Monthly Archives: August 2001

It’s Official — Danny Almonte Is 14

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The New York Times reports that the Dominican Republic has confirmed suspicions that pitcher Danny Almonte was 14 — not 12 — when he pitched in the Little League World Series. It also turns out that Almonte is in the country illegally, since his visa expired six months ago (on that count, though, I’ll side with great pitching over the INS any day of the week).

Almonte also apparently had plenty of time to practice. Although his biography claimed he was enrolled in a South Bronx school, the school in question has no record of him ever enrolling there.

You Can’t Say That on Television

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There were a couple of threads at Plastic yesterday about pushing the boundaries of acceptable content on network television. This anecdote isn’t about network television, but about commercial cable channels, but it shocked me nonetheless at the time.

I was watching Gene Wilder’s movie, “Silver Streak,” on one of those cable movie channels that features commercials — I’m pretty sure it was A&E. Anyway, someone had gone through and edited out all the f- words, which didn’t surprise me because that’s pretty common. But then near the end of the movie they did not edit out Patrick McGoohan calling Richard Pryor’s character the n- word.

That really floored me.

Salon Really Gets the Cutting Edge News

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Gee, if it weren’t for Salon I never would have guessed that record companies try to rig MTV’s “Total Request Live.” I guess I was wrong and David Talbot was right — this Salon thingie really is cutting edge.

The last line in the story did have me laughing out loud. After describing how Interscope actually has a contest to reward TRL online ballot stuffers, writer Eric Beohlert asks,

So in an effort to maintain TRL’s integrity, is MTV moving in to shut the contest down? MTV’s Sirulnick declined to comment.

That’s some hard hitting reporting. What I’d like to see Beohlert do next is go undercover at TBS and try to confirm suspicions I have that some large agricultural corporations are having an undue influence on the dishes cooked up on Dinner & A Movie.

Amazon.Com Reviewers on AFI’s Top Film List

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Sweet Fancy Moses has a hilarious look at what Amazon.Com reviewers thought of each of the American Film Institute’s Top 20 films (the AFI actually listed the top 100 films, but SFM only highlights the top 20.

The AFI list itself is interesting, but I think The Godfather is a far better film than either Citizen Kane or Casblanca. In fact if you treat The Godfather and The Godfather II as a single narrative, I think there’s no question you’re watching the best mainstream American cinema ever (as mush as I like the film, I’m not sure I’d put it in the top 10 films if you include foreign films).

Of course I’m a bit biased because over the past few years I’ve become pretty obssessed with the films to the point where I’ve memorized most of the dialogue and watch them any chance I can get. I.e., whenever my wife is out of town because, as she puts it, “I’m sick of watching that stupid movie all the time.”

Little does she know that I pre-ordered the deluxe DVD version set to be released in October.

The Future of “The Defenders”; and Printer Rejects Marvel Comic

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It just abandoned the Comics Code a few weeks ago, and now ComicBookResources.Com reports that a printer stopped production on a Marvel book in mid print-run after deciding that the book, Brian Michael Bendis’ Alias #1, was “offensive.” The comic book is the first title under Marvel’s new “mature” imprint, MAX Comics.

And while I’m at it, ComicBookResources.Com has an outstanding interview with Kurt Busiek about the future story arc for “The Defenders” including a lot of spoilers.

More Proof that Palm is Doomed

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I can’t believe that Palm is counting on Blue Tooth to rescue their rapidly sinking ship. First they tried wireless in the Palm V that nobody wanted, now they’re going to let it all ride on Blue Tooth… maybe the third time will be the charm and they’ll ship a Palm with 802.11b built in. Even then, they’re falling so far behind what Compaq and other PocketPC manufacturers are doing (and I am stunned at that), the entire Palm platform risks being relegated to obscurity in a few years if it doesn’t play its cards right.

Business Week Profiles Right Wing News Sites

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Business Week has a look at right wing news sites such as WorldNetDaily and FreeRepublic.Com. Along with their right wing political angle, these sites have something else that differentiate themselves from other content sites such as Salon.Com — they’re not losing millions of dollars a month.

In fact, World Net Daily claims that most months it breaks even with monthly revenue in the $250,000-$300,000 range (that wouldn’t be enough to pay the inflated salaries of the folks at Salon.Com).

Or look at Australia’s Crikey.Com.Au which takes in a paltry $66,000 a year in revenue (Salon.Com burns through that much every two days), but keeps costs below $11,000 a year. Stephen Mayne, who runs the site, isn’t getting rich, but is well on the way to turning his site into a profitable small business.

According to Business Week,

Profits may sound miraculous for any content-based Web site right now, but given the smaller scale and narrower focus of these online niches, everything is possible.

“The smaller sites can survive on the media edge. It’s even easier if they are willing to focus on costs,” says Eric Scheirer, an analyst with Forrester Research. Moreover, niche sites’ long-term success could eventually threaten big media’s domination — a concept that has been all but discredited since the Internet bubble burst.

Personally, I don’t think we’re going to see any disruption of big media’s domination of the news anytime soon. On the other hand, the same economies of scale and organizational structures which make those companies very profitable also make it very difficult for them to meet niche market needs — the return on investment simply isn’t worth it. Which means plenty of opportunities for savvy independent web sites.

Was Danny Almonte a Ringer?

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I did not watch any of the Little League World Series, but it was almost impossible to avoid coverage of pitching sensation Danny Almonte. The young man from the Dominican Rublic struck out 86 percent of the batters he faced, gave up only one run in four games, and managed to pitch a perfect game to boot.

Of course, those feats might not turn out to be all that amazing if, as Sports Illustrated claims, Almonte was in fact 14 years old — a full two years older than the cutoff age for players in the Little League World Series.

Almonte’s coach was showing reporters a copy of Almonte’s birth certificate listing Almonte’s birth date as April 7, 1989, but when Sports Illustrated traveled to the Dominican Republic it found that Almonte’s birth had been registered twice.

In 1994, his parents registered his birth and recorded his birthday as April 7, 1987. But then in March 2000 — coincidentally just before Almonte left the Dominican Republic to play Little League Baseball in New York — they re-registered his birth, this time listing the birthday as April 7, 1989.

Little League officials plan to investigate.

Brazil’s Short Sighted Thinking on AIDS Drugs

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A lot of folks are celebrating Brazil’s decision to declare AIDS a national emergency and basically ignore patents on AIDS drugs.

There is a lot of debate back and forth over patents for lifesaving drugs, with pharma. companies claiming the prices they charge are necessary to pay for continued research and development, and AIDS activists and others charging that this is nonsense.

Before the celebration over Brazil’s actions go into high gear, it might be worth taking the time to survey the current state of vaccine development and production.

For a variety of reasons, it is very difficult to make a profit on vaccines. They are difficult to research, and often even more difficult to manufacture. The political situation in Western countries has really focused intense attention to even minor side effects of vaccines, with a couple prominent vaccines (such as for rotavirus) being recalled.

So how have companies reacted? Most major pharmaceutical companies won’t go near vaccine development with a ten foot pole. Those few that do focus almost exclusively on vaccines for diseases affect those in the developed world.

My daughter’s generation, for example, was one of the first to receive a chicken pox vaccination. Now, I think it’s great there is a chicken pox vaccination, and yes, in some rare instances chicken pox can be life threatening, but chicken pox is hardly a deadly scourge.

Compare that to the malaria vaccine. Well, we could do that in theory if there were a malaria vaccine. Not only is there no vaccine yet for malaria, but most drug companies don’t even have major efforts to find such a vaccine. Certainly nobody is putting the sort of money into finding a malaria vaccine as they are for other vaccines.

And it would be kind of pointless to do so. Not only would a malaria vaccine likely not be profitable, but it probably wouldn’t even recoup its development costs by the time companies were forced to give it away.

Look, for example, at how bad the business climate is in Africa. Nobody wants to invest in Africa so several governments there are going to create a special insurance company just to issue policies to reduce the political risks of doing business on that continent (i.e. Robert Mugabe might decide some of his cronies need your company more than you do).