Category Archives: Uncategorized

Community and anonymity

Today, our local newspaper, The Gazette, announced that soon it will be changing their article commenting system over to facebook comments.  Despite my dislike of facebook as articulated in my previous rantings, this comes as good news.

A local newspaper should not only provide sound journalism for its community, but allow the free expression of an exchange of ides within its community.  A local community is responsible for making informed decisions as to where to spend its money, how to grow its economy and how to govern itself.  This can best happen when the community has a voice and a forum in which to be heard.

But not at the expense of civility.  The cacophony of stupidity that exemplifies the current Gazette commenting system prevents civil discourse.  Those that might weigh in with cogent arguments do not want to subject themselves to the vitriol of the sheer crazies (both left and right) the Gazette has attracted. Ad hominem and straw man attacks abound, as well as racism, sexism and political intolerance.  The current commenting system is an anonymous one – and one which encourages crazy.

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Get Well Soon, Buster Posey

Posey 03

I was in the bleachers for Buster Posey’s first at-bat with the SF Giants last year. The kid was smoking hot that night – I fell in love with him and with the Giants (again – been a long time fan). He was hot – hot at bat, cute young thing, Rookie of the Year and, possibly, the catalyst for the Giants winning the World Series last year. Smoking. Hot.

Last night, a Florida player ran into him at home plate (video here) to get the game winning run for the Marlins. But now, with his leg all fucked up, Posey may be out for the season. :’(

A great loss to baseball and for the Giants this season. And, I still have a crush on the guy, so I feel for him.

FWIW, I believe the hit was clean and within the current rules of the game. Baseball isn’t known as being a contact sport, but Ty Cobb and Pete Rose sure made it one back in the day. But it doesn’t need to be that way. Here’s a good post from SB nation with more on that topic.

Oh Posey.

world cup mania

The crowd at AT&T Park for the US-Eng match of World Cup 2010

Wow.  It sure is impressive to live in a big city when the World Cup runs.  

In 2006, I was in a smaller city and hung out at one particular pub for most of the month, eating, drinking, and soaking up the World Cup.  Friends would come and go – it was actually a delight to not quite know who would be coming in for any given game.  And strangers were affable, so even if no one you knew showed up, it was still a ball.

San Francisco parties with the World Cup in a very different way.  The scale is mega – crowds spilling out of pubs, laundromats and taquerias, patrons giddy on beer and GOOOOOLLLLLLLLL ringing throughout.  AT&T Park, where the San Francisco Giants play baseball, opened its doors to a whopping 15,000 people for the US-England match yesterday and I was there.  Most of the concessions were closed until half-time and I later heard that during the ball game that night (against the As), they ran out of food entirely.  Civic Center, the home of City Hall, erected a giant screen for families to come with lawn chairs and loll about in the sun.  GOOOOOOOOLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL.

I started the World Cup-age on Friday, getting down to a local restaurant at 6am before work, when they threw their doors open for the first game.  They were overwhelmed with Mexico supporters – spilling out into the restaurant next door (this was Mijita and then the Public House) by the time the game began.  Breakfast was an uneven and long-waiting proposition.  But I loved it.  The staff apologized so much for not having their shit together – but who has their shit together for the World Cup?  Not the pub I hung out in during the 2006 Cup.  By the time you sort out how to manage your crowds, the Cup is over. 

;-)

And that's terrific.  Life can't always be a polished, consumer-driven, corporate wheel greased to perfection.   And when the cracks in the surface show, especially for a crowd-pleasing sporting event that the entire globe watches, it's actually OK.  It's fine.  In fact, it' s part of the fun – one game does change everything (I like the 2010 World Cup motto, since it has so many purposes).

There are other ways in which this model fails, ways I'll get into next time I write.  But from time to time, it's good to not have your business act together when you're trying to support unknown crowds for a sport not well known in this country – for when the unknown and the unexpected is part of the game.  It's good to go with the crowd's massive ebb and tide into joy, defeat, longing, and distraction… into pure neurotic emotion for a game played a half globe away and for teams whom most don't even know the first thing about.

And I hope my bar keeps over the weekend made a killing in tips. ::grin::

Exercising what’s left of my brain

I’ve been thinking a fair bit about ethics, which ought to be more of a pervasive concept than it is. We seem to have left ethics at the curbside somehow.

I do not mean that some dogmatic morality should inform policy. Ethics, put succinctly, should inform policy how to not screw things over so badly that some group is marginalized to gain profit for another group.

Which is not to say that policy ought to please everyone, just that it fairly consider many disparate interests and not be driven to privilege some at the expense of others solely for any financial profit which may line the pockets of some while downgrading the overall quality of life for many.

So, I’m going to be asking, “Who profits?” a lot more lately as a mental exercise to see what role, if any, ethics still plays in life.

Sent from my iPhone

a question or two about March Madness

Last week, I greatly enjoyed filling out a bracket for March Madness, the NCAA Basketball playoffs that take up a few weeks in March, and following the games on both CBS Sports and CBS itself on TV.  Kudos to CBS for running all live videos of the men’s tourney online (quite a difference from NBC’s pathetic online video for the Olympics).  This year’s tournament has been stellar, with a few upsets, the Kansas one the most notable.  It did put a dent in my brackets, but then, it was also a very amazing game to watch, highly enjoyable.

 

But today it just dawned on me that there was also Women’s NCAA Basketball March Madness happening… but where are the televised women’s games?  Where are the online videos of the women’s games?  Where are all of the online Brackets games you can fill out for the women’s games?  Where is it even in the sports headlines of major news services?  It was in going over to Northern Iowa’s website to learn about their sports program that I have seen any information on women’s basketball.

 

Just seems a little weird that this isn’t as loudly surfaced as the men’s games.