Friday, November 16, 2007

The unaccounted dates

The following list of dates are the ones that an inhistoric article haven't been written for, and if you really want to contribute, they're the ones to tackle.

January 13th
January 14th
January 15th
January 17th
January 21st
January 22nd
January 23rd
January 24th
January 26th
January 27th
January 28th
January 29th
January 30th
January 31st

February 4th
February 5th
February 7th
February 8th
February 10th
February 11th
February 12th
February 15th
February 16th
February 17th
February 18th
February 19th
February 20th
February 21st
February 23rd
February 25th
February 27th
February 28th

March 1st
March 3rd
March 4th
March 5th
March 6th
March 7th
March 8th
March 9th
March 10th
March 13th
March 15th
March 17th
March 18th
March 19th
March 20th
March 22nd
March 23rd
March 25th
March 27th
March 29th
March 30th

April 2nd
April 3rd
April 5th
April 6th
April 7th
April 9th
April 11th
April 12th
April 13th
April 14th
April 16th
April 22nd
April 27th
April 28th

May 1st
May 2nd
May 3rd
May 4th
May 6th
May 7th
May 9th
May 11th
May 12th
May 13th
May 15th
May 16th
May 18th
May 19th
May 20th
May 21st
May 24th
May 25th
May 27th
May 28th
May 29th

June 5th
June 6th
June 7th
June 8th
June 12th
June 15th
June 20th
June 21st
June 22nd
June 23rd
June 24th
June 27th
June 28th
June 30th

July 5th
July 6th
July 8th
July 11th
July 13th
July 15th
July 16th
July 22nd
July 26th
July 29th

August 6th
August 8th
August 10th
August 11th
August 13th
August 14th
August 25th
August 26th
August 28th
August 29th
August 30th

September 2nd
September 3rd
September 4th
September 6th
September 14th
September 15th
September 16th
September 17th

October 2nd
October 3rd
October 4th
October 9th
October 10th
October 13th
October 17th
October 18th
October 20th
October 21st
October 27th
October 29th

November 2nd
November 3rd
November 5th
November 7th
November 8th
November 11th
November 12th
November 13th
November 20th
November 21st
November 22nd
November 24th
November 26th
November 27th
November 28th
November 29th
November 30th

December 4th
December 5th
December 11th
December 13th
December 21st
December 24th
December 25th
December 26th
December 27th
December 28th
December 30th

Got a long way to go

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Sunday, November 11, 2007

An Antiquated Debate

Sports stuff coming soon, until then here's some rambling that's on my mind.
The theme of the '07-08 presidential primary debates was supposedly technological innovation. TIME had named us, the Internet user, the person of the year. These debates followed suit and integrated themselves with YouTube, there were more and more debates with young people to connect with the Internet demographic, and there was a debate at a college every other day. But while the locations and the methods of these debates have changed considerably, the debates themselves have remained virtually the same.

This is a problem because these debates absolutely suck.

The most glaring issue, for me at least, is a lack of objectivity. Every candidate should get equal representation during the debate, and if you've watched any of these face-offs you know that is simply not the case. In the Democratic debates, all the attention went to Hillary Clinton. Not only was she asked the most questions, other candidates were then asked about her during their answer time. And making matters worse, some candidates like Mike Gravel weren't even asked the same number of questions as Clinton.

The Republican debates also had a focus point in Rudy Giuliani, though theirs was a bit more inclusive than the Democrats'. It was in these that a lack of political partisanship again reared its ugly head. NBC stopped airing reruns of Law and Order that featured Fred Thompson so that there would be equal coverage among the candidates. Yet when the debates ended, the first people interviewed were Rudy Giuliani, John McCain (before he lost all his support), and Fred Thompson. They were interviewed about their performances as though they were LeBron James going into halftime of a basketball game. And then the following days and weeks were solely spent talking about either Giuliani and Thompson or Hillary and Obama. There was nothing equal about it.

Then there's the debates themselves, which do a disservice to the word 'debate'. Rather than actually arguing an issue, one candidate is asked a question that ultimately equates to: "What do you think of this?" AIDS are an issue in Africa, What do you think of this? There's corruption in the White House, What do you think of this? The questions asked in these debates demand the simplest most straightforward answers possible: "AIDS is a problem, we need to work on that." "There's corruption in politics, we need to work on that." "Poverty is a problem, we need to work on that." etc. etc.

It's a raise-your-hand-if-that's-bad system that never actually divulges a candidate's real stance on an issue. What they should really do is put all eight or so candidates in a board room, away from a studio audience, and have them thoroughly discuss an issue the same they would in real life. That way you would actually hear how they plan to reduce poverty rather than just saying it's a problem.

In the end, these debates are less an actual polling of the candidates and more an attempt at getting a glorified interview with Hillary and Giuliani. I can't imagine that people can base their political opinions around these debates. But maybe I'm just carping on a naturally flawed system. When image is everything and the goal is to avoid saying something crippling like macaca, rather than trying to say something inspiring and meaningful, a debate where nothing at all gets said should only be expected.

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Thursday, November 1, 2007

Contribute

Cataloging all that is sports history is a daunting task that one person alone cannot accomplish. Here are some things you can do to help out the site.

1. Provide article suggestions/write them yourself:
If I'm forgetting some massively important date in history, like Wilt Chamberlain scoring 100 points in a game, please point it out so that it can be documented.

However consider that it was probably omitted because I have no interest in writing about the subject. I am not much of an NHL or NASCAR fan, so some major dates are going to slip through the cracks. If you write an article about the subject yourself, and post it on this comment page so it can be used on the site, your name will be credited as will a link to your website/myspace/whatever. Note that I'll have the final say on what you write. If you're recount of the Super Bowl says, "Thank god those jackass Bears and their crappy quarterback lost," it probably won't show up.

Here's a list of the dates without an article for them.

2. Upload videos/torrents:
The whole reason any of us follow sports is to see the games. And reading about some awesome triple-overtime classic isn't right when there isn't any way to actually see that the game. So if you're sitting on a VHS of the Ice Bowl or just a three minute clip of Babe Ruth hitting his final home run, feel free to bring it to the masses.

The NBA is really good with YouTube content, so you should just upload old games to YouTube if you can. But the NFL and MLB ask for their content to be instantly pulled. Therefor, I recommend doing one of two things. If it's a small clip, do something subtle like change the background music so that it can be seen as a parody or remix (otherwise just upload pictures of it). For games, make a torrent out of it.

It'd be great if every single game mentioned had a video or torrent to go with it. Go to TYT 2.0 for football, dakaBT for basketball.

3. Upload photos:
Assuming footage can't be found, I'd really appreciate a picture (preferably 400 px wide) of the following:

3/16/2003 - Ricky Davis' not so triple-double
3/19/2006 - Anthony Bowie's triple double
4/06/1987 - Al Campanis’ Nightline interview (video requested)
5/17/1979 - Phillies beat the Cubs 23-22 in shootout
6/17/1999 - Carlos Perez attacks a water cooler
8/10/1995 - At "Ball Day," Dodger fans force team to forfeit
9/07/1993 - Mark Whiten hits 4 home runs, gets 12 RBI
10/24/1971 - Chuck Hughes dies during football game
11/01/1946 - The first NBA game
11/10/1997 - A fan shoots off a flare gun on MNF

Also, if you have a better image than the one representing an article, again provide it.

4. Other: If you spot a dead link, removed video, or missing photo, or if you want to express your undying admiration or exchange links, feel free to write the email address at the top of the page.

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What is InHistoric?

This website is a day-by-day reference of everything that happened on this day in sports history. From the greatest games of all time to the controversies and esoteric mistakes, you get to expand your sports knowledge, one day at a time.

There are several sports history sites out there, but none of them are very thorough. They just list events in a paragraph or sentence. InHistoric aims to provide how a game or trade or whatever happened, what preceded it, and what happened later.

The goal is to get at least one corresponding article for every day of the year on the day it happened. But there are a lot of days in the year, and your help would be greatly appreciated.

Click on the "Jan. 1 - Dec. 31" dropdown list on the right side of the page to see what happened on what day of the year.

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