Like Delmarpa, but different

If you've read any past posts, you know I'm a big fan of The New York Times.

That's mostly because it's one of the best-written, best-edited papers there is. (And, as my college newspaper editor used to point out, it doesn't come with coupons or the funny pages, so it must be pretty serious about the news.) Usually the top-notch editing applies to the Times web site, too. But I found a funny mistake yesterday in a Q&A with the Times travel editor.

Responding to a question from a reader, the editor mentioned the Delmarva Peninsula, which he described as, "that jut of land made up of portions of three states (Delaware, Maryland and Pennsylvania)...."

Well, that's close. As the great Meat Loaf once sang: Two out of three ain't bad. Problem is, the "-va" in Delmarva comes from Virginia, which should have been a hint that the Old Dominion State, not Pennsylvania, is the third state that makes up the peninsula.

Being the editor pest I am, I actually emailed the Times yesterday to let them know. The mistake was fixed when I checked the page this morning.

BTW, geography errors aside, the piece is kind of an interesting read if you're looking for vacation ideas. But it sorta seems like a travel editor could check a map for that kind of thing, doesn't it?

... Or however you spell it

As if, in some small way, the folks who write CNN's Web site reports were trying to provide support for yesterday's post, this sentence appeared today in a CNN.com story about American Airlines' Great Flight Cancellation Spree of 2008:

At Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, American passengers reported frustration but complemented the carriers efforts to get them to their destinations.

Spelling? Punctuation? Whatever, dude. Haven't you seen those touchscreen election maps?!?!

CBS, as in Can't Be Serious

CNN is a super place to get your news if you need wall-to-wall coverage every time a random twentysomething celeb is getting arrested for DUI or a weather disaster strikes a trailer park -- or if you like breezy five-second analyses of important issues that might actually impact your life. Oh, and if you like annoying sound effects while John King plays with touchscreen election maps.

So it's ... what's the opposite of super? ... not super to hear that CBS News is considering outsourcing some of its news gathering operation to CNN. It's like hearing that Tony Bennett is considering outsourcing some of his singing to Michael Bolton. Yes, Tony's been around for a while, and he's not as mainstream as he was back when, but the result would be so disheartening.

Sounds like some people need to watch Good Night, and Good Luck for a little inspiration.

There's a difference between TV journalism and TV coverage. Let's hope CBS keeps its business in house.

O-mazing

Another sports post that nobody else will care about, but I'm putting this up for later -- in a few months, it will be a happy reminder of good times.

It's more than one week into the 2008 baseball season, and the team with the best record in the American League is...

Not the Red Sox.
Not the Yankees.
Not the Tigers.
And not even the Southern California Angels of Greater Los Angeles or Possibly Anaheim.

Nope. It's the Baltimore freakin' Orioles. That's right, baby. The 6-1 Baltimore Orioles. The same team that finished 2007 so far out of first place that when the newspapers printed the daily standings, they were almost off of the page. Told that the O's six-game winning streak matched their longest streak in 2007, one of the Orioles players asked, "We won six games in a row last year?" I was surprised, too.

The latest win was an 8-1 victory over the Texas Rangers, the team that must have collapsed from exhaustion after one game against the Orioles last year, because they spent so much energy rounding the bases and scoring 30 runs -- yes, 30 as in three-zero, and yes, that was one single game.

Incredible as it may be, the standings as of this morning look like this:




Too good to last? Maybe. Still 155 games left? I know. But for this week, anyway, it's like 1983 all over again.

Sad, but (not) true

Oh, wait. You mean those sad stories about the common folk that presidential candidates tell during their campaign speeches have to be true? Hm.

Well, that changes everything! What's Hillary going to do now?

This gaffe has to be mostly the fault of her campaign staff, for not checking it out, but maybe she oughta surround herself with people who would have thought of doing that. At this point, I think I'd be more surprised if the stories in her speech were actually based in fact.

John McCain, rabble-rousing stud muffin

It's one thing to connect with the electorate by reminding us that despite your bona fides as a military hero, you're not perfect. You got in trouble in school. Raised a little hell. (See my previous post.)

It's another thing to take every possible opportunity to share all of the gory details -- and do so with great pride -- of your years of being a drunken man-slut.

What's even better about these revelations of John McCain's hard-partying youth is that his campaign advisers think they're, well, on strategy. His media adviser tells Time that this is a good way to "appeal to young people." Right. Youngsters love hearing stories about senior citizens getting sloshed and whoring it up. Makes them seem so ... much... yeeeeeccccchhhhhh.

Oh, good. Another class clown

Candidate McCain gets many many points for his military service and his survival as a POW. No doubt about that.

But he's canceling out some of those points by bragging today about all of his demerits while he was a student at the Naval Academy. The New York Times excerpts an advance of the speech, which is being delivered at Annapolis today. The pertinent portion:

“In truth, my four years at the Naval Academy were not notable for exemplary virtue or academic achievement but, rather, for the impressive catalogue of demerits I managed to accumulate. By my reckoning, at the end of my second class year, I had marched enough extra duty to take me to Baltimore and back seventeen times — which, if not a record, certainly ranks somewhere very near the top.’’

(By the way, that better not be some kind of cheap shot at Baltimore.)

I'm not sure if he's exaggerating his misbehavior to seem more like a regular guy, or whether he really was getting written up all of the time. I also tend to think he had to be a fairly serious student to get into and graduate from the academy.

Either way, it makes me wonder what would happen if we had a president who really had been a total screw-off during college. What would that be like? Maybe we'd be better off with someone who was a top-notch student and is comfortable with that. That'd be neat.