Eric Timar's Blog

I’ve been hosting a trivia contest recently, and my son came up with this category. For each name, is it a historical pirate, or a Muppet?

Red Legs GreavesGorgon HeapMarvin SuggsPierre Le GrandCanootFloyd PepperJP GrosseJohn Bear

Answers spaced out a bit here to keep them separate from the questions . . .

Coming soon . . .

Keep scrolling . . .

Lorem ipsum . . .

Here we go:

Red Legs Greaves: pirate; Scottish buccaneer of the 1670s; Wikipedia says he operated in the Caribbean, but of course true pirate fans know that’s redundant when you’ve already said he’s a buccaneerGorgon Heap: Muppet, this guy:

3. Marvin Suggs: Muppet, this musician:

And this instrument is called the Muppaphone!

4. Pierre Le Grand: Pirate, a French buccaneer — although he may be fictional . . . yeah yeah, call the lawyers on me

5. Canoot – Pirate! Not Canute, and not a Muppet; rather, a French pirate active off New England in 1698

6. Floyd Pepper: Muppet. Almost everyone knew this one when I went through these last week; the guitarist of the Electric Mayhem:

7. JP Grosse: Muppet, the owner of the Muppet Theater.

Stogie and all

8. John Bear: Pirate. English, 17th Century, the Caribbean.

More trivia! Which ones of these are skyscrapers, and which are NBA players?

Burj KhalifaAbraj Al BaitAl-Farouq AminuDzanan MusaChina ZunZhou QiJianlian YiJin Mao

(There was an NBA player named Keith Tower; too bad he wasn’t Houston Tower, or London Tower, etc. — that would have been perfect)

Answers below . . .

Keep scrolling, let’s get some distance . . .

One more line . . .

Answers:

Burj Khalifa – Skyscraper in Dubai



Burj Khalifa

2. Abraj al Bait – Skyscraper in Mecca

Abraj Al Bait, Mecca

3. Al-Farouq Aminu – NBA player

Al Farouq Aminu

4. Dzanan Musa – NBA

Dzanan Musa

5. China Zun – Skyscraper, Beijing

6. Zhou Qi – NBA, Houston Rockets

Zhou Qi

7. Jianlian Yi, NBA

8. Jin Mao – Jin Mao Tower, Beijing

Okay, there’s no such thing as this so-called week; this post is just a bald attempt to send traffic to my book The Acorn Thief.

[image error] Deer is up to no good . . .

This is a fun book for children about achieving peace through empathy. Deer and Squirrel argue about acorns until a wise owl shows each what the other one has to put up with.

A peace book for children!

A peace gift!

A book about empathy!

Search Engine Optimization!

I’ve been hosting a trivia contest recently, and my son came up with this category. For each name, is it a historical pirate, or a Muppet?

Red Legs GreavesGorgon HeapMarvin SuggsPierre Le GrandCanootFloyd PepperJP GrosseJohn Bear

Answers spaced out a bit here to keep them separate from the questions . . .

Coming soon . . .

Keep scrolling . . .

Lorem ipsum . . .

Here we go:

Red Legs Greaves: pirate; Scottish buccaneer of the 1670s; Wikipedia says he operated in the Caribbean, but of course true pirate fans know that’s redundant when you’ve already said he’s a buccaneerGorgon Heap: Muppet, this guy:



[image error]

3. Marvin Suggs: Muppet, this musician:

[image error] And this instrument is called the Muppaphone!

4. Pierre Le Grand: Pirate, a French buccaneer — although he may be fictional . . . yeah yeah, call the lawyers on me

5. Canoot – Pirate! Not Canute, and not a Muppet; rather, a French pirate active off New England in 1698

6. Floyd Pepper: Muppet. Almost everyone knew this one when I went through these last week; the guitarist of the Electric Mayhem:

[image error]

7. JP Grosse: Muppet, the owner of the Muppet Theater.

[image error] Stogie and all

8. John Bear: Pirate. English, 17th Century, the Caribbean.

For my book The Acorn Thief I found a terrific artist on Fiverr. The book has three characters: a somewhat overcaffeinated squirrel, a slacker deer, and a requisite wise owl. I told this artist the story, and described the characters, and he rendered sketches that I liked of the deer and the squirrel.

The first owl he came up with didn’t match what I had been envisioning, though:

This owl . . . I don’t know, just didn’t seem expressive enough. I asked for a slightly more anthropomorphic owl. So he sent this one, which I used:

Pictured here with Deer, of course. I liked this one; maybe not really a huge difference vs. the first, but she just seems warmer.

The owl has a large eye, doesn’t she? My wife asked: what’s up with the eye?? Well, that’s the vision of the artist, Nick Talbert. He calls his drawings “whimsical,” and they are, and I like that eye.

Amazon listing for the book, which is in both kindle and paperback: The Acorn Thief

The Acorn Thief— a squirrel and a deer squabble over acorns until an owl (who is wise, of course!) helps each see the world through the other’s eyes.

This is a book about empathy, which I think we could use more of.

Ages 4-8. Professionally illustrated by Nick Talbert.

[image error]

A Map and a Mule is the story of Queen Isabel of Portugal, a peacemaker of the Middle Ages who helped end two wars (one of which was between her husband and their son!). It’s now available for Kindle. Twenty pages, fourteen illustrations.

Link to Amazon listing

[image error]

 

So you’re going to line-dry a load of clothes today? (Good — I line-dry too! Although honestly 2018 was a bad year for it, where we live — too many rainy days.) 

Anyway, travel soccer will crush your pathetic energy savings starting the weekend after next!

Two teams in the National Capital Soccer League, U12, Division 2, have home fields 120 miles apart:

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And these teams do indeed play each other in the first week of the season; that team from Winchester, Virginia will travel past Annapolis:

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(WIN is for Winchester; Mago Vista Park is that field past Annapolis)

If 14 cars carrying 18 players (I don’t see much carpooling in these leagues) travel 240 miles round trip each, for that game — and let’s assume that all the home team players don’t drive at all because they all bike to the game (???) — that’s 3,360 miles traveled; at 25 miles per gallon, that’s 134 gallons of gas burned for ONE U12 soccer game. 

You might ask yourself: Wait, aren’t there any closer teams these kids could play? Answer: Yes! Look at these teams in the next higher division — and remember there are seven divisions for these 11- and 12-year-old boys and this is in just one league; there are more travel leagues right in this area!

In that Division 3 there are teams at least 58 miles apart:

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(You can see Arnold MD on the right side of this map, to compare it to the previous)

These two teams play each other June 9:

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(Schedules are here: http://www.ncsl-soccer.com/_element_display/#/scripts/runisa.dll?M2:gp::80738+Elements/Display+E+18235+Display/+80220167+92660809+94351814)

This in insane and we can fix this. We could put that Chantilly team in the division with the Winchester team, and similarly the two Maryland teams in the same division. 

But wait, parents will howl — these 11- and 12-year-old boys must be separated into seven divisions because of their different skills! If those third-division boys are forced to play those from the second division, how will they get college scholarships??

That’s silly. Read what scientists are writing about our environment. Starting locally-grouped youth soccer leagues would be an easy fix for this. If you don’t believe that gasoline use is a problem, well then, at least think of the time your kids could spend in the outdoors instead of stuck in a car. We can fix this. See my blog post immediately below. 

Believing that young men and women will develop into better soccer players by spending more time on the pitch and less in vehicles, a group of parents and professional coaches in Northern Virginia have founded a top-shelf league which will begin play this autumn with eight each boys and girls U14 teams. Two more age groups will be added in Spring 2020.

Named The Firm in a nod to the “Old Firm” rivalry of neighbors Celtic and Rangers in Glasgow, this elite league will provide players an additional 60 to 100 minutes per week of training and [image error]development with no additional time required from families, thanks to its clustering of teams and fields. 

“Northern Virginia is a cauldron of football which we will embrace,” states Seamus Crowley, Skills Director of The Firm. “I have never worked with a young man who told me he wanted to get off the pitch and into his family’s car instead. These lads –“

We’ll stop there since this league does not exist. But it could! Parents and players in metro areas could make the decision to do more playing and less driving by pulling neighboring teams in different travel leagues to establish competitive yet limited-travel leagues.

For a list of overlapping leagues in Northern Virginia, for example, see this description from soccer journalist Beau Dure:

https://rantingsoccerdad.com/guide-to-youth-soccer/youth-soccer-area-guide-the-dmv-washington-d-c-plus-suburbs-and-exurbs/

 

 

 

 

” . . . the Belgian’s muscularity helped find parity as a knockdown fell at the feet of Allen, who swept home in front of a jubilant Kop to snatch a point.”

That’s from the site of soccer’s Premier League in England (and Wales). Who else writes game summaries like that? The line is from a report of a recent Liverpool match. I love reading these for their distinctive and consistent style.

(Beware — this post will be a mishmash of Anglo and American terms. Match, game, football, soccer, pitch, field, etc., all tossed together.)

I would give credit to the authors, but they are not named. Other excerpts from various matches:

“Ben Watson put in a sublime block to deny Pedro just after the hour-mark, but Costa restored parity when he latched on to Willian’s through-ball to guide a shot beyond Heurelho Gomes.”

A sublime block it was; and look at these other adjectives:

“However, Quique Sanchez Flores’ side were unperturbed and drew level before the break when Troy Deeney converted a cool penalty following a needless handball from Nemanja Matic.”

and:

“John Terry’s header deflected off Cahill and fell kindly for Costa”

When I imagine how an American writer might describe a particular play, I think it would be something like this:

“The City defender made up for his earlier mistake by taking a corner kick which Toure smashed in for a goal with eight minutes remaining.”

But on the Premier League site, it is:

“The City defender atoned for his error by delivering the corner that Toure met with an emphatic left-foot volley eight minutes from time.”

And finally, I like the efficient way the writers convey the sequence of events:

“The in-form winger scored a spot-kick in each half, either side of Romelu Lukaku netting in his seventh consecutive league game for the hosts.”

Either side of; so it was the wing scoring a penalty kick, then Lukaku’s goal, and then the wing scoring another penalty.

Similarly:

“only for Olivier Giroud to net either side of half-time.”

An American football writer might say that the Packers scored right before halftime, and then again at the beginning of the second half, but I doubt she’d say that ‘Aaron Rodgers crafted sublime touchdown passes either side of half-time.’ Ah, but I wish she would.

http://m.premierleague.com/en-gb/matches/2015-2016/epl.summary.html/liverpool-vs-arsenal/