Blade Runner Can't Compete in Olympics

When he was 11 months old, Oscar Pistorius had both his legs amputated below the knees because of a congenital condition. Now 21, Pistorius is a sprinter who runs on artificial legs called blades, as he did in July at the Golden Gala competition.

Pistorius can't compete in this year's Summer Olympics in Beijing because those blades have been ruled an unfair advantage. It's a shame he won't be allowed to compete. Seeing him round the turn in the 400 meters and take off, moving at world-record speed on metal prosthetics, accomplishes a feat that's rare in this world: Redefining the possible.

Sports · 2008/01/15 · Comment · Link

Ron Paul and the Electability Question

During last night's South Carolina Republican debate, Fox News moderators were tough on Rep. Ron Paul, most notably when journalist Carl Cameron asked him an incredibly derisive question:

Congressman Paul, yet another question about electability. Do you have any, sir? There's always the question as to whether or not you are, in fact, viable. Your differences with the rest of the Republicans on this stage has raised questions about whether or not you can actually win the Republican nomination, sir.

Leaving aside the issue of whether journalists have any business deciding which candidates are "electable," Paul got twice as many votes as Rudy Giuliani in Iowa and five times as many as Fred Thompson in New Hampshire. Yet Fox News did not pose that question to either Giuliani or Thompson, and I don't think it ever would.

After Cameron's question was met with loud ridicule from the crowd and his fellow candidates, Paul provided the night's best moment.

There's a furious debate going on at the Drudge Retort about bigoted newsletters published in Paul's name. I have concerns that he's not the steadfast old-school Republican he seems to be, but instead belongs to the angry hard-right fringe.

But last night, as he's done many times before, Paul held his party to account for straying so far from its principles. Crazy borrow-and-spend military adventurism has taken hold of the GOP to such a degree that ideals once solidly in the Republican mainstream are openly mocked by its most popular leaders.

I think the primary attraction of Paul is that he's a politician who won't sacrifice his ideals to please voters. If that approach is unelectable, we're in a lot of trouble.

Politics · 2008/01/11 · 11 COMMENTS · Link

Hail to the Racial Slur

Joe Gibbs abruptly resigned today, ending his second stint with Washington's football team on significantly less successful terms than the first. In posting the story on SportsFilter and the Drudge Retort, I made the conscious decision to avoid referring to the team's racist mascot name.

Original lyrics to Washington's team song:

Hail to the Redskins
Hail Vic-tor-y
Braves on the Warpath
Fight for old Dixie

Scalp 'em, swamp 'em -- We will take 'em big score
Read 'em, weep 'em, touchdown -- we want heap more
Fight on, Fight on -- 'Till you have won
Sons of Wash-ing-ton. Rah!, Rah!, Rah!

It feels awkward to refer to them simply as "Washington," but it's not that uncommon outside the U.S. where sport franchises aren't so focused on mascots. In the other football, for instance, you'll find pro teams known by their city and the designation F.C. (for Football Club), which is attractive for its plainness. I recently bought a share of AFC Wimbledon, a publicly traded soccer team that began play when its original team moved to another town.

Wandering back to my main point, I'm joining the minority of sports fans who won't play along any more with Washington's use of a contemptible racial slur. I grew up in Dallas as a Cowboys fan, so I'm sure that will be pegged as my motivation, but I'd feel the same way if the ball was on the other foot. Why does the media, so primed for racial slight that an offensive Don Imus rant got his entire show canned, continue to ignore the enthusiastic commercial use of a slur as a trademark in the nation's capitol?

Sports · Politics · 2008/01/08 · 8 COMMENTS · Link

Google Searches Lead to Nicole Atkins

I've never heard of singer Nicole Atkins, who popped up on Google Trends this morning as a search spike. She performed her song "The Way It Is" on Late Night with David Letterman in October, a lover's lament with a great heartsick Roy Orbison wail.

She's scheduled to perform at this year's SXSW in Austin.

Music · 2008/01/08 · 2 COMMENTS · Link

Author George MacDonald Fraser Dies

I've never heard of the Flashman series of novels by George MacDonald Fraser, but the description that has accompanied his obituary today has my curiosity sparked:

He wrote the first novel of the Flashman Papers in 1969 after he quit as assistant editor of the Glasgow Herald.

The book imagines what happened after Flashman -- the bully in Thomas Hughes's Tom Brown's Schooldays -- was expelled from Rugby for drunkenness.

Eleven more novels were to follow in the series, during which Flashman -- the most lily-livered hero in Victorian England - fornicates and brawls his way round the empire, provides Abraham Lincoln with his "you can't fool all the people all the time" quotation, and accidentally starts the charge of the Light Brigade.

Books · 2008/01/03 · 5 COMMENTS · Link

Hoosgot: The Return of the LazyWeb

Hoosgot a web application for creating a hierarchical Dmoz-style link directory in a browser?

The term "hoosgot" is newly coined by Dave Sifry, a founder of Technorati and one of my former homies on the RSS Advisory Board. He's launched the web site Hoosgot (as in "who's got?") for lazy people who have technical requests for help. Just use the word "hoosgot" as a verb in a request on your blog (or @hoosgot on Twitter) and it'll end up on his site, where it's hoped someone more industrious can help you with a solution.

I really do need that software, preferably open source, PHP and MySQL. The board had an RSS resource directory created with Radio UserLand, but I'd prefer something lightweight and server-based.

Hoosgot · Programming · 2007/12/30 · 2 COMMENTS · Link

Long Bet Winner: Weblogs vs. The New York Times

In 2002, blogging evangelist Dave Winer made a long bet with New York Times executive Martin Nisenholtz: "In a Google search of five keywords or phrases representing the top five news stories of 2007, weblogs will rank higher than the New York Times' Web site."

Today, Associated Press editors and news directors chose the top 10 news stories of the year, which makes it possible to determine who won the bet.

AP's No. 5: Chinese exports

The Times ranks 20th for the Nov. 30 article China Agrees to Remove Certain Export Subsidies. The weblog BloggingStocks ranks 19th for the Dec. 5 entry Chinese exports take off. Winner: Blogs.

AP's No. 4: oil prices

The Times ranks 15th for the Oct. 17 story Record Price of Oil Raises New Fears. The weblog BloggingStocks ranks 42nd for the Dec. 11 entry Is the Price of Oil 'Artificially' High? Winner: Times.

AP's No. 3: Iraq War

The Times ranks 20th for its special section on the war. The weblog Iraq War Today ranks 17th. Winner: Blogs.

AP's No. 2: mortgage crisis

The Times ranks first for the Sept. 2 story Can the Mortgage Crisis Swallow a Town? The user-generated weblog Digg ranks 19th for Monday's entry Top 5 Reasons Why the Mortgage Crisis = Global Warming, which links to a Dec. 17 blog entry on Solve Climate. Winner: Times.

AP's No. 1: Virginia Tech killings

The Times ranks 30th for an April 18 weblog entry, Updates on Virginia Tech, from The Lede: Notes on the News. The user-generated weblog Newsvine ranks ninth for today's weblog entry, Top News Story: Virginia Tech Killings, which is about AP's top 10 stories of 2007. Winner: Blogs.

So Winer wins the bet 3-2, but his premise of blog triumphalism is challenged by the fact that on all five stories, a major U.S. media outlet ranks above the leading weblog in Google search. Also, the results for the top story of the year reflect poorly on both sides.

In the five years since the bet was made, a clear winner did emerge, but it was neither blogs nor the Times.

Wikipedia, which was only one year old in 2002, ranks higher today on four of the five news stories: 12th for Chinese exports, fifth for oil prices, first for the Iraq war, fourth for the mortgage crisis and first for the Virginia Tech killings.

Winer predicted a news environment "changed so thoroughly that informed people will look to amateurs they trust for the information they want." Nisenholtz expected the professional media to remain the authoritative source for "unbiased, accurate, and coherent" information.

Instead, our most trusted source on the biggest news stories of 2007 is a horde of nameless, faceless amateurs who are not required to prove expertise in the subjects they cover.

Journalism · Wikipedia · 2007/12/20 · 43 COMMENTS · Link

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