Use(less)net

By now everyone who reads this blog knows what a huge fan I am of the New York Football Giants. What you may not know is where I go for my daily dose of breaking Giants news. Of course I check BBI on a daily basis, but that site is only updated daily, so for breaking news and discussion, I head for the Giants newsgroup on Usenet (for the truly geeky, it's alt.sports.football.pro.ny-giants). There, I can find out what other Giants fans are reading, watching, and thinking, and occasionally I even participate in the discussion.

But all that just got a lot harder. In an egregious example of overstepping the authority of one's office, New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has strongarmed several major internet service providers into dropping most or all access to Usenet newsgroups. The reason? 88 out of over 100,000 of them--that's around .08%--contained some form of child porn. Does this sound like overkill to you? Why not ban digital cameras? Or analog cameras and scanners? That would ensure that no one ever trades child porn again ever. Or extend it into other areas of life. Want to reduce highway fatalities? Ban automobiles--everyone takes the train! But wait, once in a while, people get hit by trains (either accidentally or as a means of suicide). So it looks like we're back to the ol' Foot 'n' Leather Express.

The Founding Fathers thought that the right to free and open speech and expression was so important that they made it the very first piece of the Bill of Rights. But Cuomo doesn't seem to care, extorting ISPs with the threat of bad publicity, since, as the CNet article stresses, using the law to accomplish this has already been ruled unconstitutional. Hopefully, the ACLU (who, in their defense, was involved in overturning Pennsylvania's attempt to legislate Internet censorship) will take a break from defending terrorists and rapists and put the pressure on New York and the ISPs to bring back our newsgroups. My Giants offseason depends on it.

Tech Tip: Clean Your System

One of our staff introduced me to a great little utility last week to clean up (and speed up) Windows-based systems. It's called CrapCleaner, or CCleaner for short. There's not much to it--just download it (it's freeware), install it, and run it until it says there's nothing left to clean. It doesn't take too long to run, and most of the default settings work just fine. My only caveat is to think twice before letting it clean up your Internet Explorer/Firefox stuff. Chances are if you've got saved passwords/browser histories/recently typed URLs, you've got them for a reason, and deleting them won't give you much of a speed boost. Other than that, this is a great little utility for computers that haven't been formatted in a while.

In Memoriam: Tim Russert 1950-2008

I was asked over the weekend if I would be taking down the farting video that I posted a couple of weeks ago in light of Tim Russert's passing on Friday. The answer is no, I won't, but I will take a moment to pay respect to a good newsman. Russert did a better job than most at attempting to put his personal views aside and present a balanced viewpoint, always asking the tough questions regardless of the subject's political affiliations. Russert's voice will be missed among the mainstream media elite.

Strahan

With the start of the NFL's training camp season right around the corner, one of my all-time favorite Giants, Michael Strahan, announced his retirement yesterday. I'm a little surprised that he'd walk away from a guaranteed $4 million (with bonuses rumored to kick in at the almost-surely-reachable level of 6 sacks), especially to rebuild his war chest after his shrew of an ex-wife cleaned him out, but I can respect his desire to go out with his health more or less intact and as a Super Bowl champion. He has the single season sack record, and he's still nearly 60 sacks behind the career record, so that one is likely forever out of his reach. It would have been nice of him to have let his team, his coach, or at least his front office staff know of his decision before announcing it to the press, but for the most part, his departure was fittingly dignified. Let's just hope he's learned a thing or two from Tiki Barber and leaves behind any petty grudges he may have had in the locker room as he searches for a job in the broadcast booth. Thanks for fifteen great years, captain.

Friday Videos 5.23.08

In honor of Yankee skipper Joey G. getting the boot during last night's win over the O's, here's the best manager tirade ever:



And here's Meet the Press host Tim Russert on MSNBC. He loses his train of thought right after he says "No one has appeared on that program..." at about 14 seconds in. See if you can hear why:

Teddy and McCain

Ted Kennedy has a malignant brain tumor. John McCain is releasing his medical records. With timing like that, it can't be coincidence. I won't be at all surprised to see whichever candidate the Democrats end up nominating try to make some political hay out of this--after all, McCain is only a few years younger than Uncle Teddy, and is himself a cancer survivor (albeit "only" melanoma--a skin cancer). The Dems, especially Obama, love to portray themselves as young and hip and paint conservatives as old fuddy-duddies. It worked pretty well against Bob Dull Dole, but wasn't quite so hot against Reagan in the '80s. Hopefully McCain's medical history won't have any red flags, because while I'm not his biggest supporter, I respect his service record and find him far less abhorrent than Obama/Clinton and will be voting for him in November.

Fists of Fury

Goose Gossage is crying "fowl" over Joba Chamberlain's fist-pumps after inning-ending strikeouts. He does bear a striking resemblance to Howard Dean in 2004, but Joba's just an emotional guy who really loves the game and reacts just as visibly to a bad outing as a good one. Papelbon up there in Boston has been known to do almost the same thing after he closes out a game, but he almost always gets a free pass. (He did catch a little bit of heat for dancing around in his underwear, but hey, the Sox had just won the Series, so even I'll give him a pass for that one.) And how many home runs has Man-Ram stood there and watched? Joba's not trying to show guys up--he's just showing a little heart and emotion. That is acting like a Yankee, no matter what Goose says. And it's nothing but good for the game.

Man Movies I Missed

I was watching TV earlier and saw the commercial for the new Indiana Jones flick. I know there's a lot of buzz about it, but I'm just not catching the fever and couldn't understand why, until it hit me that I've never actually seen any of the first three all the way through. Sure, I've flipped past the boulder scene, or Mola Ram tearing out the dude's heart, but I've never sat down with a glass of scotch or a Chicory Stout and watched Raiders of the Lost Ark, or Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. That got me to thinking....there are a lot of classic "guy staples" that I've never taken the time to watch. Maybe it's something I should work on the next time I get a rainy Saturday. Here's a list of what I consider the top 10 that I've never seen (at least not all the way through):

10. War Games
9. Platoon
8. Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
7. Heat
6. Scarface
5. Any of the existing Indiana Jones trilogy
4. The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly
3. Rocky I or II (though I've seen III and IV so many times I can probably recite them from memory
2. Casino
1. Raging Bull

And that's just a small sampling. I ought to be ashamed of myself.

New Blogroll: Bill and Iris

As seen on NewsBusters: this is the blog of my buddy Nuts McCracken over at the August Knights Forums. Lots of good politics content over there.

Fun With My Front Page

I just found something fun to do--go down a few entries and start playing the Lee Elia video, then go to the Hartford Whalers theme vid in the previous post and start playing it. If you do it right, the horns should kick in just as Lee starts ranting, and it makes a pretty good remix. Kind of like a very, very, very poor man's Dark Side of the Moon/Wizard of Oz.

Speaking of poor men, check out FreeRice--a vocabulary tester that donates food to poor children with flies in their eyes for every word you get right. (For instance, did you know that "petcock" means "valve"?) If you really want to help, have a dictionary site open in another tab and look each word up--there are no time penalties. After all, "if you ain't cheatin', you ain't tryin'." Hat tip to my gal for the link. And for just putting up with me.

Sportsmanship or Stupidity?

Watch this ESPN video (hat tip to Nuts McCracken over at the August Knights message boards for the clip):



Now, beyond the obvious Eight Belles jokes, this goes past the r ealm of good sportsmanship and into outright stupidity. Good sportsmanship means rendering aid to a fallen opponent. It means calling out the trainer and not kicking the downed player in the back of her injured leg. It doesn't mean you give them free runs and knock yourself out of the tournament (even if, had the rule been interpreted correctly, the pinch runner would have been allowed to complete the home run anyhow). Injuries happen in sports--they suck, but they happen. Good sportsmanship means not taking unfair advantage--not giving up fair advantage.

Superbad

OK, this is a new feature that I came up with late at night, but if it takes 3 Twitter posts to say something, it goes in a blog post instead. So I just finished watching Superbad, and why does it seem like half the population feels the need to say "Dude! I'm McLovin'!" when McLovin is the douchiest, most cringe-inducing character in a movie that (while freakin' funny) is full of douchy, cringe-inducing characters? I also kind of wish they'd resolved the plotline of who robbed the liquor store, but that's neither here nor there.