My Dan Haren fast ended as soon as it began. Haren threw eight shutout innings, and Huston Street closed out a 1-0 victory over the Twins in the Hubert H. Humphrey House of Horrors.

Even though the A’s had held a lead in all six games between the two teams in Minnesota this year, it was the first time the A’s had held on to win.

Now that Haren’s fixed, I’m not sure whom I should fast next. My first thought was Dan Johnson, but then I view the fasting as wanting to see players perform the way they’re capable of performing, and I’m not sure Johnson is really capable of performing better. I think he might just be your prototypical AAAA player, and what we’re seeing is what we should expect. Maybe Zito or Blanton needs to get snapped back into shape, instead. I’ll think about it.

Here at Catfish Stew, we have been tracking the Oakland A’s completely unbelievable bad luck in coin flip situations. Today, MLB set the home fields for playoff tiebreakers. The A’s lost their 10th consecutive coin flip, this time to the Anaheim Angels. If the A’s and Angels finish tied at the end of the regular season, the Angels will host the tiebreaker.

Consider this: the A’s are 0-for-their-last-9 in playoff-advancing games, and 0-for-their-last-10 in playoff tiebreak coin flips. That, by itself, is a 1-in-524,288 longshot. Then throw in Kirk Gibson, two sucky players named Hatcher, and–for your only World Series victory in 30 years–a major earthquake, and you gotta start thinking that somebody up there has a really wicked sense of humor about the Oakland A’s.

So while technically, the A’s have a 5 1/2 game lead, and almost a 90% chance of making it to the postseason, to me, their playoff odds still feel like little more than a coin flip.

And yet, although we might have been given some bad breaks, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.

* * *

For instance, although I’m sure everything worked out fine because I’ve never heard about any airplanes crashing into the San Francisco Bay wetlands, but I still feel fortunate that I wasn’t on this plane. That looks scary.

* * *

Also scary: yet another Moneyball/What’s-So-Great-About-Billy-Beane article has popped up, this time on by Jon Heyman at SI.com.

Ho hum. You know, as an A’s fan, should it matter to me if Billy Beane is a great GM or not, or if Ken Macha is a great manager or not, or if Lew Wolff is a great owner or not, if I am at least confident that they are competent?

I think all three are, at a minimum, competent at their jobs. The rest is gravy. (Or at least, it should be, but I suppose that won’t stop me from barking when I feel they’re making mistakes.)

* * *

I mean, imagine if the A’s were owned by Charles Wang. If he ran the A’s the way he’s running the New York Islanders, Billy Beane might have been hired back in 1997, but he would have been fired two weeks later, and replaced as GM by the A’s sixth starter, Dave Telgheder, who would have immediately signed up-and-coming star Ben Grieve to a 15-year contract that would today, even several years after Grieve’s career went down the tubes, still have six years left on it.

There but for the grace of God go I. Charles Wang was actually my boss for about three hours back in 1994, when Wang’s company, Computer Associates, purchased Ingres, my employer at the time. CA, as they love to tell you themselves, is a great place to work. You get free breakfast and day care! Unfortunately, I was childless at the time, so I didn’t get to take advantage of the day care, but on the first day that CA took ownership of Ingres, I did receive a fat, sticky pastry to coat my stomach with, just before they showed me the door.

I’m not sure why they let me go, but now I think it pretty much went like this: OK, Tech-Support-Kid, here we go–heads, you’re the new VP of Database Engineering, tails, you’re fired. Oops, sorry, kid.

Maybe I coulda done some wicked cool things with that database, instead of watching it rot into irrelevance from afar, but then again, if that had happened, Charles Wang would have been my boss for more than three hours. Shudder.

* * *

More shuddering: if the coin flips in my life had gone differently, I might have been the guy who figured out that if you turn the energy flow in a refrigerator backwards, you will finally know where to put all the dung and dead Indians. Or even worse, I might have been the QA guy for that product, instead of the inventor. Ewwww.

* * *

Instead, here I am, many years and many figurative coin flips later, sitting in a pleasant room, with a pleasant view, following a pleasant team, and devoting my time instead to some weird thing called a Baseball Toaster. And that’s just dandy. What were the odds of that?

Back in May, the A’s lost a game I thought they shouldn’t have lost, and I went on a rant about Ken Macha’s pitcher removal algorithm:

It’s like Macha won’t trust his pattern recognition tools at all, and requires rational, empirical proof that X is Y before he’ll act on it.

This manifests itself in the worst way when Macha is trying to decide whether to yank a pitcher or not. He seems unable to trust his eyes that a pitcher has run out of gas. He has some logical algorithm: if the pitcher:

(1) hasn’t maxed out his pitch count, and

(2) hasn’t yielded over five runs yet, and

(3a) hasn’t gone five innings yet, or
(3b) has gone five innings and still hasn’t given up a run this inning,

then

(4) leave him in the game.

Count Saturday’s game as yet another failure of Macha’s algorithm. Esteban Loaiza was not sharp, (perhaps he was feeling a little improperly scrambled), and anyone with eyes could tell. He had yielded four runs in the fourth, another in the fifth, and with the game tied 5-5 in the sixth, gave up a one-out hit to B.J. Upton, and then walked the #9 hitter, Ben Zobrist.

Now, c’mon, if you’re yielding runs left and right, and then walking a guy like Ben Zobrist, who’s hitting .236, clearly, it’s not your day. Not only that, but now it’s September, and you’ve got a 40-man roster to play with, so there’s no risk of burning out your bullpen. It’s time to take Loaiza out, and bring in somebody else, who might be having a better day. Right?

Oops, nope. Because that’s not what the algorithm says to do. Check it, is it true that Loaiza:

1. Hasn’t maxed out his pitch count? Yup.
2. Hasn’t yielded over five runs yet? Yup.
3. Either (a) hasn’t gone five innings yet, or (b) has gone five but not yielded a run yet this inning? (Yup, b.)

Well, then, by all means, (4) leave him in the game!!!

Therefore, Loaiza faces Rocco Baldelli, who promptly singles to give the Devil Rays the lead.

OK, now here comes the really weird part. Carl Crawford, a left-handed batter, is up next. Brad Halsey, a left-handed pitcher, has been throwing in the pen. Now, surely, Macha must replace Loaiza, right? After all, points 2 and 3 of the algorithm are no longer valid.

No! He doesn’t! Macha leaves Loaiza in there to face Crawford, too!

Now I’m really confused. What kind of a *@#&$*(@*&$#(*@&*$(#@&*(@ #$ing stupid pitching change algorithm is that? When #1-3 don’t apply any more, start flipping a coin to see if you should remove the guy or not?

Crawford, of course, singles in another run, and the game is lost right then and there. Argh.

Well, at least the Angels lost, too. Angels fans could probably point out some stupid thing Mike Scioscia did to lose that game for them, too. Maybe all the dumb managing just evens out in the end. Joe Torre lets Derek Jeter bunt too much, uses his second-best reliever over and over again until his arm falls off, and won’t use Mariano Rivera in a tie game; Jim Leyland keeps playing Neifi Perez several times a week; Ron Gardenhire wastes months of the Twins’ season throwing Juan Castro and Tony Batista out there every day; Ozzie Guillen is a mad genius, but mad nonetheless; and all of these teams would have clinched a playoff spot already if only Earl Weaver had been their manager. So maybe I should forget about it, and go to bed.

Between innings, MLB.tv showed this word scramble:

BENATAS AZAILO

After a few seconds, they showed this:

Hint: HE PITCHES IN THE AL WEST.

After a few more seconds, they didn’t show this, but they should have:

Hint: WE SPELLED HIS NAME WRONG WHEN WE SCRAMBLED IT.

* * *

Overheard on the Devil Rays’ TV broadcast: “There’s nothing worse than a cantankerous banana.”

* * *

Same broadcast, after a 2-2 curveball misses in the dirt to Frank Thomas, this dialogue could be heard in my office:

Joe Magrane: “Now would be a good time to challenge Frank Thomas with a high fastball around the letters.”

Ken Arneson: “You go ahead and do that.”

High fastball indeed follows on the next pitch, as does a two-run homer.

OK, I resisted fasting Dan Haren before, but I gotta do it now. He was terrible today against the Devil Rays. He just keeps leaving pitches out over the fat part of the plate.

I’m not watching/listening to Dan Haren pitch until he throws five consecutive scoreless innings.

Mystery Photo Number 11 comes via Corey and Alex Rubin. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to help figure out the who/when/where of the photo.

Click on the image for a larger view.

Thanks to all who have sent in photos. I have enough to keep us going another few weeks. Nonetheless, please send in more. If you have any old (non-copyrighted) MLB photos that might suit this game, please email them to mystery At humbug .com.

I think I’ll throw some happy thoughts up here, so we can look away from the ugliness of the A’s getting swept by the Rangers.

Here’s a slideshow of a nice double play turned by Marco Scutaro and Mark Ellis on Sunday.

Continue…

After a game like last night’s 5-4 loss to Texas, I’d normally be frightened that the A’s division lead is now going to quickly shrink to nothing. Bah. Frightened, schmightened.

* * *

Here’s a test of your ability to imagine the impossible: try to picture in your mind the love child of Zza Zza Gabor and Richard Simmons.

You’d get a woman who speaks in a strange, affected accent, calls everyone around her “Dahling”, has so much energy she can’t sit still or stop talking for one second, and when she really gets excited, can’t help but share her energy by getting everybody else to stand up and cheer along with her.

That’s who I sat next to at the A’s game last night, way up in the right-field corner of the second deck.

Every time the A’s got a couple of runners on base, Zza Zza Simmons would stand up, turn around at her section, and shout, “OK, Dahlings, it’s time to do the wave! One, two, three…GO! Wooooooooooooooo!”

Now that was truly frightening.

Mystery Photo Number 10 comes courtesy of Toaster Member das411. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to help figure out the who/when/where of the photo.

Click on the image for a larger view.

Thanks to all who have sent in photos. I have enough to keep us going another few weeks. Nonetheless, please send in more. If you have any old (non-copyrighted) MLB photos that might suit this game, please email them to mystery At humbug .com.

Moneyball is a raincloud, and A’s bloggers are Eeyore. The book follows you where ever you go. It’s difficult to come up with an interesting angle on the A’s that hasn’t been covered by Moneyball, or by the seven hundred billion gazillion essays about Moneyball that followed Moneyball. Sometimes, if you’re lucky, you can manage to scrounge up a few sticks, lean them up against each other like a tent, and crawl under. It’s better than nothing, but you still get wet.

Even more annoying than Moneyball and essays about Moneyball, are discussions about essays about Moneyball. There exists a sort of Moneyball corollary to Godwin’s Law. Whenever there’s an online discussion about the A’s, someone will inevitably bring up Moneyball. Which is fine, until someone else inevitably feels compelled to say, “They missed the whole point of the book!” Nothing follows from that point but the beating of dead horses.

Of course, by discussing this, I have now written an essay about discussions about essays about Moneyball. And when you enter your comments below…

In other words, Moneyball has become cliché. There’s nothing left to add to it, except to start making jokes. As Mark Liberman at Language Log wrote about my Eskimo-word-for-slump joke, “stereotyped rhetoric repeats itself, first as cliché, then as irony.”

Continue…

With this walk:

My Nick Swisher fast (see sidebar, at bottom) is finally over. He had an extra-base hit (a double) and a walk in the same game.

The fasting has worked wonders, especially with Kendall and Loaiza, but really, there isn’t anybody on the A’s who is stinking now, except maybe Antonio Perez. Should I do a Perez fast?

Nah, what’s the point?

Mystery Photo Number Nine Number Nine Number Nine comes courtesy of Garth Sears. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to help figure out the who/when/where of the photo.

Click on the image for a larger view.

Thanks to all who have sent in photos. I have enough to keep us going another few weeks. Nonetheless, please send in more. If you have any old (non-copyrighted) MLB photos that might suit this game, please email them to mystery At humbug .com.

Who is currently leading the 2006 Oakland A’s in Win Shares?

Got your guess?

OK, now go check out the answer.

You were wrong, weren’t you?

Don Nelson is back in Oakland???

Wow.

I used to be a huge Golden State Warriors fan, but that team has been so bad for so long that every piece of hope I ever had for it has been completely squeezed dry. I’m completely numb to that team now. Or at least I thought I was, until they went and did something wacky like this. I guess there’s still a little light flickering inside me for that team, because I find this quite interesting, even if it’s only a rubbernecking-to-see-the-latest-car-wreck kind of interest.

Every time I think about the A’s losing nine straight ALDS clinching games, or about choking in September the last two seasons, or about anybody named Hatcher, I should just think of the Golden State Warriors, and be grateful. Because things could be sooooooooo much worse.

Sapphire bullets…bullets of pure A’s:

• I haven’t actually watched an A’s game in well over a week. Several of the games on their current road trip weren’t televised, and I was busy during the others.

  I feel somewhat disconnected from the team right now. Who are these guys?

  I did go back on MLB.tv and watch the interesting innings from Monday’s game against Toronto, where they came back from an 8-0 deficit to win 12-10. That game left me with the feeling that perhaps the best way to characterize the 2006 A’s is that they’re a gang of thieves.

  The A’s had no business winning that game, but somehow they managed to sneak their way in the back door and burglarize a W out of it. This year, it seems like there are a lot more games that the A’s have won that they shoulda-coulda lost than the other way around.

  The stats back me up on that one: they’re currently 18 games over .500 at 73-55, but their record in BP’s adjusted standings indicates they really should have a record of about 65-63 or 64-64.

  Which explains why, I suppose, that even though the A’s have the second-largest division lead in baseball, their 5.5 game lead over the Angels feels so insecure. Thievin’ may be a thrillin’ way to live, but in the back of your mind there’s always the fear that sooner or later, your thievin’ ways are going to be exposed, and you’ll be revealed for the fraud you really are.

• Part of the A’s thievery involves fortunate scheduling. They finished playing the Yankees before they acquired Bobby Abreu, and started playing the Red Sox just as they started falling apart. They missed Roy Halladay this week in Toronto. They missed both John Lackey and Jered Weaver the last time they played Anaheim. And would the A’s be 15-1 against Seattle if the rotations had fallen so that they had faced Felix Hernandez five times and Joel Pineiro once, instead of the other way around?

  That luck may soon run out, though. If the Angels are going to make a run at Oakland, next week might be the time. They’ll play three games against the hapless-and-losing-more-hap-by-the-hour Mariners, while the A’s are staring down both Josh Beckett and Curt Schilling. Also, Tim Wakefield may be ready come off the DL to face the A’s, as well. So much of streakiness is in the scheduling.

• This weekend’s Oakland-Texas series is a true battle of top heavyweights. The top two teams in the MLB Heavyweight Championship standings (see sidebar) are battling it out for baseball supremacy in Arlington.

  With their victory over Tampa Bay on Thursday, the Rangers had pulled ahead of the A’s in the standings. But Barry Zito’s near no-hitter against Texas on Friday not only gave him his 100th career victory, it also put the A’s back into first place.

  Sunday’s game (Dan Haren vs. Vicente Padilla) may be the Fight of the Year. The winner will have a big step up in the battle for Heavyweight Team of the Year.

• Speaking of mystery photos…a guy in Southern California pulled a bunch of publicity photos out of someone’s trash, and put them up on Flickr.

  I think this one might be the first recorded meeting between Billy Beane and Ken Macha.

• Nick Swisher has emerged from the worst of his slump, and been playing better of late. He’s been collecting the occasional extra-base hit, and the occasional base-on-balls.

  Unfortunately, he has not yet put the two together in the same game, so my Swisher fast continues.

• Chris Dial’s defensive ratings through July 11 have Eric Chavez as a below-average fielder.

  That is unfathomable. How can a guy who catches everything be below average? I mean, Eric Chavez fields everything there is to field. E.V.E.R.Y. T.H.I.N.G.

  Maybe he had a bad three weeks while I was in Europe, and I missed it. I don’t know.

  Otherwise, if he’s below average, that means that there are seven third basemen in the AL who are fielding more than everything. Hank Blalock? Troy Glaus? Alex Rodriguez? No way, dudes.

  Time now for everyone to go over to TangoTiger’s place, and tell people who’s really boss.

Our eighth mystery photo comes from the slide pile I bought. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to help figure out the who/when/where of the photo.

And in this case, why. As in, why does one guy look like he’s been in a fight, and why is the other guy laughing at him?

Click on the image for a larger view.

Thanks for all who sent in photos this weekend. I have enought to keep us going another couple weeks. Nonetheless, please send in more. If you have any old (non-copyrighted) MLB photos that might suit this game, please email them to mystery At humbug .com.

Our seventh mystery photo comes courtesy of Cliff Corcoran. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to help figure out the who/when/where of the photo.

Click on the image for a larger view.

Thanks for all who sent in photos this weekend. I have enought to keep us going another couple weeks. Nonetheless, please send in more. If you have any old (non-copyrighted) MLB photos that might suit this game, please email them to mystery At humbug .com.

The Internet is weird sometimes.

Catfish Stew doesn’t have “Oakland Athletics” in its blog name or tag line, so you won’t find it at the top of many search results related to what is presumably the topic of this blog.

Yet, on the other hand, if you want to know about a “stomach punch”, you have come to the right place. A Catfish Stew blog entry is currently the #4 result for that phrase.

So, I got that going for me, at least.

And perhaps, when I add the title of this entry into the searchosphere, I can grow my Internet empire further. I shall become the King of All Pains Abdominal!

* * *

There’s a little black spot on the sun today
It’s the same old thing as yesterday

* * *

Things never go as planned. The other day, I wrote a baseball article that I thought had a fairly good point: the language we use to describe slumps lacks precision. I thought maybe some people would take the idea and expand upon it, and we’d have an interesting little baseball discussion.

Did it happen? Nope. The blog entry didn’t get a single measly comment. Not a single baseball blog linked to it. But then, something weirder happened. Two of my favoritest non-baseball blogs in the whole wide world (Language Log) and (God of the Machine) linked to the article. Which triggered a series of other, smaller non-baseball blogs to also link to the article.

Jeers to the unintended failures! Cheers to the unintended victories!

* * *

I have stood here before inside the pouring rain
With the world turning circles running ’round my brain

* * *

On Dodger Thoughts the other day, there was this exchange:

109. D4P
> Bronx Banter went over 1000 [comments] for Game 1

I blame the respective blog names. “Banter” provokes discussion; “Thoughts” provokes contemplation…

 

121. King of the Hobos
And Catfish Stew provokes the desire to eat, yet I have never had such a desire after reading the Stew.

Perhaps that’s because I’m better at providing stomach punches than hunger pangs. Wouldn’t it be great to be able to write something that literally makes someone else’s mouth water?

I am failing at the things I want to succeed at, and succeeding at things I have no intention of succeeding at. So who the heck am I? What in tarnation am I doing here, writing on a baseball blog, when Google loves me elsewhere?

On my more optimistic days, I imagine myself as the baseball version of Babette, a stranger in a strange land, trying to fit in, to provide the meals you expect me to provide, barely scraping by for the longest time. But one day, maybe, when things fall just right…

* * *

There’s a blue whale beached by a springtide’s ebb
(That’s my soul up there)
There’s a butterfly trapped in a spider’s web
(That’s my soul up there)

* * *

I served on a jury a year ago for a robbery. The victim got kicked, punched, and hit over the head with the butt of a gun, making him bleed profusely. He could barely see for all the blood pouring down over his eyes. When the cops showed up and caught the bad guy a block away, the victim, instead of nursing his injuries, ran over to try to punch the robber in the face.

He ended up punching the cop in the face, instead.

Shortly thereafter, the victim’s adrenaline wore off, and he passed out.

* * *

There’s a king on a throne with his eyes torn out
There’s a blind man looking for a shadow of doubt

* * *

Friday night, I was playing indoor soccer in my old farts’ league. A ball was sent into our offensive corner. The opposing goalie and I both chased it, arriving at the ball at the same time.

This league is presumably a non-contact, recreational league. The primary objectives are to have fun, and stay healthy. You’re supposed to avoid any sort of moves that may end up hurting someone, even if it means you might give up a goal that costs you the game.

Somebody forgot to give the goalie the message. Instead of easing up when we got close to contact, he came at me like some freakish combination of Ronnie Lott and Scott Stevens. He ran full speed for the ball, jumped as high as he could to knock it away from me, and in the process, sent his knee full force straight into my groin, and slammed the rest of me right into the hockey-style boards.

* * *

There’s a red fox torn by a huntsman’s pack
(That’s my soul up there)
There’s a black-winged gull with a broken back
(That’s my soul up there)

* * *

I hurt like hell. As I peeled myself off the boards, I instinctively screamed something profane as loud as my voice can carry. Instantly, I was insanely angry. I mean, like Jason Kendall insane; maybe even worse. The pain was killing me, but if they had measured the amount of adrenaline and testosterone in my bloodstream at that moment, I would have made Floyd Landis look clean. I barely noticed how much I hurt through my rage.

Somehow, through my madness, I kept my head just enough to stomp off the field without turning around to look at the guy. Because I don’t know what I would have done if this guy had given me any sort of John-Lackey-ugly-mug look that would have made me even more ticked off. Perhaps the words “stomach punch” would have come to my mind, and then to my fists, and then I might have ended up repeating history, wanting and trying so badly to punch the goalie, but accidentally punching the ref, instead.

So I stomped off the field and kept stomping; stomping straight to the locker room, where I grabbed my bag without showering; stomping straight out to my car, and then driving off, straight for home.

* * *

There’s a fossil that’s trapped in a high cliff wall
(That’s my soul up there)
There’s a dead salmon frozen in a waterfall
(That’s my soul up there)

* * *

Just as I was getting in my car, Huston Street was entering the A’s game in the eighth inning against Kansas City. The A’s held a slim lead. My anger began to blend with dread. Street has seemed to be losing more and more stuff lately, the result of too much work during the A’s current hot streak. “Ken Macha is going to run Huston Street’s arm straight into the ground,” I thought.

Sure enough, Street proceeded to blow the A’s lead. Then Street left the game. He had an injured groin. The A’s lost the doubleheader.

Perhaps Street’s groin injury is for the best. I think his arm was starting to wear down, and now Ken Macha will be forced to rest Street and his tired arm, and maybe, someday, when the time is right, Street will be able to return to the A’s bullpen, and lead his team to a glorious, delicious ending.

* * *

My groin injury, on the other hand…I don’t see any silver lining for it. My adrenaline has worn off. I feel like crap. There’s nothing for me to do right now except feel like crap.

* * *

I guess I’m always hoping that you’ll end this reign
But it’s my destiny to be the king of pain

* * *

My pain–the throbbing, the aching–probably doesn’t have the wonderful, juicy ending from which great stories are told. I think my story is meant to just pass out.

Here we have our sixth mystery photo. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to help figure out the who/when/where of the photo.

Click on the image for a larger view.

Note: I’m running low on photos. If you have any old MLB photos that might suit this game, please send ’em in to mystery At humbug .com.

Dr. Catfish Stew, Ph.D., the world’s most brilliant scientist, knows absolutely everything! He can answer any question in the world! Just send your questions in to catfish @ zombia.com, and watch Dr. Stew astound you with his ingenious answers!

Dear Dr. Stew,

–Melky C., Bronx, NY

It’s not the “sour” part that the expiration date refers to, it’s the “cream” part. After a while, mold starts to grow on the cream. At this point, the product technically ceases to be a “cream” and becomes instead a “cheese”. Economics makes it cheaper to just toss the product into the dumpster than to comply with truth-in-advertising laws and relabel the product as “Sour Cheese”.

Hello, Dr. Stew,

–Pete Burns, Liverpool, England

This is a corollary to Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity. Just as time slows down as you approach the speed of light, time also slows down as you approach the center of a rotating disc. So even though a point at the center and a point at the middle both travel at 45 revolutions per minute, the “minute” varies depending on where you are relative to the circle’s center. This is explained by Einstein’s lesser known equation, E = Pi x r².

Dear Dr. Stew,

–Sidney Lanier, Macon, GA

Few people seem to realize that the word “evening” actually comes from the verb “to even out”. Even fewer know what, exactly, “evening” evens out.

The etymology of the word “afternoon” is obvious, of course: it refers to the time after noon, but before sunset. There was also an old English word, “forenight”, which was the opposite of “afternoon”–meaning the period after sunset, but before midnight. Over time, unfortunately, the word been shortened/merged with “night”, and the resulting lack of precision causes a lot of confusion.

But back in the day, “afternoon” and “forenight” were both common words, with perfect opposite meanings. And being perfect opposites, the two time periods were required by definition to last the same length of time each day.

Under the simple definition of the terms, this only happened twice a year–at the fall and spring equinoxes, when sunset hit at exactly 6pm. Without some process for “evening” these time periods out, “afternoon” would last longer than “forenight” during the summers, and be shorter in the winters, and they would no longer be perfect opposites.

Evening out the two time periods is quite simple. You figure out the amount of time between sunset and 6pm, and subtract that much time from the other side of 6pm, to form the new period of the day called the “evening”.

So for example, if sunset is at 5pm, the “evening” would last from one hour before 6pm until one hour after 6pm, i.e. until 7pm. Subracting two hours from the forenight evens out both the afternoon and the forenight to five hours long each.

Similarly, if sunset is at 7:30pm, the “evening” would last from 4:30pm until 7:30pm, and the “afternoon” and the “forenight” would each be an even four hours and 30 minutes.

So to answer the original question, from the fall equinox until the spring equinox, afternoon ends and evening begins at sunset. From spring until fall, afternoon ends and evening begins at the 6pm mirror of sunset.

Dr. Stew,

–Demilitarized Zone, Seattle, WA

I have no freakin’ idea. They just do.