2006 October » Hello World

Who are the ad wizards who thought up this one?

Oct 182006

Sorry to keep writing about sports, but sometimes I can’t help myself.

Cory Lidle, the Yankees pitcher who died when a small plane he was piloting crashed into a Manhattan building last week, was buried yesterday.

As the 45-minute outdoor service in Covina, Calif., began, three planes similar to the one Lidle owned flew over the crowd before disappearing into dark gray clouds. “Everybody was doing fine until the planes went over,” said Randy Wolf, Lidle’s teammate with Philadelphia.

Um, yeah. That’s like having a phalanx of limos speed past Princess Diana’s funeral. Or the Olympic downhill skiing team at Sonny Bono’s. Just a horrible, horrible idea. They might as well have closed with “The Day the Music Died.”

Mission Accomplished!

Sports No Responses »

Oct 172006

The Arizona Cardinals lost their game last night due to a) a few ugly turnovers, b) an enormous special teams collapse at a crucial moment, and c) a missed field goal. They also scored 23 points on the toughest defense in the NFL. So, naturally, they fired their offensive coordinator. By this logic, the 2-4 Redskins should seriously consider terminating the Hogettes (that website hasn’t been updated in weeks!).

Dennis “Denny” Green is the head coach and, in the scenario that makes him look best, sat idly by while his offensive coordinator called a passive and completely ineffective second half in an effort to protect a lead. The worst case scenario goes something like this: he told his offensive coordinator to call a passive game to try to protect the lead, and then when his team completely collapsed in a way that can only be his own damn fault, he fired the guy he gave the orders to. The Cardinals defense gave up three points (for those of you keeping score, that’s twenty points fewer than their allegedly-worthless offense managed) to a Bears offense that has been absolutely destroying their oppenents and the Cardinals still lost the game. The coordinator’s play-calling–you know, the thing that is so awful that it got him fired–gave the Cardinals a 20 point lead in the second half of the game! Talk about a fall guy–this poor sap got fired after Denny Green squandered the best half of a game he’s ever called.

“I’ve known Keith for a long time. I have the utmost respect for him,” Green said, adding “and that’s why I’m making him the scapegoat for a season’s worth of my screw-ups.”

Links of the day

Links, Tech No Responses »

Oct 162006

I’d like to own this game if it ever comes out.
Ditto this smartphone.
A few college football players get kicked off the team for buying beer even though a) they didn’t drink it and b) they were over 21. I assume there’s more to this story but so far the only additional information is that they got caught because an assistant coach searched their bags… he probably justified it with the UConn Patriot Act or something.
How Friendster crashed and burned while MySpace made millions. Call me old-fashioned, but I always preferred Friendster to MySpace. I considered the limited customization options an enormous feature (and I am disgusted that they succumbed by allowing music, video, etc. on their formerly spartan profile pages), and I loved the fact that everyone’s 12-year-old siblings were busy exchanging txtmsg emotichat over at the garish and generally repugnant MySpace. But for one huge reason–the incomprehensible fact that Friendster never bothered to fix the rampant and severe pageload delays that crippled usability–Friendster missed its chance to be what MySpace has become. All that being said, it’s hard to feel bad for the founder who seems most responsible for the site’s failures–he’s had a long time to craft his story, but he seems like an arrogant nerd who let his greed distract him from the site at a critical time.

Is it too late to trade for Favre?

Sports No Responses »

Oct 152006

Let’s face facts, guys. The Redskins’ season is over. We can defend against neither the run nor pass, and we can’t throw the ball well enough to give Clinton Portis a chance out there. We’re 2-4 in a highly-competitive division and we just lost to Tennessee.

It’s time to put Brunell on the bench. It’s not entirely his fault that the season is a wreck, but it’s time to salvage what we can–next year. We’ve got 10 games to get Jason Campbell ready for next season–let’s get him in some real games while our opponents still have something to play for.

And we might look into getting somebody who can play cornerback or mount a pass rush of some kind.

Two things

Economics and Advertising, Links, Tech No Responses »

Oct 112006

My friend Britt posted this astounding image which has been steadily exploding my brain for the last hour or so. His description can be found here.
Update: See also this link.
End of Update.

And on another subject, I’m not going to bother linking to any of the many stories about it but let’s just say that I totally agree with Mark Cuban that Google was insane to pay $1.65 billion for freaking Youtube. ONE POINT SIX FIVE BILLION DOLLARS. That’s, like, forty thousand Euros! I mean, bless Google for giving it a shot, but I don’t see any way that this acquisition will ever pay for itself. Although, on the other hand, they paid for the company in stock–so once the market reflects the idiocy of the purchase in Google’s price per share the real dollar value of the acquisition will be a lot more reasonable. I’m pretty sure that wasn’t what Google had in mind, though.

The liberal media picks up the fois gras story

Links No Responses »

Oct 072006

In its “what’s online” column, the Grey Lady notes the same Salon interview I posted yesterday. Does this mean that I’m better than the New York Times? Well, yeah, I guess it pretty much does.

Permalink Life, Links No Responses »

Oct 052006

Here‘s a very interesting (if completely one-sided) back-and-forth interview between Anthony Bourdain and Michael Ruhlman, two significant personages in the world of food:

Telling people what they should and shouldn’t eat is cultural imperialism — and deeply disturbing. That a group of people could say, “You know, how you eat and how you’ve been eating for hundreds, if not thousands, of years — traditional Jewish cuisine, Western European food since Roman times — that is wrong and should not be allowed.” I find that offensive. Ethnically insensitive, jingoistic, xenophobic, anti-human and disrespectful of the diversity of cultures on this planet, and for human history. But that’s just the kind of law that has passed — in Chicago, our second city, no less. It’s a win for the forces of darkness, willful ignorance and intolerance.

Later on in the exchange, Bourdain defends fois gras as a relatively benign practice (specifically compared to the big business farming that goes on in the chicken and beef industries). Also openly mocked: Whole Foods’s pro-crustacean, pro-biped stance, as chronicled in this space a few months ago.

[Salon]