Work's been crazy busy lately, so tonight I'm just now catching up on a lot of the Internet time-wasting I'd normally have done on my lunch break. As luck would have it I ran across two separate posts, back to back, that both had me saying out loud, "OMG I love the Internet so much."
First, Baseball Prospectus' Ben Lindbergh analyzes a two-minute scene from the pilot of the TV show "Elementary" that featured a Mets-Reds game. It turns out that the game in question doesn't exist, and what ended up in the episode was spliced together from different games (against different teams) that took place over a year apart. And the reason for this is that the pilot's writers and producers wanted it that way. They wrote a scene where Sherlock gets to be all mentalist about some upcoming baseball plays, and then the MLB's game tape keepers provided clips that fit their scene's needs, and voila. Lindbergh's piece is amazing not just because it provides a glimpse of the legwork that goes into a mere snippet of a TV show, but because he actually tracked down the real-life games that showed up onscreen. It's kind of nuts, but I love it.
Speaking of the sausage-making of film, someone is really, really tired of hearing conspiracy theories about the 1969 moon landing. If you weren't a communication major in college and therefore never had to take a History of Broadcasting quiz, I apologize for all the techno-speak - but it's important, especially since this video-maker's entire point is that conspiracy theorists have poor understanding of the things that actually go into lighting, shooting, editing and completing an in-focus, dust-free film clip.
Prior to the 1990s, both of these people would be the guy at the dinner party that's either incredibly, painfully boring or super-interesting, depending on your perspective. But now they get to share their hunches and pet peeves with those of us who are just as nerdy about the same things. Yes, the Internet amplifies some really awful things like anonymous commenters who can't spell... But at times it's pretty awesome.
Saturday, January 19, 2013
Thursday, January 17, 2013
Quickie: that Notre Dame player with the fake dead girlfriend
It's still a developing story, and there's a strong stench of BS about it. But, for me, the most fascinating aspect of the story about Notre Dame football player Manti Te'o and the tragic loss of his girlfriend (who turned out not to be real) is that there's no way it would've gone as far if the press who cover college sports hadn't played along.
Deadspin, who broke the story yesterday, has a rundown of all the ways the traditional media should've caught on.
As my journalism professors always said, a news story is the first draft of history. Reporters and editors get things wrong out of haste or misunderstanding, and journalism has mechanisms for correcting prior bad reports. But it always seemed to me that sports journalists were more susceptible to falling for a convenient narrative than, say, the guy assigned to cover Federal Reserve policy. They cover entertainment, for one thing. For another, sports fans tend to be sports fans because we like epic tales of triumph over adversity and all that, and so we eat up those stories about athletes playing games just hours after a death in the family, for instance. (No, I'm still not ready to talk about Lance Armstrong.)
Personally, I fall in the "the sport itself is interesting enough already" camp. We're watching people push themselves to the physical and mental limits of human possibility, after all. Why do I need to know about anything else?
.
Deadspin, who broke the story yesterday, has a rundown of all the ways the traditional media should've caught on.
As my journalism professors always said, a news story is the first draft of history. Reporters and editors get things wrong out of haste or misunderstanding, and journalism has mechanisms for correcting prior bad reports. But it always seemed to me that sports journalists were more susceptible to falling for a convenient narrative than, say, the guy assigned to cover Federal Reserve policy. They cover entertainment, for one thing. For another, sports fans tend to be sports fans because we like epic tales of triumph over adversity and all that, and so we eat up those stories about athletes playing games just hours after a death in the family, for instance. (No, I'm still not ready to talk about Lance Armstrong.)
Personally, I fall in the "the sport itself is interesting enough already" camp. We're watching people push themselves to the physical and mental limits of human possibility, after all. Why do I need to know about anything else?
.
Wednesday, January 16, 2013
Are the president's kids more important than yours?
Yes.
I'm sorry, was there some confusion over that? I mean, his kids aren't more important to him than your kids are to you, of course. But they're more important in terms of national security, because when the president's kids are threatened it impinges on his ability to do his job - which puts America's security at risk.
That's why Congress requires that the Secret Service protect not just the president, but his family. The president couldn't turn down Secret Service protection if he wanted to.
That's another thing - those "armed guards" who protect the Obama daughters when they're at school are not employed by the school. (They go to a Quaker school, which - if it's anything like the Quaker college where I worked for four years - doesn't have armed security, period.) Those "armed guards" are insanely-highly trained Secret Service agents who guard the girls at school and anywhere else they go. Because federal law.
The NRA is all concerned about hypocrisy now? Okay. When the armed personnel you want in every school in America have to undergo the selection process, the background checks, the training and all of the other weeding-out that those agents go through in order to have the privilege of watching the president's kids, then we can talk.
I'm sorry, was there some confusion over that? I mean, his kids aren't more important to him than your kids are to you, of course. But they're more important in terms of national security, because when the president's kids are threatened it impinges on his ability to do his job - which puts America's security at risk.
That's why Congress requires that the Secret Service protect not just the president, but his family. The president couldn't turn down Secret Service protection if he wanted to.
That's another thing - those "armed guards" who protect the Obama daughters when they're at school are not employed by the school. (They go to a Quaker school, which - if it's anything like the Quaker college where I worked for four years - doesn't have armed security, period.) Those "armed guards" are insanely-highly trained Secret Service agents who guard the girls at school and anywhere else they go. Because federal law.
The NRA is all concerned about hypocrisy now? Okay. When the armed personnel you want in every school in America have to undergo the selection process, the background checks, the training and all of the other weeding-out that those agents go through in order to have the privilege of watching the president's kids, then we can talk.
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