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Media
March 14, 2006
The Hindi-Film Actor Plague
In this week's edition of Zooming In, Gelf's quasi-weekly roundup of undercovered local stories from around the world: a Norwegian woman finds her stolen goods online; a missing Nepali mystic; and Japanese reaction to a blown call. One of our favorites deals with how Bangladeshis' movie-star looks cause "social problems" in Malaysia.
Sports
March 9, 2006
A Hockey Marathon
What's it like to call the longest game in men's college hockey history? Dan Fleschner announced the five-overtime, six-hour match between Yale and Union on March 4. He had just flown back from covering the Olympics in Torino for NBC when Yale's sports information director, Steve Conn, called to ask him if he would be interested in announcing a Yale men's hockey playoff series for WYBC radio, something that Fleschner did regularly when he was a student at Yale. (He also wrote Bulldogs on Ice
Media
March 2, 2006
Don't Quote Me on That
Among the highlights of this week's edition of Oops, Gelf's quasi-weekly round-up of media corrections: An aggrieved cab driver, hog gambling, chicken wings, and Enron perfume. Here's one of our favorite corrections this week:
Media
February 23, 2006
Good Sports
In this week's Olympic edition of Zooming In, Gelf's quasi-weekly roundup of undercovered local stories from around the world: Lindsey Jacobellis pulls a Devon Loch; a controversial Indian luger; and a Swedish miracle. One of our favorites deals with Canadian fans' newfound respect for the people of Norway.
Media
February 22, 2006
'Bad Movie, Good Actors'
In this week's edition of Blurb Racket—the Gelf feature in which we take a close look at those critic blurbs that are a fixture of ads for movies—see breakdowns of blurbs for Brokeback Mountain, Freedomland, Nanny McPhee, and more. This week's Bogus Blurb of the Week comes in an ad for Go For Zucker:
Media
February 18, 2006
Leakers Wanted
Slate is asking its readers to submit juicy primary documents: "White House memos, wiretap transcripts, financial disclosure forms, college transcripts, wills, e-mails, police reports, pending regulations, expense account filings—anything sufficiently piquant to interest the lay public," Timothy Noah explained Thursday. Since Noah acknowledged that The Smoking Gun was an inspiration for the idea, Gelf asked TSG founder William Bastone what he thought of the new Slate feature. In an email, Bastone replied to explain why he welcomes the competition, but is wary of audience participation:
Media
February 17, 2006
'What Are You Writing?' 'A Valentine's Day-Olympics Column.' 'Hey, Me Too!'
Several sports columnists Tuesday took on the weighty topic of Olympics lovin', in honor of Valentine's Day. Two columns stood out to Gelf for running surprisingly similar jokes. So we asked the columnists what happened. The answer was no big surprise: It seems that two buddies covering the same event sometimes end up writing very similar things. In fact, coincidentally, the two columns would have shared another passage, if not for intervention by editors.
Media
February 16, 2006
Condom Nation
In this week's edition of Zooming In, Gelf's quasi-weekly roundup of undercovered local stories from around the world: Korea's reaction to Hines Ward; a defiant editor; and a lot of missing teeth. One of our favorites deals with Thailand's push for world prophylactic domination.
Internet
February 15, 2006
Reclaiming Anti-Semitism
When a prominent Iranian newspaper started calling for the creation of Holocaust cartoons in retaliation for the widespread publication of offensive caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad, Amitai Sandy was saddened. "It's not impressive to laugh at other people's sorrows," he tells Gelf over email. So the 29-year old graphic artist from Tel Aviv started a cartoon contest of his own, this time based on comic submissions from Jews around the world. "[The Iranians] don't have the balls to do an anti-Arab cartoon," he says, but he hopes that his fellow Jews are willing to draw anti-Semitic cartoons to steal the newspaper's thunder.
Media
February 9, 2006
Economics of Homelessness
Malcolm Gladwell, in the latest issue of the New Yorker, argues that the traditional approach to homelessness is inefficient. It'd be cheaper, he suggests, to identify the hardest cases—the chronic homeless—and hand them each a key to an apartment, then monitor them with dedicated social workers and health-care specialists. That's because continually treating them for substance abuse and other medical and societal ills, jailing them, sheltering them, and ejecting them back to the street costs even more. It's an interesting argument, raising questions of how societies should balance economic efficiency with the need for proper incentives and an intuitive moral code. But Gladwell's argument rests on a flawed interpretation of government costs—though in an email to Gelf he explains why his argument still holds.
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