More Tony

This morning, on the commute to work, I was listening to Tony Kornheiser, my favorite morning announcer. He wanted to talk about several things. He talked about why his daughter didn't watch the news, that the news is meant to scare the audience or at least make them feel uneasy. This happens a lot. Ever since news was told they needed to make money, news producers needed someway to sensationalize news, and one way to do that was to make audiences scared, and yet, in a train wreck sort of way, unable to turn their heads.

In particular, there were replays of videos from yesterday's launch of the Discovery, where bits of flotsam were seen careening off the shuttle. Such scenes were played and replayed to evoke memories of Columbia, whose debris caused a crack, and perhaps, as Tony points out, caused that shuttle mission to be doomed. With no way to repair the shuttle in space, once they re-entered, the atmosphere overheated the crack, which had become unprotected from the heat, and boom, no more Columbia (and to think, if it could have been on the ground three minutes earlier, there would be no disaster).

Tony, rightly, complained that this kind of news coverage is prevalent, and partly attributes this observation to Michael Moore, who has also levelled this kind of criticism on the media.

He then says that even Sportscenter does this kind of sensationalism. He recalls an incident where some athlete, perhaps a baseball, was hit over the head. Announcers said those sensitive to such scenes should turn their heads, and then proceeded to show this hit, Tony claims, seven times, and in slow motion. If they were so sensitive to viewer needs, why did they show it so many times? Probably because people want to see things they are told not to see. It's a morbid fascination to see harm, even when we want all to be well.

How many people were expecting to see the shuttle blow up? I mean, seriously. Weren't you? It's a horrible thought, and yet, it drew more attention to this launch than any other ordinary launch.

While Tony is discussing this replay of the hit, Andy (or maybe it's Gary...I always think it's Andy) pipes in and says "If you play it backwards, you see Joe Theismann's leg break". This is the kind of humor that shows the intelligence of sports commentators, at least, for the quick observation, and the humor.

To explain this, you have to understand that in the 70s, who seemed to cavort in lyrics involving Satanism and the like (heavy metal was essentially this, until the 80s, when these groups used their libido and sang about girls, girls, girls, instead of owing allegiance to some otherwordly demon, as an expression of teen angst) with groups like Led Zeppelin, parents believed there were obscene lyrics, which could be heard if you played the records (yes, vinyl!) backwards. Over time, people joked that all sorts of mischief could be heard playing albums backwards.

The other half of the joke only makes sense to Redskins fans, or devotees of NFL history. Theisman was the quarterback of the Redskins in its heyday. His last name is really pronounced THEESE-MUN, sort of like "cheese", not "THIGHS-MUN". The good folks at Notre Dame changed the pronunciation of his name to make it rhyme with Heisman, as in the Heisman Trophy, awarded to the best quarterback (er, player) in the country.

His career was ended when linebacker Lawrence Taylor (known as LT) hit Theisman in such a way that his leg bent unnaturally and broke. This was apparently shown on Monday Night Football, and repeated many times for fans at home to watch. Theisman's
career was effectively ended.

Then, Tony goes on to talk about how Nike wanted to pay him large sums of money to repeat his soccer-hating quotes which he's written prodigiously on over his 25 years at the Washington Post. Apparently, they'd make an ad where his voice goes over great images of soccer plays. He's made to look silly about those comments.

To his credit, Tony understands that's what the ad is for, but he claims that as a loyal member of the Washington Post, he can't accept money for ads like that. To which his cohosts discuss just when was the last time Tony wrote for the Post. Tony used to write, say, once a week, to once in two weeks. Then, with PTI, the sports show he cohosts with Michael Wilbon, and his radio show, which I was listening to, his writing has dwindled to nearly nothing.

And with his two week vacation just concluded, he hasn't written for over a month. Andy says "If Tony writes an article, and it doesn't get published, does anyone read it?". Again, it's the kind of comment that's just heady enough to qualify as genius in the sports commentary world.

This comment is a riff on "If a tree falls in the forest, and no one hears it, does it make a sound?", which itself is about observability. Heisenberg postulated the uncertainty principle which states that you can not measure momentum and position with infinite precision. The conseqeunce of that is any observation you make perturbs what's being observed.

If you want to find an atom's location precisely, you end up making it move. It has nothing to do with the lack of precision of modern day equipment, and all to do with the inherent nature of the world. Imagine the most precise measuring equipment you have, and it would still cause a perturbation, albeit a tiny one. This is supposed to explain why electrons don't fall into the nucleus.

There's also the associated Schrodinger's Cat problem where a cat is placed inside the box, and based on the decay of some radioactive atoms, poisonous gas is released. Given the probabilistic nature of this decay, without observing it, the cat is both dead and not dead, and only upon observation do we really know.

Strange stuff, quantum physics.

And that too, is why Kornheiser's show is so amazing, when the jokes lend itself to blogging material.