have my lunch against the din of “football highlights” in the canteen doesn’t do my blood pressure any good.]
Hilarious!
Been on the receiving end of too many punches over the years to find it amusing. And the naked blood lust of the boxing fans screaming at the TV for blood is a sight to freeze the heart of one of Pinker’s “Better Angels”
Some time back, since the wife (who watches the garbage on TV) was going away for six months, I cancelled Sky TV, our sports-obsessed equivalent of cable. I was phoned up by a rep to ask me why I quit and I said specifically that I detested rugby (which permeated Sky) and didn’t want a bar of it. In the next week I got a notice saying monthly charges were going up but it would pay for More! Rugby!!; and another leaflet decorated with pics of rugby thugs implying that by leaving I was ‘letting the team down’ and ‘the guys [rugby fans] were all so disappointed in me’…
Gotta love the irony…
I refer the honourable gentleman to my previous comments about them not even understanding that there was an “it” to be “got”.
I’ve had that sort of conversation with Sky Sales Reps too. Someone who writes their scripts seriously has an imagination failure.
While I do believe evolution is true… I really do… I am beginning to believe devolution has some positive correlation with wealth and celebrity.
Count me in on the “You go, Mr. Law” group.
The fact that Galileo never actually said “Eppur si muove” is as unimportant as the fact that Sinclair Lewis never actually wrote “When fascism comes to America, it will come wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross,” or that Einstein never said “Men and women who refuse military service are the forerunners of a world without war.” These are “attributed to,” and are valuable as cultural sentiments, even if the attributions are not historically correct.
For a while I’ve had the idea of writing a story in which, North Carolina style, some scientist is persecuted for presenting information about global warming especially with respect to the diminution of the amount of sea ice. At the end of the story, he’d be fired, or carted off to prison, or forced to recant, but would mutter as an aside, “And yet it melts.” I haven’t done this yet because (1) I suck at writing fiction, and (2) I don’t know the Italian phrase for “And yet it melts.”
“Eppur si scioglie” possibly. [Google translate, but it won’t spit out “eppur” there.]
FWIW, the phrase was used already 2004, when the current climate consensus firmed up (or whereabouts).
“And yet it melts
Leader
The Guardian, Wednesday 3 November 2004
Some people still think the world is flat. Others firmly believe that the sun rotates around the earth. In spite of all the evidence to the contrary, they cling to their opinions based on the naive realism of what they can see with their own eyes and nothing else. In children or most adults, such beliefs are quaint or merely cranky at worst. But there is a class of events that too many people, and too many otherwise sensible people in positions of authority, refuse to see: climate change.”
[ http://www.theguardian.com/news/2004/nov/03/leadersandreply.mainsection ]
Very interesting. Thank you.
I think it’s actually epurre, with an e on the end.
2 Ps, 1 r…I must have cats on the brain🐱
Galileo purportedly said eppur, but I think the official Italian is eppure.
He spoke Tuscan dialect, which is excellent Italian but not what they speak in the capital.
The final vowel is often elided in poetic use.
with much gesticulating with hands;-)
Like when French sounds weird when song because they add vowels.
Non, je ne re-gret-te rien
& I meant to say “when sung”. Frère Jacques comes to mind.
I know that stupid song is going to be in my head now.
Sonnez les matti-nes…
(Thanks for the earworm:-(
Crap, I just got that song out of my head. Even my dog is sick of hearing it!
I also (used to) know it in German:
Bruder Jacob, Bruder Jacob,
Schläfst du noch, schläfst du noch,
Morgen something something….
You’re welcome;-)
Henrik Ibsen’s play ‘An Enemy of the People’ is a lot like the story you describe. Clearly allegorical, it’s about a town whose economy depends upon tourism to the local medicinal baths. The town doctor discovers that they are contaminated with toxins from a tannery. As the story unfolds all the town leaders – his friends who initially praised and supported him – turn against him as their own interests are threatened. He is left nearly alone – “an enemy of the people” – standing on his principles and refusing to deny the truth. Arthur Miller wrote a wonderful English translation/adaptation. I highly recommend it.
I’ll check it out. Thanks!
It’s a great play, and I was unaware Miller had translated it. Did he do the translation I read, years ago? I wish I knew; it might have something to do with it being the only Ibsen play I have any time for, but I don’t think the translation alone was doing the work.
(I would tolerate Peer Gynt for the Grieg music, not the other way around, which I gather makes me a philistine.)
Eppure si fonde? ( must look it up..)
Eppur si scioglie
You forgot “Je n’avais pas besoin de cette hypothèse-là.”
Good one!
I’ll add this one, too, which Voltaire never said: “Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.”
Ah, but did he say (to Frederick the Great) “Once, a philosopher. Twice, a sodomite.”?
Probably not. But, I had been wondering the “source” of that comment, which I’d heard before. So still worthwhile. Thanks!
Sub
As a direct result of this post, I have just rewatched the episode in Bronowski’s magisterial “Ascent of Man” which deals with Galileo (“The Starry Messenger” – the name itself taken from Galileo’s “Sidereus Nuncius”) and I was impressed by his argument that Galileo’s trial effectively killed Mediterranean science stone dead with the scientific universe moving to the north of Europe.
I was then left contemplating, not for the first time, the perfidious role that religion, in all its form, has had throughout history.
I recently saw that series for the first time and am now of the opinion that ‘Brono’ (as Attenborough affectively calls him in a special episode) belongs in the hall of famous science popularisers together with Sagan, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Martin Gardner and the like.
For what it’s worth I consider “Ascent of Man” to be the single greatest science series ever made. Bronowski’s erudition, insight and humanity (esp in the justly celebrated and deeply moving Auschwitz scene) shines through along with his wonderful clarity in explanation. It heavily influenced me in my formative years and even now, 40 years on, it remains a series that anyone interested in science should watch.
I loved that series! Might well be worth buying on DVD.
Ditto. Watched the first run at the age of 8-9, and several repeats thereafter, and it provided a large proportion of the skeleton on which my world view and general knowledge hang together. Thank you again, Sir David.
That series featured some pretty far-out and groovy music on its soundtrack too.
This segment from the first episode features Pink Floyd’s “Careful with that axe, Eugene”
Lady Hope’s Law predicts that he will recant on his deathbed, most probably through facilitated tw**ting.
Clever & irreverent! I’m not a follower of sports but I’m sure glad Keith Law’s in the profession! He should run for office. The US needs smart people like him to offset the lunatics.
It’s great to see someone who’s not cowed. I hope this enhances his career prospects.
🐾
He knows the word ‘oenophile’ and he’s a sports writer? He’s wasted in that job.
I’m not into sports at all myself, but have occasionally dipped into the back page of a newspaper or listened to a game summary after the TV news. There’s a lot of excellent writing done on the subject of sports; if it’s all wasted, at least Law’s not Robinson Crusoe.
I agree. I’m a bit of a sports fan, largely due to the great sports writers of the past. Today newspaper sports writing, like newspapers themselves, has declined, but there’s still a lot of great prose on the web.
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Great response by Law!
I am sure Schilling didn’t have the guts to tell his oncologist that basic biology is B.S. What a hypocrite.
As a long-time lover of Mr. G, thank you. I wouldn’t have read this tweet otherwise.
Galileo’s famous sotto voce in the Vatican at the conclusion of his trial.