Scott T. Holland

@sth749.bsky.social

520 Followers 99 Following

Husband of one, father of four. Writer and other things. What was your favorite part of the day?

Sitting inside my car looking out on a torrential downpour.
Libertyville High School celebrates its second straight Supersectional Championship.
A government press release explains how nuclear sirens were accidentally triggered in North Central Illinois Tuesday afternoon.
The April 1, 2020, "April Fool's Day" edition of the Coe College Cosmos.
It’s just unfathomable to me that our brains can see a groundball and almost immediately intuit whether we need to charge it or back up or stay where we are to get the best hop. It’s not based on how hard the ball is hit, but based on where we calculate the second or third hop is going to be, relative to our starting position. The math on that! It must be impossible, especially since every groundball is hit with a different angle/velo/direction combination than any other groundball that fielder will ever see. Every fly ball is essentially the same proposition as every other fly ball, but every groundball is essentially a one-time-only phenomenon. AND the ball goes across multiple surfaces, and one of those surfaces isn’t even smooth, but is a thatchwork of a billion different blades of grass leaning against each other, which presumably affects the uniformity of each bounce. Somehow these grounders routine to us. It’s the greatest testament to the human brain I can figure. Robots can drive cars. They can probably catch fly balls, or they will be able to. I don’t think a robot will ever be able to field groundballs better than we do. (That’s how naive I probably am.)