Elegant Distractions

NY Times reports (registration required):

KIRKLAND, Wash., Nov. 28 (AP) - In a rare admission of error by the National Football League, the Seattle Seahawks received word on Monday that the referee Larry Nemmers had erred Sunday on both of the Giants' touchdowns in Seattle's 24-21 overtime victory.

"There were mistakes that were made," said Seattle Coach Mike Holmgren, one of eight men on the league's competition committee, which oversees rules and game operations.

The N.F.L. said that touchdown catches made by Jeremy Shockey and Amani Toomer should not have been ruled completions.

On Sunday, with 1 minute 14 seconds left in the second quarter and the Seahawks leading, 7-3, Shockey caught a 7-yard pass from Eli Manning in the center of the end zone. Seattle safety Marquand Manuel lowered his right shoulder into Shockey and forced the ball to the turf, though officials signaled a touchdown.

Jim Blackwood, the replay review official, asked Nemmers, an N.F.L. game official for 21 years, to review the play to determine if Shockey had possession long enough to constitute a catch. After a few moments, Nemmers emerged from under the hooded replay monitor and declared that Shockey had possession before losing the ball. The touchdown stood and the Giants took a 10-7 lead into halftime.

With 2:03 left in regulation, Toomer leaped high and caught a pass at the back of the end zone. He got his left foot down inside the end line, then appeared to drag the toes of his right shoe into his left as it hit the turf. Game officials concluded on the field that it was a touchdown - and Nemmers concurred after reviewing Holmgren's challenge.

That touchdown, and Shockey's subsequent 2-point conversion catch, tied the score at 21-21 with 1:59 left.

UPDATE: Wasn't this the same official that gave Testaverde the "phantom touchdown" in 2002?

Posted by director at 10:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0) | Categories: Sports

I saw this on /. and thought it had some merit.

Google to me seems like a new Catholicism. Everything consolidated under a monolithic central power with a mandate of "doing no evil". They send missionaries in the form of Bots and Ad Words to uncharted territory seemingly to help netizens in the wild, while gathering statistical data about what large masses of people are doing where, when and why. With this they can build their own versions of everything. Your home (page) is nothing compared to their cathedral. Heathens flock to it and erode their old societies under Google (capital G).

-Godshatter

Posted by Godshatter at 11:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0) | Categories: Technology

Here is a little more on the decline of dino-media. So where are people spending their entertainment dollars?

Posted by director at 09:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0) | Categories: Film

I have noted before that the comfortable marriage between the political Left and the Islamists is one of convenience. The Left has purged itself of the capacity for violence so they are hoping the terrorists will do their dirty work but leave them in power.

Dr. Sanity doesn't quite expand on that theme but spends a great deal of energy exposing the frail underpinnings of Modern Liberalism. I like what she said a lot better.

Someday, it will occur to someone that the Left has not had a single new idea for over half a century and that none of the "great" programs they have created have actually worked. Yet they guard those programs jealously, afraid of any new ideas or approaches that might make them have doubts in their precious ideology.

Instead of reducing poverty, they have created a class of people dependent on the government for their survival and thus they ensure continuing poverty--even through the generations. Motivation is destroyed. Self-respect is trashed. Victimhood and passivity become a way of life whose worse aspects are glorified in the music and culture of the newly created welfare class.

Read. It. All.
Thanks to Malkin again.

Posted by director at 11:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1) | Categories: Politics