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April 26, 2009
Cosmic Baseball Game |
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There has been an upsurge in interest in the stars recently and more and more people are asking, "can the stars predict the future?" We asked a member of the Cosmic Baseball Research Alliance (COBRA) to investigate the matter. Using a Hollywood Telescope she was able to interview six stars on April 20, and she asked each one, who they thought would be the CBA's best team in 2009. Here are the selected stars' answers.
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Jack Nicholson: I was born in Neptune City, New Jersey so I'm both rooting for and predicting the [Astronomical] Planets will win it all.
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Olivia Wilde: I always predict that the [Paradise Pisces] Pisces will win. Sometimes I'm right. sometime's not so right.
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Rush Limbaugh: It definitely will not be the Wall Street Debentures. Probably the [Dharma] Beats will win even though I don't much care for that cosmic baseball team.
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Nancy Reagan: The [Zodiac] Signs have it in the bag. Other stars have told me this.
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| Tina Fey: Cosmic what kind of team? I have no idea.
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Lindsay Lohan: I'm not clairvoyant at all but I hope the Krafft-Ebing Mosaics win.
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Changing directions at four degrees of Capricorn*, Pluto has already caused controversy. Ruled a "dwarf" planet in 2006 by the International Astronomical Union (IAU), the CBA made an exception and allowed the Astronomical Planets to include Pluto on the Planets 2009 Official Team Roster.
The rules require players on the Planets roster to be "planets." Not wishing to leave well enough alone, the Planets are preparing another petition requesting that extra-solar planets, also known as exoplanets, be made eligible for the team. Exoplanets are planets in solar systems other than our own.
As of March 2009, some 344 exoplanets had been identified. Most are verified indirectly using technology such as radial velocity. However, direct photographic identification of exoplanets is increasing and while many of the identifications are of extra solar gas giants (like Jupiter), astronomers believe that as the imaging technology improves, many smaller Earth-like exoplanets will be discovered.
The Cosmic Baseball Association is going to have to determine policy. The Planets are forcing the issue. Most believe that exoplanets will become eligible. In the meantime, technology like the Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS) aboard the Hubble telescope apparatus, will offer more potential cosmic baseball players.
*Note: The Sabian text for 3-4 degrees of Capricorn is "A group of people outfitting a large canoe at the start of a journey by water." Scholars at the Cosmic Baseball Research Alliance (COBRA) have been unable to assimilate the Sabian metaphor into an exoplanet policy recommendation.
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Green was born in the American south and attended business school in the Atlanta, Georgia area. For the past ten years she has run her own small business with significant success. Her connection with cosmic baseball before Ms. Krafft-Ebing's announcement today is not known.
The Krafft-Ebing Mosaics are a rookie cosmic baseball team currently competing in the CBA's regulated league.
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It is important to note that the criteria used to select the Umpire Director is completely different than the moral/ethical criteria used to select the individual umpires of regulated cosmic baseball games. Essentially the Umpire Director is an administrative and morale-based position. The Tarot Fool is not the first "card" to direct CBA umpires. The ambiguously gendered Tarot card replaces Mr. Herm Card, a well-known and well-liked poet, teacher and baseball enthusiast from the State of New York in the United States of America.
Many writers on the Tarot regard the Fool as the most important and most profoundly mysterious card in the pack. It is the only one of the trumps to have survived in the modern pack of playing cards where it is the Joker, the 'wild card' which is exempt from normal rules and can take the place and play the part of any of the others. "--Richard Cavendish, The Tarot. Harper & Row, New York: 1975
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