Let’s go to the videotape

Phil Simms’ new book Sunday Morning Quarterback is discussed in Richard Sandomir’s column in The New York Times.

Simms’s view of calling football is derived from a belief that what you see on a TV screen is not the truest reflection of what just happened. “TV absolutely can lie,” he writes. Those who do not delve beyond what is immediately before them are doomed to simple analysis.

“I can watch a game on TV,” he said, “but when I put on coaches’ tape, my opinions and thought processes change dramatically.”

It wasn’t until his sixth season that Simms had his epiphany about coaches’ tape. One day, Ron Erhardt, the Giants’ offensive coordinator, showed him tape of the Redskins’ defense.

Erhardt pointed to an outside linebacker, who, he said, kept his feet parallel when Washington was going to rush four down lineman but kept one foot forward for a blitz.

“But that can’t be true all the time,” Simms writes. Yes, Erhardt said, 100 percent of the time.

The Bryant case

The Los Angeles Times has an article on the mock trial the prosecution staged in the Kobe Bryant case.

They wanted to gauge how their chief witness would hold up under hostile cross-examination.

The answer: Disastrously.

For more than three hours, a lawyer playing the role of Bryant defense attorney Pamela Mackey pounded away at the accuser and the account she had given police. The lawyer pointed out that in her police statement the woman said she had kissed Bryant consensually for five minutes before the alleged assault.

“All right, let’s start now,” the lawyer said, looking at his watch.

For the next 60 seconds the courtroom was silent.

“You’re still kissing him,” the lawyer broke in, continuing to look at his watch. “You kissed him for four more minutes.”

“That’s too long,” she responded. “We didn’t kiss that long.”

The lawyer pounced: “Well, you said five minutes.”

The woman crumbled, and seven days later so did the criminal case against Bryant, superstar guard of the Los Angeles Lakers and one of the nation’s wealthiest and most celebrated sports figures.

Is nothing sacred?

Michael Barbaro in The Washington Post writes that retailers are planning to play remixed Christmas songs in hopes of boosting sales.

On the remixed holiday CDs now hitting retailers’ shelves, the song titles are familiar, but the sound is not. On Old Navy’s “Jazzy Jolly” holiday CD, 46Bliss remixes Mahalia Jackson’s rendition of Silent Night. Jackson’s voice is still there, but the original tune is all but unrecognizable, replaced with a thumping drum base line and computer-generated pulses.

On Pottery Barn’s “Christmas Chill” album, Michael Kessler remixes Mel Torme’s recording of “The Christmas Song.” Torme sings, accompanied by his own echo, which reverberates throughout the piece, and a hip-hop-inspired rhythm is inserted in the background.

Deal in danger

Michael Wilbon thinks the D.C. government is fouling off the deal to bring the Expos to Washington.

And if I ran MLB I would call [Mayor] Williams and say, “The deal’s off the table. We’re not accepting your council chairman’s bait-and-switch idiocy. Do we have a deal or not? And if not, we’ll let the team play in RFK until we strike a deal with Las Vegas, or perhaps we’ll more fully explore our options in Northern Virginia. If you don’t get the stadium built where you promised, you don’t get the team. Period.”

IQ and politics

NewMexiKen provides a link to the IQ and politics page everyone is looking for.

Shocking, simply shocking

Sending a weak electrical impulse through the front of a person’s head can boost verbal skills by as much as 20 percent, according to a new study by the U.S. National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.

In the study, researchers at the institute asked 103 volunteers to recall as many words that begin with a particular letter as possible. The researchers then passed a 2-milliamp current — one-tenth of what is needed to power a small LED (light-emitting diode) light — through electrodes attached to the surfaces of the volunteers’ foreheads. When the volunteers were quizzed again while the current was still on, this time with a different letter, they were able to come up with 20 percent more words on average.

— Wired News

Now they will have to test Boggle players to make sure they’re not getting an illegal boost.

Only fitting

Arafat isn’t even dead yet and according to news reports the Palestinians and Israelis are arguing over where he should be buried.

Ha Ha

Q: How many American voters do you need to change a burnt out light bulb?

A: None, they’re perfectly happy being in the dark.

Via FarrFeed

Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site …

was authorized on this date in 1998. The National Park Service tells us:

On the morning of September 23, 1957, nine African-American high school students faced an angry mob of over 1,000 whites protesting integration in front of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. As the students were escorted inside by the Little Rock police, violence escalated and they were removed from the school. The next day, President Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered 1,200 members of the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division from Fort Campbell to escort the nine students into the school. As one of the nine students remembered, “After three full days inside Central [High School], I know that integration is a much bigger word than I thought.”

This event, watched by the nation and world, was the site of the first important test for the implementation of the U.S. Supreme Court’s historic Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision of 1954. Arkansas became the epitome of state resistance when the governor, Orval Faubus, directly questioned the authority of the federal court system and the validity of desegregation. The crisis at Little Rock’s Central High School was the first fundamental test of the national resolve to enforce African-American civil rights in the face of massive southern defiance during the years following the Brown decision.

The Incredibles

The buzz on the internets is that The Incredibles, the new film from Pixar/Disney, is wonderful. Not just a great animated film, but a great film.

Seems it’s about time the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences comes up with an Oscar category for Best Performance by an Actor (and Actress) in a Voice-Over Role.

Purple haze cartogram

The county election returns map has been altered to include population distribution — a cartogram. Read about it here. See it (large version) here. See also the strictly red and blue winner-take-all large version.

Mildcats

Poor Mike Stoops. The first-time coach (brother of Oklahoma head coach Bob Stoops) inherited an Arizona team that went 2-9 in 2003 and he’s having a tough time doing as well. The Wildcats are 1-7.

Try rebuilding with the country’s toughest schedule. They’ve lost to teams currently ranked No. 4 (Wisconsin), No. 6 (California) and No. 8 (Utah). Arizona’s one win was over Division 1-AA Northern Arizona.

Today may be Stoops’ best chance for one more victory. The Wildcats play Washington (also 1-7) in Seattle.

Next week it’s USC (8-0 and ranked No. 1). The final game is against Arizona State (6-2 and No. 23).

[Update: Arizona 23 Washington 13]