Stephen Clancy’s online home including blog, résumé, and portfolio.
NY Times: Changing Speeds to Go the Distance. Take that Bob Costas. Instead of the clichéd triumph-over-tragedy stories, the Times is writing about the mechanics of training. Today in text, graphics, and video they showed what a typical workout routine is for runner Sara Hall with tips for the non-Olympic runner.
Update: Since this is becoming a popular post, here’s a search listing on the NY Times’ site with all their sport profiles including swimming, cycling, and beach volleyball training.
Bill Clinton: Older voters too savvy to fall for Obama. Obama is elitist, Clinton is ageist. The whole extended primary process is just getting uglier every day. My response to President Clinton is a saying they had when he was my age: Don’t trust anyone over 30.
Jock tax: Competing in multiple states means more complex filings. The state of California apparently makes $100 million in taxes from visiting athletes. Typically I’m not to sympathetic about the tax burden of multi-millionaires, but this gets pretty ridiculous. I guess everyone wants to get a piece of the A-Rod deal. (source: TrueHoop)
NFL Gear Not Going To Waste. I’ve always wondered what happens to the losing team’s shirts and hats in the Super Bowl and other championship events. Apparently the Pats stuff went to a hurricane-torn region of Nicaragua, where it was worn by a girls soccer team that went on to win their championship. Kind of poetic.
The end of the Cosmo: A Dining Commons tradition runs its course. For outsiders, the Chicken Cosmo is a tastier version of a McChicken sandwich and a staple of the undergrad diet. It’s hard to imagine residential dining without Cosmos. Why couldn’t they have canceled herb chicken instead?
Johnny Gilbert’s Perfect Sweet 16. Some 3.5 million people submitted brackets on ESPN.com’s Tourney Challenge game and after this weekend’s upsets only 2 had all the sweet 16 finalists (nobody has a perfect one). One of them was this young boy, Johnny Gilbert, a Ohio State fan who says he got all his picks from reading the morning paper and reading up online. Way to go!
For at least two years, Big House won’t be biggest. Who isn’t surprised that Michigan was trying to cheat at the ADA, by not making the stadium accessible. Now that the playing field is level though, maybe Penn State will expand to keep up with them. Generally I regard stadium expansions as the worst kind of pissing contest, but if Penn State wants to add seats so I can get tickets easier that’s alright by me now.
Media and Major League Baseball in New Photo Dispute. You’re allowed no more than 7 photos per game, remaining on your site for no more than 72 hours, and must not be included in a photo gallery. You must ask permission to use interviews for online audio/video reports and those reports can be no greater than 2 minutes. This makes DRM seem reasonable.
Yuckster Fricassee. The New York Times has an interesting piece about Rick Reilly and Dan Patrick switching outlets and how they’ve been brought in to contribute to the Web as much as print, TV, or radio. Also intersting to me, not only is Matthew Berry name dropped in the story, its not even the first time he’s been mentioned in the Times.
Slate: The Wisdom of the Chaperones. This article argues that Digg and Wikipedia are not as “democratic” as they suggest they are in concept, because both are tightly managed by a small group of super users. While this sounds bad, its not particularly surprising that the people who invest the most time on these sites exert the most influence. I would argue the democratic spirit of these sites, a la Anton Ego, is not that anyone can edit but an editor can emerge from anywhere. These sites have self-organized as pure meritocracies which makes them unique.