Damn you, autocorrect!
Stephanie: Every artist should make a video with the mullets!
Ha ha...muppets
Stupid autocorrect. : P
Brian: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH
i agree with both statements
Twice each year, the sunset aligns so that it is visible down all the cross streets in Manhattan. This effect, dubbed “Manhattanhenge”, creates an amazing scene for about 5 minutes. My cellphone camera didn’t do a very good job of capturing it last night (also, the view from 57th street is partially obstructed by a building in New Jersey), but but you can check out some better photos HERE.
On Manny Being Manny
Manny Ramirez tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs for the second time, we learned today. So Manny, being Manny, retired from baseball. And for the next few days, then for a number of days five years from now, there will be a great media debate over whether Ramirez will make it into the Hall of Fame.
The baseball writers with actual votes on this matter have sent a resounding message to anyone linked to PEDs the past few years. That message is that there is no place in the HOF for them. Agree or disagree (which I do), there is still a strong enough voting bloc that strongly believes this to make it an immutable fact: if you are linked in anyway, official or rumored, to steroids, you will not be going to Cooperstown anytime soon.
So what do I think of Manny’s chances of being a first-ballot Hall of Famer? Pretty good actually.
While the message sent by the Baseball Writers Association of America has been clear, Manny represents a case that we have not seen come before the jury so far, and won’t see until he is eligible for consideration. Players like Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens had careers that were historically transcendent, and rank highly all-time at their respective positions. Despite this, they are viewed as despicable characters, and, right or wrong, character often plays a strong part in HOF election. Players like Mark McGwire and Rafael Palmeiro, while not universally beloved as people, probably net a reasonably neutral public opinion. However, their Hall of Fame case is slightly narrower. McGwire hit a hell of a lot of homeruns, but take those away and there isn’t a whole lot there. Palmeiro achieved some gaudy counting numbers over the course of a very long career, but was never really considered an elite player at any point of his career (ahem, Bert Blyleven, ahem, ahem).
But Manny? Manny will come before the HOF jury with the same baggage as Bonds, Clemons, McGwire and Palmeiro, but he will be the first of the PEDers with historically great numbers – probably one of the top 5 right-handed hitters of all-time – and a Clinton-esque public approval rating.
I subscribe to the Buster Olney philosophy that we will never know, definitively, who did and did not use performance-enhancing drugs in an era where Major League Baseball did very little to discourage it, and that the greatest players of this era should be granted admission to Cooperstown as with any generation before. Obviously, not enough BWAA members share this belief, but I like to think that Manny Ramirez represents the best hope to get the ball rolling in a direction where the truly elite of a regrettable era are included in a museum that should represent a complete history of the game we love.
On the NY Times digital subscription
The first time I used the internet was in my mother’s office when I was in high school, probably sometime around 1997. I wasn’t quite sure what I was supposed to do with it, so I just printed out pages of statistics for my favorite basketball players. With no home computer, I had no need for even an email address until I went off to college, at which point I took advantage of the sudden, unfettered worldwide web access by spending hundreds of hours reading online rumors regarding professional wrestling. In the years since, my web usage has become somewhat more…sophisticated.
While I was, perhaps, a little behind the times, the fact is that no one was quite sure what to make of the internet in the late nineties, and, in a blind attempt to get ahead, many major institutions set themselves on an unsustainable path by making freely available their content that had previously been available only via subscription or newstand. It is just now, nearly a decade and a half later, that a potentially viable attempt to correct this is being implemented by a major newspaper.
I am a strong proponent of the outside-the-established-institutions journalism that has come about during the internet era, from Drudge to HuffPo to Deadspin, but I still believe that the resources offered by major traditional media are critical to the information age. We cannot let our newspapers die. Though there may not be any shortage of political coverage, no institution covers American politics like the Washington Post, and in an increasingly global community, few institutions possess the international reach of the New York Times.
Despite the ubiquitousness of the web, online advertising has yet to translate into the revenue-generating power of a print ad or a television spot. So with online content available for free and ad revenue down, how do these institutions remain in business?
This past month, the Times finally (again) instituted an online pay wall. They are not the first major newspaper to do so; the Wall Street Journal has had one for as long as I can remember, though they haven’t seemed to quite gain the online traction of other free publications. If this is successful, I imagine that others will follow suit. Personally, I have shifted to Twitter as my primary means of reading the news. By creating a roster of writers and news outlets that I trust and respect and “follow”, Twitter has become my one-stop news-shopping site. However, I feel ethically obligated to financially support the Times by becoming a digital subscriber to ensure that a trusted organization with the best means to provide global coverage and firsthand reporting continues to do so.
If you take advantage of nytimes.com and have the means to do so, I strongly encourage you to support this risky and radical paradigm shift with your credit card. Even if it means that other sites that currently offer free content go behind the “wall”, in the long run, I believe that we all will benefit from saving the great American newspapers from dying.
The difference between Facebook and Twitter
I signed-on to Facebook tonight and my newsfeed consisted entirely of posts by Conan O’Brien, who was live-Facebooking his show. I was annoyed, and immediately “unliked” him.
If this had happened on Twitter, I would have probably read every post, and enjoyed it. It took me a few minutes to figure out why I felt this way. Ultimately, I decided that in my usage of these social networks, Facebook is for people I know, Twitter is for people I am interested in.
Can We Get a Style Ruling?
Libya’s leader has been in the news since the 1980s, so why can’t the media agree on how to spell his name? Here is a quick rundown of some major news outlets, and the spelling that they are using today on their front page:
Washington Post: Moammar Gaddafi
New York Times: Muammar el-Qaddafi
New York Post: Moammar Khadafy
CNN: Moammar Gadhafi
Los Angeles Times: Moammar Kadafi
Fox News: Muammar al-Qaddafi
The Guardian: Muammar Gaddafi
Even the major wire services can’t agree with the Associated Press using “Moammar Gadhafi”, and Reuters opting for the “Muammar Gaddafi” spelling.
