Major League Baseball continues the extortionary policy of requiring all-public funding for any stadium: Baseball Rejects Council’s Changes In Financing Plan for D.C. Stadium. This is the underlying reason why baseball left Montreal and will likely leave Washington before ever playing a game there. MLB needs this cautionary tale to force other governments in other jurisdictions to put up the money or lose their team. The reason Montreal wasn’t viable had nothing to do with attendence or revenues and everything to do with the fact that the Provincial and Federal gov’ts can’t be bought or intimidated as easily as US municipal, county, and state governments can be.
Archives for December 2004
Jeffrey Zeldman has a problem
with a not-Zeldman using Kinja. While I agree that it’s annoying, and in that particular case I think Kinja should definitely take down the pretend user, if it were another person with another username, I’m not so sure that it’s clear what should be done. BTW there is a “mikel” over there, but it’s Mikel Maron, a perfectly legitimate user of the name I also use throughout the web. Does either one of us have a claim to the name? I don’t think so.
Salon’s Eric Boehlert
has written a piece on the right’s – and Bill O’Reilly’s – crusade for XMas: The Grinch who saved Christmas. Like so much of the crap from the right, though, it’s totally founded on specious claims that set up a straw man they proceed to attack.
Jakob Nielsen:
Most Hated Advertising Techniques. What’s your least favourite advertising technique? For me it has to be auto-playing any sound whatsoever when I visit a site.
Spoonman!
Kate over at montreal city weblog is covering a “local colour” story that isn’t really very funny: Ogilvy’s Spoonman under legal attack. Apparently someone thinks his spoon-playing is annoying – from six stories up. For my part, local colour should definitely win this one – the complaint is ridiculous and indicates more than anything that the mobile enema squad is urgently needed.
