Short shots. Old Rag Top Mountain in central Virginia. How not to be a political hack. ESPN and ice hockey.

Shorts

• An Australian Electoral Poll website .
• Sign for a business seen in Warrenton, VA; "Spitonys Pizza". Say it fast and wonder how spritely their business is.
• Sign for a business seen just outside Sperryville, VA; "Antique Tables, Made Daily".
• South Pacific Federation Project blog/website. Has as its current lead article one discussing the issue of potential political union between Australia and New Zealand . What is often forgotten was the New Zealand was involved in the Federation talks in the 1890's but backed out of it before Federation in 1901. In the last 25 years New Zealand has shown more international courage than Australian politicians, that is where the starkest political divide is.
• Article on shame and disgust as part of political and judicial discourse. Martha Nussbaum believes the the emotion of disgust should have no role in public reason. [courtesy Alleria]
• I thought Little Green Footballs was an anti-dailykos , but it doesn't have much political commentary; however, the articles are good for terrorism coverage. redstate.org has better political/topical articles but not as many comments. It even has a mission which is a good idea for defining the personality of a website.
• The Corvette has its new gas tank. The fuel pump was buggered again too, but it was under warranty so wasn't an issue. It is running well now. After having the cooling system, fuel system and transmission revamped, it should be. Next is clean up the engine bay ... or respray it ...

Old Rag Top Mountain

Went hiking with a mate to the summit of Old Rag Top Mountain in the Virginian Blue Ridge Mountains. Old Rag Top is part of the Shenandoah national parks and is the highest peak in the Blue Ridge Mountain range at 3,500 feet (apparently Virginia has several around the 5,000 feet mark). The hike gets rave revues, and part of its appeal is how strenuous a hike it is. Compromising 7.2 miles (and excluding the extra 0.8 mill hike to the parking lot) the tough trail goes up hill on well defined paths until about a mile from the top. At this point it turns into rock and the trail is marked by blue dots and the occasional blue arrow when it is too confusing to determine where the trail should lead.

It was a lot of fun, the mate I went with had given a pint of blood the day before, and the final mile to the peak knocked him around. We did do the hike pretty hard, coming up and going down, we were over-taking groups. On the way up I bought a farm-fresh apple from a central Virginian mountain man. We couldn't understand each other, I finally worked out he wanted 50c for the apple. I wasn't alone my New York state mate couldn't understand him either. The apple was fantastic though, crisp and juicy. No presence of the flowery insides from being snap-frozen and transported up from Florida.

How Not To Be A Political Hack

From the blog of Iain Lygo who wrote; "News Overboard", has a ten point plan on how not to be a political hack . Some highlights of Lygo's advice to journalists;

• 3. When a pollie refuses to answer a question, say "you didn't answer the question" and then ask it again.(and again if necessary).
• 4. When a pollie makes a statement, attribute that claim. Even a cadet knows to do this, but, the number of journos who turned Howard's Children overboard claim into a rolled gold fact was embarrassing to the profession.
• 6. Get a relevent lawyers opinion. There is no point in asking the bloke who defended your drink-driving charge to comment on constitutional law.

Number three is particularly frustrating. When asked a question the politicians answer the question they want to answer not the one asked. And if pressed they just stick to their talking points. They are treating the polity with contempt and not even bothering to attempt any level of discourse.

ESPN and Hockey

ESPN has the broadcast rights to the Ice Hockey World Cup; usually their telecast is ok, it suffers from the twit down on the sidelines trying to get interviews and the normal focus on one player and "tell their story" but other than that it is fairly competent. The World Cup has had a couple of upsets, mainly the USA hasn't been playing well. Canada dispatched them fairly easily, and then Russia blew the USA out of the water. This set up the saturday night game between Canada and Russia as the game of the preliminary round. I was keen to watch it to judge how much of a challenger Russia was to the North American style of game.

Labor Day weekend in the US is when football season starts as it is the official end to summer. The networks on saturday were splattered with college football games from all over the place. ESPN carried three college football games, but ESPN2 Alternate had nothing on it. This station was not used for the Canada vs Russia game. Instead ESPN decided to put the hockey on www.espnbroadband.com; which was pathetic. When I watch sport, I like to do it infront of a big TV, in a comfortable lounge chair. Not sitting in an office chair and watching it on a tiny screen, that has advertisements all around it, propped up in a n office chair and in my home office. Not to mention, the broadcast required windows media.

I fired off an angry email to ESPN explaining that, I also told them I would boycott any advertiser that I saw on ESPN television during the remaining hockey games. I am fair dinkum on that too. But since I am an avid hockey fan and wanted to watch the Russia vs Canada game, I got on the Dell/Win2000 PC and connected to the ESPNBroadband.com and prepared to watch the game. It was slashdotted, the next hour and a half the computer sat there with the message, "getting video - please wait". I sent ESPN Broadband an angry email as well.

When we buy the NHL hockey package on DirectTV we get the CBC (Canada) feed for games. We also get the Toronto Sports Network, both of which are better feeds than ESPN. Now in a world where I could purchase individual channels, I would have purchased CBC to guarantee that I could watch the hockey world cup. As it is, the games for the remainder of this weekend are all on espnbroadband.com; which means they are unwatchable as far as I am concerned. Mass media sucks.

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