January 05, 2008

Best of 2007

AKA, "A Buttload of Hyperlinks." Presented in no particular order.

Best video game: Okami, PS2
Runner up, even though I’ve only played it for about an hour: Bioshock, Xbox 360
Best book (fiction): For Whom the Bell Tolls
Runner ups: Independence Day, Siddhartha, The Plague, A Deepness in the Sky
Best book (nonfiction): Wild Swans
Runner ups: Infidel, The Myth of Sisyphus, The Clock of the Long Now
Best graphic novel: Watchmen
Runner ups: Persepolis, Pyongyang, The Complete History of the Modern World Part 1
Best baseball book: Clemente
Runner up: The Cheater’s Guide to Baseball
Best movie: Fitzcarraldo
Runners up: Waitress, Ratataoullie, Perseopolis
Best TV show: 30 Rock
Runners up: House, The Office
Best classic TV miniseries: Cosmos
TV show or movie I’d most like to see in HD: Planet Earth
Runner up: Metropolis
Best baseball memory: This one, obviously
Best minor league baseball cap: Montgomery Biscuits

(Yes, that's a real mascot.)
Best baseball-related website: McCovey Chronicles
Best FORA.tv FORAcast:



Best new favorite album: Goldfrapp, Black Cherry
Best new favorite band: Gnarls Barkley
Best new favorite album by an old favorite band: Cornelius, Sensuous
Best website: Netvibes
Runners up: Tumblr, Facebook, Pandora
Most overrated website: Second Life
Best print magazine: Washington Monthly
Best online magazine: Slate
Best bay area hike with dogs: Phoenix Lake Trail, Mt. Tamalpais Watershed, Marin County, CA
Worst natural disaster: SoCal Wildfires
Best short-film compilation DVD series: Wolphin
Best new favorite nonprofit organization: The Long Now Foundation
Best new hobby: Skiing
Best board game: Polarity
Best major life change: getting engaged
Best photo:

Hope everybody had a great year.

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posted by Nick Ryan @ 7:10 PM 1 comments

September 20, 2007

You Decide!

Obviously I'm biased, but I think this is just silly. Marc Ecko claims he's using the ball as a spark for serious public debate (I'm guessing the mountain of publicity it's getting him also may have been a consideration). Here's his opinion on the matter:

Ecko, who is letting the public decide what to do with Bonds' record-setting baseball, said he had voted to brand the historic sphere with an asterisk that would suggest the Giants slugger used steroids on his way to breaking Hank Aaron's career homer mark. But Ecko said Major League Baseball is to blame for Bonds' predicament because it ignored signs for years that players were using performance-enhancing drugs.

"The notion that a system in Major League Baseball kind of knew that this was going on, and kind of played ostrich, and then indicts its players for wanting to achieve great things and earn big bucks - I more have a bugaboo with a system that fosters and actually rewards unnatural behavior," Ecko said in a phone interview.

I actually share Ecko's opinion that MLB itself is mostly to blame for the face it's lost over this issue. But regardless of what you think of Bonds and the impact steroids have had on the last few decades of professional sports, the record is what it is. The ball is now a part of baseball's history, and it would be a shame to see it defaced or destroyed simply on the whims of the internet masses -- who, in my experience, cannot always be trusted to have the best judgement.

Anyway, here's a thought I had at work today while doing a podcast of this program for FORA: a century from now, when only the people playing pro sports are those whose parents could afford to buy them, in vitro, the genetic makeup of athletic supermen, will steroid abusers of our day still be seen as cheaters?

I'm kind of serious. Remember this?

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posted by Nick Ryan @ 8:05 PM 0 comments