papsrus

Trying to size up the Rays' off-season moves, here's what they've done so far: Acquired: Burrell, Matt Joyce (from Motor City Kitties in exchange for Edwin Jackson), Kapler and RHP Joe Nelson. Lost: Floyd, Hinske, Gomes (free agents) Aybar, Bartlett, Navarro are in arbitration. Picking their spots with the the position players, there is a clear upgrade there. And they acquired the RH bats they needed in Burrell and Kapler. But a glaring unfilled need (IMO) remains a closer. Percival seemed to get shakier and shakier as the season went along last year, and then folded completely at the end. The committee thing didn't work so well after that. Balfour is wound much too tight for the roll. All in all: Happy with the tweaking on offense. Don't know enough about Nelson. Worried about the 9th inning.

Whatever that pilot did -- from start to finish, every decision and maneuver -- should be mandatory study in flight schools. Best line I've read about the guy: "I'd say he puts his pants on more than one leg at a time."

I touched on this in this thread, or a related thread, earlier. The problem newspapers face is not that they are not making money on an operating basis. It's that they have too much debt to service (much like the rest of America). This TPM entry outlines the problem. Of course, I suppose you could make the same argument about debt for a lot of other industries that are in trouble today. Still, this might lend support to the notion that the newspaper model, while certainly shifting (online), is not quite dead yet. TV was supposed to kill radio. Didn't happen. Maybe there's some sort of parallel with newspapers vs. online?

Lends new meaning to the term "good vibes." Stay strong. Stay happy.

Boston Globe cutting 50 newsroom positions. Voluntary buyouts first, followed by layoffs if the voluntary thing doesn't attract 50 employees. A somewhat telling comment from a reader reacting to the news:

Memo to Pete Carroll: stop whining. The day after the Gators beat the Sooners to win the national championship, Carroll gives a news conference to whine that nobody could beat his Trojans. Well, talk to the people at Oregon State about that. He needs to take care of business in the middle-of-the-Pac 10 so he can qualify for a slot in the national championship game first, not whine about it after the fact in a news conference. Classless. The guy in Utah has a more legitimate claim and showed some class when he stated his case that his undefeated team deserved a shot at the Gators or a share of the title. He's right. Carroll's wrong. I'd love to see a USC-UF game. Who'd win? Who knows? But it would be fun. Carroll needs to leave it at that. But, whatever. Today, however, was Carroll at his whining best. I turn on ESPN, and there's his sour puss moaning and groaning about the decision of his junior quarterback to go pro. He didn't come off as being concerned one bit about the kid, Sanchez. He looked frustrated and, frankly, pissed off, that Sanchez would dare leave USC early. What a contrast to Urban Meyer, who put his kids in touch with NFL people to gauge their readiness for the NFL, and then left the decision up to them. Carroll's wrong about his No. 3 Trojans, and he's wrong about Sanchez. With Bradford staying at Oklahoma, Sanchez would be nuts not to enter the draft this year. He's a great quarterback whose stock likely won't get any higher than it is right now. IMHO

The rationalization about alcohol is rich: Products "like" alcohol? What products? There's alcohol and then there's ... what? Wings at Hooters? He's trying to draw some sort of moral equivalence between alcohol (or chicken wings) and cheating? Why not compare cheating to cars, which also cause a lot of deaths each year? ... publicity stunt. I'm sure they realized the ad would be rejected and the plan all along was to use that rejection to create a buzz. The statement about football fans being their target audience has to be more than a little insulting to millions of happily married football fans, too.

... maybe they were talking about a golf foursome? ... who would open for this stupor group? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Wv3Ya9nskA? (apparently this is from Kill Bill?) HEY! If you watch to the end there's a fade-out. He was flute-syncing!!!

I don't have time right now to read the linked article. I will later. But my gut reaction is also: bad idea on several levels.

I'm not a numbers guy (which may automatically disqualify my opinion), but some of the names you've thrown out as not deserving are a bit surprising. Koufax, Dean, Ryan? Are these even on anyone's "marginal" list? And you say on the one hand five good years shouldn't qualify a pitcher, then say Ryan's longevity shouldn't be a factor either. I dunno. ... I'm sure you have stats to back up your opinions on these guys, but I just wouldn't give any of these three a second thought. I was pretty young, but I remember Munson as a beast of a man. Those cats were cut from a different cloth back then, me thinks.

Complete Lester Young on Keynote

What about out of those areas (like Florida)? I must have some of this beer. Where can I get some shipped to me? EDIT: nevermind. i found their OL store.

Let us know when you start to look like her.

Thanks for this. Listening to the Marsalis and the Shavers-Clayton clips one after the other, the impression I come away with is that the Marsalis piece is about Marsalis displaying his technical proficiency, while the Shavers piece is about how Shavers is able to use the music as a creative vehicle. Shavers explores the music (with zest!), while Marsalis seems to recite it (with polish). I always feel a little apprehensive listening to Marsalis, as if every note must have its perfect place and Marsalis is simply slotting the notes in where they belong. "Will he do it?" I find myself wondering, fingers crossed. "I hope a 'wrong' note doesn't appear somewhere, and I hope that the piano player stays in line!" While technically impressive and skillful -- and yes, interesting and enjoyable to listen to -- this doesn't seem to be a particularly creative endeavour, and therein lies the rub. ... if that makes sense ... (and Hawk Eyes is now on order)

yes of course this is a cure for everything! Yes, it helps healing. The only time I lost my voice. . .I had a bad throat infection and it took a few weeks of antibiotics to get past! And of course I waited far too long to go in for care. If your throat isn't CONSIDERABLY better early next week, call the doctor. This is good advice. Whatever your malady, if you're not getting better on your own within 3 or 4 days or so, see a doctor. ... or at least go talk to a pharmacist about an over-the-counter remedy.

Never bet on a sure thing. I can't figure the Cardinals out at all. (And apparently, I'm not alone). They played so shitty down the stretch, now they're playing like world-beaters. If they keep playing like they did Saturday in Carolina, who's going to stop them? I wouldn't describe the Eagles offense as multi-dimensional. And the Giants, while they have a nice running game, are a little suspect, too, without Plaxico in the mix. Cards must be feeling like if they stay on their game, they can get to Tampa, and then who knows? Cardinals as Super Bowl champs? They're the Rays of the NFL, except they're actually scarier. I'm rooting for them. As for the Titans, they only have themselves to blame. Really, they should have won that game. If they make any one of about a half dozen plays, they're moving on. Crumpler fumbling near the end zone was an absolute killer for them. Still, you got the feeling watching the game that the Ravens were going to match them punch for punch no matter what they did.

Have a good one. Happy birthday.

Happy birthday.

Myself, I call this partying ... But, when I enter the sensory deprivation tank, I like to pipe in a little Dexter Gordon -- "Ballads," Turrentine -- "Ballads," Chet Baker -- "Chet," Evans' "Sunday at the Village Vanguard" and "Waltz for Debbie," the Turrentine and the 3 Sounds -- "Complete Blue Hour," maybe some Tomasz Stanko -- "Lontano," or some of Crispell's quieter discs -- "Storyteller." Then I wake up 8 hours later to find the stereo has been on all night. ( ) ( )

Happy birthday!

Obviously I am deeply pessimistic, since I see that Americans prefer to avoid depressing news (and certainly don't want to pay for it); shiny happy features are all that will thrive in a post-print news media world. But more fundamentally, the thing about on-line papers is how easy it is to avoid the ads. And if they become more ubiquitous there will be an arms race in Explorer and Firefox on how to bypass them. But let's say for argument's sake that the same quantity of ads in the print media was forced upon on-line readers. So you'd have to scroll through page after page of used cars and bra ads to get to the news content. I can't see that, and I don't think most advertisers do either. And when advertisers do make the switch on-line, they overwhelmingly have been going to Craigslist and other basically free sites. This is the reason that all the free weeklies like the Chicago Reader and the Seattle Weekly are getting thinner and will probably go under soon without those property rental ads (this is certainly true of the Reader, whose parent company has gone bankrupt). And I suspect that the Village Voice's days are numbered as well, based on all the layoffs there. Hm. Yeah, it's a tough nut to crack -- how to shift advertising to the web. I think it would be a mistake for advertisers to simply superimpose the print model on the web and force readers to scroll through pages of ads, as you describe. With the web, of course, you can have a single ad window that rotates a variety of ads. The Internet also offers an opportunity for a wide range of interactive features in ads that obviously aren't available in print. I'm thinking of, say, an ad that invites you to test drive their new hybrid car on your typical daily drive (Google maps?) and see how much money you could save in a year -- stuff like that. The other side of the equation is that a web-only publication is a lot less expensive to produce, so, I would imagine require a lot less advertising dollars to turn a profit. There's also the enhanced capability for networking and cross-branding (or whatever the term is) on the web, where I promote your stuff and you promote mine and we all get more eyeballs and, therefore, higher dollar ads, etc. The real message of the article to me was that the shift is likely going to be dramatic and messy, not gradual and graceful. And while the Times and other leading news sources will certainly struggle with the changes, they are adapting. If they don't, they'll be gone. But I pick up links to NYT articles on this very forum all the time. And the article did mention, if I recall correctly, that some of the web-based properties the company owns were turning a profit. But I can't disagree with Rooster_Ties that the under-40 set really doesn't give a shit one way or the other, and that's a whole other problem, I guess.

More spit-ballin' by Dan Froomkin on the subject in a posting titled "What can Google Do for Journalism?: Not sure about some of his ideas, but he's just throwing ideas out there. As has been mentioned before, we are in the "information age," where the demand for reliable, accurate, useful information is increasing, not decreasing. Just because the means of delivering this information, in the case of newspapers, is changing does not necessarily mean the end of so-called watch-dog journalism. In fact, quiet likely just the opposite, IMO. I think it is quite obvious that newspapers as a means of delivering information are fast becoming relics of the past.

Will go back and give that Pres solo a listen. Thanks. The Sinatra version of the song as well. Someone else mentioned Billy Holiday's version. That really stands out to me as well, although I've only introduced myself to it recently. Nonetheless, quite beautiful. dansgoodstuff: I don't think the Wiki entry (as posted here; didn't check the original) approaches libel for several reasons: It credits the song to Ronell, first and foremost. When it does bring up the issue of speculation about Gershwin penning the song, the entry is simply reporting that there is speculation about this, and does not give it weight one way or the other. In fact, the entry states that the speculation is based on nothing more than the song having the "blues-inflected style of Gershwin." One could interpret this as being dismissive. A little sourcing would have helped, but if it is widely known that the speculation exists, then it's really just reporting that fact. ... seems to me, anyways.

It's not addressed until near the end, but I prefer to see the glass as half-full: The issue of what advertisers will do was mostly skirted in the article, and advertisers, not subscribers, are the main source of revenue. If the print edition ceases, the advertisers who want to remain with the Times brand (or, in the case of your local newspaper, remain with that local brand) may very well flood to the web edition as part of that hurricane of change the article talks about up top.