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Monday, January 16, 2006

From the Notebook

BEARS' LOSS RETURNS US TO CIVIC LIFE, ALREADY IN PROGRESS:  State and local political candidates, particularly those challenging incumbents in the March 21 primary,  are no doubt secretly relieved  that the  Bears lost  to the Carolina Panthers Sunday night.  Big sports stories take attention from everyone, and a Bears run to the Super Bowl would have kept the political races off the front pages and away from the top of the newscasts until the second week of February.  Now -- joy! --  we can all study the merits of education funding instead of the merits of the Bears' linebacking corps.

FUN FACT: From today's business section story about the growth in self-checkout lanes: "The typical supermarket doesn't break even on the time it takes to complete a transaction until the customer has spent $15."   Given this, I'm surprised that the industry doesn't seem to be working any harder to make the self-checkout process easier and friendlier.  Every time I hear the robotic voice barking about an "unidentified item in the bagging area" I feel like screaming,"Never again!"

GREAT MINDS: When I heard NPR commentator Frank Deford quip the other day that "the family that slays together stays together" in reference to studies showing how hunting helps build personal relationships, I wrote it down for inclusion in the Fine Lines feature. The fact that Deford was not by any means  the first to think of this play on words doesn't mean he didn't think it up independently, of course.

QUESTION FOR READERS #1: What is it, exactly, that gives many nursing homes that unmistakable nursing-home smell?

Vulpine_creatures_1QUESTION FOR READERS #2: Are these creatures, pictured to the left, wolves, big foxes, coyotes or just stray dogs?  I photographed them Sunday afternoon near where Dempster Avenue goes under the Tri-State Tollway.

IS MLB TAKING ADVICE FROM BILL WIRTZ?  "Stats lawsuit could turn fantasy into a nightmare" describes a ham-handed effort by Major League Baseball to -- get this --crack down on Web-based companies that "provide daily data for fans who pretend to be team owners of imaginary squads. Major League Baseball has claimed that intellectual-property law makes it illegal for fantasy-league operators to `commercially exploit the identities and statistical profiles" of big-league players.'" 

The whole fantasy-league thing mystifies me--it seems misleading and therefore not very interesting to equate the performance of athletes competing against different opponents under different conditions.

But many people really like it and, accordingly, pay more attention to actual games and leagues than they might ordinarily. Marketing and public-relations 101 would seem to dictate that MLB feed these strange passions rather than fight them.

THE DILBERT FACTOR: My  father was  curious about the frequent mentions of a company called "Systems Technology International" in public broadcasting funding credits. It sounds a bit like a made-up name, an in-joke, he thought.

It's not. Though what does the company do? Read the description below from the STI Web site and tell me:

Systems Technology International, Inc. (STI), provides core professional services and products to businesses and individuals. STI is about inspiring our clients to enhance their business, for it's time to dream big again. Our vision of success is to achieve a team environment with our clients, staff, associates and business partners -- perpetuating a long-term, mutually beneficial, relationship.

Our vision of success is to achieve a team environment with our clients, staff, associates and business partners perpetuating a long-term, mutually beneficial, relationship. STI is a highly innovative professional services and software development company. We offer highly professional services in Information Technology (IT), Creative Services, Engineering and Software Development and Web Application areas. Our services provide flexibility and optimal performance within our clients' business environment.



Checkout lines: The strategy isn't to make the self-checkout better, but to make the teller-attended checkout worse.

Reader question 1: Stale urine and feces with a touch of unbathed old people and nursing home food.

Reader question 2: Coyotes.

This wasn't a Reader Question, but I feel moved to comment.

Isn't this MLB stats lawsuit essentially the same lawsuit (in spirit, if not in fact) as when they sued STATS Inc over their SportsTRAX pagers? I mean, those things were a ridiculous waste of money and anyone could've told you they'd never succeed, but they did establsh that the leauges don't own the results of their games, otherwise they couldn't be reported on by any media without paying licensing fees.

I might be wrong about all that, but given that fantasy players are among the most loyal and dedicated fans (after all, if you're in Kansas City, Detroit or Tampa Bay, what other than a fantasy team will make you pay attention to baseball after June), and given that they're more likely to pay for MLB's content (radio and TV broadcasts of games), they can't be that stupid, can they? Oh god, wait, I just said it, didn't I?

Aside to Prof. Zorn...you really should try playing fantasy once, though I'd start with fantasy football, since it's an easier game to understand, and a much easier game to be a casual player of than baseball.

i, too, have heard about sports leagues' newfound beef with fantasy leagues (read: desire to thwart any third-party moneymaking off their product without getting a cut of the action themselves). i couldn't agree more with your assessment - as someone who's played semi-inspired fantasy football for a few years, i've definitely watched more meaningless games i otherwised would never have watched because i had fantasy players involved. and i'm not even that into it. the ratings and interest blitz alone from fantasy sports would seem to be enough for owners to not pull such a boneheaded move. but then again, such things are hard to quantify, and $24.99 to own a fantasy team is not.

What STI does is simple.
It separates money from corporations to its own accounts.
It does this by using incomprehensible jargon that sounds good, and gullible executives fall for this & outsource their IT and websites to them.
These are the same execs that let teenage programmers put Flash animation on their corporate websites because the execs know nothing about computers or the Internet. Thus forcing thousands to sit through the teenagers idea of a cooooool site, even though all the person wanted was some technical info or the address or phone number of the company.

I find the MLB lawsuit appalling as a huge fantasy sports player. If I wasn't in a fantasy baseball league, I wouldn't have any interest in teams like the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. Instead, I'm glued to the TV watching meaningless late season games like the Devil Rays versus the Royals all so I can follow my team's players. This might make me a pathetic baseball dork, but I would think MLB would want as many baseball dorks as it could possibly get.

ZORN COMMENT-- Indeed. You'd think this desire would be so pronounced that they'd have some sort of shorthand for it like PSDOS -- Pathetic Sports Dork Outreach Strategy -- as in, "boss, I think we can raise our broadcast avertising rates with just a small PSDOS investment."

Actually, Eric, the smarter politicians are not happy about the Bears losing. I LOVE having a good sports season during a campaign, because I always tie several rallies in to the sports event. On David McSweeney's campaign for the 8th, we were going to have a home football party at his house next week for about 60 of our top volunteers had the Bears won. And I was already planning the top three or four SuperBowl Parties for him to attend. Yes, some candidates are so wonkish they don't know how to tie it all in. I am very disappointed the Bears won - both as a Bears fan and as a political operative.

One of the reasons the NFL is experiencing such heights is it's embrace of fantasy football...MLB just can't seem to EVER get over the hump and think in modern terms.

Not all nursing homes are created equal, Don. The facility where my mother resides in Joliet, for example, always smells "fresh" with just a hint of disinfectant. That is because a very attentive staff takes care to keep the hallways scrubbed and patients' hygiene is scrupulously attended to. Would that all such facilities were so fastidious.

I don't know what those creatures are, but I live right where that picture was snapped. Guess I won't be taking any walks at night anymore.

Note how the "screen crawl" on NFL games now feature seemingly useless stats such as who kicked a 23-yard field goal or which tight end has two receptions for nine yards. It's all fantasy-driven, and MLB ought to get on board.

I'd say coyotes. Wolves in the Chicago area are rare, except at Rosemont's arena.

Jim, I wouldn't worry about coyotes or wolves while walking, jogging, or biking in metro Chicago woods and trails. Focus on stray pit bulls.

STI reminds me of Gene Klein's company, National General, with which he made a gazillion dollars. Klein owned the SD Chargers and made a gazillion there and then did the same with his partnership in horseracing with D. Wayne Lukas. I don't think even the stockholders knew what National General produced, but apparently Klein did. It produced a lot of money for him. He started selling cars in So California after WWII and said that it didn't matter what shape it was in those days; even the clunkers just flew off the lot.


The only item that gives me pause is that if they are coyotes, it is odd that they are out in the middle of the day.

But, I'll stick with my assessment that they are relatvies of Wile E.

Those canines are coyotes (Canis latrans).

Residents of the area should not be worried though -- the yotes were no doubt just waiting for a UPS truck to deliver their ACME jet-packs.

Coyotes for sure. They're in most of the forest preserves. I saw a road kill coyote at Oakton and Caldwell a few months ago.

Those are Dingos. They've migrated acoss the country from Southern California, where they were abandoned by expatriate Aussies recently discharged from the Royal Navy.

They're harmless. They are only on the hunt for a pint of bitters. No worries.

ZORN: I just want to stress that there is absolutely no cannibalism in the British Navy.

Those are dingos!

Be careful, or they will eat your babies.


Great photo, Eric! You will be contacted shortly by the Loch Ness and Bigfoot societies for help.

ZORN REPLY: I pulled over on the on-ramp at great personal peril to bring you that vivid photograph, and what do I get? Mockery!!

Well, they seem to look like coyotes in body shape, but the tail looks like it's tapered. A coyote's tail is cylindrical, puffy, and doesn't taper like that. I would wsay they are wild dogs.

Hey Eric, were you aware that there was a coyote in your neighborhood last June? My dog found it sleeping in the yard of a friend of yours, in the early morning. After much agitated whining, my dog flushed it out and it took off towards Pulaski. No time for me to grab my camera :( That one definitely had the big bushy tail; the ones in your pictures seem tail-deficient, but if they are in fact coyotes, winter morphology and poor health could be a factor. Coyotes around here are usually solitary but this is breeding season. I wonder if they were scoping out the embankment for a den location?

Back to the self-serve checkouts: The reason I don't use them at Jewel-Osco is that I can't stand the obnoxious robotic female voice. Over-enunciation sounds cool when it's done by James Earl Jones or Samuel L. Jackson; when it's done by an anonymous woman, it just sounds snippy and stuck-up. If I have one or two items and the lines at the checkout are too long I'll go through self-checkout but will activate the Spanish voice, which is much less annoying. Now I know how to say "99" in Spanish.


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