Paradise Lost: Tanka for the Blue Jays

we came very close

although winning is better

we can still be proud

they had some great players and

we were tough competitors

"Can We Fix Our Nation's Broken Heart?"

 Found this new (to me) song by Stevie Wonder. He wrote it a year ago.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKSz3n3qP6g

Statistics...and Baseball

I don't like statistics. 

I dropped it in second year university and (Bell) curved myself into an English major, which was clearly where I belonged.

All's well that ends well.

I've never liked sweeping generalizations, which often seem like stereotyping. M used to say I dealt with everything by exception. Statistics tries to make sweeping generalizations to try to predict the future.

The only concept I mastered in Statistics was 

The Gambler's Fallacy. 

An example of this is tossing a coin for heads or tails. Most people think that, after a lot of heads tosses, the chances that there will be a tails next is more likely. This is wrong. 

Every coin toss has a 50% chance of being heads.

And 50% chance of being tails.

What happened before has no effect on what is going to happen next.

People who gamble, especially in professional sports, want to read the future by looking at the past. It comforts them to see that a horse has good breeding, has won in other races, and so on. Or that a superstar baseball player (although very talented and skilled) will provide the magic fairy dust for a win every time. 

But a team is just that: a group of people working together. Using a Psychology term, there are too many uncontrolled variables to predict accurately. Any player can get injured. Any player can drop out because he hasn't recovered fully from a past injury. Something could affect a player's mood. The order of the lineup has to be matched to the other team's. And so on...

It's useless to look backwards to predict the future. 

You might as well use a Magic Eight Ball.

https://www.mysticmag.com/magic8ball/

Oh, by the way,

Go Blue Jays! 

 

Avocado

a capricious fruit

avocado's ripe moment

then swings to rotten

it causes disappointment

like Lucy fools Charlie Brown

(Daily Haiku Prompts: ripe, swings)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqzA1VOiC-M

Hover: Tanka for Helicopter Pilot

 "I worship the ground 

you hover over, " I tell

my heli pilot

birthdays won't wither our hearts

love creates its own flight plan

Daily Haiku Prompts: hover and withered

painting by Rima Sharma

Tanka for my Mother

a true Libra, she

needed beauty and colour

red, yellow, blue, green

the artist splashed a rainbow

on canvas to free her soul

Imitate the Sun, oil painting by Frances Etlin-Rapoport

Daily Haiku Prompt: red

Detour

Canada geese take a

detour in protest of the

evil southern winds

Photo: Getty images

(Daily Haiku Prompt: Geese)