May 5

May 5, 1999

Last night was Jim's first softball game of the season. He's playing in a league with Ter and Stimp and some other guys. They are the Bad News Bears of their league, apparently, except as Jim pointed out, "The Bad News Bears won at the end." Although a valiant effort was put in by all parties, our boys lost both games. The first game was called after 3 innings by the Mercy Rule - they were losing by more than 14 runs. The second game actually lasted 5 innings, but then they were losing by 10 runs, so it was over. They did a great job in the last few innings - they held the other team to 1 run and they scored 4. So that's a good sign of things to come.

I think it must be hard to be a boy. While girls are insecure about their bodies, boys are insecure about their athletic ability. Men are expected to be able to play just about any sport as some sort of test of their manlihood. The thing that surprised me about the game last night was that some of the guys on the team, who I have never seen in any kind of athletic capacity, take a lot of pride in their abilities or lack thereof. It's just weird to see people you think you know in a completely different setting.

I have this paper to do and I am completely putting it off. I could never be a freelancer because I am such a procrastinator. I need severe deadlines or I don't do the work until the day before. For example, I have a final exam on Monday for my database class. It's on the second half of our class, which is a lot of material. So I should start studying this week. It's an open book test, so the more preparation I do, the better off I will be. Instead, I am working on this web page.

Again, I will be harping on Howard Stern for not fact checking. Yesterday, Robin reported on Harry Knowles on Siskel and Ebert. First, she called him Harry Moscowitz or something. Then she acted like he was just some random guy, instead of someone who runs a very important website in the entertainment industry. (I don't particularly like Harry or his website, but it is well known and kind of powerful). Then they said that no one knew what Harry was going to look like before he showed up. Come on! I have spent about 10 minutes on his site, and I knew Harry is an obese, hairy man! I really hate people who don't check their facts and I think it's one of the biggest problems in the media today. Irresponsible journalists read a story on the wire or in another paper, and assume that if it's in print, the facts have been checked. So they pass it on, whether it's true or not, because they are afraid if they don't, they will get scooped. And they don't print corrections because no one cares. If the story is out there, people remember that and not the correction.

I don't blame the reporters or the editors. It's the people at the top of the organizations - they need to make company level decisions that factual errors are not acceptable, and make it OK for writers and editors to check their facts.

Whew! I'm done with that. Maybe I should start that paper now.

Wired News has an interesting article about Buy.com, who are poised for an IPO. Basically, Buy.com sells good for below wholesale price (thus losing money), and hopes to make up the difference in advertising. It's an interesting idea, but I don't think it will work. Big advertisers still aren't convinced that Internet advertising shows a good return, and I don't think it ever will because it's too easy to just leave the page and ignore the ads. Turns out other online retailers are angry with Buy.com, because they feel consumers will have unrealistic expectations about pricing on the web.

Debbie Matenopoulos was on Howard yesterday, talking about why she got fired from The View. She got fired because she's an idiot. They gave her a quiz and she proved her ignorance. She didn't know who the U.S. fought against in World War II. I was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt, but she was incredibly annoying. I wanted to fire her, just because.