…Americans in history: It stinks. 80% of the names of the top 23 have no business on that list and as is true with all such lists, too much attention is paid to contemporaries.
But lists generate hits, hey I clicked on it.
Archive for the ‘oddities’ Category
One comment on the Right wing news list of worst…
Posted: August 14, 2010 by datechguy in blogs, odditiesTags: fun, history, top ten lists
It’s all in the wording
Posted: August 13, 2010 by datechguy in internet/free speech, media, odditiesTags: media, spin
While scanning memeorandum for interesting stories today, the thing that caught my eye was not so much the stories but the headlines. Observe:
It's all in the spin
This is a screen shot of Memeorandum at about 7:30 a.m. of all the stories concerning the Judge’s ruling on a stay in the Prop 8 case. Ignore the actual words of the stories and look simply at the headlines. From simply the headlines you could not be sure how the judge actually ruled.
Each of the headlines is factually accurate, each one describes the same event but you would never know it just from that look.
This, even more than Ace’s screed about media spin reminds us that a writer can spin any event to deliver the desired message to the reader. So when scanning headlines let the reader beware because on the other end of that jump to a-13 the actual story might be hiding.
Unimpeachable logic
Posted: August 12, 2010 by datechguy in elections, odditiesTags: election 2008, election 2012, hillary clinton, history, obama
The “official” story as to why Biden was chosen for VP was that Michelle Obama didn’t want Hillery Clinton on the ticket and thanks to John McCain’s implosion (despite Sarah Palin’s best efforts) it turns out she wasn’t needed.
Now the talk is again of putting Clinton on the ticket in 2012 and Glenn Reynolds gives three reasons against. Can anyone explain why #3 would have been any less valid in 2008.
3. If Hillary is going to be one heartbeat away from the Oval Office, would you want that to be your heartbeat?
I got no answer to that one.
Nellie King, born too early
Posted: August 11, 2010 by datechguy in baseball, odditiesTags: baseball, history
Baseball Musings announced the death of Pirates Announcer Nellie King. I wasn’t familiar with the man but something in the post on his death struck me.
He pitched two outstanding seasons in 1955 and 1956, and then was out of baseball after the 1957 season.
I looked at his stars from baseball reference.com and his stats looked ok.
What struck me was the 4 seasons and out. If he came up today he might have made enough to live pretty comfortably and with current sports medicine the injury (of which I have no details about) might have only shelved him for a season or less.
Then again the pirates would have been deprived of a fine announcer.
Pretty soon we will run out of players who played under the old reserve clause and there will be nobody with actual baseball experience to remind young ballplayers just how lucky they are to have been born after 1970.
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