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Saturday, Oct 11, 2008
If Pete Rose won't fess up, he shouldn't be in the Hall of Fame; why we're chicken-pox party parents.
Nov 2, 1999 | Pete Rose steals the show
BY STEVE KETTMANN
(10/25/99)
What really struck me was Pete Rose's unrepentant demeanor in the interview. As much as Rose loves the game of baseball, he loves himself even more. He still refuses to acknowledge that he bet on the game of baseball, and, as long as he refuses to do that, he places himself above the game itself. You simply cannot have ballplayers betting on baseball games; it would completely destroy the integrity of the game. The only way they should let him into the Baseball Hall of Fame is posthumously. That way, he gets credit for what he did on the baseball field, but is not rewarded for his criminal behavior.
-- Richard Vigesaa
"From Hell"
BY CURT HOLMAN
(10/26/99)
While it's nice to see Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell get some mainstream credit for their fantastic work, I was dismayed to see a few elementary errors. Two that leap to mind are the author's assertion that the "Love and Death" issue of Swamp Thing was the first mainstream book to be published without the Comics Code Authority seal (leaving aside Dell/Gold Key publishing -- who never used the seal -- two issues of Amazing Spider Man still beat Swamp Thing out by over a decade) and that Moore left DC because "For Mature Readers" was included on "Watchmen" (the real break being caused by royalty and merchandising disagreements).
This is, in fact, Moore's best work since "V For Vendetta" (I've always found "Watchmen," though a good story, to be highly overrated) and Campbell's best work ever, which is saying a great deal.
I must say, though, that I am somewhat relieved that Moore has gone back to writing comics that are meant to be simply fun, like "Tom Strong" and "Tomorrow Stories." To a great extent, Moore's element is playing with convention, only slightly twisting it to show us a different light, as with his Superman and Swamp Thing stories. And of course, "From Hell," where he twists the basic concepts of history.
Possibly the most dismaying thing about your review, though, is the almost total lack of mention of Eddie Campbell, himself an artistic genius with a fairly broad oeuvre. I mean, he only drew the book; surely he rates more than a paragraph or two. Or is it possible that your author is not familiar enough with his work to write about it?
-- Jonathan Miller
For too long, Alan Moore's genius has been appreciated only by those lucky enough to have a well-stocked local comic book store -- and brave enough to not be self-conscious about reading books with pictures. Moore has the piercing social insight of William Burroughs combined with Scheherazade's abilty to keep the reader enthralled from one chapter to the next. His characters literally come to life, because he understands the human heart and what motivates it.
-- McCamy Taylor
Microsoft flip-flop
BY ANDREW LEONARD
(10/26/99)
Does Microsoft understand the software business? I wonder at times. Their recent abandonment of support to their financial newsgroups in favor of their buggy, slow, confusing "Web Communities" has caused at least one person (me) to go elsewhere for financial information.
-- Richard Sanchez
I did not mourn the end of the MVP program. I think it could use some thinning out, actually, because the program has become less about community support and more about a few people getting free software and a cliquish designation. The problem is, Microsoft primarily gets feedback about MVPs from MVPs.
Though I think there are excellent MVPs for Frontpage and IIS, there are some horrible, self-serving ones for HTML Help and Office. Some MVPs have developed a cult of personality. Others campaign to get the MVP designation, then you never hear from them again. I think it's high time they thinned the herd.
-- Tracey Attwood
The information laundromat
BY MARK GIMEIN
(10/26/99)
Whispernumber.com is using a straightforward application of the Delphi Method, published by the Rand Corp. in the 1960s. This is a group consensus and decision-making method using structured communication, anonymity and feedback. The method is specially useful for areas where lack of information renders traditional planning imprecise (such as predicting the future). Hence the reference to the oracle at Delphi.
If the group can keep their egos under control, anonymity is not necessary, in my experience. I've used the method for project scheduling, for a project involving new software methodology for which there was such a severe time constraint that traditional planning methods wouldn't be appropriate.
-- Conrad Clark
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