Great! He may be a bit past his prime, but even at that, he adds some welcome punch to the Dodger's anemic lineup. It might just be enough to make a difference in a lot of games, because the Dodger pitching has been quite good.

I just did a little research on this:

There have been 8 games so far this year where the Dodgers have given up just 2 or fewer runs, but lost (and 4 of them have been 0-1).

For comparison, how many times do you suppose the Diamondbacks have lost while giving up 2 or fewer runs?

Answer: zero.

The Dodgers are also looking good right now. A couple weeks ago when they had lost 8 in a row and were 4 1/2 games back and had just dropped their first game at Arizona, I thought they were finished.

Some folks fear that it will accidentally create a micro-black hole which will eventually eat the earth. It may look something like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXzu...

<Some folks fear that it will accidentally create a micro-black hole which will eventually eat the earth.> Being a physicist I have been following the LHC experiment with great interest. When you hear that black holes will be created (but that they evaporate too quickly to grow) this is something you want to know more about. I remember one chapter in Martin Rees' book "Our Final Century" ("Our Final Hour" in the USA) where he mentions the possibility of humankind extinguishing itself by an experiment going awry. The problem is that even if chances of this happening are minute, the consequences are so dire that we still can't take a chance. The best argument against a black hole swallowing us up is the fact that apparently these collisions happen all the time in our atmosphere. And yet, we have to rely on the experts here and those are the CERN physicists.

I personally think that we are more likely to be extinguished by Apophis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/99942_...) than by a CERN black hole. If there will be a big black hole I make sure to jump in first. The problem is that apparently, due to the theory of relativity, time dilation is so extreme close to a black hole that the fall into the hole will go on forever for the poor soul falling into it. Of course, hopefully your consciousness will be gone before.

<The problem is that apparently, due to the theory of relativity, time dilation is so extreme close to a black hole that the fall into the hole will go on forever for the poor soul falling into it. Of course, hopefully your consciousness will be gone before.>

But would it seem like forever to the poor falling soul, or does it only appear to take forever to some distant observer?

<Maybe, here's a crazy theory, they will start with the real experiment when the Cubs are in the World Series, game 7, leading 1-0, bottom of the 9th, nobody on, 2 outs, count is 0-2...>

LOL! Yes, let's hope the CERN people are busy watching the game.

However, I read somewhere that a micro black hole wouldn't eat the earth that fast. In fact, it might take years. That would be an interesting conundrum. Suppose we detect that a micro black hole didn't decay as expected, and we saw that it was gradually sucking up nearby molecules. We might be able to retreive it and put it in a box. But then what? We might fire it off into space. Presumably, we could make it land on, say, uranus, and eventually it would eat uranus. We would have to be pretty sure of ourselves, because if it misses and finds its way back to the sun...

<But would it seem like forever to the poor falling soul, or does it only appear to take forever to some distant observer?> I think the distant observer would see the poor soul disappear quite quickly and for the guy falling it would seem like forever.

<Presumably, we could make it land on, say, uranus, and eventually it would eat uranus.> If it eats Uranus it will eventually eat us nonetheless. We could however throw it away at the second(?) cosmic speed which means it would go away and never ever come back again. That's what we did with the Voyager ships. How to trap a black hole in a box is a different story, though. I really, really, really hope the CERN guys did their job well.

Well, that's a step up from the old days where Swiss people only made watches or chocolate. ;-)

Well, as much as I'd like to see the Dodgers win the World Series, I wouldn't mind seeing the Cubs take it all -- just for the historic relevance of it...

The next hitter, Adam LaRoche, then hit his 2nd homer of the game -- a grand slam to give the Pirates a 7-4 lead. :-(