The metaphor employed by Judge Roberts reminded me of the old joke about three old umpires talking over a few beers. “There’s balls and there’s strikes,” says one of them, “and I calls them as I sees ’em.” The second, older and more grizzled, disagrees. “There’s balls and there’s strikes,” he says, nodding his head, “and I calls them the way they are<\/I>.” The third, even older and more grizzled yet, shakes his head and says, “There ain’t no balls or strikes until I call ’em.”\n
Umpires are, in one sense, impartial or disinterested. They aren’t rooting for one team to win. A good umpire will call balls and strikes the same way for each team. But their impartiality should not be mistaken for the lack of an agenda. Some umpires have a narrow strike zone, others think that a ball on the letters is a strike. Some umpires like a slow game, some like a fast one. A good umpire is consistent, and fair, and even predictable. But even a good umpire affects the game. He has to. It’s how the game is.\n
You know, when Schroedinger’s Cat is in the box, how it’s alive\/dead, how its state is not just unknown but indeterminate? A pitch can be right down the middle of the plate, but it ain’t a strike until the umpire raises his hand. And if the umpire calls it a ball, then it was a ball. There’s no appeal.\n
chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek<\/I>,
-Vardibidian.\n<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The metaphor employed by Judge Roberts reminded me of the old joke about three old umpires talking over a few beers. \u201cThere\u2019s balls and there\u2019s strikes,\u201d says one of them, \u201cand I calls them as I sees \u2019em.\u201d The second,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[201],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-navel-gazing"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3134"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3134\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17524,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3134\/revisions\/17524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}