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Media
April 28, 2008
The Times Undermines Its Own Columnist
What do you do when your star guest op-ed contributor writes a piece decrying the very tendencies that your star op-ed columnist exhibits all over her column, which is set to the run the same day? Well, if you're the New York Times Week in Review Op-Ed section, you run the pieces side-by-side, so everyone can see the hypocrisy.
Science
April 23, 2008
Urination Nation
Last year, Gelf caught up with the creator of the Stadium Pal, who seems to have found an answer to the age-old question, "How do I drink myself silly without needing to run to the bathroom every six minutes?" However, during the intervening months we've learned that the Stadium Pal is not the only new and exciting way to pee.
Internet
April 23, 2008
Understanding Facebook's Lexicon
The introduction of Facebook's Lexicon is a valuable research tool for studying the curious habits of Facebook users. Marketing executives are already salivating over the goldmine of data that Lexicon will sift from the wall posts of the ever-coveted hardcore Facebooking demographic. Eh, who are we kidding? Lexicon is nothing but a fun time-wasting tool that reveals neat bits of information about the Facebook set. Mostly, it just confirms things we already knew—is anyone shocked by the direct correlation between "party" appearing on Saturday night and "hangover" on Sunday morning?—but the fun is in seeing this information presented graphically like some important earnings report. Below, Gelf highlights some of our favorite bits from Lexicon before we tire of our new toy.
Media
April 22, 2008
Watch Your Keywords
As more newspapers migrate their content to the internet, a lot of research has gone into optimizing articles for processing by search engine robots. Google's spiders pay particular attention to titles, which means that clever headlines like "Skywalkers in Korea cross Han solo" are dropped for more easily indexed titles like, "World High Wire Championships in Korea." But the spiders also look to other things for direction, like tags and keywords that are inputted by computers or human editors once the piece is ready for publication.
Varsity Letters
April 20, 2008
May 1: Gelf's Varsity Letters
Gelf's Varsity Letters sports reading series returns to New York on May 1 at 8 p.m. At this free monthly event at a Lower East Side bar, hosted by Gelf, Steve McKee, Shaun Powell, and Michael Tunison will read from and talk about their work, and take questions. McKee will recount how his father's death taught him how to live, and to embrace sports; Powell considers the modern black athlete; and Tunison will share writing from his riotous NFL blog.
Non-Motivational
April 13, 2008
The Non-Motivational Speaker Series returns April 24
The Non-Motivational Speaker Series returns to New York on Thursday, June 26 at 8 p.m. Get your antiestablishment-on as these merry band of pranksters, culture jammers, and artists takes to the mic: Alan Abel, perhaps the most infamous prankster in American prank history, subject of the recent award-winning documentary, Abel Raises Cain, and "founder" of mock citizens' groups Citizens Against Breastfeeding; Steve Lambert, guerrilla artist, founder of The Anti-Advertising Agency, and Senior Fellow at arts organization Eyebeam NYC; and Ron English, patriarch of the agit-pop art movement and subject of the documentary POPaganda: The Art and Crimes of Ron English.
Full article » | by Adam Rosen
Media
April 10, 2008
The Knicks' Hulking, Sinking Ship
The performance of the New York Knicks has been so mind-bogglingly bad in the last few years that sportswriters have been digging to find appropriate metaphors for the degree of ineptitude Isiah Thomas and his team bring to the court on a regular basis. A recent New York magazine piece titled "Absolutely, Positively the Worst Team in the History of Professional Sports" calls them "a Kurtzian horror of bloated contracts and hyped ne'er-do-wells"—among many other things.
Politics
April 10, 2008
Politicalliteration
When there are no new results to report in the race for the Democratic nomination, some media outlets seem to get a little punchy with their political coverage. Or should I say, a paucity of party primaries perhaps pushes publications to pen puerile pages. Nowhere was this playful tone more apparent than in the assonance featured in a recent New York Times story about the resignation of Clinton's chief strategist Mark Penn: "Ouster Opens Opportunity for Obama."
Sports
April 2, 2008
Bracketology's Battle of the Sexes
College-basketball fans have long noticed that the men's and women's NCAA tournaments tend to play out a little differently. While the men's tournament routinely serves up enough stunning upsets to fill a yearly remake of "One Shining Moment," the early rounds of the women's bracket tend to play out true to seed. (Of course, there are some serious exceptions to that rule.) But does that pattern persist as the tournament advances through the second weekend? Gelf investigates.
Varsity Letters
April 2, 2008
Gelf's Varsity Letters: 4/3 Interviews
The baseball writers featured on Gelf's front page will be speaking at a free Gelf event in New York on Thursday, April 3, at 8 p.m. Come by the Happy Ending Lounge to hear Stefan Fatsis, Jonathan Mayo, and Cait Murphy read from and discuss their writing.
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