...Just to give you a better idea of how the London 2012 Olympic logo is meant to Move And Shake Its Thing.
Red Herring today goes to... who[m]ever thinks "its," above, should get an apostrophe.
London 2012 promo vid:
...And, just for fun, a little Presidential music video. Because you've earned it:
-Zed
QWTOFDY
"I promise you I will listen to what has been said here, even though I wasn't here."
-George W. Bush
...And you know? It's not bad t.v. If you're into that kind of thing, of course. (And yes, you can actually watch live online.)
Peter Gammons, Steve Phillips, and Keith Law are sure a lot better than Mel Kiper, Jr. and whatever unfortunate mook gets to sit next to him.
And did you know? This is actually the first time the draft has been held anywhere. (It has customarily been conducted by conference call.)
As for the Giants pick: well, the draftniks love it -- you've got to like a big-bodied, projectable high school lefty nobody thought would go this high -- and Madison Bumgarner (pictured; surf's up!) is hands down the best name in the draft thus far.
As the first round winds down, the analysts have been extremely complimentary of the Giants three first-round picks. Stay tuned to ESPN2 for more.
Meanwhile: four of the A's starting pitchers are in the top 20 in the American League in ERA.
I'll give you a dollar if you can name them.
-Zed
QWTOFDY
"I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it."
-Groucho Marx
The London 2012 Olympics has a new logo.
Revealed on the web today, the logo itself is, of course, perfectly hideous. But the idea is good: a logo that keeps moving (see YouTube for the introductory press conference) and can be used on mobile phones and whatever other multimedia we'll be toting around in '12.
Let us know what you think.
-Zed
QWTOFDY
“In silence and movement you can show the reflection of people.”
-Marcel Marceau
What you didn't know:
Justin.tv is a huge hit, one of those things you think you've heard about before, where a guy straps a camera to his head and airs it 24/7.
What sets Justin apart appears to be that he's a (1) interesting, bright (2) webby nerdy. I'm sure my roommate's a groupie.
What else you didn't know:
This girl -- aptly named Justine, the graphic designer daughter of, apparently, a gym teacher and a coal miner in Pittsburgh -- is the heir apparent star Justin Kan has been looking for (launching today, under the name "iJustine.") Yes, the ball cap has a camera on it.
Hey, after double-checking the photo, I might stop in for a few peeks.
-Zed
QWTOFDY
"Television has proved that people will look at anything rather than each other."
-Ann Landers
Blogging from a Windows interface. This is weird...
And how about a big Red Herring to those with too much time on their hands, and not nearly enough hobbies. Yes, in yet another great example of irony, IBM has made a video game in which the user simulates the making of business software.
Yah.
OK, it actually sounds pretty cool -- it's skill-building, for one, which you can't exactly say about Grand Theft Auto, and (get out those glasses) it's in 3-D.
It also sounds a darn sight more complex than the game we're playing for class, which I dare say is plenty hard enough.
Okay! How 'bout some sports, then!
It seems tech has come to the Olympics -- surely this has happened somewhere before, but this one has rockets. Apparently, in the event of rain, China plans to launch a ground-to-air attack against the offending cloud.
I'm thinking: Thor would have loved the Olympics.
By the way, thanks to all of you new crew for stopping by; it surely is appreciated. Just one question: where the heck is Petaling Jaya?
-Zed
QWTOFDY
"The comic book [is] the marijuana of the nursery, the bane of the bassinet, the horror of the home..."
-John Mason Brown
For those of you who haven't yet been exposed to this yet (and why have my numbers dropped in Manhattan... Matthew?!) you get to click this choice vid, right here, right now.
A friendly Red Snapper (we were all out of Herring) to OK Go, for making terrific use of user-generated sites, instead of bitching about privacy rights.
(Those who've already seen the vid, don't forget to go to YouTube or the OK Go site for Go-inspired user-generated dance routines!)
And, for those who missed it: the Bay to Breakers happened again.
It's like trying to explain the rain.
Or pizza.
-Zed
QWTOFDY
"When you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on."
-Franklin D. Roosevelt
This is big. Sen. Kerry: rescue us!
From Eric Fisher, who tracks such things for the Sports Business Journal:
MLB owners today approved the league's contracts with DirecTV and 35 other MSOs for the distribution of the Extra Innings out-of-market package and launch of the MLB Network. The channel, now carrying that name, has a planned start of January 1, 2009, with early plans to carry 26 live, non-exclusive MLB games on Saturday nights.
The network, jump-started by this year's often fractious negotiations with cable’s InDemand consortium and others, will launch in at least 46.9 million homes. That would make it by far the most successful channel start in cable TV history, surpassing MSNBC, which launched in '96 in 28 million homes.
...The channel is two-thirds owned by MLB, with 16.67% of the equity held by DirecTV and the remaining amount split proportionally between InDemand partners Comcast, Time Warner and Cox.
(Incidently, MLB just approved the sale of the Atlanta Braves to Liberty Media, who's all over DirecTV and pretty much everything else.
The NFL network has already had its ups and downs. MLB has done an awful lot of dealing on these topics in recent months; it will be interesting to see how this compares.
Time will tell.
-Zed
QWTOFDY
"Television: A medium; so called because it is neither rare nor well done."
-Ernie Kovacs
A couple simple links today from your humble blogger!
* No, David Eckstein is not Jewish. But if you listened to the Adam Sandler song, you'll know: Rod Carew is (he converted). Okay, so maybe Carew isn't.
http://jewishmajorleaguers.org/
The good news is, Carew can rest easy knowing Danny Glover will do a great job playing him in the biopic -->
* Google vs. Viacom: from the top turnbuckle, and you, the consumer, asked for it.
* Social Media Club meets tonight in San Francisco -- but is the (corporate) Townsend Street location a little suspect?
* I have to shout out baseball blogger Maury Brown by name -- follow the links for some cool "every stadium now being built" stuff -- including this billion-dollar Jerry Jones propoganda piece...
Red Herring on principle to Jones, the most self-important man this side of Curt Schilling.
* Surprised you have back problems so young? Don't be...
* Speaking of which, Grannies who are Gamers? Why not? My Granny's already a balla'!
* And, just for the heck of it: Tofutti Cuties! You had no idea that nasty-ass bean curd could be so good. Seriously, a head-scratchingly good snack any time!
And, you know; you could stand to lose a few.
-Zed
QWTOFDY
“A conservative is a man who is too cowardly to fight and too fat to run.”
-Elbert Hubbard
Trivia Time:
[Q:] Who is the only player in baseball allowed to wear his particular uniform number?
Answer below.
Now, to Senator Kerry, currently leading the league in Red Herrings.
Because baseball has reversed its position, and thrown its Extra Innings super-package back on basic cable, as Kerry wanted, in a deal starting in 2009. From the ESPN story, which explains it better than I can:
Baseball announced an exclusive $700 million, seven-year agreement with DirecTV on March 8, but during a hearing last week in Washington, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., pressed baseball to resume talks with iN Demand, which is owned by affiliates of Time Warner, Comcast and Cox.
If that only half clears it up for you, the Sports Business Juornal has some additional facts worth noting:
...Cable will wind up with an equity stake in the channel. The stake will be 16%, which will be equal to DirecTV. Originally, DirecTV agreed to take 20% of the channel, and it had to approve this deal. The deal means that at launch, the channel will have nearly 40 million homes, making it one of the most successful channel launches ever.
Whether any of this relates to Turner merging with Time-Warner, and AOL, and giving up the Braves, who are now being sold to Liberty Media, who owns large chunks of DirecTV... aw, who can tell? Let's just go with Kerry and say it's better that you can watch it on basic cable (although I'll now have to drop my DirecTV two years from now.)
Trivia Time:
[A:] Mariano Rivera (#42). Rivera is the only player still allowed to wear 42 regularly, under the grandfather clause of a rule instituted ten years ago, when Major League Baseball retired the number league-wide to honor Jackie Robinson.
-Zed
QWTOFDY
"When one realizes that his life is worthless he either commits suicide or travels."
-Edward Dahlberg
(What year is it today?)
No, not LA 2016.
The Olympics in Tahoe? In 2018?
Hey, it's happened before. Who knows, maybe it will make the food at Kirkwood a little more palatable.
Plate of Pickled Herring all around.
Also...
By the way, for those following this kind of thing, blogger Josh Wolf, who filmed an anarchist rally in San Francisco at which a police officer was bashed in the skull -- has just ended his tenure as the longest-jailed journalist in U.S. history. Wolf has agreed to testify in federal court (which doesn't offer the "shield" protections written into California law) but only after the feds significantly weakened their demands.
Obvious implications from Plame to BALCO here. Oh, and the first... whatsit?... Uh-mendment.
Also...
Did you know Google offers you a whole WiFi kit and service for free? It's okay, they don't need money anyway... just to dominate the world.
I figure, it's my job as a blogger to coolly pass along discoveries like this... but as your friend, I promised to be as amazed and confused by them as you are!
Incidently, another surprise. My new phone, all of $30 from Sprint (yeah, yeah, the two-year contract) is not only super-thin but, among other things, actually acts as a modem whenever you're on the Sprint network. That's right, with nothing more than your phone and the USB cable that comes with it, your laptop (or desktop) now has "free" WiFi -- even without Google -- any time your phone has bars.
It's getting harder and harder to convince people I'm unreachable -- you know, in the event that I want to have a coffee with a friend, watch t.v., bathe...
-Zed
QWTOFDY
"The irrationality of a thing is no argument against its existence, rather a condition of it."
-Friedrich Nietzsche
