Patriot fans shouldn’t complain too much about the weakness of the AFC West, since that 11-5 record is propped up by a 3-1 record against the AFC West. Speaking of the West and weak divisions, the Patriots were also handed four games against the equally pathetic NFC West, all four resulting in victories. That’s seven wins against the two worst divisions in football, with only one (maybe two, pending the conclusion of the Broncos/Chargers game tonight) of those victories against a team with a winning a record, and that would be a world dominating 9-7 at that.

So New England fans, don’t start that complaining too soon. You could have just as easily been handed a schedule this year that included games against the NFC East and AFC South, and you’d be sitting out of playoffs with an 8-8 record instead.

This concept came into play for me as I was redesigning the comment form on this very website. Rather than placing field labels in the HTML itself, I’m using javascript to insert my labels into the fields themselves, then when the user focuses on a field the javascript removes the label leaving the field blank and ready for user input. However, if a user was to come to this site with javascript turned off, or from a mobile device that doesn’t support javascript all they will see is three fields with no labels. Yea, some people may assume the fields are name, e-mail and url since that’s pretty much the blog standard, but I can’t assume that. There may be users who see these three fields and have no idea what to do with them. And since I want to encourage everyone to join the discussion and comment, I needed to make sure javascript-less users get some kind of useful user experience.

Therefore I decided to put proper labels back on those fields. Then when a user visits this site with javascript turned on and using a browser my javascript library supports, that javascript hides those labels and lets my place-holding text do its job. That also means when a user comes to my site without javascript and with the place-holding text not working, the javascript will never have hid the labels in the first place.

As more sites use more and more flash and javascript, not to mention trendy AJAX, designers and developers have to remember to continue to accommodate those users browsing in less than ideal environment.

That said, this site isn’t exactly optimized for IE7 or IE6 yet, but it’s a personal site that I don’t have all the time in the world for, and I’ll get to you IE folks eventually. In the mean time have patience.

The Apple iPhone, featuring at&t service

The iPhone and at&t probably win the battle of the plans, as theirs is by far the simplest. Basically, at&t features just four all-inclusive plans for the iPhone, the price dependent on how many anytime minutes you want. All of the plans include unlimited data, both e-mail and web, as well as visual voicemail. This is the simplicity that the Apple shopping experience is known for. I don’t talk much on my phone, so I’m looking for the cheapest plan, which at 450 anytime minutes per month clocks in at a straight $69.99.

The Google G1, featuring T-Mobile service

T-Mobile and the G1 actually win the price wars, but I have more concerns regarding their network, and overall shopping experience leaves a little to be desired. T-Mobile first has you select a voice plan, their individual basic plan comes with only 300 whenever minutes, but only gives you unlimited weekend minutes, no unlimited night minutes. The individual value plan at $39.99 comes with 600 Whenever minutes and both nights and weekends unlimited. The basic web/e-mail plan is unlimited and also comes with 400 text/video message for $24.99. There’s some other plan features, but none of them interest me. So now we have T-Mobile offering me more minutes for even less than at&t at $64.98. That could be even lower at $54.98 if you almost never use your phone as a phone and opt for only 300 minutes.

The BlackBerry Storm, featuring Verizon service

Verizon and the BlackBerry Storm, like T-Mobile, first have you select a voice plan, their 450 minute plan pricing in at $39.99. In Verizon’s favor, their network is extremely strong in my area, and almost all of my friends and family are part of the network leading me to rarely use my actual minutes. Verizon has five different text message plans, of which I want no part of any of them. Now to the confusion, Verizon offers two so-called BlackBerry E-mail plans, the E-mail and Web for BlackBerry® at $29.99 per month and the Blackberry® Solution Unlimited Data Usage plan at $44.99 per month. I’m really not sure what the difference is between the two plans. The second plan is obviously advertised as unlimited, but the first plan has no mentions of limits in any of its literature. I’m hoping the first plan is what I’m looking for, so I’ll select that. Verizon also offers a visual voicemail plan for $2.99 per month and their VZ Navigator, which is their turn-based GPS navigation system, for $9.99 per month. Add all this up and I get a monthly bill of $82.96. And that assumes that the E-mail and Web for BlackBerry® is the data plan that I want, and I don’t have to fork over another $15 per month for actual unlimited access.

After considering all this information, I’m really starting to lean towards the iPhone, but I still need to research the G1 and the effectiveness of the T-Mobile network in my area before I make my final decision. Needless to say, despite my affinity for the Verizon network, the price of their plan alone basically disqualifies them, and that’s before I even had a chance to compare the Storm to the iPhone.

Why am I only linking to it rather than just embedding the video? Because thanks to some backwards thinking by the NFL Network, they don’t allow access to the embedding of their videos. No some may think that’s a smart thing because they want you to visit their site to view their videos and watch their ads. That’s nice and all, but the video itself starts off with a fifteen second commercial. The NFL Network could easily allow the embedding of videos from their site, and every time someone watched them, they’d still get the advertising views. I don’t get it.

There are certain players you know you just can’t trust to stay healthy. Carl Pavano is their president, but last year was already the last straw, and the team was not counting on a single inning from him. But there are other players who deserve zero trust going forward as well. Jason Giambi is still a beast when healthy, but he’s basically lost two out of the past four seasons to injure or poor health. He just can’t be counted on to stay healthy. With injuries that have whipped out most of his past two seasons, Phil Hughes may qualify for this classification, but he still has some time to heal up and enjoy a long career.

Baseball Prospectus‘ injury guru Will Carroll has recently written about another type of player teams should be cautious with regarding their future health, the aging iron man. Think Hideki Matsui and Jorge Posada. These are players who were previously the epitome of health, but eventually the injury bug strikes. Because these players have so little experience with injuries and rehabilitation, they lack the “skill” to heal that a player who’s been injured a few times in the past have learned. They may also attempt to rush back from injury, further compounding the problem. And of course, Matsui and Posada are getting up there in years, injuries will now lag a little longer than they would on a twenty-seven year old.

Johnny Damon is a similar type player, but rather than suffering a single serious injury, he is slowly dying the death of a thousand small nicks and bumps. For the future the Yankees need to be cautious with Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez and Mariano Rivera. All three of these players are used to playing full seasons, or in Rivera’s case being amongst the league leaders in relief innings, all three are on the wrong side of 40 and all three will more than likely attempt to rush back prematurely because the team depends on them.

And lastly there are the freak injuries. There is a reason the American League doesn’t require pitchers to run the bases and Chien-Ming Wang discovered why. Joba Chamberlain as a younger pitcher was more susceptible to injury than most, but the Yankees have taken proper caution with his development and use, and yet sometimes injuries just happen.

Going forward Brian Cashman needs to take health into account when building the 2009 Yankees. $200 million can buy a good team only if that team actually takes the field. He needs to let go of aging players with injury flags like Jason Giambi and Bobby Abreu. Both have been healthy this year, but that is no guarantee they will be healthy next. Likewise, Johnny Damon and Hideki Matsui should be let go for 2010. Mike Mussina should be thanked for this season and sent on his way as well. Maybe he can pull a Jamie Moyer and throw over 200 innings for the next five seasons, but the odds are against it. It’s worth the risk to offer Andy Pettitte a one year contract, plus he’s a True Yankee®.

Thinking free agents, the Yankees need to target healthy players in their twenties. Luckily, some of the biggest stars in the market, CC Sabathia and Mark Teixeira, fit that bill exactly. Despite his health this season, Ben Sheets is not a good consolation prize to Sabathia, nor is Oliver Perez. If Adam Dunn doesn’t resign with Arizona, he could be an interesting alternative to Teixeira as a potential convert to first base, but a position change is also a health risk. Dunn will be only 29 next year, and he’s played at least 150 games the past five years. Theoretically Pat Burrell could be signed and transitioned to first as well, but with three years on Dunn that’s probably not the best idea. Besides, Burrell just seems like a player who’s ready to miss half the season with a knee injury. Needless to say, Milton Bradley and Rocco Baldelli should be avoided like the plague.

If Brian Cashman returns as general manager, he needs to evaluate players with the understanding that health is just as important a skill to the Yankees as contact, defense or throwing power, if not more so.

I have to assume that real economists have better statistics, but either through ignorance or bias the media keeps shoving the same old misleading statistics down our throat.

I feel that the net size of an economy tells us very little about that economy, other than it is large. It is common to note, often in fear, how fast the Chinese economy is growing, and that one day it may overtake the American Economy. Really? America is a nation of around 300 million people, China can cover that 300 million and add a billion more. It’s not a problem that China’s economy overtakes ours, instead it’s a problem that China with four times our population, can’t even come close to matching our own.

Gross numbers are fun to play with, but if we want an accurate picture of how the common person is living, it is far more useful to look at the average figures. GDP per capita is a start, but a straight mean average can be distorted by large amounts of wealth accrued at the top, and distort the conditions of the common man. Median income figures would give a more accurate assessment.

I feel that even median income gives us only a partial picture, because as we all know, we aren’t allowed to keep all of the income we earn, a good portion is taken away in the form of taxes. Thus I favor after-tax income figures, to pre-tax. The median after-tax income (normalized for inflation, when comparing between years) seems like a pretty good number to describe the economic condition of the common man. For more fun, use quartiles to get a picture of class economics.

Another pet peeve of mine is throwing around the GDP without taking into account the government debt of that year. If the GDP grew by $300 billion, but the government took on $500 billion of debt, did the GDP really grow?

Speaking of debt, too many people freak out over our national debt looking at only the raw numbers, but taking them entirely out of context. Yes, a national debt of over $9 trillion looks bad, but when you compare the ratio of debt to GDP and then compare that to other industrialized nations like France, Germany, the UK or Japan, our debt is nothing special. Now this shouldn’t be an excuse for unrestrained spending or taking on further debt, while it’s ok to be in the middle of the pack, it’s even better to lead.

So this is probably all information that economists have long figured out, and more than likely bettered, I still find the general economic information to be sorely lacking.

Each year over $150 billion is spent on advertising in the United States alone. I can only assume that businesses expect to at least match that investment with increased revenue. Thus advertising is related to some increase in economic activity.

However, during the WGA strike of 2007 and 2008, networks were forced to air reruns in place of fresh scripted shows. Those reruns led to lower ratings, fewer people watching television, fewer people watching television commercials, fewer people buying products and services as a result of watching commercials. Thus some depression of economic activity was a result of the WGA strike. I guess the harder question is just how much the strike affected the economy, and was that effect statistically significant or relatively trivial?

Creating a custom CMS is actually pretty easy for the front end, especially when I had taken advantage of disqus to handle the commenting. Read-only content is pretty easy to code up, and a little .htaccess tweaking will even provide friendly URLs. The problem with a custom CMS, is the management end. I never got around to creating anything close to a functional backend, and for the most part I was left with phpMyAdmin to perform blog updates. Hence, no updates at all.

I considered dabbling with Python/Django, but decided to table that experiment until the 1.0 release of Django in September. Not to mention my need to become a bit more familiar with Python itself.

So in the end I decided to come back to my old friend WordPress. The following is why.

I feel that at this time I could be considered a WordPress expert. Even though I haven’t used the system for over a year on any personal blog or site or mine, I have been working with it extensively on both Wallstrip.com and MobLogic.tv. I didn’t just create any old blog on either of these two sites, but instead stretched WordPress to the extremes of its abilities to create a site for daily video consumption, in addition to a standard text-based blog on each site. Thus I felt that I had the ability to use WordPress to create the exact site that I wanted

I also created a few tools and functions while working on Wallstrip.com and MobLogic.tv that I reused on this very site, including my threaded comments and relative date function. At some point I may package each up as a proper plugin and release them to the public.

WordPress itself has evolved and added much desired featured in the various releases since I last used it. WordPress now supports tagging natively, and manages media and attachments in a much more useful way. Though I do think the media and attachment management still requires some fine tuning and some much much needed features, but that is a complaint for another post. The recent update to the “Press This” bookmarklet was the killer feature that tipped the scales in favor of WordPress, as I could now easily posts links and video white offsite during my regular browsing.

I’m at the conceptual stage of developing a large multi-author internet publication, and for easy and speed of development, I’m strongly considering using WordPress as its core, at least at first, and this redesign of my current personal site was almost a test run and experiment for many ideas that i would like to include in this publication.

Lastly, I’ve had this redesign in my mind for a few months now and it was about time I just sat down and did it. WordPress let me create the majority of the theme in one weekend, with another weekend for the fine tuning. I’m highly doubt I would have been able to do this in a CMS I was unfamiliar with, and impossible if I was to develop the CMS myself.

What are the consequences of the lack of a competitive third party in national US politics?

We get to vote for the lesser of two evils.

Remember though, that we have chosen these two parties. There is nothing in the Constitution that calls for only two political parties or even the existence of any political party at all. George Washing was very much against the creation of political parties fearing the very problems that we have today would result from such partisanship.

It was only a little less than a decade and a half ago when we had a strong third party candidate in Ross Perot who was actually leading in the polls for a time. It was only a paranoid breakdown that led to his fall.

We are allowed to vote for whomever we want, in whatever party we want. All we have to do is actually vote for them.

Is having pride in ones country necessary and healthy for a nation, or does it inhibit logical thinking about the nations actions? (Submitted by: poke-the-eric)

Pride in one’s own nation is very healthy. Pride means that you have a stake in your nation, that you are responsible for your nation. Having pride means that you work to better your nation, you strive for excellence of your nation.

However, pride alone is not healthy. Pride and a healthy dose of humility are the best combination. Be proud of what your nation does well, and have the humility to understand what your nation can do better. Pride without humility leads to blind allegiance and extreme nationalism, both of which are unhealthy for your nation and the world.

To paraphrase Dinesh D’Souza, you should love you country because it is lovely.

What product, technology, or service introduced this year will be the biggest flop and why?

Both HD DVD and Blu-Ray will officially flop.

The future is no longer in discs, but in On-Demand and near instantaneous downloads, while the plain old DVD, especially with an upconverting player, is just fine for present use.

If you look back in history it was porn that settled the Betamax vs. VHS war. In present times porn has already chosen its methods and they are neither HD DVD nor Blu-Ray, but the Internet.

So instead of buying those high definition discs, invest in a Netflix or iTMS account or your local cable company’s On Demand service. IP based high def programming is the future.

Who was the quintessential ’80s band?

The quintessential ’80s band is not about who was best (The Cure), or who changed music the most (REM), or who was the most popular (U2). The quintessential ’80s band is about the ’80s, epitomizes the ’80s, is the ’80s.

They feature long, bad hair, tight pants, hard rock, excess, bare chests, power ballads, thrashing guitar, crazy antics, changing up lead vocalists at the height of popularity, music videos and they should be a permanent fixture on any episode of We love the ’80s.

Ladies and gentleman, may I introduce to you, Van Halen!

Jump, Hot for Teacher, Panama, oh yeah!

Is the fixing of genes to eliminate genetic disorders morally wrong? (Submitted by: poke-the-eric)

The “fix” in this question can be taken multiple ways.

If the fix is gene therapy – the insertion of genes into cells and tissues to fight a hereditary disease – then the procedure is no more morally wrong than surgery.

If the fix is the abortion of a fetus with unwanted genetic traits, then the procedure is most likely morally wrong.

If the fix is Gattaca-style genetic engineering, then the moral line is far more fuzzy. If the genetic engineering is used to ensure no life-threatening hereditary disease or debilitating genetic abnormality, then the procedure is rather moral, and life saving. However, if the purpose of the genetic engineering is to increase intelligence, athletic ability, or appearance, then the procedure is no better than steroids or other chemical enhancements.

Who is the most important author of the twentieth century? Why? (Submitted by whatwasleft)

Arthur C. Clarke.

Clarke was member of the “Big 3″ of science fiction along with Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein.

His 2001: A Space Odyssey produced with Stanley Kubrick, was the first serious science fiction movie and paved the way for blockbusters like Star Wars and Close Encounters.

He was knighted in 2000.

He has written over 33 fiction novels, hundreds of short stories and dozens of nonfiction books on a variety of subjects.

The Asimov-Clarke treaty recognizes Clarke as the best science fiction writer in the world.

However, Clarke’s most important contribution was not to the field of science fiction or fiction at all.

Clarke was the first person to conceptualize the geostationary satellite in a paper titled “Extra-Terrestrial Relays — Can Rocket Stations Give Worldwide Radio Coverage?”, published in Wireless World in October 1945, of which our entire modern communication system is dependent on.

What will be the most interesting merger, acquisition, or corporate restructuring of this year?

A Yahoo/Microsoft merger almost makes too much sense, so it won’t happen.

Something big needs to happen between the Detroit Big 3. Not a Ford/GM merger, but a Detroit/Japanese merger or something along that line.

However, I think the real shocker will be a restructuring with a movie studio or record company. Their current strategies just aren’t working.

A split between Sony’s entertainment divisions, Sony Pictures Entertainment and Sony BMG Music Entertainment and the rest of their more consumer electronics efforts makes sense.

Sony killed their Walkman line with their refusal to go MP3 for the longest of times to protect SonyBMG’s profits from piracy. Now SonyPictures is going to get harmed by relying on Sony Electronics’ Blu Ray format.

Sony’s Music and Movie divisions need to be able to operate in their best interests, not in the interests of Sony Electronics and vice versa. A split would make sense.

What, specifically, determines whether a restaurant is considered “fast food” or not?

Let’s make this clear right off the bat, fast food is not necessarily served fast.

I’m not sure how it got its name. Perhaps at one time it was served fast, or perhaps the “fast” is in reference to how fast it comes out of you.

So what makes a food, a fast food?

There are quite a few factors, if you go through this checklist and answer yes to most of them, then you’re probably eating fast food.

• Is the restaurant a franchise?
• Does the restaurant have a drive thru?
• Did you order from a counter?
• Is there a dollar/99cent menu?
• Do the employees where paper hats?
• The Simpsons Test: rub the food item on a solid object, does the grease from the item now make the solid object see thru?
• Do you feel a little dirty afterward, and that may not just be guilt, either.

Should the United States eliminate the Electoral College system and instead elect its President by popular vote? Why or why not? (Submitted by: dvcguam)

No.

The Electoral College gives a strong incentive for each candidate to concentrate on the political center, as the winner is often determined by the “battleground states” that are almost always “purple.”

If the Electoral College was removed, election strategies would change from trying to convert the moderates, independents and the undecided, to attempting to energize the bases to rally more voters than the opposition. Instead of candidates campaigning to the center in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania, candidates would campaign to the extremes in Massachusetts and Texas.

The Electoral College is also a protection against election fraud since the outcomes of polls in states like Texas and Massachusetts are almost certain, and thus fraud would be of no use or very overt. The Electoral College allows us to narrow our monitoring to the battleground states where the outcome is far from certain and fraud far more effective.

What is the most important song ever written and why?

I woke up with an offer from Bono to choose one of U2’s songs. Apparently his ego is not bloated enough already.

Then I was thinking along the lines of Band Aid’s Do They Know It’s Christmas, which raised millions for Ethiopian famine relief (sound familiar?) and inspired We are the World, Live Aid and countless other efforts. Seriously, do we really want to encourage Bob Geldof and stroke more celebrity ego?

Then my thoughts turned to Rock Around the Clock written by Max C. Freedman and James E. Myers for Bill Haley & His Comets, which is generally regarded as the song to kick start Rock-and-Roll.

I finally had to to settle for the Shins New Slang.

In the words of Natalie Portman in Garden State, You gotta hear this one song, it’ll change your life I swear.

You can do much worst than what Natalie Portman tells you.

Does the United States (and any other large country), as a member of the international community, have an obligation to help poverty-stricken nations in Sub-Saharan Africa? (submitted by Dom Pody)

The United States government has an obligation only to the people and the Constitution of the United States.

As United States Senator Davy Crockett once said,

We have the right as individuals to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity; but as members of Congress we have no right to appropriate a dollar of the public money.

Our government may not have an obligation for foreign aid, but we as individuals certainly have an obligation to help our fellow human beings who are in need, whether they live next door or in sub-Saharan Africa.

If given a choice between purchasing either organic produce that has been grown in another country or non-organic produce which has been grown locally, which choice would you make and why?

Simple answer: Whichever was cheaper.

How does Hillary Clinton’s entrance into the 2008 presidential race most impact both the overall shape, as well as the final outcome of the race?

Hillary’s entrance is no surprise, and does not impact the race all that much, since everyone already assumed that she was running.

Even though she will lose the Democratic nomination, she will still impact the final race through her primary campaign. He loyalties lie far more in herself and her own campaign than to the Democratic party and she will not hesitate to play dirty against the other candidates, which could come back to hurt the eventual Democratic nominee in the main race.

I’m not sure whether they are accepting straight donations of money or not, but the plan is to publish a high quality blog with guest writers volunteering their services. Traffic will be driven to the site naturally through submission to the various social bookmarking sites. All ad revenue will be donated to charity and in the spirit of full transparency receipts and statistics will be published.

I encourage anyone who would like to help out do so. And everyone else should at least head over there and give it a visit. Your traffic equals more money for charity.

Offer high quality material, give all the proceeds to charity and the traffic will come.

Person of the Year: YOU

This is probably old news to all of you (except Chrysler) thanks to the very social media that TIME seeks to acknowledge. However, some (most?) of us are not exactly taking this recognition gracefully.

In fact, blog after blog after blog are calling this years Person of the Year a “cop-out” and question everything from the sanity to the sobriety of the TIME editors. Many argue that there are far more important candidates, such as recent United States foils Kim Jong-il, Hugo Chavez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, or Democratic leaders that led to the victory in Election 2006 like Nancy Pelosi or Howard Dean, or even the people of Iraq, perhaps the most important news event throughout the year. Some people even want to recognize Al Gore for making a movie that no one saw.

I think the editors of TIME may have actually made a good choice. Is it really a cop-out if everyone complains about it? Isn’t a cop-out the easy choice that people may not love but they like or at least are ambivalent about? Is a choice that people hate really a cop-out?

Look at the candidates mentioned above. We have three anti-American world leaders, who have been leveling threats and insults our way throughout the year. But that’s just it, all they have been doing is threatening, all bark no bite. Other than some failed nuclear missile tests, none of these leaders have really done much.

Do Democratic leaders really deserve a Person of the Year award for winning a mid-term election for the minority party? Will this change actually really change anything or affect the world much?

Has Al Gore really accomplished anything except increase global warming himself with all of his hot air?

The people of Iraq have sure made headlines this year, but again most of them haven’t done anything. It is just a small percentage who are the terrorists who are actually affecting the world. But even they are not affecting the world that much. If the actual people of Iraq ever rise up and say enough with all the violence even if they say enough with our presence as well, then they deserve the Persons of the Year.

Back to the choice that TIME did make.

The social media is changing the world. News is not the same. Relationships are not the same. Communication is not the same. Myspace, YouTube, facebook, Digg, and the countless other social sites are changing the world. This revolution is changing the world. If we could go back in time to 1876, would not Alexander Bell be the recipient of the Person of the Year then? Unlike the telephone, a single person or company is not driving the social media, we are all.

We really do deserve to be the Person of the Year and I congratulate you all. Let’s just hope that our affect on the world has been and will continue to be positive.

The New York Times has decided to let users post stories directly from their site to Digg, Facebook, and Newsvine. As of Monday, the paper will embed links to all three sites to most of their online stories.

Techcrunch is also reporting that the New York Times contacted both Digg and Newsvine initially. This is a good sign for the respectableness of newsvine, that The New York Times would choose them along with Digg over other social bookmarking sites like Netscape or Reddit.

It will definitely help publicize newsvine, having their icon displayed along with every free New York Times article.

This also is a small validation of all my work over at newsvine. If the New York Times is taking notice of a site where I am a top user, then that can’t be a bad thing.