Nobody at Slate knows anything about anything, much less sports, but that doesn’t stop them from writing woolly-headed articles about it.  The most recent long-winded screed accomplishing nothing is about the fallibility of human referees, and why sports should consider more computerized judges.  Or not.  It’s hard to tell if there’s a point or not, because it’s Slate.

More specifically, the author is enamored with tennis’s Hawk-Eye system that allows for challenges to umpires’ calls.  So why don’t we do that for ALL SPORTS?

Computers… are free of hate and idiosyncrasies. So why don’t we move to the tennis model, letting a computer be the ultimate decision-maker? Sure, I’m making a slippery-slope argument, and it may seem far-fetched to think that baseball or any other team sport will let machines analyze, rather than just record, what happens on the field.

“Hey, this is ridiculous, but why don’t I write a long boring article about it anyway?  I’m getting paid by the word.  Look at me, I can perform useless thought experiments that go nowhere.”

What I’m saying is, I’d rather starve than write something for Slate.