Idle Thoughts, while waiting for idiotic July 4 fireworks shows, Carlos Rodon’s first pitch and for Jaylen Brown to make one when it counts:

• Dr. Idle, Dr. I to his close friends, is on record railing at CIAC for allowing technical schools to alter the integrity of state tournament playoff brackets across all sports.

If the poohbahs balk at creating a separate division, then at least keep tech schools out of Class LL and L. It creates perpetual competitive advantages (and disadvantages), illustrated by lopsided final scores and coaches who can manipulate their pitching, saving their aces for other games.

Example from baseball this spring: Wilcox Tech was the No. 1 seed in highly competitive Class L. Wilcox Tech lost 17-4 to No. 32 seed Wilton in the first round. This happens all the time. Make it stop. Somebody. Beggin ya.

• From one of Dr. I’s cabinet members, an English teacher at a local high school, who became suspicious recently that a student was using Artificial Intelligence to write a term paper.

“I told the kid, ‘If you can tell me right now what the word ‘pusillanimous’ means, as you wrote in your paper, I won’t give you the ‘F’ I’m about to give you,’” my friend said.

Needless to say the response was crickets.

Note to all you kiddies out there: Your teachers aren’t stupid. Keep using A.I. at your own risk.

• Trivia: Which 300-game winner in the majors accumulated the same number of hits at the plate as he did wins on the mound? (Answer below).

• Dr. I feels honored to be witnessing so many miracles in East Lyme.

How is it possible that this “stale” athletic department came within a timely hit Saturday of sending two different teams to the state semifinals?

(If you think Dr. I is going to let this go, you don’t know Dr. I very well.)

• Speaking of East Lyme, Mike Korineck of campus safety issued a challenge to Dr. I the other night at the lacrosse game:

“Instead of saying one of the kids scores a goal, can you write, ‘found the back of the onion bag’ instead?”

There you go, Mike. Dr. I is always happy to comply with the constituency.

• Dr. I discovered that Notre Dame had a baseball player this year with the last name of “Putz.”

Has there ever been a more appropriately named Notre Dame person?

• Dr. I wants to meet the person responsible for the Geico commercials.

The latest: A couple loves their new house, but … “the lamps.”

Next scene: a bunch of kids playing street hockey. When one of them scores a goal, the lamps in the house start turning on and off and a foghorn starts blaring (mimicking an NHL arena).

Utter brilliance.

• Dr. I’s pal Todd Lynch, a former New London police captain, now tends bar at Filomena’s.

“From arrest-making to martini-shaking,” Lynch said. “I had to give Dr. I a rhyme.”

• Attention Celtics fans: go to the Boston Globe and read (BC grad) Bob Ryan’s latest piece on the Celtics. Headline: “It was hard work to be a Celtics fan this season.”

• The great Bob Picozzi, now happily retired from Channel 8 and ESPN, sent Dr. I a story from CNN on the benefits of swearing.

“The advantages of swearing are many,” Timothy Jay, professor emeritus of psychology at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, who has studied swearing for more than 40 years, told CNN. “The benefits of swearing have just emerged in the last two decades, as a result of a lot of research on brain and emotion, along with much better technology to study brain anatomy.”

Turns out cursing may be a sign of intelligence, a sign of honesty, improves pain tolerance and is a sign of creativity.

(It also helps while driving.)

• Trivia answer: Warren Spahn, who won 363 games and got 363 hits in his 21-year career. Somehow, Spahn did all of it without launch angle and was unaware of his spin rate. Go figure.

• Finally: A very happy retirement to the great Jan Carpentieri, who tended bar at Anthony J’s in Mystic for more than 30 years.

Jan, a favorite of a coaches’ group that attends weekly services, shook her last martini about 10 days ago.

She personified Billy Joel’s archetype of a bartender in “Piano Man.” Always “quick with a joke or to light up for smoke.” The greatest ever.

This is the opinion of Day sports columnist Mike DiMauro