The light is obviously coming back now. A week into February places us as far from the longest night as almost Halloween. The leap from Yule to winter fest has been made. Once the Super Bowl is over, the sports of 2009 finally give way to those of 2010. Because no one watches NHL before New Year's Eve, right? Hockey really has four seasons: pre-season, no one is watching season, the lead up to playoff season and playoff season.
What are your plans for February? Watching it flee is mine. Go Latvia! Screw you Estonia!!! There, I am ready for the Olympics.
We are generally clever, we humans. We figure things out by what we see about us. But there are two problems - what we haven't seen yet and what that we make decisions without considering what we haven't seen yet. Consider this:
...in recent months at a clinic in Liège, Belgium, the patient, now 29, showed traces of brain activity in response to commands from doctors. Now, according to a new report, he has begun to communicate: in response to simple questions, like “Do you have any brothers?,” he showed distinct traces of activity on a brain imaging machine that represented either “yes” or “no.” Experts said Wednesday that the finding could alter the way some severe head injuries were diagnosed — and could raise troubling ethical questions about whether to consult severely disabled patients on their care.
One hopes that way down in there the person experiences a pleasant dream-like state. After all, we are not told whether he answered the question about brothers correctly. But it is more likely that it is more like being stuck in a shopping mall at night with no access to any of the stores, roaming the grey hallways, just missing running into the night cleaners over and over. We suspect it yet until we have a device that gives indications, a glowing toggle switch attached to a tiny flicking light bulb on a panel, we presume there is nothing to be indicated. It's too bad William Blake did not live in the era of amber glowing toggle switches of panels filled with tiny flicking light bulb. He'd have something to say about them in addition to those senses five.
I like a drink as much as the next guy but am I a Cocktailian? I am not sure I could even communicate with a Cocktailian if I met one in the street or, better, in a cool darkened subterranean public space. Yet all is not well in the Land of Cocktailia:
...no Pegu imbiber is known to have keeled over from bacterial assault by the cocktail, which has been served there for the last four years. And the drink has drawn neither prior official rebuke nor customer complaint. Nevertheless, on that fateful evening, an inspector from the New York City Department of Health cited Pegu Club, at 77 West Houston Street in SoHo, for serving the MarTEAni without telling the customer who ordered it that it contained raw egg. The notice said it was a serious infraction that required a court appearance. Raw eggs are among the ingredients most fervently embraced by cocktail revivalists who have sought out new techniques and circled back to classic recipes. And the MarTEAni is a signature drink at a bar that is seen as a paragon of the new cocktailians.
Sam and Ella. The bacteria twins. They sound so cheery when given their real names. Yet they bring the plague. There were 167,319 cases (or "extrapolated incidence") of their mischief in Canada during an unspecified period according to this unreliable source which does give one brief pause. Yet we learn from an actual Phd writing on this unreliable source that "Alcohol with a meal can lower the risk of food poisoning" and on this unreliable source we learn that a "Spanish study of an outbreak of acute salmonella gastric infection among people at a banquet found that “the protective effect of alcohol was strongest for subjects who had drunk more than 40 grams of alcohol..."
It is not illegal to eat a raw egg. It is not even wrong. Think about it - it's a well known fact that plucky lads in schoolboy adventure stories suck on gulls eggs to stay fit as a fiddle while lost on wild sea coasts waiting for rescue. Would we not all be comforted were the meal accompanied by a reasonable measure of gin?
It really was. So is this so weird:
“Father, we thank you for tonight,” he said. “We pray that we will be a representation of you.” An hour later, a member of his flock who had bowed his head was now unleashing a torrent of blows on an opponent, and Mr. Renken was offering guidance that was not exactly prayerful. “Hard punches!” he shouted from the sidelines of a martial arts event called Cage Assault. “Finish the fight! To the head! To the head!”
I am just hoping that there are Sofa Surfers for Jesus counting heads in the afterlife as well. Can't have all the Type A's running the show... let alone the teeth kickers.
I need to break loose and do mad cap things like post sports bullets on Mondays. But not every Monday. That would be a rut. But as it is no longer January, I am no longer in a rut. Spring Training starts this month. It is the month before spring. Plans are already started for the vintage base ball season. I'm practically in training for heaven's sake.
- Bay may have had a bum knee which would make him a strong fit for the hapless Mets.
- Morton did not play due to a frozen pitch... which this season is something of a comfort.
- Toronto makes a big trade involving a whole bunch of people I either don't know or barely know. Because I am a Leafs fan I can't watch the stuff.
- A week and a half from the Olympics and I really do not care one bit. Looks like it'll be the downhill scrape and the cross country slush as the rains continue. The are actually going to ski on hay that is covered with snow brought in from elsewhere. Expect a boycott by athletes after the first shredded knee.
- Syracuse kep rolling withe a less than wonderful win against DePaul Saturday. Are the Orange the best in the land?
- Super Bowl week. It could be a good game but it will be a dumb week. Personal interest stories. Hype. Yet I am more interested in the upcoming game than the prospect of soon watching Latvians struggle over hay bales in the British Columbian rains.
Anything else go on over the weekend as I folded laundry for days? Days I tell ya.
Who cares? Who care that there is a new thingie that makes you hold it as you do basically the same thing you did with the old thingie - except that you sent more for the new thingie... and right after Christmas when you don't have the money. Stop stealing the money from the geeks, Apple. It's not fair and it's not nice. Don't you dare put the iPad out in neon colours next year, either. That is just cruel.
- Constitutional Violation Update: "This conduct establishes Canadian participation in state conduct that violates the principles of fundamental justice. Interrogation of a youth, to elicit statements about the most serious criminal charges while detained in these conditions and without access to counsel, and while knowing that the fruits of the interrogations would be shared with the U.S. prosecutors, offends the most basic Canadian standards about the treatment of detained youth suspects."
- It's a little funny realizing you are living in a country where you assume that the cops can take a beer from a kid when you also realize that it isn't the case in other countries.
- Monorail!
- You will like the Olympics. You will. Or else. Nothing can spoil it but you not liking it.
- If Harper packs the Senate to kill off the Senate is it really all that bad?
- And why the heck does anyone care what the PMO thinks the flaming rocket in the sky was? First climatology, now rocket science. What science has Canada's most average man not the mastered? Not just normal. Average.
- "[A] monument to creative failure."
Next week it is February. Spring training starts in February.
So it was a big day for the rights of man as Andre Dawson is announced to be entering the Baseball Hall of Fame as a Montreal Expo. But he don't like it:
Dawson — considered by some to be the best player in Expos franchise history — will be enshrined in Cooperstown, N.Y., as an Expo and not a Chicago Cub. “It was a little gut-wrenching for me to hear that, but it’s (the Hall of Fame’s) decision, and I respect that, and from there I move on,” Dawson said Wednesday on ESPN 1000, a Chicago sports radio station. Earlier this month, Dawson had said he preferred to join the hall as a Cub. Dawson spent six seasons with the Cubs.
It may be that he is irked that he, like every other HOFer, doesn't get to pick the cap on the plaque which is displayed at Cooperstown. And maybe he was happiest with the Cubs - that's his call. But his ten years at Montreal were the ten glory years of the franchise, the great experiment that sorta failed and sorta should never have failed. Look, even the Chicago Tribune believes he should be inducted as an Expo. Best of all, if I get down to Cooperstown this summer, the vintage baseball memorabilia shops will be full of Expos stuff. Last time I was there I could only find one ticket for a Jarry Park game and a cloth patch. And maybe there will be a DVD set put out of the greatest five Expos games ever. Is it sad that this is my dream? To own that DVD set?
I few months ago, I was out and about with the lad when one of the nation's new super transport military cargo planes flew overhead on a training run from nearby CFB Trenton. Having grown up for a chunk of my life next to CFB Greenwood in Nova Scotia, I have a soft spot for the planes but it was the speed of Canada's response to Haiti that proved their worth in practice. The news of the speed and success of the mission is amazing as well:
Today, survivors of the earthquake that reduced Governor General Michaëlle Jean's hometown to rubble are living in tents in the streets. On Friday the team set up their field hospital on the pier at the base of the downtown core. From there a team of 40 medics have helped treat hundreds of people, including 240 on Monday. "Today was our busiest day by far," said Maj. Annie Bouchard, the medic overseeing the field hospital, who has been working with a broken hand. Four days into a deployment that could last 40 days, the major says DART's medical team is already operating near its limits.
While the Travolta mission may seem a bit much - or not - the DART team is a great reminder that when you hear PM Harper trot out the old simplicity "I don’t believe any taxes are good taxes” that there are in fact many good taxes because there are many good civic functions, few of which can beat this sector of our military as an example of service and a source of pride. Too bad all that coming Olympic coverage might suggest that some other career path as a role model for national pride.
Oh dear. Is this all it was about? Is this our tea party?
About 150 people gathered in front of Province House in Charlottetown Saturday to protest against the proroguing of Parliament. It was one of a number of protests staged across the country. Prime Minister Stephen Harper shut down Parliament just before the new year. MPs will not return for the official business of Parliament until after the Olympics. Harper said the government needed time to prepare for the next phase of economic revitalization.
That represents about 0.1% of Islanders so clearly shows a trend. Even more stunning were the 300 Montrealers who came out. It was even a warm day so they really really meant it. What is the word for less interest than "apathy"?
Hint: if you are going to hold a rally on a national issue make sure you have some support.
