Vince on Front Page

[HowardRoark]

I am going to make this its own thread so that Joe sees it……

I think that you should give Vince a corner of the front page with which he may do whatever he pleases. The guy seemingly has more Packer history knowledge (and data) than 99.99% of Packer fans out there; he has copies of love letters from Curly to his wife for crying out loud (I fear what he may have on me). His cache of data makes Julian Assange look like a cloistered monk on a deserted mountain top.

[Joe]

I am going to make this its own thread so that Joe sees it……

I think that you should give Vince a corner of the front page with which he may do whatever he pleases. The guy seemingly has more Packer history knowledge (and data) than 99.99% of Packer fans out there; he has copies of love letters from Curly to his wife for crying out loud (I fear what he may have on me). His cache of data makes Julian Assange look like a cloistered monk on a deserted mountain top.

Joe has already offered Vince a blog, and Vince has accepted.

I have been trying to figure out how to get him rights to "promote articles" but the feature isn't working right. I have on my list of things to do, over the weekend, to experiment with a few different things to get him up and running.

Great idea, Howard!

Send any other ideas for blog writers, or front page writers to me via PM. I'm looking for ideas!

[Fritz]

Hell, I'd love to see KYPack (where is that old coot, anyway?) get a chance to share his knowledge on a blog. That guy has loads of insight - I think he was an old ST coach - and I'd love to see a blog about ST's. Imagine the detail we could get, the insight, instead of JSO's generalizations.

[Little Whiskey]

Zig, bretsky and Nutz all had articles that i look forward to reading every week.

[superfan]

I also support vince on the front page. And Cleft Crusty needs his own special corner, if he can figure out the technical aspects of it. Cleft is possibly the best feature "writer" on any forum site, ever.

BTW, nice avatar Roark. That was an excellent movie.

[Guiness]

Hell, I'd love to see KYPack (where is that old coot, anyway?) get a chance to share his knowledge on a blog. That guy has loads of insight - I think he was an old ST coach - and I'd love to see a blog about ST's. Imagine the detail we could get, the insight, instead of JSO's generalizations.

Generalizations? You're too kind. Blather is closer to accurate for what they spew out under the guise of analysis.

I read maybe 10% of what I used to on so-called news sites, since this place started up. Only thing I go to them anymore is to get a general idea of what's going on around the other league and injury updates from other teams.

[vince]

There are a bunch of blog-worthy posts/posters here - too many to name IMO.

Once it gets started and people start using Twitter/Facebook to link articles/blogs from here, I think we'll see this place come out from obscurity over time - which I'm not sure is a good thing. I kind of like the semi-controlled environment we enjoy here where there's a preponderance of quality posts and the idiocy is kept to a minimum without a need for much moderation.

[swede]

There are a bunch of blog-worthy posts/posters here - too many to name IMO.

Once it gets started and people start using Twitter/Facebook to link articles/blogs from here, I think we'll see this place come out from obscurity over time - which I'm not sure is a good thing. I kind of like the semi-controlled environment we enjoy here where there's a preponderance of quality posts and the idiocy is kept to a minimum without a need for much moderation.

swede's efforts notwithstanding...

[HowardRoark]

BTW, nice avatar Roark. That was an excellent movie.

Best movie I have seen in the last 10 years.....if not more.......


May 23, 2007 12:00 A.M.

William F. Buckley

Great Lives


I return from one week’s leave from my column, grateful for my old roost and in the mood to repay a favor by granting one, or attempting to do so. You must have the narrative of what happened one day last week.


I was at work, with an assistant, on a long project, a book about the Goldwater campaign and the events leading up to it. At noon I had an e-mail from my oldest friend, a historian-belletrist, a knighted Englishman, whose message was that I must interrupt whatever I was wasting time on in order to catch a particular movie. The title he gave me was The Lives of Others. My companion hadn’t heard of it either. Still, so urgent was my friend’s recommendation that we instructed Google to advise us where, within reasonable reach, we could find it.

We were given one theater 15 miles east of my study, at an odd hour of the evening. But west about the same distance was a matinee at 4:15. So we threw duty to the winds and arrived at the theater in Mamaroneck, New York, which like most modern theaters husbands five different movies, requiring you to specify which it is you are there to see.

We were ushered into a dark chamber entirely empty. The ticket seller told us that if we had arrived two minutes later, the theater would have been shut. “If there’s no one here, we don’t show the film.”

Two hours and twenty minutes later we came away. The house was still empty. I turned to my companion and said, “I think that is the best movie I ever saw.” He is only 23 years old, but he nodded his agreement.

The movie is German, and in German. There is a prejudice, perhaps understandable, against going to see a movie made in a foreign language. But good subtitle writers capture your mind and heart early in the engagement, and after ten minutes you are as if tuned into your native language. This is so of this German film, which depicts life in Berlin in 1984 under the famous Stasi, who were ten times as numerous as their brother Gestapo had been.

The watchword of the Stasi was information. They would use all their powers, which were plenary, to press their totalitarian thumb down on any expression of life in East Germany. In this case, they had their eye on a playwright who sought to write about the way he and his fellow East Germans lived. To effect their surveillance the Stasi used the most rudimentary tool of social highwaymanry, the listening device. The writer is away from his lair for a day, and no fewer than eight technicians swoop down on his apartment, from which moment there is not a private swallow in the life of the author and his lady and his friends.

Omnipresent in the film is the Stasi officer who is listening to it all, turning the device over to a coadjutor every eight hours, together with notes about the conversations he has overheard during his watch. And then, and then, there is a trickle of humanity, which quickly turns the drama into three parts, Stasi vs. German humankind vs. Stasi. The tension mounts to heart-stopping pitch and I felt the impulse to rush out into the street and drag passersby in to watch the story unfold.

The principal players are captivating, especially the main Stasi officer, who, without a change in aspect of his dour countenance, undergoes this convulsion of the soul, which permits the author life, though without his martyred lady. There is then the sublime vengeance of a published book’s dedication to the redemptive German functionary who briefly interrupted hell in East Germany, pending, finally, the eradication of the terrible Berlin Wall.

I looked at the record and was gratified to find, in the critics’ files, encomiums absolutely unconfined in their admiration of this movie, which in fact won the Academy Award for Best Foreign-Language Film. And I was unsurprised to find that what seems the whole of East Germany is riven by its impact. Since so many East Germans were complicit in the postwar reign of the German Democratic Republic, there is a corporate national shame at the betrayal of life, as so brazenly done by so many millions, but whose country, at least, has given the world this holy vessel of expiation.

© Universal Press Syndicate

[Little Whiskey]

I would also suggest that Madtown get his own blog. maybe he can tell us the finer points about raking leaves or picking veggies. some might find that useful.

[HowardRoark]

Partial and Ty could be guest bloggers on technolgy purchases.

[Fritz]

Generalizations? You're too kind. Blather is closer to accurate for what they spew out under the guise of analysis.

I read maybe 10% of what I used to on so-called news sites, since this place started up. Only thing I go to them anymore is to get a general idea of what's going on around the other league and injury updates from other teams.

Well, I tempered my language because I'd just read a JSO blog post in which the writer actually put together a chart showing the turnover on ST due to injuries, and the writer suggested this could be having an effect on the ST play.

For the JSO, I count that as in depth analysis.

[denverYooper]

Partial and Ty could be guest bloggers on technolgy purchases.

They could do a point-counterpoint-type feature.

[vince]

How about a Skinbasket and Zool weekly podcast? Audio only will suffice Skin.

[OS PA]

Where's Waldo?

[Joemailman]

Where's Waldo?

He's in there.

http://images2.layoutsparks.com/1/107601/wheres-waldo-abstract-image.jpg

[MJZiggy]

He's in there.

http://images2.layoutsparks.com/1/107601/wheres-waldo-abstract-image.jpg

How am I supposed to find him in there if I don't know what he looks like?

[MJZiggy]

By the way, I agree with Howard on this one. Vince was cool to work with and can write a mean story (did some very good editing on an early M3 piece I did as well). Some days I wish I had a copy of the old homepage...

[Guiness]

By the way, I agree with Howard on this one. Vince was cool to work with and can write a mean story (did some very good editing on an early M3 piece I did as well). Some days I wish I had a copy of the old homepage...

Have a peek at the wayback machine - most of the front pages from 06-07 are there.

http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.packerrats.com

Started looking at some of them, and came across this one - http://web.archive.org/web/20070625155021/http://www.packerrats.com/ heck of a retrospective.

[MJZiggy]

Have a peek at the wayback machine - most of the front pages from 06-07 are there.

http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.packerrats.com

Started looking at some of them, and came across this one - http://web.archive.org/web/20070625155021/http://www.packerrats.com/ heck of a retrospective.
That. Is. Awesome!

[mmmdk]

Best movie I have seen in the last 10 years.....if not more.......


May 23, 2007 12:00 A.M.

William F. Buckley

Great Lives


I return from one week’s leave from my column, grateful for my old roost and in the mood to repay a favor by granting one, or attempting to do so. You must have the narrative of what happened one day last week.


I was at work, with an assistant, on a long project, a book about the Goldwater campaign and the events leading up to it. At noon I had an e-mail from my oldest friend, a historian-belletrist, a knighted Englishman, whose message was that I must interrupt whatever I was wasting time on in order to catch a particular movie. The title he gave me was The Lives of Others. My companion hadn’t heard of it either. Still, so urgent was my friend’s recommendation that we instructed Google to advise us where, within reasonable reach, we could find it.

We were given one theater 15 miles east of my study, at an odd hour of the evening. But west about the same distance was a matinee at 4:15. So we threw duty to the winds and arrived at the theater in Mamaroneck, New York, which like most modern theaters husbands five different movies, requiring you to specify which it is you are there to see.

We were ushered into a dark chamber entirely empty. The ticket seller told us that if we had arrived two minutes later, the theater would have been shut. “If there’s no one here, we don’t show the film.”

Two hours and twenty minutes later we came away. The house was still empty. I turned to my companion and said, “I think that is the best movie I ever saw.” He is only 23 years old, but he nodded his agreement.

The movie is German, and in German. There is a prejudice, perhaps understandable, against going to see a movie made in a foreign language. But good subtitle writers capture your mind and heart early in the engagement, and after ten minutes you are as if tuned into your native language. This is so of this German film, which depicts life in Berlin in 1984 under the famous Stasi, who were ten times as numerous as their brother Gestapo had been.

The watchword of the Stasi was information. They would use all their powers, which were plenary, to press their totalitarian thumb down on any expression of life in East Germany. In this case, they had their eye on a playwright who sought to write about the way he and his fellow East Germans lived. To effect their surveillance the Stasi used the most rudimentary tool of social highwaymanry, the listening device. The writer is away from his lair for a day, and no fewer than eight technicians swoop down on his apartment, from which moment there is not a private swallow in the life of the author and his lady and his friends.

Omnipresent in the film is the Stasi officer who is listening to it all, turning the device over to a coadjutor every eight hours, together with notes about the conversations he has overheard during his watch. And then, and then, there is a trickle of humanity, which quickly turns the drama into three parts, Stasi vs. German humankind vs. Stasi. The tension mounts to heart-stopping pitch and I felt the impulse to rush out into the street and drag passersby in to watch the story unfold.

The principal players are captivating, especially the main Stasi officer, who, without a change in aspect of his dour countenance, undergoes this convulsion of the soul, which permits the author life, though without his martyred lady. There is then the sublime vengeance of a published book’s dedication to the redemptive German functionary who briefly interrupted hell in East Germany, pending, finally, the eradication of the terrible Berlin Wall.

I looked at the record and was gratified to find, in the critics’ files, encomiums absolutely unconfined in their admiration of this movie, which in fact won the Academy Award for Best Foreign-Language Film. And I was unsurprised to find that what seems the whole of East Germany is riven by its impact. Since so many East Germans were complicit in the postwar reign of the German Democratic Republic, there is a corporate national shame at the betrayal of life, as so brazenly done by so many millions, but whose country, at least, has given the world this holy vessel of expiation.

© Universal Press Syndicate

'Das leben der anderen' is a masterpiece - a personal top 10 movie of mine from last decade. What's your German connection anyway? Also, though a very different movie, try 'Lola rennt'. Or director Michael Haneke movies are huge in my book too; 'Caché' or 'Das weisse band'.