Fear & Loathing

Golden Rule Doesn't Apply in Politics

Liar, liar pants on fire. Rove Calls Biden 'Liar' After VP Boasts of Scolding Bush [FOXNews.com]. Looks like the whole things was manufactured anyway.

Posted via web from glenn's posterous

A Post-Newspaper Era

Michael Kinsley says if the New York Times disappears, there will still be news. Life After Newspapers. I'm not so sure. Since most Web news is repurposed content from newspapers, especially financial and investigative reporting, and because few if any sites can monetize or profit from online news distribution, when newspapers die I fear there will be little to replace them. Certainly NOT television.

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Astonishingly Out of Touch

Frank Rich asks "Why has there been so little transparency and so much evasiveness so far? The answer, I fear, is that too many of the administration’s officials are too marinated in the insiders’ culture to police it, reform it or own up to their own past complicity with it." Obama's "Katrina Moment"? [NYTimes.com]. Newt Gingrich calls this "astonishing." Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal dubs it the "incredible lightness" of the Obama policy team.

Wow. Who woulda thunk that only eight weeks into the new Administration Americans -- and especially liberal columnists from the New York Times -- would be pondering, let alone writing publicly, whether Barack Obama's crew is "out of touch" with mainstream anger?

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What's In a Name?

SciFi Channel is all set to become Syfy. But no, despite what CNet News implies, it is not the lawyers' fault.  The point here is a rather arcane one about trademark law, which prohibits use of a generic term as a protected description of goods or services.  The CNet article seems to suggest that "SciFi Channel" could not be trademarked because "Sci-Fi" is generic.  But if the mark is unique and the entire phrase has not been allowed into the public domain, as in Science Channel, there should be no problem.  So on this one, don't blame me!!

Posted via email from glenn's posterous

As American Gun Culture Spreads, U.S. Media Ignore the Parallels

Watching BBC News last evening on DirecTV, I learned that Germany has suffered a rash of high school shootings over the past 8 years. School Killings Shake Germany to the Core [IHT]. Surprisingly (or not, sadly) we in the United States hardly ever hear of serious issues facing other nations, even when in reality they are American cultural exports.  In the aftermath of Virginia Tech, one would think a story like this -- how adolescent shootings are a dark side of almost all developed nations without gun control -- would have received more attention.

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Scary Indeed

Just the thought of being in the icy waters of the Hudson River in the winter is enough to make one's skin crawl. US Airways Jet Crashes Into Hudson River off New York City [ABC News]. But looking at photos and video of today's aircraft floating in the river is scary, very scary indeed.

One Old Second

So 2008 needs to add an extra second to the official world atomic clock to account for subtle changes in the earth's orbit.  4 ... 3 ... 2 ... 1 ... 1 ... Happy New Year! [NYTimes.com]. This is old news, really old.  I blogged (actually tweeted) about it a while ago.  Still interesting, but topical only for those with very short attention spans. What?  Happy New Year!

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Breaking the Plane

The biggest and most controversial play (see video) in the NFL last week decided the Pittsburgh Steelers' victory over Baltimore. Steelers Beat Ravens; Titans Await [Pittsburgh Tribune].

Flushed out of the pocket on third down, Roethlisberger kept the play alive long enough to fire a bullet to Holmes in a shallow part of the end zone. Ed Reed quickly shoved Holmes back across the goal line and officials initially ruled Holmes down at the 1-yard line. They changed the call to a touchdown after an official review. Afterward, referee Walt Coleman said that Holmes established both feet in the end zone [with possession of the ball] before Reed pushed him out.

Debate raged all week throughout the blogospghere, newspaper message boards, fan sites and on TV talk shows (like Inside the NFL) over whether the replay officials got it wrong. The conventional theory is that Holmes should not have been credited with a TD because the football did not cross into the end zone, that replay should not have reversed the on-field call because there wasn't "indisputable" evidence on the replay video and that the referee's explanation was botched.

My belief is that all of this controversy misses the point. Even the NFL's unofficial rules digest defines a touchdown with reference to breaking the plane. "Touchdown: When any part of the ball, legally in possession of a player inbounds, breaks the plane of the opponent’s goal line, provided it is not a touchback."  But it also defines the field in terms which make clear that breaking the plane is not the sin qua non of a TD.  "Sidelines and end lines are out of bounds. The goal line is actually in the end zone. A player with the ball in his possession scores a touchdown when the ball is on, above, or over the goal line."

Take these two hypotheticals.

1.  The QB rolls out wide and passes the football toward the end zone pylon but it crosses the goal line outside of the field of play.  With the ball still in the air and both feet planted in the end zone, the receiver catches the ball, maintains possession and falls to the ground out of bounds.  The football has never broken the plane of the end zone but the receiver had legal possession while in the end zone.  Result?  TD.  No one could argue otherwise, else many "fade" routes would not be scores.

2.  A runner comes down the field, ahead of the defense, holding the ball.  Nearing the end zone, in celebration, the runner holds the ball out to his side, outside the pylon, as he runs into the end zone.  So the player has possession of the ball in the end zone but the ball never broke the plane.  Result?  TD. Whether or not the ball crossed the plane, the player has possession of the ball with two feet in the end zone.

So what does the official NFL rule book say?  Well, crap, it's not online. I did find a copy of the 2006 rule book available, which provides in Rule 3, Section 2, Article 7:

To gain possession of a loose ball (3-2-3) that has been caught, intercepted, or recovered, a player must have complete control of the ball and have both feet completely on the ground inbounds or any other part of his body, other than his hands, on the ground inbounds.... This rule applies in the field of play and in the end zone. The terms catch, intercept, recover, advance, and fumble denote player possession (as distinguished from touching or muffing). A catch is made when a player inbounds secures possession of a pass, kick, or fumble in flight (See 3-20; 8-1-7-S.N. 5).

Yet the official definition of a touchdown also seems to require the ball to break the plane. Rule 3, Section 38 says "A Touchdown is the situation in which any part of the ball, legally in possession of a player inbounds, is on, above, or behind the opponent’s goal line (plane), provided it is not a touchback (11-2)." 

So in my hypotheticals, unlike the Santonio Holmes play, the ball in each case was "on, above or behind" the goal line.  It is counter-intuitive, but I think there's good reason to conclude that even having the ball "behind" the goal line is not necessary.  (Since we talking hypothetically, note that the "goal line" is an imaginary plane, which technically extends past the sidelines and continues out of bounds.)  Take that fade route again.  Assume the receiver has both toes in the front corner of the end zone, with possession of the ball, but that the ball is out-of-bounds at the 1-yard line.  Possession, and thus a "catch," are clear. Result? Touchdown, I say.  If a player can score a TD by waving the ball into the pylon (which is considered part of the end zone) without ever having possession of the ball while in the end zone itself, then a player can score a TD by having possession of the ball in the end zone without the ball ever having entered the end zone itself.

Mystery solved.  But the NFL surely needs to publicize its 2008 rule book and clarify whether it is both possession "and" location of the ball that are required for a TD if the player is in the end zone.

Let the debate continue!

What To Do Without Newspapers?

With increasingly frequent reports that American newspapers are in severe financial difficulty because of a rapid and accelerating shift of advertising revenue to other media outlets, it is fair to ask how citizens, investors and consumers will get their news in the next decade. Newspaper Ad Revenue Falls Nearly $2 Billion [Advertising Age]. 

Without a profitable newspaper industry, it is difficult to see that any of the re-purposed Web content offered online by those publishers can remain. After all, the trend is decidedly against online subscription content business models and, as has become clear, Internet traffic to news sites needs to be an order of magnitude greater in order to support positive advertising net revenues. Television networks like CNN and FoxNews offer a little, but the bulk of their content is a superficial summary of the prior day's news cycle, drawn principally from newspapers. And without all those reporters, how are the blogosphere or GoogleNews going to function?  As the L.A. TImes asks in commentary, "How long can newspapers keep delivering the news?"

This problem is one that is indifferent to politics. Whether you like the supposedly liberal New York Times or conservative Wall Street Journal or something else, not even the newspapers with the widest circulation are making any money online. The Detroit Free Press' recent discontinuation of most home delivery to focus on Internet distribution is a serious cry for help.  So if the "paper-and-postage business" dies on the newspaper industry -- which is where it certainly seems to be headed -- where does that leave us? Without any serious defenders of the 1st Amendment and certainly lacking news organizations with the scale and resources to report on our increasingly interrelated world.  Newspapers indeed have to reinvent themselves or die, but it is not at all clear what they should come back as in their next business model iteration.

Getting Buzz (Jennifer Aniston Naked!!)

No, this is not really an E! or Inquirer celebrity story. Although I certainly do think Jen's cute and wonder why it took 39 years to see a naked photo, this post is about how headlines create buzz and traffic, especially online. 

See, when one notices something like this -- Jennifer Aniston Not Nervous to Get Naked [E! Online] -- is just when the Google-stats go crazy. Admit it. Now I could add links to how to guides or the impressive statistics on searches for "Jennifer Aniston," but I won't bother.  You didn't read this post because you are a student of online traffic science. You read it for the prurient thrill created by putting "Jennifer Aniston" and "naked" in the same sentence.  Naughty, but fun.

No one ever said the Internet is only about public policy and high-minded ideas. In fact, most of the 'Net is about trash and the mundane. So I don't blame you at all for stopping by to voyeur the former Friends queen. Now just don't tell your mom/wife/husband!