Checkered Past

What's all this talkabout a 4-car cap anyway?

With all possible respect due and apologies to the late Gilda Radner and her brilliant character Roseanne Roseannadanna in the early "Saturday Night Live" years, I've got to ask: What's the big deal about NASCAR's imposition of a four-car cap?

I mean, who would want one?

If I'm buying a cap at the track - assuming my personal banker and I can come up with that kind of money - I'd want it to carry the number of my favorite driver's car. Why would anyone want a cap with two, three or four car numbers on it?

Make a choice. You don't have to stick with it forever - because sponsors and car owners sure don't - but pick ONE.

And another thing ...

What's all this talk about overall winners? Dick Brooks hasn't been racing  - much less winning - for a long time. Why is anyone even bringing that up?

It's almost Thanksgiving, so ...

Since Keith Ott has already beaten the Christmas rush and submitted a NASCAR gift list in The Infield blog space, I'm making a pre-emptive strike on the Chief and our other bloggers with the ol' What I'm Thankful for this Thanksgiving effort.

It's not meant to be all-inclusive - I'm expecting some help to make it much more so - list. But if I can wrap it up pretty soon here, maybe I can be first with one.

This Thanksgiving, I'm thankful ...

That the longest season in pro sports, complete with its Chase for the Nextel Cup, has almost run its course and that the NASCAR offseason will soon be here.

That the offseason is as short as it is. (I know. I'll eat at least a couple of those words around the middle of January when preseason testing fires up at Daytona. But I figure by then we'll all be about ready to go again.)

This Thanksgiving, I'm also thankful ...

For Ricky Rudd. Anyone who shows up for work as often as Rudd has for 30 racing seasons deserves a break.

For Ricky Rudd simply announcing that the time was right for his break and not dragging it out with some kind of contrived fare-thee-well tour.

For Rusty Wallace and Mark Martin, who have elevated such season-long tours to a new level of respectability - even if Martin's turned out to be a tad premature.

For Carl Edwards, for reminding us how danged much fun someone can have with such a serious racing Jones.

For Carl Long, for reminding us how hard someone can work to feed such a serious racing Jones.

For racing rivalries, new and old. That's part of why we're interested. And, besides, it's not our driver who sucks, is it?

For flyovers that come at just the perfect point in the last stanza of the National Anthem.  And for the way the jet noise blends into danged-near perfect harmony with the roar of a race-ready crowd.

Blogs, the new scourge of business

What's the new biggest drain on the productivity of American workers and latest grave threat to the profitability of American business?

Blogs. That's right, blogs. American business is racing to ruin because of blogs, and presumably bloggers. And all this time you thought it was morale, didn't you?

But, no, it's blogs. At least that's what Bradley Johnson, writing on AdAge.com would have you believe.

U.S. workers in 2005 will waste the equivalent of 551,000 years reading blogs, Johnson says.

Here's how "bad" it is.

About 35 million workers -- one in four people in the labor force -- visit blogs and on average spend 3.5 hours, or 9%, of the work week engaged with them, according to Advertising Age's analysis. Time spent in the office on non-work blogs this year will take up the equivalent of 2.3 million jobs. Forget lunch breaks -- blog readers essentially take a daily 40-minute blog break.

Jonathan Gibs, senior research manager at Nielsen/NetRatings, told Advertising Age that at-work blog time probably is spent on top of the usual non-work web browsing we do.

“Since for the most part blog readers tend to be the most engaged readers of online content,” he told the magazine, “they do not appear, at least for now, to be sacrificing time from their favorite news sites. Instead, it looks like blog usage is in addition to existing online behavior.”

But, as the writer notes, some blogs do relate to work. How relevant they are to the employer is, as Johnson says, open to debate.

Brrrrr. Can't you just feel the chilling effect on business?

Absenteeism was the culprit at one time. Drug use on the job, too, was a villian. There was even a time when many managers truly believed in their hearts that hiring women was the easiest way to watch productivity go down the tubes.

Times change. Now, it's blogs. Gimme a break.

OK, Brad, how about this: You say office time spent on blogs equals something like 2.3 milllion jobs. I say how would that 2.3 million stack up against the number of jobs cut by those same companies that participated in Advertising Age's analysis?

You say people spend about 40 minutes each work day on blogs. I say how does that stack up against the time spend on the trivial stuff we all face every day at work?

I say this: Maybe we can we schedule a meeting on it midmorning at a corner cubicle. And we could appoint a committee. A task force, even.

Know what else I say? Blog on.