City of the Angels

In a followup to an earlier blog entry about ESPN's graphic for the Los Angeles Dodgers, ESPN is the first national network to recognize the name change of the (previously) Anaheim Angels. During a Tuesday game between the Angels and the Chicago White Sox, ESPN listed the team as the Los Angeles Angels, and the scoring graphic showed the abbreviation "LAA."

Also, Wednesday was the first pre-season game that Dodger broadcaster Vin Scully has worked this spring. For the Dodgers' radio-only broadcast, he announced the first three innings, and then Charley Steiner and Rick Monday took over for the rest of the game.

Predictably, Scully is already in prime, mid-season form. He riffed about the origins of Holman Stadium and Dodger Stadium (they were the first stadiums built into excavated land), and shared a story that when Bob Gibson wasn't pitching well, a young catcher would never assume he could approach him.

One interesting addition to the Dodgers radio broadcast is a tagline added to the "bumper" leading into commercials. It's a gentle reminder that, "You're listening to L.A. baseball."

The Dodgers are marking their territory.

This season's going to be an interesting one for baseball in Los Angeles.

Boeing CEO two-time loser

I'm usually not much for gossip, but I couldn't pass this one up.

Earlier in the week it was reported that Boeing's chief executive officer, Harry Stonecipher, had been forced to resign from the company for having an affair with a Boeing vice president.

According to a Chicago Tribune report by way of the Seattle Times, Stonecipher's wife of fifty years, Joan Stonecipher, has filed for divorce in Cook County Circuit Court in Chicago.

The couple had celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary just last month, according to another article in the Chicago Sun-Times.

Stonecipher resigned after he showed poor judgment and violated the company's code of conduct, according to a Boeing news release. So why hasn't the company extended the same action to the vice president, Debra Peabody, with whom he had his affair?

Of course, Stonecipher was the company's top executive, so his behavior reflects more directly on the company. But I believe Peabody, as another Boeing executive, should otherwise be judged by the same criteria.

Minardi-FIA feud threatens Australian GP

CNN is reporting that Minardi's dispute with the FIA is getting even more contentious.

After a court ruled that Minardi could run in the Australian GP in a 2004-spec car, the FIA announced that it would consider banning Australia from hosting Formula One events in the future.

Apparently the FIA also threatened to cancel its backing of the Australian GP as early as Saturday, one day short of the Grand Prix, if Minardi did not step down from its legal challenge.

Minardi decided to outfit its F1 cars to 2005 specifications in the face of the FIA's threat.

If the FIA went through with its threat, the Australian Grand Prix would have gone ahead, but as a non-championship race.

Minardi chief Paul Stoddart said the FIA did not follow legal guidelines to change the rules of specification, which forced his challenge in court.

Stoddart claimed the FIA's legal maneuvering was leading the Formula One championship to an eventual destruction.

A minor change on ESPN says a lot

I was watching the Dodgers play preseason baseball against the Atlanta Braves on ESPN yesterday, when something caught my eye.

The scoring graphic at the top-left of the screen showed ATL for Atlanta and LAD for the Dodgers.

Hmm.

On national telecasts, the Dodgers have never been represented on the graphics by anything but LA, until now.

I can't wait to see what graphic ESPN uses when they show an Angels game.

Australian GP wackiness

It's been a few hours now since the first qualifying session for the Formula One Australian Grand Prix.

They had wacky weather, which resulted in a myriad of qualifying craziness. The slowest officially timed qualifier was none other than seven-time F1 champion Michael Schumacher, who slipped and slid his Ferrari through the heavy rain water on intermediate tires.

Giancarlo Fisichella was certifiably blessed, running the best time of the day as he found the circuit at the driest time and ran his Renault with dry tires. Heavy rain almost immediately followed his hot lap, leaving Felipe Massa in a downpour in his Sauber with dry-weather tires. The circuit stayed wet from that point on and plagued about half the field.

Takuma Sato was the only driver to punt off his car in the wet, damaging the front wing and both left side suspensions of his BAR-Honda.

Provisional podium?

Qualifying, however, won't be completed until tomorrow (Sunday in Aussieland). So then why were the top three provisional qualifiers invited to the interview room after the Saturday session? What have they won to deserve the honor of doing the official post-qual interview?

It didn't take but a moment for this false ceremony to show that the FIA's new qualification schedule, in which final qualifying takes place on race day, is a mistake and should be changed as soon as possible. Hopefully this season. Preferably before the next race.

Earning the pole position should be reserved for Saturday, not Sunday.

I do like the aggregate qualification system, in which drivers have to combine the times of two laps to determine start order for the race. That means drivers can't have just one good hot lap -- they now need two consistently good laps.

But, the first qualification session should take place on either Friday or Saturday, with the final start order determined on Saturday, one day before race day.

Seeing three drivers in the interview room after the first day of qualifying is like handing out a man-of-the-match award to a soccer player at halftime.

It's absurd and it has to end.

Calling Eason Jordan

Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena was released by her Iraqi captors today, and then her convoy was mistakenly attacked by U.S. forces, who killed an Italian intelligence agent and wounded Sgrena as their vehicle sped toward a checkpoint.

Here's a short, unbiased thought. . . .

Sgrena now must be wondering to herself at what point her life was in the most danger: during her captivity or shortly afterward.

Brace yourselves for an avalanche of "I told you sos" by defenders of defrocked CNN executive Eason Jordan, whose job evaporated because of remarks he made accusing U.S. forces of deliberately targeting journalists in Iraq.

Sad irony? Yes. I told you so? Not me.

It's Formula One time again

It's that time again -- time to smell the high octane and burning rubber, feel the surge of adrenaline, and experience the thrill of seeing the world's best drivers in the world's best cars, driving on the greatest motor racing circuits in the world.

No, I'm not talking about NASCAR.

If I told you Formula One is the most popular racing series in the world, you probably wouldn't believe me if you're an American.

Here in the U.S., NASCAR is by far the most popular form of racing, obscuring everything else. You might say NASCAR is the fourth major American sport, and no one would really dispute it -- except maybe some jealous hockey fans.

But NASCAR means little to anyone outside of the United States.

Our only analogy to Formula One is our own open-wheel racing leagues, CART and IRL, also collectively called Champ Car racing. American open-wheel racing has been a sad state of affairs since the IRL was created out of a dispute with CART. The feud split the sport in two in the early 1990s, created two marginalized sports, and fragmented a fanbase. Open-wheel racing has never been the same since, and NASCAR has capitalized on their troubles.

It's hard to believe that with NASCAR's popularity at an all-time high, there's another form of racing that's even bigger, but one in which, like soccer, America isn't a dominant force.

It's the first week of March, and we've already had the first two NASCAR races of the 2005 season. But the NASCAR Nextel Cup cars are off this weekend, and race fans can look forward to the first Formula One race of the 2005 calendar -- the Australian Grand Prix in Albert Park, Melbourne.

Formula One has perhaps the most storied history of racing aside from the Indianapolis 500.

Some of the greatest names in all of racing come from Formula One history -- Juan Manuel Fangio, Alain Prost, Jim Clark, Jackie Stewart, Ayrton Senna, Graham Hill, Michael Schumacher -- the list goes on and on.

Seven-time world driving champion, Ferrari's Michael Schumacher, is the favorite to win the title again this year, and his rivals aren't viewed as challenging his dominance anytime soon.

But F1 does have several rising stars, including Juan Pablo Montoya, Mark Webber, Jenson Button, Kimi Raikkonen, and Fernando Alonso, who should all at least make the race for second place interesting.

This season brings a host of rule changes designed to make racing more difficult for the top teams. New rules include the following:

• Cars will run on harder-compound tires to prevent tire degradation.
  
• No tire changes will be allowed except in emergencies (i.e. blown tires and bad weather).
  
• Front wings have been raised to take away some downforce.
  
• One engine must last for two races. This rule was implemented to prevent the top teams from stockpiling engines (at great cost) for qualification and possible attrition.

These are among a number of rule changes Formula One has brought to bear in the last few years to hold down the cost of competing in the series. The top teams have budgets and logisitical capabilities far outweighing those of lower tier teams, and the race results tend to reflect that disparity. On balance, the rule changes made have been good for the sport, and should help make the racing more contingent on the skill of the drivers than the builders.

The Australian Grand Prix typically provides an unpredictable start to the season, with most teams still trying to dial in their cars, and with drivers tuning their skills for the long season. Although Albert Park is technically a street course, it's very well laid out and isn't claustrophobic. It will make for one of the more interesting races of the year.

If you like racing but haven't seen F1, do yourself a favor and check out the race Saturday night U.S. time. For those of us addicted to speed, Speed Channel is there for our fix.

Michael Gorman and digital books

Librarian Michael Gorman wrote an opinion piece carried in the Los Angeles Times on December 17, 2004 titled "Google and God's Mind," a commentary on Google's plan to digitize books and make them available for online searches.

Gorman is Dean of Library Services at California State University, Fresno, and is president-elect of the American Library Association.

He thinks of Google's efforts to create digital libraries as an act of hubris -- an attempt to gather all the world's information in one medium. Somewhat pedantically, he reminds us that information by itself is not knowledge.

Gorman warns that Google's search of online books will encourage readers to read bits and pieces of books rather than the entire text, thereby reducing the reading experience to a sort of "Cliff's Notes" version. He's afraid the book will become marginalized by a fast food culture.

But the last time I checked, the reader still has the inalienable right to decide how to use a book for his or her own knowledge.

The medium is the message

Marshall McLuhan once said of electronic technology that "the medium is the message," suggesting that the way in which a message is delivered says more about our society than the message itself. The medium may change and evolve, but the message is essentially the same.

Digital media provides the possibility for libraries to be preserved and propagated for future generations, indefinitely. It represents another way to mass produce the written word, and to distribute information and therefore, knowledge.

The medium is the message.

Digital books will never be a perfect substitute for real books, but they can complement each other. No one is suggesting replacing one with the other.

Michael Gorman needs to trust readers to know how to read a book the way they see fit, and not worry about how the book is presented.

He was heavily criticized online for his views, and he wrote a response titled "Revenge of the Blog People!" In the piece, Gorman dismissed his detractors, many of whom were bloggers who characterized him as a Luddite. He also makes several subtle insults at blogging culture and those he believes are obsessed with technology.

The reason Gorman's opinions have a slightly musty odor to them -- something that smells of technophobia -- is because he believes advocates of digital libraries, such as Google, want electronic media to "supplant and obliterate all previous forms," according to his Los Angeles Times article.

His comments are deeply rooted in his profession as a librarian.

I'm not knocking the trade -- I have a lot of respect for librarians as patrons of literature. They have an admirable and often thankless job.

But his suggestion that Google and others like them want to replace brick-and-mortar libraries is the sound of an alarmist.

I'm not an apologist for technology -- I may have a degree in Management Information Systems, but my difference with Gorman is in how information is used, not in what mode it is delivered.

Gorman should remember that the book itself is a technology -- and it remains the greatest technology in human history.

So I chose to make remarks here in a blog -- another technology -- because I think of a blog as another way to deliver information efficiently, nothing more, nothing less.

The medium is the message.

Information and knowledge are only as useful or as destructive as the reader who makes use of them.

Knowledge is power, as they say.

Give Google a chance to show what its project can do before demonizing its ambitions. Ridicule their godlike hubris, if you will, but let their results rise or fall on its own merit.

Afterword

I love books, because they represent a system to deliver information efficiently. I don't have to wait for it to boot, it doesn't have batteries to burn out, and it has no screen to fade out. It doesn't crash. It's light and portable, and I can even make notes in the margins.

As wonderful as a digital book can be, there's nothing quite like a real book. And there never will be. Books are an indispensible part of human knowledge, and as long as there are books in this world, libraries will always be here, too.

I see digital libraries as a valuable service that will complement real libraries. And unlike Michael Gorman, I don't see anyone threatening to replace real libraries with electronic imitations.