Nate Silver on Fox's morning show

Nate Silver, of fivethirtyeight.com fame, went on Fox News' morning show, and he had an... interesting experience discussing Barack Obama's falling poll numbers.

He concluded his post, "I've never met people more terrified of what might happen if they actually tried to engage in a rational discussion."

NFL lays down harsh guidelines on Twitter use

Wow.

From the Associated Press:

The NFL said Monday it will allow players to use social media networks this season, but not during games. Players, coaches and football operations personnel can use Twitter, Facebook and other social media up to 90 minutes before kickoff, and after the game following traditional media interviews.

During games, no updates will be permitted by the individual himself or anyone representing him on his personal Twitter, Facebook or any other social media account, the league said.

The use of social media by NFL game officials and officiating department personnel will be prohibited at all times. The league, which has always barred play-by-play descriptions of games in progress, also extended that ban to social media platforms.

The NFL's player who gets the most publicity for using Twitter, Chad Ochocinco, tweeted:

@ProFootballTalk what's the new policy that I am hearing about, need the ins and outs so I can get my tweet team together?

Charlie Villanueva, an NBA player then with the Milwaukee Bucks but who signed with the Detroit Pistons earlier this summer, sent a tweet at halftime of a game against the Boston Celtics this March.

Villanueva wrote:

In da locker room, snuck to post my twitt. We're playing the Celtics, tie ball game at da half. Coach wants more toughness. I gotta step up.

The NFL rules seem to be overkill.

Some teams themselves, the AP report notes, have laid down their own Twitter restrictions. And setting the restrictions on Twitter to an hour and a half before the game seems like something that the teams themselves would want to do. But not necessarily the NFL.

And as for the officials, if they want to join a social media network... too bad. It is completely prohibited.

AdAge looks into the future of ESPN -- including holograms

A pretty cool look into what we can expect from the sports media behemoth in the near future from Ad Age. And that includes holograms:

New hologram technology coming to ESPN in the spring, based on Electronic Arts' "Virtual Playbook," will enable anchors to be digitally inserted into shots from remote locations. The idea thrilled Chris Berman and Bob Ley, the two anchors with the longest tenure at the company.

"This is just an example of the cutting-edge technology that will save us so much money on airfare for the World Cup," said Mr. Ley, referencing ESPN's forthcoming coverage of the 2010 FIFA World Cup, which will be broadcast from South Africa. Mr. Ley first appeared via green screen from a separate conference room down the hall, only to appear seamlessly on the screen seated between Mr. Berman and Chuck Pagano, ESPN's exec VP-technology.

Mr. Ley looked remarkably more realistic than Will.i.am did during his appearance on CNN last fall, which was precisely the goal. "We looked at that and we said, 'How can we do it better?'" Mr. Pagano said. "How can we extend our internal studio to the outside world?" Although the convenience seems inherent, you can expect many jokes like the one Mr. Berman made in response to Mr. Ley: "You look like Kazoo on 'The Flintstones,' sitting on my shoulder."

The whole piece is interesting, so go take a look.

IKEA changes font, font-obsessed fans fume

I have to say... I don't care that much.

But when IKEA changed from a font that they've always used to Verdana, Time writes, some people were pissed off.

"Ikea, stop the Verdana madness!" pleaded Tokyo's Oliver Reichenstein on Twitter. "Words can't describe my disgust," spat Ben Cristensen of Melbourne. "Horrific," lamented Christian Hughes in Dublin. The online forum Typophile closed its first post on the subject with the words, "It's a sad day." On Aug. 26, Romanian design consultant Marius Ursache started an online petition to get Ikea to change its mind. That night, Verdana was already a trending topic on Twitter, drawing more tweets than even Ted Kennedy.

Cliff Lee isn't superstitious

Most baseball players, especially pitchers, are very superstitious. If they have a no-hitter going, no one acknowledges it. In fact, the pitcher will sit alone in the dugout because no one wants to talk to him and say something to jinx the no-hitter.

But new Philadelphia Phillie Cliff Lee, who was traded from the Cleveland Indians? Well, he doesn't care about that kind of stuff. His manager, Charlie Manuel, told Baseball Prospectus (subscription required) of Lee, "A lot of guys might have put pressure on themselves coming over here, but it doesn't faze him at all. His first game with us, he had a no-hitter going through five innings at San Francisco. Well, you know the superstition about not talking about a no-hitter, but he comes in the dugout after that fifth inning and says, 'Hey, I've got a no-hitter going.'"

Pretty cool.

A Jerry Lee Lewis song without piano?

Jerry Lee Lewis is as inextricably tied to the piano as Elton John or Billy Joel. But in his latest single, the 73-year old rock icon has a song that is completely devoid of piano.

There's just something wrong about that.

The New Yorker writes:

In a post on YourItList.com, [Cal] Morgan points out that “Lewis has rarely sung without the piano beneath his fingers; it is hard to imagine him without it, any more than we can imagine B.B. King’s voice without Lucille’s tart counterpoint.” But the new song’s lyrics challenge the listener to think twice about who Lewis really is—“If you think I’m a voodoo doll, that’s what I am”—and, as Morgan points out, the rocker’s motives are anyone’s guess.

It just seems weird.

He also sounds a lot like a poor man's Johnny Cash, perhaps because the song is written by Kris Kristofferson.

The Onion AV Club's least favorite movie cliches

I have to say, I agree with... well, just about all of these, especially this one:

Jason Heller

There are two clichés in particular that really irk me—probably because they’re both staples of one of my favorite genres, science fiction. First is the monolithic, evil corporation that always seems to come complete with a malevolent CEO, a cadre of sadistic scientists, and an army of faceless storm troopers. The most recent example I can think of is the fictional entity Multi-National United from District 9; granted, there is plenty of evil perpetrated by military-industrial contractors, but the world is just way more complex than that. But even worse, cartoonishly evil corporations make for lousy drama: It’s pretty much the same as the mustache-twirling villain, no ambiguity or complexity. Another sci-fi cliché that gets on my nerves is the plastic, antiseptic vision of the future in the vein of Gattaca or A.I.—which, besides being played-out and hard to swallow, seems to stem from some antiquated, Boomer-era paranoia about suburban conformity rather than any plausible prognostication of tomorrow. Human systems and societies are fluid and messy, not the homogenous lumps that writers and directors often sculpt—and even when their creations’ dark underbellies are inevitably revealed, the overall shape is usually far too simple.

The New York Mets as a slasher film

The New York Mets have had an incredible number of people hurt on their team this year. Of the 25 Mets on the opening day roster, just 11 are still playing.

So Baseball Prospectus wonders (subscription required) takes a short look back at the season full of injuries as if it is a slasher-film.

And they wonder who is next

Inconveniently, none of these 11 men are named 'Tina,' so we don't have any easy picks as far as who's going to be next to fall. We know that for the final survivor, it won't be any of the ones who have been drinking a lot, or those having fun, loveless pre-marital sex, or those having fun, lusty extra-marital sex, or those having sex of any stripe with their wives, because let's face it, sex is death in such matters. But here again, we can also probably take it for granted, given the immutable laws of slasher movies, that the real good-time charlies are already toast. I know, that probably means the guys left aren't exactly the original fun bunch, but I don't think anyone's figuring the remaining Mets to be a bundle of joy. Let's face, it, we're almost seven months in since the start of spring training, and anyone left on this fun ride must be feeling like the guys left in the final third of Dan Simmons' interminable Terror, wondering whether they get to eat one another before the polar monster TBNL chomps them to bits.

The anti-Twitter

Woofer, which looks like Twitter but is incredibly different, has a unique premise. Instead of requiring users to stay below 140 characters, it forces users to use at least 1,400 characters.

CNET looked at the website:

When you look at the site's three principles of woofing, you begin to believe that Woofer truly will be the salvation of the language: "1. Be eloquent. 2. Use adverbs. 3. DEA (don't ever abbreviate)," the site says.

Floyd Mayweather doesn't lack confidence

He did an ESPN chat yesterday, and here is one exchange:

russell (snellville,ga)

does it bother you that a lot of people seem to think you are no longer the best, even though you have not lost a fight?


Floyd Mayweather (5:09 PM)

Nobody who is a true boxing fan doens't believe that I'm the best. How can I not be the best when I've never lost? When there are so many people on the mythical best list have lost? If I was the No. 1 on the list when I left and the guy who is lost, how can I not be the best when I come back? That doesn't even make sense. My record speaks for itself.

He fights against Mexican boxing legend Juan Manuel Márquez on September 19 of this year.

Fan made trailer for Ferris Bueller's Day Off

This is pretty cool, even if the first song ("Shimmy Shimmy Ya" by Ol' Dirty Bastard) is incredibly misplaced in one of the quintessential 80s movies of the time.

Is it possible for Rick Pitino to look worse than he did?

I mean, seriously, what the hell was he thinking, calling this press conference and... looking crazy.



Why hasn't Rick Pitino, the head men's basketball coach at Louisville, resigned yet?

If you don't know the details of the Pitino case, then read this Sports Illustrated piece on the whole affair.

The last phone booths in Manhattan

Not just pay phones, but actual phone booths.

Something interesting from Huffington Post:

There are only four outdoor phone booths left in Manhattan - and they're all on West End Avenue. That's it: four

I wonder how many are left in Albuquerque -- are there any?

When I worked at the Victoria's Secret Call Center (yes, I worked there), they had two phone booths inside, which seemed... quaint.

And people would step in to talk on their cell phones in private which seemed... ironic.

Facebook quizzes reveal more than you think

Facebook quizzes are not only annoying, they can potentially reveal private information to the quiz developers.

The Northern California chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has put together a campaign to raise awareness of privacy issues surrounding Facebook applications, in particular quizzes. According to this group, the millions of Facebook users taking quizzes are revealing far more personal information to application developers than they are aware of. This is mostly due to the fact that Facebook's default privacy settings allow access to all your profile information whether or not your profile is set to "private." Even worse, the ACLU reports that even if you shun quizzes yourself, your profile info is revealed when one of your friends takes a quiz. Want to see how bad the problem is? Just take the ACLU's Facebook Quiz and prepared to be shocked.

Wow. So if you find out what Harry Potter character you are, then the quiz developer can know just about everything that is on Facebook. No matter your settings.

(Tip o' the hat to Trip for the catch... on Facebook no less)

Friday Night Lights, NPR edition

NPR is exploring high school football.

Starting with training camp and all through the 2009 season, NPR will bring you some of the stories, struggles and victories of high school football and the communities who support it, while also exploring the costs and the issues the sport raises.

In big cities and small towns across the country, high school football is the ritual that defines the fall. And for many young men, it is the ritual that defines who they are.

I never played football (I'm not exactly built for the sport), but I will be interested in seeing how this series plays out.

Perseid meteor shower video

Cool stuff. Via Bad Astronomy:

"Violent battles" and one man stabbed outside soccer game

Wow.

A man has been stabbed and violent battles have broken out between rival football fans in "large-scale" crowd trouble, police said on Tuesday night.

Hundreds of fans are involved in the disorder which police said was caused by people without tickets to the West Ham versus Millwall game who had planned to start trouble.

Basketbrawl

Uruguay vs Mexico in what was essentially a scrimmage:

Top ten plays of the weekend

Just about all baseball. Since it is, you know, the offseason for everything else, but here are SportsCenter's top 10 plays for the weekend that just ended.

Unassisted triple play ends Phillies game

Philadelphia Phillies 2nd baseman Eric Bruntlett ended the Phillies' 9-7 victory over the New York Mets in style -- with an unassisted triple play. You can see the video at MLB.com.

With the Mets threatening against Phils closer Brad Lidge, Eric Bruntlett turned the first game-ending triple play in National League history and only the second in Major League history. With Luis Castillo on second base and Daniel Murphy on first and both running on the pitch, Jeff Francoeur hit a line drive that Brunlett caught before he stepped on second base to retire Castillo. Bruntlett then tagged out Murphy to end the game.

It was just the 15th unassisted triple play in Major League history, and the second one to end a game.

Bruntlett also had three hits. Not a bad game.

The Shins - Turn on Me (Video

A pretty damned good video. Check it out.

Usain Bolt slideshow

Over at Talking Points Memo.

Bolt (seriously, a sprinter named Bolt!?) might be my favorite athlete right now who doesn't play on one of my favorite teams.

I can't decide which is my favorite photo. Maybe this one that shows he beat the rest of the field by a good ten meters.

But, yeah, Bolt is crazy fast.

Looking back to the future in baseball

A very interesting Uni Watch (a column about uniforms) from ESPN's Page 2 on "Turn Ahead the Clock," a promotion that gave teams 'futuristic' uniforms just in time for the turn-of-the-millenium.

I thought a couple of the jerseys (the Colorado Rockies and, against the judgement of the Uni Watch guy, the San Diego Padres) looked pretty cool. But the San Francisco Giants (left on the last link) and the Pittsburgh Pirates jerseys... umm... let's just pretend that never happened.

TV reporter files report -- via iPhone

Here in Albuquerque, KOB-TV reporter Jeremy Jojola (or @jeremyjojola on Twitter), did something pretty cool -- he filed his report via the iPhone.

Check it out:



I'm not an iPhone user and I still find this pretty cool.

Chad Ochocinco is multitalented

Chad Ochocinco (formerly Chad Johnson) kicked an extra point which proved to be the difference in the Cincinnati Bengals' preseason victory over the New England Patriots. Ochocinco, being the self-promoting showman that he is, wasn't exactly humble afterwards.

From the Associated Press:

" 'Esteban' Ochocinco is back, the most interesting footballer in the world," Ochocinco said. "Everyone has to remember, I've always said that soccer is my No. 1 sport. I think Ronaldinho would be proud of me right now."

It isn't the first time the American football player has expressed his love for the European style of football. Though, at the time, he was still named Chad Johnson.

ESPNsoccernet: Rumor has it that you drove Coach Lewis crazy juggling a soccer ball during practice?

CJ: [Laughs] Yeah that's the way I warm up, before games, during the season, in practice, in between drills, in between practice I use the ball, just juggling the ball all day.

Usain Bolt is crazy fast

Ho hum, Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt smashed another record, this time in the 200 meter sprint.

The remarkable Jamaican took gold in 19.19 seconds, shaving just over a tenth of a second off the mark he set in winning the 200m at last year's Beijing Olympics.

Bolt smashed his own 100m world record with a 9.58 seconds clocking in claiming gold in the shorter sprint on the second day of the championshiops.

And his antics afterward, according to Pardon The Interruption's Twitter account, were almost as entertaining:

Usain Bolt just ran 19.19. Then fake-raced a mascot. Then got hand kissed by cameraman. We'll discuss at 5:30pm ET.

Crazy fast and he just has fun out there.

Why I love the New Yorker

This article on Ricky Jay, who not only is not only one of the most gifted sleight of hand magicians of his time but also a great historian of magic, is nearly 15,000 words long. And every word is worth reading.

The article is from 1993, and I wish someone else would write such an article about him in 2009. It would be equally interesting to see what he has done in the last 16 years.

@TheOnion: "Newly Discovered Recordings Reveal Beatles Actually Terrible Group"

From The Onion:

This unfortunate find has forced music historians to completely reassess the talents of John, Paul, George, and Ringo," said Beatles scholar Mark Lewisohn, who has dated the tapes to early 1968.

I wish I could write as well as David Sedaris

His latest from the New Yorker is here:

The thing had been struck but not run over. It hadn’t decomposed, or been disfigured, and I was surprised by the shoddiness of its coat. It was as if you’d bred a rabbit with a mule. Then there was the tail, which reminded me of a lance.

“Hugh,” I called. “Come here and look at the wallaby.”

It’s his belief that in marvelling at a dead animal on the roadside you may as well have killed it yourself—not accidentally but on purpose, cackling, most likely, as you ran it down. Therefore, he stayed in the car.

“It’s your loss,” I called, and a great cloud of steam issued from my mouth.

As always with Sedaris (and the New Yorker), there is much, much more.

The toughest place to play in all of sports

You think that Cameron Indoor Stadium is hard to play in with their Cameron Crazies? Think again. The Big House in Michigan? Hell, Appalachian State won there. Qwest Field, home of the Seattle Seahawks?

Nope. None of those are even close to Mexico City's Azteca Stadium. The 100,000+ seat stadium, the fifth-largest stadium in the world, is so impenetrable that the United States has never won a match there. Ever.

ESPN's Bill Simmons attempted to let you know what it was like last week when the United States played Mexico in a World Cup Qualifying match that was a must-win for Mexico:

You can't even call it just a hostile environment; it's more primal than anything. I have only attended two other games in which the crowd's collective loathing was palpable -- Game 6 of the 1986 NBA Finals (Boston fans heaping hatred on Ralph Sampson, who had punched two Celtics in the previous game) and Game 5 of the 1987 Eastern finals (the same treatment for Bill Laimbeer, who had decked Larry Bird the previous game) -- and neither approached USA-Mexico. Michael Vick could crash a PETA rally and get a friendlier reception than the Americans did at Azteca.

Amazing.

ESPN columnist attacks Twitter after ESPN social media ban

ESPN really doesn't like social media. After their ban of Twitter, a columnist on their site decided to blast Twitter.

Isn't that timing weird...?

Don't mess with Prince Fielder

Prince Fielder, the All-Star first baseman for the Milwaukee Brewers, got hit by a pitch in the 9th inning of a game where his team was being destroyed by the Los Angeles Dodgers. It was in retaliation for his pitcher hitting the Dodgers' star Manny Ramirez.

Fielder, however, took it a bit personally. From the Associated Press:

When the game ended, Fielder charged through the underground tunnels at Dodger Stadium to the door of the home clubhouse, shouting obscenities with many fellow Brewers trailing behind. Several security guards and teammates Bill Hall and Casey McGehee prevented Fielder from entering the locker room in search of Mota.

"He ran over there, and they weren't going to let him in, and everybody came back," Milwaukee manager Ken Macha said. "I don't know if you can restrain Prince. I don't think I can. I don't think there's anybody else out there who can."

England gets more Orwellian -- UK government to put cameras in people's homes

This is just plain scary, from the Daily Express across the pond:

The Children’s Secretary set out £400million plans to put 20,000 problem families under 24-hour CCTV super-vision in their own homes.

They will be monitored to ensure that children attend school, go to bed on time and eat proper meals.

Private security guards will also be sent round to carry out home checks, while parents will be given help to combat drug and alcohol addiction.

Umm, wtf?

Orly Taitz's meltdown is epic

I almost feel bad for her.

I know that everyone has already seen this, but it's worth watching again just for the utter insanity of the clip.

ESPN banning Twitter for most instances

The Worldwide Leader in Sports, ESPN, is like a lot of companies these days. Seemingly every person on their staff has a Twitter account. I follow about a dozen of these folks to find out the latest about sports news, including their RSS feed Twitter account.

But now ESPN has decided that all this Twittering by their reporters isn't a good thing and has banned tweeting except for cases where it serves ESPN's interests.

Ric Bucher, who covers the NBA for ESPN and ESPN.com, said in a Twitter post today that the sports giant is prohibiting Twitter posts that don't serve the network. Bucher has more than 18,000 followers on the site.

I caught the tweet by @RicBucher.

Here it is:

The hammer just came down, tweeps: ESPN memo prohibiting tweeting info unless it serves ESPN. Kinda figured this was coming. Not sure wh ...

He followed up with a tweet that says,

My guess is I can still tweet about my vacation/car shopping, etc. Which I will do, if I can. But the informal NBA talk is prob in jeopardy.

In other words, there is no longer any reason for me to follow ESPN personalities for scoops on sports news.

Rap song about Twitter: "Hit me on Twitter"

And no, it isn't one of those jokey, "I'm a guy who can't rap, isn't it funny!?" rap songs. It's an actual rapper (Mista F.A.B.) telling people, "Hit me on Twitter."

Listen to it.

Modest Mouse music video directed by Heath Ledger debuts

You can watch the animated video for the song "King Rat" over at MySpace.

Ledger directed part of the video and the rest was finished by his company, The Masses.