Links for 2010-03-04
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… explain so well the emphasis on 3YOs. "Even without the UAE Derby, purses for graded prep races in the U.S. will be worth $11-million this year, a 32.3% increase from a decade ago. Deflated total purses in North America declined 13.6 % from 2000 to '09."
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The gamesmanship continues.
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"Lately, I’ve found the cathartic returns from blog-format writing to be diminishing." A problem with blogging unlike any other form.
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Key point: "… we must first stop demonizing aggregation." Learn from what online start-ups/aggregators are doing to help re-invent the newsroom. "The specific model that you employ will be as unique as the particular community that you [cover]."
Links for 2010-03-02
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"None of this is meant to conclude that Blind Luck would win the Kentucky Derby. In what is always a very tough, very demanding race, she well could get trounced. Yet, doesn't she deserve a chance to show what she can do? Whether it's Blind Luck or any other star female, fillies ought to run against colts more often than they do."
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CJR surveys 665 magazines about web site practices. Selected findings: "Magazine Web sites are most likely to be profitable when budget decisions are made by the publisher or an independent Web editor." (In other words, when sites are overseen by people without a vested interest in maintaining print dominance.) "Despite the fact that two-thirds of respondents’ staff are expected to work on the Web at least some of the time, only 26 percent of those staffers were hired with Web experience." (That's just depressing.) Much handwringing about "traditional standards" in decline, but it seems a fundamental error to assume print practices are best practices online.
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"We were all so, so stupid…. The thesis of the piece was that Ebert's work was suffering because he was on television all the time, but that's not really what it was about: It was me lashing out at Daddy, trying to make my own name, trying to feed off his. That's not what I thought I was doing at the time. But that's absolutely what it was."
Links for 2010-02-27
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Hm … "Zayat freely acknowledges that he is a big bettor, but he says that the $605,000 is not owed to him from wagering. He said he had lent money to the Jelinksys because he had known their father."
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"… the key is not going to be to create distinct destinations organized around topics, but to find ways in which content can be surfaced in context, regardless of where it resides." Danah Boyd on production, consumption, and flow in the networked era.
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"Although there is no perfect statistical measurement for evaluating sires, I believe I've come up with a short list of stallions who are better at consistently siring the most successful synthetic performers than those who top the progeny earnings list for synthetic runners." Useful!
Links for 2010-02-23
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Of the 38 races run over Meydan's Tapeta track, only three have been won by front-runners, four by pressers, nine by trackers, etc. Add it up and, "… 58 percent of this season's Meydan synthetic winners — 22 of 38 — have been closers." Quite different from what one jockey expected prior to Meydan's opening: "Horses coming up from behind will find it very difficult so it’s going to suit horses that like racing up in the first five."
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Very interesting app for visualizing chart data (API to come).
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Exhibit review: “As are many of Corio’s paintings, this one is named for a thoroughbred race horse, and according to gallery information the arrangement of colors is derived from the artist’s analysis of results at the Belmont and Aqueduct tracks. Whatever. All you really need to know is right before your eyes.” Racing rendered in geometric abstraction: View all the paintings on the artist’s site. The piece titled “Casino Drive” draws the gaze as much as the horse himself did during the 2008 Triple Crown season.
Links for 2010-02-20
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On Denman and Kauto Star at Cheltenham. "As with all seductions, however, the more pulsating the anticipation, the greater the potential for disillusion. It's no good for racing to hitch up its skirts so provocatively, if it turns out that a couple of oranges have been tucked into its bra."
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Bright side: Less competition from the Rail during the Triple Crown season.
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Compare any two terms used on Twitter, such as Zenyatta (legendary, beautiful), Rachel Alexandra (fast, perfect). [View spectrum graphic.]
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Jessica Chapel is a writer, editor, and web producer living in Cambridge, MA. Railbird is a thoroughbred horse racing blog published continuously since June 2004. More ›
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