I know a lot of bloggers don’t like newspaper registration schemes, but for reasons that will be obvious to some, I support them.

However, I have just run across the worst, most onerous registration scheme yet devised by any newspaper. I registered just to see how bad it was. It’s at TheDay.com, which I guess is a small paper in Rhode Island. There are SEVEN screens of registration forms with every conceivable registration question. And then … and then … before you can open a link, you MUST confirm your registration by going through three more screens of forms and then clicking a link in an e-mail.

Standard practice is to have one registration screen and if e-mail confirmation is required, at least give the new registrant 30 days to respond.

I also find this wacky: Registration is only required for stories that are more than 48 hours old. In other words, the readers they should most care about registering, meaning their local readers who probably check the site daily, DON’T HAVE TO REGISTER? Only blogging schmucks like me, who are out of market and might look at the site only once in a lifetime, must register.

Maybe I’m misunderstanding something here. I’m only going off of what I saw.

This article by Dan Kennedy on podcasting is a good overview of the technology and the movement (via Instapundit).

Prescient observation from Mark Glaser:

Mark Glaser, a columnist for the Online Journalism Review, recently wrote a piece about podcasting in which he noted that four million iPods have been sold — but that 650 million cell phones would be purchased in 2004 alone. If the Internet were everywhere, and if every cell phone were equipped to tap into the ’Net, then, overnight, podcasts would have a vastly greater potential reach than they do today.

Last week Glaser, who’s based in San Francisco, told me that he thinks the next step is for manufacturers to equip MP3 players with built-in Internet access — “a no-brainer,” as he put it, since it would eliminate the need for a computer to download shows. To Glaser, podcasting, like satellite radio, is drawing people away from traditional broadcast radio because it gives them choices they wouldn’t otherwise have.

Over the next five to ten years, the media landscape is going to change tremendously. The ubiquitous internet is going to evolve the world toward a fragmented media where personalized content is the norm. This is a tremendous challenge for media companies, but I think some media companies are going to see this as an opportunity, not a threat. Not all of this micro-media content will be created by digital pamphleteers. Some of it will be created by forward thinking media companies. I’ve always believed that quality is what sells. Quality content will raise to the top, regardless of its origin — be it basement tape talk shows or big media news bytes — in a democratized media world, listeners and viewers will pick and choose the shows (and formats) that best meet their needs.

Deadwood returns with re-runs Jan. 3. All new episodes March 6.

This afternoon, we watched Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope.

It is a movie of interest primarily because of Hitchcock’s use of what seems like one long camera shot, keeping the scenes seamlessly tied together, like one long rope, and the subtle homosexuality of the main characters (interesting discussion here), and the way it was rather loosely based on an infamous 1924 murder. The Leopold-Loeb crime and sentencing (the duo pled guilty) is covered well here (main trial page here — and the fasinating home page for this site about famous trials can be found here.

There’s plenty of intellectual meet in both the historical crime and the movie, touching as they do on the thinking of Frederick Nietzsche and his “super man” notions. Also, the ideas of determinism and the criminal made victim (as Clarence Darrow did in arguing that the teens should be spared the death penalty).

As a pieceo of entertainment, Rope gets maybe three stars. There is some fine acting, especially from Jimmy Stewart, but the plot moves slowly and lacks the same degree of tension of Hitchcock’s best thrillers.

If you’re interested in progressive Muslims on the Web, here’s a good place to start. There’s also a Muslim blog called City of Brass that is joining forces with Alt.Muslim to create Islamic blogosphere awards.

XM Radio was developed by people who love music. It is programed by music lovers of the first order. Music fans should love XM Radio.

I now know this about XM Radio because I got my wife XM for Christmas.

Fortunately, we’re both music lovers and XM hits the spot.

We got an ear full of XM driving to and from San Diego. We listened XM 12 (XCountry), XM 13 (Hank’s Place), XM 40 (Deep Tracks), XM 43 (XM U, or “what’s next”), XM 44 (Fred, which strikes me mostly as the new wave/punk of my late teens and early twenties), XM 53 (Fungus, and is mostly the brand of punk I enjoy), and all of the decades channels (there isn’t a decade of music that both my wife and I don’t find something we enjoy — in fact, since XM only goes back to the 40s, it doesn’t go back far enough for us. We’ll take the 20s and 30s, too.) We also made stops at every other spot on the XM dial, even doing a little Larry Elder, CNN, MSNBC and Los Angeles traffic.

What I like most about XM is that the people programming these stations know there music. They haven’t just stuck a bunch of CDs in a multi-disk changer and hit shuffle (which seems to be how the digital stations on DirecTV are programmed). There are real people picking quality songs, and not just the hits, but songs you haven’t heard in years or maybe never heard. And for hard core music fans like me and my wife, finding an Ernest Tubb or Wynn Stewart song we haven’t heard is an accomplishment.

Interesting example (interesting to me at least) driving home this evening, I heard for the first time Jan Howard’s “Evil on Your Mind,” which is a song I had just been reading about. It’s a woman’s take on cheating, but before the man had actually done the cheating. And I thought, it might be interesting to write a song from a man’s perspective before the cheating had been consummated.

A couple of hours later over on XCountry, the DJ cued up Todd Snider’s “Trouble,” with its chorus of “A woman like you walks in a place like this/You can almost hear the promises break,” and I knew for a fact what I already suspected — the song had already been written.

Speaking of DJs — another cool aspect of XM are the DJs. DJs’s on XM? Doesn’t that get in the way of the music? Well, a good DJ does a couple of things — first, he doesn’t get in the way of the music. In fact, he sometimes adds a little context or enlightenment. Second, somebody talkin’ at ya helps break the music up. Believe it or not, an endless stream of music can get a little monotonous. It’s nice to know there’s a real person picking out the songs. But the nice touch from XM is that all of the DJs are station appropriate. On the ’60s channel, for example, you’ll be reminded of the fast-talkin’ boss-DJs of AM’s salad days.

The current line up for XM means that just about every taste in music is represented. I wish there were a rockabilly station, and maybe jump blues, and something that is strictly swing would be nice. But at this stage of my XM listening, my needs are satisfied, and I know my wife’s will be, too. In fact, I’m so impressed with XM that next month, or the next, I’ll get XM for myself.

My one quibble with XM really has more to do with our set up for XM than a failing of the service itself.

Originally, XM was supposed to come with my wife’s Toyota Scion. The dealership ASSURED us repeatedly when we bought the car that all we needed to do to get XM was the buy the service for $10 per month. I didn’t do it right away for various reasons, and when I went to give it a try, I learned (with great difficulty and poor customer service from Ventura Toyota) that we had to sink an additional $300 into the Scion to get XM. I wasn’t about to pay $300 for XM, so while Ventura Toyota lost a customer, my wife was without XM.

What I bought for Billie was an XM car kit for $119, which included the receiver, a cassette adaptor and an FM modulator. Since neither of our cars have cassette decks, we were counting on the FM modulator.

The modulator is easy enough to use. You just have to find a free frequency and then flick a switch or two to tune the modulator to that frequency. It’s finding a open frequency (even with eight to choose from) that is the pain in the ass, especially while driving through metropolitan areas like Los Angeles or San Diego. It’s hard to go as much as 20 miles without starting a new quest for an open frequency. And for a large portion of our trip though LA, we couldn’t find an completely open frequency and had to settle for a bit of static.

Otherwise, the XM signal is just as crisp and clear as XM advertises. When tuned right, XM is better than CD quality.

I also bought Billie the home adaptor kit. It works on the office stereo, which is fine, but on the living room stereo we get a deep, rumbling hum. I’m guessing it’s a ground problem, but supposedly my fancy tuner/receiver shouldn’t need to be grounded, so I’m not sure what to do. I’m open to suggestions if you have any.

One additional benefit of XM: It’s the radio network that DOESN’T HAVE Howard Stern on it.

In my most recent post, I wrote about “Heartaches by the Number,” a book by David Cantwell and Bill Friskics-Warren, which was a Christmas present from my wife. Having read more if it, I have more to say about it.

Specifically, this: Cantwell and Friskics-Warren, are capital “L” liberals, it seems to me, and pretty anti-capitalist. I’m not saying this mares the book, just noting it.

Example #1: Under the entry for “Life’s Little Ups and Down,” recorded by Charlie Rich and written by Charlie’s wife Margaret Ann Rich, Cantwell writes, “her similie effectively nails the inevitability of life’s highs and lows, not to mention the way a market economy can keep smacking you down right back where you started, love and hard work be damned.”

Example #2: In the entry for “A Satisfied Mind” by Porter Wagoner, Cantwell writes, “‘A Satisfied Mind’ expresses one of country music’s defining sentiments — money can’t buy happiness, and, at any rate, ‘I’m richer by far with a satisified mind.’ While people at every rung of the American class ladder give lip service to this sentiment, it lies particularly close to the heart of the largely working class country music audience — a community that resides in a worldwheree great material wealth is denied them by the same society that treats it as a reason for being.”

Example #3: Now we get around to the entry for “Folsom Prison Blues,” by Johnny Cash. Friskics-Warren writes that the prisoner in the song is being twice oppressed, first by prison walls and second by his position in society, where the wealth of those rich folks in the dining car smoking fine cigars has always been denied him. “It’s the unfairness of it all,” Friskics-Warren writes, “and especially the way those fat cats ride on the backs of people like him, that stick’s in Johnny’s craw. Even more than the stone walls and steel bars that hold him, it’s the injustice that makes him hang his head and cry.”

I can’t speak to the author’s interpretations of examples one and two, because I haven’t heard those songs in many years. But “Folsom Prison Blues” is practically part of my soul. And Friskics-Warren couldn’t possibly be more wrong in his reading of this lyric. If there is any politics in the song at all, it is the politics of accepting responsibility, a very conservative notion. Remember, the prisoner admits he did wrong, stating matter-of-factly that he shot a man in Reno just to watch him die. He doesn’t equivocate. He doesn’t strike the pose of a socio-economic victim. He doesn’t blame the other guy or somebody else. He says he did it. That’s it. He’s in prison because he did it, and he knows he deserves to be in prison. There’s nothing that will make a man weep more intensely that the realization he has nobody to blame but himself.

The prisoner doesn’t envy or begrudge the rich man and his cigar. He wants it for himself. The folks on that train symbolize freedom — a freedom that is moving past and away from Folsom Prison every day, and that’s where the singer wants to be — as far from Folsom Prison and he can get. That metaphorical freedom gathers intensity from the symbolism of the fancy dining car and those cigars. These are symbols of economic freedom, to be sure, but no doubt, the prisoner would like that kind of freedom, too. In fact, he states flatly that not only does he want to ride that train, he wants to own it.

But you can’t achieve economic freedom doing life in prison.

Further, remember also that Cash calls these passengers “folk,” which is a friendly, not apejorativee term. There isn’t an ounce of resentment toward these folks in either Cash’s language or tone.

A free man in our society has the same chance as Sam Walton or Ray Kroc to become rich and powerful. Our protagonist in Folsom Prison seems to acknowledge this fact by the plain way he states his predicament. He did wrong. He’s in prison. He know’s he’ll never be free. And that train whistle reminds him of what could have been if only he’d listened to his mama.

All I’m saying is that if you’re going to dress your music criticism up in political swag, at least get your story straight.

If there’s any romance about Los Angeles at all, it was largely created by Raymond Chandler.

No wonder — he lived all over — 30 different homes and appartments in 30 years.

This is a tour just waiting to happen.

Would you believe that the greatest country music single of all time is “Help Me Make It Through the Night,” as recorded by Sammi Smith?

Before reading “Heartaches by the Numbers,” by David Cantwell and Bill Friskies-Warren, I would have reacted violently to the suggestion, but now, I’m not so cocksure. I need to hear the Smith version again (which I haven’t listened to in years). Cantwell and Friskies-Warren lay out a compelling premise in the introduction for why such a crossover bit of pop pap should be considered and then layout an intelligent argument in the book’s first entry for the song itself.

After reading “Heartaches,” I’m ready to reconsider my entire country music purism and elitist sneering at crossover commercialism. The authors “don’t fence me in” policy toward great records encourages a whole new way of listening to country music.

Besides, “don’t fence me in” is the only policy that would allow “Train Kept A-rollin’” and “Dixie Fried” and “One Hand Loose” to make such a list, and any list that includes great but obscure rockabilly is going to get my respect.

I only got this book because Billie gave it to me for Christmas, and I’m glad she did.

Cantwell and Friskies-Warren have impressive writing credits (No Depression, Journal of Country Music, Oxford American), but even without the bio on the back of the book, a quick skim through its contents tells you all you need to know about the authors - here are two men who have immersed themselves over a lifetime in country music. They have read about it, thought about it, argued about it and taken seriously every country record they have ever heard (and I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve heard them all).

In most of these “greatest all-time” lists, there is ample room to argue with the list makers conclusions, and Cantwell and Friskies-Warren want you to pick apart their choices, but there is so much love put into this book, it’s hard to spit and cuss even as you disagree.

Before reading “Heartaches,” my list of greatest country singles probably would have lead off with “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” or maybe “Crazy,” or “I Walk the Line,” or “He Stopped Loving Her Today,” now I’m thinking - does the actual order really matter? All that matters are that those songs are acknowledged for their greatness, and from there, what other songs should be admitted to that pantheon?

Having been through the whole book once (not reading every entry, as tempting as that is - and something I will eventually do), I’m hard pressed to think of a song that should be included and isn’t. Last night Billie and I bounced song titles off of each other … “There Stands the Glass,” yup, it’s in there. “Lovesick Blues,” of course (interestingly, by Tony Bennett, not Hank). “Walking After Midnight,” sure ‘nough. “Make the World Go Away,” yes, but by Ray Price, not Eddy Arnold (my preference).

I have yet been able to trip up the authors (Though, under the terms of the book, I think I could make an argument for The Blasters “Marie, Marie” or X’s “Fourth of July,” but that may have more to do with my own predilections and prejudices … but then, if Lone Justice and Los Lobos can make it, why not The Blasters? “Marie, Marie” is one of the greatest songs of any genre, and it is rockabilly and it was a single.)

“Heartaches” is also deep into country music, including songs by such lesser known pioneers of hillbilly tunes as Bascom Lamar Lunsford, Charlie Poole, DeFord Bailey, and the Coon Creek Girls.

Nor does the book concentrate on monster hits. It’s the quality of the record that matters, not the chart success, which is why you’ll find James Talley here along with Billy Joe Shaver and Lucinda Williams‘ original “Passionate Kisses,” not the wooden and ultimately unsatisfying hit version by Mary Chapin Carpenter.

Only authors who have spent a lifetime preparing to write such a book could produce something that gets beyond mere parlor room bickering and goes deep into why a record is good and worth thoughtful consideration. Each song is accompanied by an essay that skips empty rhetoric and includes history, production notes and context. Such research makes any disagreement with a choice more of a quibble than a red-faced rejection of some idiot’s two-cent opinion.

For readers who love country music, and don’t just merely listen to it, “Heartaches” will provide intellectual fodder as well as a desire to dig deeper into the music.

My only regret now is that I don’t know all of these songs. Now I have a new project - start acquiring and cataloging them. I think this will require an iPod!

Associated Press is solidifying its policy on anonymous sources:

One of the lengthiest parts of the new guidelines relates to anonymous sources, stating they can only be used if the material is informational, not opinion or speculation; with approval of a news manager; and if the manager knows the source’s identity.

The policy also would require that such sources be identified as specifically as possible, not simply as “a source,” and may not be cited elsewhere in the story as someone who declined comment. All anonymously sourced stories must also carry a byline, according to the policy.

The new ethics code also defines “on the record” as information used with no restrictions and quoting the source by name; “off the record” as information not used for publication; and “background” as information that can be published with specific conditions set by both parties.

This is great for AP. Now if only the NYT, WaPo, etc. would get their acts together and craft a policy equally as strict, if not more stringent.

The most important clarification is that AP will restrict (if they following their own guidelines) to informational material. One of my pet peeves, as longtime readers know, is anonymous sources used for speculation and conjecture.

What will TVIP mean?

Maybe my vision of TVIP is a bit different than what the telcos are talking about now, but I also think my vision is inevitable. Once you have a settop box that is fully IP-enabled, everything you can do on the Web, you will be able to do on your TV. The only potential glitch is if the broadband providers restrict this functionality. But I just can’t see that happening.

Here are some thoughts.

• It’s an on-demand world. Forget channels. Forget networks. Programming will be what matters. New programming will become popular that no existing media company will touch. Some independent producer will create a show that will do for TVIP what The Simpsons did for Fox.
• It’s a personalized world. The days of 70 percent of Americans tuning into Ed Sullivan at the same time have been gone for decades. Within five years, you won’t even have .7 percent of Americans watching the same show at the same time, and even by the end of the week, it will be a rare show that even seven percent of the television audience will have seen the show. There will be more choices, and every conceivable interest and taste will be served.
• There will be new stars, but they won’t be as big. People that in today’s media world haven’t a chance of getting even 15 minutes, will find audiences in the hundreds of thousands.
• Blogs will survive, but videopunditry will be just as big, or bigger. And in the same way the blogs serve both hyperlocal news needs, and niche interests and hobbies, so will homemade video on demand. The Web has been a great tool for the democracy of news and information. TVIP will take such egalitarian impulses to a whole new level.
• TV will become as interactive as the Web. You will leave video comments on your favorite video blogs. You’ll bid on Survivor gear during the final episode. You will be able to talk back to Dr. Phil in real time. If Tucker Carlson irritates you: Tell him. Now. Or at least everybody who is watching him while you are.
• All kinds of media companies that currently don’t do broadcast will start doing video and doing it well. It’s do it and survive, or not, and die. Multimedia will have to be part of the mix. Audiences/readers/users will demand it and expect it, and so will advertisers.
• Content will be evenly divided between pay-per-view/download and advertising-supported, but the advertising will be accepted and expected because it fits the programming and audience interests/needs.
• Advertising will often be interactive.
• All kinds of small businesses will produce video advertising and infommercials.
• TVIP will be the most profound change to the Internet since the launch of Mosaic.
• TVIP devices will be as easy to use as TiVo.

At least, that’s what I think.

Steve Outing has a lengthy column on what the MSM can learn from bloggers.

I have my own thoughts on this subject. I think there are three important lessons:

1. Publish frequently.
2. Find a niche and hit it hard.
3. Write crisply and with personality.

The most popular blogs do that. The exceptions are rare.

This formula breeds loyalty.

Of course, a loyal audience is an audience that wants to participate in the conversation. Outing has some thoughts, mainly from Jeff Jarvis, on reader participation in the news.

Where in the world could you go to watch six sporting events on one TV screen, while listening to fellow fans of your favorite team cheer it on, and placing bets on those same events? All in the comfort of your own home.

Try England. That’s where BSkyB is forging ahead with innovative personalized, interactive television.

Nothing like it has been seen in America yet. But it’s coming. BSkyB is owned by News Corp. And News Corp. owns DirecTV.

This is one more way that our digital world is evolving toward greater user control over the information and entertainment we allow into our lives. The Web gives us control. Apple’s iPods gives us control. Satallite radio gives us more choices. People, especially in Europe and Japan, see their wireless phones as expressions of individuality and expect them to be customizable in every feature.

Not only is mass marketing is dead, mass living is dead. In technology, each man is an island.

And my question is — are media companies ready for the transition.

We’re moving into an on-demand, my-wants-my-way world. We’re already past the point where most consumers might wonder what it might be like to float free of the masses. Most people, especially young people, just expect it. If you can’t give it to them, you’re dead.

In a world where you can customize M&Ms, there is no longer just one way to deliver news, or one type of news to feed the public. We in the MSM are already falling behind.

The media world is really going to be rocked when TVIP arrives. TVIP will, I predict, make news and entertainment even more diversified and customized. People will download a wide variety of TV shows and showettes that reflect individual tastes and interests in ways Ed Sullivan never could have imagined. And if you think bloggers have shaken up the media world, wait until the pajama army starts producing television shows.

To some extent, it’s hard to imagine what the world will be like in just a couple of years when mass entertainment and mass news has been completely killed off.

Michael Kinsley: Advantage blogosphere!

Summary: Kinsley wrote a column on privatizing social security. An army of bloggers responded. So Kinlsey writes:

A few days later, most of the big shots haven’t replied. But overnight, I had dozens of responses from the blogosphere. They’re still pouring in. And that’s just direct e-mail to me. Within hours, there were discussions going on in a dozen blogs, all hyperlinking to one another like rabbits.

Just so I don’t sound too naive: I am familiar with the blog phenomenon, and I worked at a website for eight years. Some of my best friends are bloggers. Still, it’s different when you purposely drop an idea into this bubbling caldron and watch the reaction. What floored me was not just the volume and speed of the feedback, but its seriousness and sophistication. Sure, there were some simpletons and some name-calling nasties echoing rote-learned propaganda. But we get those in letters to The Times editorial page. What we don’t get, nearly as much, is smart and sincere intellectual engagement — mostly from people who are not intellectuals by profession — with obscure and tedious, but important, issues.

Why the difference? Lots of space, for one. I’ll be hard-put, next week, even to summarize my own argument, let alone discuss those of others, in the space available to a columnist. Letters get even less space, if they are published at all. Certainty that what you write will get posted is surely another factor. It’s nice to know you’re not wasting your time. Ease is important, too. You can send your views electronically to a blog in less time than it takes to find a stamp, let alone type a letter.

Only idiots dismiss blogs as drivel produced by pajama-clad eccentric egoists. Smart people recognize that while there are many blogs produced by just such hacks, there are quite enough being produced by writers of experience, education and intelligence who more often than not know what they’re talking about, or only stick to topics of some expertise. These blogs are resources, even for journalists and professional pundits, and smart people in the media have known this for a long time.

Of course, Kinsley couldn’t close out a column without some smugness. In counter, I think there is always some talking past each other in all communities, but the best bloggers and blog readers rarely do that. And hence, the tone is civil discourse is elevated. I think.

Here’s a graph in need of a correction:

Major league executives, whose teams were often torn apart by drug use, had the least power to act. Ballard Smith was president of the San Diego Padres when they advanced to the 1984 World Series. Two key players on the team, Alan Wiggins and Eric Show, developed addictions. They were let go and later died as a result of their drug abuse.

The cases of Alan Wiggins and Eric Show are completely different.

Wiggins had a drug problem that first became public in April 1995, when he failed to make the starting line up for a series against the Los Angeles Dodgers (assertion based on personal memory). In June of that year, he was traded to Baltimore. Within a year or two, he was out of baseball. He died at age 32, but not from drug abuse. Wiggins had contracted AIDS.

Eric Show, who was a friend, didn’t start using drugs until several years later. Show’s addiction started with a team doctor’s pain killer perscription when he was with the Oakland A’s. He didn’t start abusing illicit drugs until he was out of baseball (or so it was reported at the time of his death; I’ve been unable to find a confirming link).

So, Lee Jenkins has made a few mistakes here. First, he implies that Wiggins and Show developed addictions while they were on the team. Probably true for Wiggins, but not for Show. Second and third, he seems to be saying that both Wiggins and Show were released because of drug addiction. Wiggins was traded (not released, or “let go”) in 1995, but Show was with the Padres for another six seasons before going to Oakland for one season. Fourth, Wiggins died from complications related to AIDS, not drugs. In Show’s case, sadly, it was drugs. Show had been out of baseball for three seasons at the time of his death.

As I was writing this post, I noticed that this story originally appeared in the New York “Never Let the Facts Get in the Way of A Good Story” Times, so I shouldn’t be surprised that so much here is so wrong.
UPDATE: Here is the response from the NYT to this post.

Dear Mr. Owens:

Thank you for your email, which was forwarded to me by the public editor’s
office. I certainly don’t want to quibble over the circumstances of
anyone’s death or their use of drugs, and we don’t want to be wrong about
it either.

As I’m sure you understand, the paragraph that you pointed out truncates
history to get to the larger point of the story. But, despite the
inferences you drew, I don’t share your belief that the paragraph is
inaccurate.

After double-checking record books and Internet sites, it seems to me that
it’s fair to say that both Wiggins and Show were “let go” in the sense that
Show was let go as a free agent (and then signed with the A’s for a
substantial pay cut) and Wiggins was traded for a minor-leaguer at a time
when he had one of the biggest contracts in baseball.

Wiggins did die from complications related to AIDS, but it was contracted
through the use of drug needles.

That leaves the question of when Show was caught in the grip of drug
addiction. Frankly, I’m not sure how to prove it one way or another and if
we can find evidence that we were in error, we would publish a correction.
But we can’t publish a correction without certainty that we were wrong and
I haven’t been able to find it.

I’ve attached a link below that gives the best synopsis I’ve seen of their
troubles.

Best regards,
Tom Jolly
Sports editor
The New York Times

I think with the Times’ resources, resources I don’t have, they could access the archives of the Union-Tribune and maybe even the San Diego Reader to the coverage of Show’s death. Also, Show’s family could clarify the record. Finally, I don’t buy the concision argument. I know journalists do it. I know I used to do it. But it’s never an excuse. Even in concision, you have an obligation to be accurate. The Times may not want to face reality, but the paragraph as written creates a record that leaves a false impression. As somebody who considered Show a friend, I’m particularly offend at the implication that he had a drug problem earlier than has ever been reported before, especially since by the Times’ own admission, they can’t substantiate it. Note: I’ve chosen to leave out the links Tom sent along because they are both easy to find and really don’t add anything to the discussion — the information provided is just the same kind of concision the Times is justifying.

Here’s something for Padres fans to celebrate — The Big Unit leaves not only the NL West, but the entire National League. Also, the Dodgers are a little bit weakened … if you believe Shawn Green is a plus as a hitter. Then again, losing Green may improve the Dodgers.

Interesting new Web video search engine.

It’s still rather limited. Well, it’s very limited. It’s not by any means the Google of video search, but it’s a start … we hope.

A couple of nice welcome backs … Steve Smith, Arnold Williams, Richard Bennett, Tony Pierce … Nelson Ascher, who is more concerned with the whereabouts of Steven Den Beste, but has still managed to refer a ton of traffic to this site.

And, of course, Glenn Reynolds.

Also, a couple of nice e-mails.

Thanks to all.

A friend brought this article to my attention. It is about a guy who decided to experiment with steroids and found, to his amazement, that his eyesight improved. In fact, he was able to stop wearing glasses.

You don’t think improved eyesight would help a major league hitter, do you? Like, oh, I don’t know, somebody who seems incredibly disciplined at the plate and is able to recognize pitches quickly and easily. Even better than he did early in his career. Somebody, like maybe, Barry Bonds? Just a thought.

This is an issue of steroid use, as my friend pointed out, that you don’t hear discussed often. Not often enough, I think.

I own a Treo 600, which is a great little device. It’s a phone, of course, and a PDA, and a camera, but it also means I can log onto the Web from just about anywhere. It’s helped settle a few arguments up at Smoker’s Castle.

A few weeks ago — and I wish I had some notes on this to tell you exactly who I’m talking about — a tech executive on Charlie Rose talked about the fast approaching day when we will all carry devices about the size of a PDA that will contain pretty much all of the world’s knowledge. And if for whatever reason some bit of information isn’t stored on the device, it will be readily accessible over the ubiquitous wireless (WiMax?) network.

This news about Google’s new deal with Harvard, to digitize Harvard’s documents, is undoubtedly a step in that direction.