beatleadam's Journal: So where is Slashdot heading really?

I am not new to Slashdot.

Matter of fact, I have been reading Slashdot for over six years. While this is not the begining of the site itself, it is long enough to understand the group of people who read, post and contribute on this site. With that said, I would like to take this Journal opportunity to ponder where Slashdot is heading.

Of late, I have been submitting quite a few stories and some of them have even been posted. But one story in particular really provoked me to write this little Journal entry and that was The Physics of Baseball. I would recommend taking a look at it to get the gist and to perhaps better understand where I am heading in this post. Suffice it to say, I, being a geeky Slashdot reader, find physics, math and even statistics extrodinarily interesting. While this is not out of the ordinary, I also failed to mention that I find baseball, yes a BALL SPORT, hyper-interesting as well and that is where the challenge truly begins.

Here is a snippet of the text of the article. "After seeing Randy Johnson of the Arizona Diamondbacks pitch a perfect game, I searched Slashdot in the hopes of reading more about what the Slashdot readers thought of this feat of athleticism and science and to learn more about the physics of baseball. As nothing was posted, I submit for your viewing pleasure a "course" in the Physics of Baseball and the subtle science that is pitching."

Now...do you see where I am heading here?

While I fully understand that Slashdot is not a sports news source and that the readers really do not even like sports (again ball sports), I purposely wrote (you could say "spun" actually) the wording to include interesting and relevant topics that the Slashdot readers would want to read and learn more about if not comment upon. Yet these (below) are a small sampling of reponses that were aimed at the author:

Re:Author of article is an id10t.

Thought about it and the ball could be accelerating as a curve ball accelerates off of its linear trajectory.

Still, author is an id10t.

Re:Author of article is an id10t. Crap!!! I just undid all the good moderation by me by posting the above... BAH!!!

Re:Eh ? Whatever wanker is moderating today needs his head examined. Look at the original post. Look at my post. Is it just possible I might be making a valid point. The original post has absolutely no reason to be put up on Slashdot.

Now let me personally add something here. First of all I am not posting these comments because I am upset, angry or anything else of the like. You will further see this is true as I removed the names, time/day and even the scores to show the text or thoughts of the Slashdotters who replied.

I submitted this story because I found it interesting, thought that the Slashdot readers would also find it interesting and wanted to learn more about the science behind such an amazing performance. Does this not fit the stated purpose or goals of Slashdot, that being "News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters"? It does. However you slice or dice it, it does.

Perhaps it is time to ponder or even realize that as we all get older, learn more, and get wiser (hopefully) our areas of interest should expand as hopefully our minds do as well and that when something different or even foreign is shown or given to you, you should savor the ability to learn even one new thing or concept and thank the person (or web site) that taught it to you.

Step out of the self-created world that you have placed yourselves in and Look Around!