And Don't Forget That...

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Boeheim at Syracuse: A History in Pictures

Jim Boeheim enrolled in Syracuse University as a student in 1963. He was a walk-on with the men’s basketball team his freshman year, but by his senior year he was the team captain and led the Orangemen to the team’s second-ever NCAA tournament berth. In 1969, Boeheim was hired as a graduate assistant at Syracuse and soon after was promoted to full-time assistant coach. In his first year as a full-time coach, the Orangemen went to their first Final Four appearance in 1975.
(Pic: http://www.orangehoops.org/photos/boeheim_player.jpg)

Jim Boeheim was named head coach of the Syracuse University Basketball team in 1976 after his predecessor, Roy Danforth, left. He was chosen only as a last resort after an exhaustive search of outside candidates proved fruitless. The university's "decision" to hire him turned out to be perhaps the best move in the program's history
(Pic: media.collegepublisher.com/media/paper522/stills/8n54uj3n.jpg)

In the late 70's and through the 80's, Boeheim built Syracuse Basketball into a national powerhouse. Bolstered by his masterful recruiting of such greats like Pearl Washington (above), Louis Orr and Billy Owens, Syracuse reached 7 Sweet Sixteens, 3 Elite Eights and 2 Final Fours from 1977-1990. An intense rivalry was spawned in the 80's with Georgetown University, lead by talents like Patrick Ewing, and provided some of that decade's most memorable battles.

(Pic: http://hoopedia.nba.com/images/3/3b/Boeheimpearl.jpg)

After losing the title game to Indiana in 1987 and Kentucky in 1996, Jim Boeheim finally lead Syracuse to the school's first basketball championship. The Orangemen defeated the University of Kansas 81-78, lead by superstar freshmen Carmelo Anthony and Gerry McNamara.
(Pic: http://espn.go.com/media/ncb/2003/0407/photo/a_boenheim_i.jpg)

On September 9, 2005, Boeheim was recognized for his achievements as a head coach and was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame. Boeheim was inducted alongside his rival Coach Jim Calhoun (UCONN) and former NBA coach and current broadcaster Hubie Brown. It was Boeheim's first time on the ballot.

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Jim Boeheim has been one of the most successful coaches in basketball history. He has never had a losing season in his 31 years coaching the Orange, and earned bids to the postseason in all but one. In his career, he has led Syracuse to 25 trips into the NCAA Tournament, with Final Four appearances in 1987, 1996 and 2003, winning the title in 2003. He is the fifth active coach to reach 1,000 games, 21st on the all-time Division I games coached list and is one of only six coaches who have reached 1,000 games with one school. He owns a career record of 750-264 and is ranked seventh among active Division I coaches in winning percentage and tied for fourth in victories. In addition, he also led the young men's USA Basketball squad to a gold medal in the 2001 World Championships.

Comparing Historical Websites

Historical websites present different ways of examining the past. Whether the site is for an academic writing a thesis or a sixth-grader trying to learn how to parse through a primary source, there are myriad sites that serve any of your research needs. The most effective way to understand these different approaches is to look at the sites themselves.

The first website I examined was The Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War. The site tells the story of the Civil War through the eyes of people from a county in the North and from one in the South. The events are told almost completely through primary sources such as town records and newspapers. I found this to be a phenomenal site for studying history. The breadth of information is simply astounding, as the site contains a massive archive of primary sources; and the obscurity of some of those sources is amazing.

Also, the site's aesthetics are alternately efficient and pleasing. The home page, for example, is looks great as it has a large, nice-looking graphic that is clickable, coupled with a well-written introduction outlining the purpose of the site. Then, when the graphic is clicked, it takes you to the site’s main page. The main page is not very attractive to the eye, but it is very efficient as the construction of the clickable graphic is almost an interactive sitemap whose links are clearly defined. This graphic made the navigation of the site very easy, as you can jump to specific pages on the site very quickly. Overall, this site is a very good one for academics and novices alike, as it gives the experienced scholar a myriad of primary sources and gives the amateur a nice immersion into historical research.

The second site I reviewed was Do History. This site was all about teaching and instruction under the guise of studying the life of Martha Ballard, a woman who lived primarily in the 18^th century. The purpose of the site is to teach inexperienced scholars how to research history with a heavy focus on how to utilize primary sources. The site uses Martha Ballard’s diary as its primary source, and it shows the visitor how to navigate through the diary to find specific dates or specific information or events. The site even goes so far as to have a page just for teachers, telling them how to incorporate the site into their lesson plans, so it is clear that this site is meant for educational purposes. Though it is not as easy to navigate as the Valley of the Shadow, it excels at its true goal, which is to teach young students.

The third website I looked at was the National Museum of American History. This website serves its purpose exceptionally well. Obviously, the flashy layout of the home page shows that the purpose of this site is to get people to come to the museum or to donate money. The site lacks any in depth information about historical events, only detailing them when explaining an exhibit. Once it is understood that the site is not for any academic research and has no scholarly intent, it can be a very useful tool to attract people who are not well versed in history into a museum.

The fourth website reviewed was the History Channel’s. This website, for all intents and purposes, is one big commercial advertisement. Upon opening the homepage, the first things you see are ads for upcoming shows and for products to buy (namely shows on DVD). It is clear from just the homepage that that the site is simply promoting the channel itself, just like any smart business that is trying to promote a product will do. In addition, the fact that there is an entire section for games, which include Human Weapon and Shootout!, proves that fact that the site exists solely to make money for the company.

Why Hallmark, Hershey's and Godiva Love You

The history of Valentines Day is about as disputed as the reason for why we still celebrate it today. To this day, the actual roots of the holiday are still very vague, no doubt beginning with some religious saint or martyr yet inevitably transformed into a way for Hallmark and Godiva to boost earnings reports. Nonetheless, whatever its reason for existence, it is still a significant day to millions of people around the world.
Originally, there were several different individuals named Valentine who were martyred in the first few centuries A.D. However the martyr named Valentine of Rome is the one most commonly believed to be the source of the holiday. According to legend, Valentine sent the first valentine himself. At the time, Emperor Claudius outlawed marriage because he felt that men were better soldiers when single. Of course, Valentine, the courageous, passionate type who women adore, loved a woman so much that he had to get married. Because of this, he was sent to jail. While in prison, Valentine fell in love with a young girl and before he died, he wrote her a letter, which he signed 'From your Valentine.’
This story, which is straight out of a Danielle Steele novel, has been responsible for billions of dollars spent, yet at first, the holiday was celebrated in a much different way. Originally, it was a religious festival of purification and fertility. To begin the festival, members of an order of Roman priests, would gather at the sacred cave and then sacrifice a goat, for fertility, and a dog, for purification. They then sliced the goat's hide into strips, dipped them in the sacrificial blood and took to the streets, gently slapping both women and fields of crops with the strips. Roman women believed the strips would make them more fertile in the coming year. Next, all the young women in the city would place their names in a big urn. The city's bachelors would then each choose a name out of the urn and become paired for the year with his chosen woman.
How these festivities eventually turned into a goldmine for card and flower companies is a testament to capitalism, as ceremonies for bearing children were transformed into Cupid shooting love arrows and men bustling about for dinner reservations and that last batch of decent looking rose bouquets left.

Historical Website Evaluation

History websites are often created to serve different purposes. Some just are there for the advertising revenue, like the History Channel; some are incredibly scholarly like the Valley of the Shadow. Whatever the purpose is, examining and understanding the various layers and facets of a website is essential when using them for actual research. Because certain websites are crafted for certain audiences, they often lack the breadth of information or the academic credibility that research calls for. This is not to say that a history website is instantly discredited if it is not erudite enough; it is simply saying that different sites have different uses.

So, taking all of that into account, the website I chose to evaluate is called “Digital History” and its address is www.digitalhistory.uh.edu. This website is a collaborative effort primarily between the University of Houston and a few historical institutes.

First of all, glancing at the home page, one gets the impression that the site is not for the most academic scholars. The home page is filled with pictures and nicely toned colors that give that convey the fact that the site may be more for students. Judging by the fact that it is actually conceived and run by a University, that notion becomes more plausible.

The pictures that compose the main frame of the home page are all actually links. For the most part, the links direct you to a series of readings about a particular event or time period in American history. However, there are a couple links that send the viewer to more interesting pages. For example, when the timeline link is clicked, it brings you to an interactive map of the United States, and dragging a cursor along a timeline brings up small colored dots on the map that represent a particular event.

Perhaps the most interesting link is the picture that says multimedia on it. The page that it directs to contains a series of links to interactive and multimedia resources. For example, there is a flash movie that gives an overview of American History. Perhaps the most intriguing and fun for the user is the currently in construction “Time Machine.” When this link is clicked, it takes you to a television that you turn on with the cursor and can then choose what time to go back to. The T.V. apparently will then show pictures or a movie depending on the time you go to. This feature is unlike any other that we have looked at in class or that I have examined while picking a site to evaluate. Its uniqueness and usability set it apart from other multimedia features that other sites may have.

The actual content of the site is more intellectual than I originally anticipated based on the content of the home page and multimedia section. Not to say that the information on the site is meant for the American Historical Review, but it is certainly above the heads of most middle schoolers and younger aged high schoolers. In addition to advanced writings, the primary documents provided include historical newspapers and audio and video of speeches. There is even a message on the reference page stating that all of the articles are endorsed by professional historians, which lends credibility to the site.

Digital History offers a great learning tool for high school students. Its content is advanced enough to give it integrity and authority yet is not scholarly to the point that the common history students would be overwhelmed exploring the site. Its use of multimedia resources, user-friendliness and vast reference section make it a very useful research tool and a respectable history website.

Tracking Blogs: The Big Lead

(Pic: Screen Grab courtesy of Street and Smith's Sports Business Daily, http://www.sportsbusinessdaily.com/article/119240)

For the assignment, I chose to follow the blog “The Big Lead,” located at www.thebiglead.com. It covers sports predominately, but it incorporates elements of popular culture such as music, movies and politics into its postings as well. The blog is run by co-creator and primary writer/editor Jason McIntyre who manages the site from h.is Brooklyn home.

This blog is easily my favorite on the internet. Like many blogs, the stories are written in a very sardonic tone, often making fun of athletes and entertainers after reporting the news about them. But the difference is between the Lead and those sites is that the Lead has writers that offer up detailed and informative analysis of sports that is insightful, whereas most other sites simply rely on lampooning the athlete or situation.

The vast majority of the postings disseminate the breaking sports news of the day.The blog typically has around ten postings, breaking the news of the day or touching upon interesting topics that are floating around the sports world. At noon and in the late afternoon daily, they do the “AM and PM Roundups.” These are a collection of about a dozen links to videos, stories on different sites and other assorted items. The roundups almost always have a picture of an attractive model or actress at the top of the post followed by the links. The roundup is great, as it is a quick recap of all the things a sports fan would have to need to know to stay on top of the events of day.

This a a great site to visit for any dedicated sports fan . It is very well written, and it provides excellent analysis on almost every sport and other topics ranging from the primaries to media coverage to T.V. shows like The Wire (as evidenced by their 2008 Culture Bracket where they asked readers to rank current events and personalities). As an aspiring journalist who is fascinated by media coverage and the reasons for why the media covers certain events the way it does, I feel that the site is so interesting because it understand its demographics and always chooses the right posts for its readership. If you love sports and witty writing, then you should go visit the Big Lead immediately.

(Updated March 15th, to include the name and residence of the editor, as Mr. McIntyre revealed his identity on March 13th)