Things I Don't Get

Today seems like a perfect time for a blog entry. I admit I have neglected writing anything new ever since school started getting busy, but the first day of the new year is a great time to reflect on issues of this world that I still just don't get. Perhaps one of my 2010 resolutions (along with the requisite resolutions of exercising more regularly, spending more time reading the Bible, etc.) can be to figure out the answers to these things.

Yankee Jerseys

The New York Yankees like to consider themselves the most celebrated, successful, historic, prestigious, profitable, gangsta, and legen...wait for it...dary teams in all of professional sports. They aren't necessarily wrong. Perhaps this is why their players' jerseys do not feature any of their names on the back - Yankees don't need to have their names on their jerseys; being a Yankee is enough.

The Third Baseman Formerly Known as Mr. Kate Hudson (even though that's not written on his jersey).

So why is it, then, that the replica jerseys that fans can buy in stores all have the players' names on them?

Presumably, if you're a big enough fan that you're actually willing to buy the jersey (these things run upwards of $100), you'd already know that the Yankees' #13 is Alex Rodriguez.

Of course, the Yankees may have printed the names on these replica jerseys for the sake of the casual fan / layperson. Not everyone in the world has the Yankees' roster memorized. People may need some help in figuring out who your favorite player is - almost like a baseball jersey version of a flashcard. But the Yankees actually admitting this would be roughly equivalent to Microsoft admitting that Linux is a serious threat in the OS market (nerdy tech joke FTW no0b pwned!). This is the same franchise that calls one of its practice facilities Legends Field. As in, legends practice here. Or practiced here at one point. Or maybe the players practicing on it will become legends? I don't know.

Apple Products

Apple's product naming scheme is fairly predictable. Lowercase i + whatever the product is = next hot product to be pimped by Steve Jobs. In other words, look past the 'i' in an Apple product name and you'll usually get a fairly good idea of what it is you're dealing with. An iPhone is a phone. An iMac is a Mac computer. iPhoto lets you view photos. iMovie lets you edit movies. You get the idea.

iPhone = phone.


iMac = Mac.

iPod = pod?

What the heck happened here? How many times have you looked at an mp3 player and thought, "What a great pod!" I'm sure there's a Wikipedia article out there explaining exactly how the iPod came to be named the iPod, but still, that doesn't take away from the weirdness of it or its inconsistency relative to the rest of Apple's product line.

Orange/orange

An orange is orange. It might have been the first fruit ever named, before the Worldwide Fruit Naming Association realized that this system was not going to work. Or maybe the color orange was the first color to be named, named after the great fruit.

No other fruit can say its name is its color.
Or that its color is its name?

Determining which came first - the color or the fruit - could be this decade's chicken/egg question. The answer could determine whether we got it all wrong by naming the color spectrum R-O-Y-G-B-I-V; perhaps it should be Apple-Orange-Lemon-Lime-Blueberry-Grape-Grape (I never knew the difference between Indigo and Violet).

Or vice versa.

If that doesn't keep you up at night, well, you're probably a normal person.