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thereWords: the postings that led to the current quips log

These postings are from 1999 and 2000, many designs ago. I started off posting intriguing quotes from all kinds of articles. Many of these links probably won't work any more because of their age, but they still make for ponderous reading.

Because when big money is at stake, when writers and editors start getting bossed around by Nielsen meters tracking what each Internet user looks at, for how long, and in what order, then the new medium that was supposed to be the promised land of freedom has become something else. Television.

Gabriel Snyder in the New York Observer's Off the Record column

This new adults-only movement is a product of a number of social forces that have been building for decades. ... But the main force driving it is what I would call the privatization of America, the notion that we should all be out for ourselves now and there is no such thing as a collective good, even when it comes to raising the next generation. ... Sadly this is a war where the real victims, children, aren't even the combatants.

Steven Stark, popular culture commentator on NPR's Weekend Edition, on the culture war between parents and the childless.

A redesign is 10 percent fonts and 80 to 90 percent leadership in management.

-- Ron Reason, in a piece about his project at the Chicago Sun-Times.

Back when I was 6, TV networks hadn't yet discovered that they could create the impression of a news story simply by reporting the same thing for weeks on end.

-- John Levesque of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer on the Elian Gonzalez drama.

Reactions to a somewhat dubious Stanford University Study

In Nie's view, e-mail just doesn't count. I guess all those people you're exchanging e-mail with ... aren't real human beings.
-- Scott Rosenberg, Salon's managing editor

The question is whether the new lifestyle is enjoyable and whether it nourishes humans or causes them damage. ... The real question is whether the Internet makes us more stressed.
-- Internet usability champion Jakob Nielsen

As for this idea that the Net may be an anti-community, everything I've read, everything I've known from experience these past few years tells me it's an outragous contention that's utterly without merit, statistical or otherwise.
-- San Jose Mercury News columnist David Plotnikoff.

Journalism, in other words, is a costly and paradoxical enterprise: it can flourish only when profitable, but it is most suspect when it seeks a profit at all costs.

-- Max Frankel, in the NYT magazine, commenting on the L.A. Times' troubles with "The Wall" between ads and news.

He does some things where you just go 'wow.'

-- Indianapolis Colts team president Bill Polian on rookie running back Edgerrin James.

The Web is creating pseudo-communities where you meet people you don't know. We're looking to build communities where people already have very strong ties and affinities.

-- Shikhar Ghosh, chief executive and a founder of iBelong, which has a deal with the AFL-CIO to provide cheap computers and internet service to union members. (Note: NYTimes.com requires free registration)

It is a shame to see The News fade away, but we have had two generations of readers who have been satisfied with a few sound bites from radio and television. Reading and writing have been ignored by too many people in this last half of the 20th century.

-- Wendell Phillippi, managing editor from 1962 to 1984, in his column in the Farewell Edition of The Indianapolis News, which ceased publication on October 1, 1999 after almost 130 years.

The place is history. It is championship celebrations in 1935, 1945, 1968 and 1984. It is Ernie Harwell's voice over a car radio. It is Cobb, Greenberg, Aguirre, Newhouser, Cash, McLain, Lolich, Gibson, Trammell, Whitaker, Morris. It is the rightfield porch, the flagpole in the middle of centerfield, the girders that block your view... It is a house of fun, and a home of memories.

-- Mitch Albom, in his column after the final game at Tiger Stadium.

It was almost like being in baseball church.

-- Detroit Mayor Dennis Archer at the final game.

Wherever fans sit today ... they will be looking not only at the present, but at the past. And they'll be listening not just for the echoes of Tiger Stadium's history but for their own.

And that is how a city intertwines with a stadium, and that is why closing a stadium is not the same as closing a bank. ...

So one more time, we do what we do around here. We go to Michigan and Trumbull. We see a baseball game. We share a time and an experience and a place, a truly special place.

-- Mitch Albom, in his column on the day of the final game.

I used to sit in the dugout sometimes when things weren't going good ... and I'd think, "Can you imagine, in this place there used to come Gehrig and Ruth and, my God, Greenberg."

-- Sparky Anderson, former Tiger manager, recalls some of his memories about The Corner.

"'Tis better to be plain and visually dull and stuffed full of information than beautiful and visually interesting but devoid of anything anyone wants to know."

-- Rodger Whitlock, on Typo-L, a e-mail list about typography and use of type.

"I'm not sitting in this chair thinking I'm going to be the Tigers' manager for the next 20 years. If you get a job as a manager, you're going to get fired as a manager. Obviously, your job is to delay that as long as you can."

-- New Detroit Tigers Manager Larry Parrish, in the Detroit Free Press.

"I don't think we're put on Earth to go home at 6 o'clock and watch television, and watch somebody else do something very good. But that's what this country has become. They're living their lives through the exploits of others."

-- filmmaker and historian Bud Greespan, in a story about sports heroes in The Denver Post.

"Research does help to lift and lower the anxiety, but the cultural consenus still says that professional mothers should be home with the kids while welfare mothers should be out working -- and all of us should be wildly uneasy."

-- Ellen Goodman, columnist for The Boston Globe, writing on a study that showed mothers who work outside the home do not harm their children's social and academic development.

"When the framers conceived the office of the president, they all had George Washington in mind. They wanted in the office a person singularly devoted to carrying out the will of the people and administering government in a virtuous manner."

-- Stephen Presser, law professor at Northwestern University in the Chicago Tribune in September 1998.

Text of President Clinton's response to his acquittal in the Senate on the articles of impeachment from The Associated Press

Now that the Senate has fulfilled its constitutional responsibility, bringing this process to a conclusion, I want to say again to the American people how profoundly sorry I am for what I said and did to trigger these events and the great burden they have imposed on the Congress and the American people.

I also am humbled and very grateful for the support and the prayers I have received from millions of Americans over this past year.

Now I ask all Americans, and I hope all Americans — here in Washington and throughout our land — will rededicate ourselves to the work of serving our nation and building our future together.

This can be and this must be a time of reconciliation and renewal for America.

Thank you very much.

Q: In your heart, sir, can you forgive and forget?

Clinton: I believe any person who asks for forgiveness has to be prepared to give it.

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