Death of a Journalist

October 20, 2007 to January 4, 2008. In that span of time, not one article was posted on Missile Test. The previous three months leading up to that hiatus had been prolific ones in the life of the site. Seventeen articles posted from July 18 to October 20, an average of more than one a week. In 2006, my output for the site was dismal. Only sixteen articles. Using that as my guide, during the summer I made a decision to step up production, with the goal of posting a minimum of fifty-two articles a year. For me, that was an ambitious goal. In the life of the site, there had never been a year that maintained enough consistency to guarantee that many postings, but I had seemed to hit a stride in the last few months. Quality was as uneven as ever. After all, I am working without an editorial staff to slap me when I’m being foolish, but that’s neither here nor there. Continue reading “Death of a Journalist”

Gears and Dials, True Results

If you’ve ever harbored doubts about the reliability of touch-screen voting machines, then Clive Thompson’s article in this Sunday’s New York Times Magazine will turn those doubts into certainty. Thompson spends thousands of words lambasting the touch-screen machines, their makers, and the local elections boards that purchased them. Near the end, Thompson puts forth an alternative system that has proven far more reliable in the past than touch-screen machines: optical scan ballots. In the interest of postulating diverse solutions to an important problem, I offer this: Continue reading “Gears and Dials, True Results”

Sports Do Not Matter

The reverberations from the Mitchell Report released last month will be felt for some time in professional baseball. One of the most prolific offensive eras in baseball history, one in which personal performance soared and the records associated with it fell, has now been tainted. In a sport that maintains a direct connection to its century-long history through its statistics, its holy numbers, anything which could damage the validity of those numbers threatens the very integrity of the sport. The report contained few surprises, but it set forth in writing just how widespread the use of performance-enhancing drugs had become in the major leagues. Most compellingly, the report named names. Continue reading “Sports Do Not Matter”