Diamond Planet: a Rich Goal

OK, so here's a mission that NASA could sink its teeth into — one that should recoup every last dollar spent, and also pay a boatload more.

We've discovered a planet made of diamond! OK, so I wasn't part of that we, but you get the idea. We as a species have found evidence of this heavenly body the composition of which is a heavenly substance: diamond.

Why? Well, it has to do with the star that the planet orbits. That star is a super-fast pulsar, a neutron star that, every so often, sends out cosmically gigantic blasts of energy that have, over time, worn down the poor planet's defense to the point where the carbon within has been ground down into diamond.

Weirdly, the planet is larger than the star it orbits. The planet's diameter is 37,300 miles, which is roughly five times that of our planet (so that's a lot of diamond). The pulsar, on the other hand, is 3,000 times smaller than the diamond planet. The planet is itself the remains of a star, which partly explains the size discrepancy.

And now, all that's left is diamond. So, fire up the rocket engines and let's get going! An entire planet made of diamond is worth, according to the best estimates available, a trillion trillion dollars. (And no, that's not a typo.)

All we need to do is to go there, scoop up a whole lot of the planet, and bring it back. No problem, right? Then we have diamonds galore for people to buy, sell, appreciate, and … fight over. Oh, wait, maybe it's not such a good idea after all. We'd need to sort the distribution schedule well beforehand.

Actually, we probably have time to do that, even to the extent of going through all the proper channels — the U.N. and consulting representatives of every country on the planet and such — because the star is 4,000 light-years away and it will take a hell of a long time to get there and get back. By the time the load of diamonds returns, we surely would have sorted out our differences, one way or the other.

Twitter Commandment: Think Before You Tweet

These days, it's not only what you say, it's what you tweet — and who's following or lurking.

Case in point: A woman left a restaurant after being berated by the manager, who wasn't even there. Her crime? Posting a derogatory comment on Twitter.

Seems the woman was commenting not on the service but on what a bartender said about someone else. She turned to what to many people is a natural outlet, Twitter, and posted a comment calling the bartender a "twerp." What she also did, of course, is mention the name of the restaurant and, for good measure, included a hashtag that wasn't all that … delicate.

Turns out also that the manager of the restaurant was monitoring Twitter at the time and happened to see the woman's tweet. His response was to call the restaurant and demand that the phone be handed to the woman in question. The manager then proceeded to berate the woman, the barrage ending in a demand for either a public apology or a departure from the premises.

The woman chose the latter and followed it up with another tweet (which probably wasn't a rave review for the food or the service). No word yet on any response from the restaurant manager.

What's the lesson here? First of all, it certainly wasn't the woman's fault that she complained about a comment by a bartender. Secondly, it certainly wasn't the woman's role to be on the wrong end of a verbal torrent delivered over the phone. The one thing that did precipitate all of what followed, though, was the woman's putting too much information into a tweet while she was still there. This is not to argue that she got what she deserved — quite the opposite, actually — she was mistreated and can probably get some sort of just desserts by telling everyone she knows about the incident, asking them to tell everyone they know, etc. In these days of 24/7 news and wall-to-wall, up-to-the-minute social media, sometimes it's best to put both time and distance between … observations.

Fan Snags Home Run Ball 3 Nights Running

You have to love the odds. In this case, they don't matter so, so much.

Some statistician or probability expert somewhere can come up with the odds of one baseball fan catching a home run in the same park three nights in a row, but I'm not that person so I won't even try. I can say with a high degree of certainty, however, that the odds of a baseball player hitting a home run on each of three consecutive nights are better.

The scene: Camden Yards, this season the setting for so many home runs leaving the park off the bats of not the Orioles.

The dude: Tim Anderson, a 17-year-old high school senior, who had nothing better to do for three nights in a row in August than to go to Oriole Park and see the O's play the Chicago White Sox.

The common denominator: a plaid pattern on the dude's shorts.

So the first home run Anderson managed to snag came off the bat of Chicago's Carlos Quentin. It's not every night that a fan can get his or her hands on a home run ball, but Tim Anderson did. He was sitting in the left-field bleachers, and he undoubtedly had some sort of expectation that he had a better opportunity to catch a home run than some other fans in his part of the bleachers, simply because he had a baseball glove with him. And he didn't keep it under the bleacher seat; no, this guy was wearing the glove and up and ready each time a batted ball came his way. (As San Francisco Giants announcer Mike Krukow is fond of saying, "Bring a glove, you get ball."

So Anderson stuck up his glove up and snagged the ball after it "left the park." And the next night, he did again, although he might have been a bit happier to have caught that home run, since it was hit by Baltimore's own J.J. Hardy. So presumably, Anderson did a bit of a happy dance that night, not only because he had caught another home run but also because his team had knocked one out of the park and won the game.

But the real happy feet routine would have come the third night running, when Anderson — clad once again in plaid shorts — caught another home run, this one off the bat of Chicago's Alexei Ramirez. Anderson had to work for that one, jumping high in the air and contesting the catch with a few other fans in the left field bleachers; but catch it he did.

Given the Orioles' propensity to hang around the American League East cellar this season, Anderson might have found himself wishing, along with many other fans, that the Orioles had won the three games — and a few score more. As it was, the White Sox managed to win the games in which their homers landed in Anderson's glove, as did the Orioles.

For the record, even though the photo montage doesn't show it, Anderson was wearing three different kinds of plaid shorts — not exactly rally cap stuff, but there you go.