The Meatriarchy If God didn't want me to eat animals, why did he make them out of meat?
Friday, March 19, 2004
Unfunny Humorist wins Award.
The Bloggies have announced the winners in various categories.
Can you guess who won Most humorous Weblog? You won't believe it!
Margaret Cho.
That's right.
I said a while ago that if you were some type of celebrity known outside the internet world you would win and Margaret Cho is certainly known beyond the Internet sphere.
So is Canadian author Cory Doctorow who's "Boing Boing" blog is nominated in almost every other category (and wins in almost every other category).
Another "famous blog" is the "Blog for America" who wins in best new blog category. Now call me a nitpicker but this blog was set up for the Howard Dean campaign (which has failed miserably). Does anyone think that this blog will be around next year? I'd like to think that the blog that wins "best new blog" would be one that has some chance of staying power. However much has been made in the traditional media about the Dean blog so I guess that counts for more than quality.
Anyway where was I? Oh yeah unfunny Margaret Cho.
If you would like to sample her devastating wit see my earlier posting comparing her letter to Michael Moore to Frank J.'s letter to Michael Moore. I'm sure you will agree that she really really is the funnier one.
A story appears via Neale News today about some mysterious freighters that are unaccounted for in the Indian and Pacific oceans and which intelligence analysts feel are being used by al-Qaeda with an eye towards future attacks.
"The fear is that the vessels, thought to be currently used to transport weapons and equipment for the terrorist organization, could be turned into floating suicide bombs."
If that is not bad enough the last paragraph really caught my attention:
Equally alarming has been a flurry of temporary ship hijackings in the Pacific. Some analysts have suggested the incidents could be training exercises for terrorists. In one case intruders took over a chemical tanker and practiced operating the vessel before leaving the ship an hour later.
I'm not sure how true this is but it spur me to do some Googling and found this similar quote in a Christian Science Monitor story about pirates
"Terrorist experts point out that Indonesian pirates have occasionally hijacked tankers and piloted the vessels before escaping, raising the possibility of plans afoot to strike in the Malacca Strait. Tugboats used to guide larger ships into port have also gone missing over the past year."
Note the difference in wording "occasionally" versus a flurry doesn't the use of the word "flurry" make it sound more ominous than "occasionally" which sounds so much more casual?
The Oakland Tribune has a more detailed account of 2 specific incidents but no mention of a "flurry":
Last March, pirates commandeered the Indonesian chemical tanker Dewi Madrim, steered it for half an hour through the [Malacca] strait, which narrows to 30 miles in some places, and left with equipment and technical documents.
Three days after the Sept. 11, 2001, airborne attacks in the United States, pirates boarded a cargo ship near Indonesia. After fatally shooting one of the crew, masked gunmen seized antitank missiles, night vision goggles and satellite communications gear. They blew up their speedboat, repainted the cargo vessel to disguise its identity and disappeared in the busy strait.
I know this is trivial - but were they carrying paint with them? It makes is sound like they painted the vessel immediately. Ships are big and take a while to paint. This seems a little odd to me. However the prior example is definitely one that should raise concern.
Of course some media outlets seem to be downplaying the whole thing altogether. A story in the New York Times last year completely dismissed the terrorism angle:
The article talks about temporary tanker seizures but doesn't seem to feel terrorism is the underlying motive at all - just friendly pirates.
Contrast this to the World Net Daily article that has a much more ominous tone to it:
"...these weren't ordinary pirates looking for booty. These were terrorists learning how to drive a ship. They also kidnapped officers in an effort to acquire expertise on conducting a maritime attack,..."
and further on in the article:
"There is also evidence terrorists are learning about diving, with a view to attacking ships from below. The Abu Sayyaf group in the Philippines kidnapped a maintenance engineer in a Sabah holiday resort in 2000. On his release in June this year, the engineer said his kidnappers knew he was a diving instructor ?‚– they wanted instruction. The owner of a diving school near Kuala Lumpur has recently reported a number of ethnic Malays wanting to learn about diving, but being strangely uninterested in learning about decompression."
This last bit is eerily familiar - remember the guys who showed up at flight schools and wanted to learn how to turn an aircraft in flight but not how to land it.
If you are planning a suicide mission by sea I guess decompression would be the least of your worries.
So now I am somewhat comforted by the relative isolation of the port of Toronto. I mean it would be hard to get a ship all the way up from the St. Lawrence and through the locks when you could hit a coastal city instead. New York might be hard given the security blanket that encompasses that city since 9/11. But off the top of my head I can think of some really interesting maritime targets. However since I have no idea who reads this blog I will keep that bit to myself.
Via Citizen Smash and the research department (who only got it half right) we have this sad news:
BOB ZANGAS was killed last Wednesday in an ambush south of Baghdad. He was a Marine Corps Reservist working in a civilian capacity for the Coalition Provisional Authority.
Go read the final entry in his weblog, and pay your respects.
I am waiting to see some condolences from the anti-war crowd who call those who are not in a position to serve (because we are too old and are in a non-coalition country for example) "chickenhawks". But I am not holding by breath.
Go and read all the excellent posts. I will be outside shovelling snow. Well not yet but we are supposed to get a big dump today 25-30cm or so. That is close to a foot for those still on the British system of weights and measures.
I was going to write something about Spain's election but I don't have anything profound to say that would add to that which has already been written.
Suffice to say it was a frightening outcome and let's leave it at that.
I have been thinking of changing my blog format from daily quick hits to longer essays that I would publish once or twice a week.
If any of you have an opinion on that let me know.
I’m a hockey fan. I love to watch the game. I loved it the first time I saw in on a small black and white TV in our kitchen. It is one of my earliest memories. Buffalo and Toronto were playing. I am trying to understand why there are penalties. My mother who has zero knowledge of the game is patiently trying to answer my questions:
"Why did that guy get a penalty?" "Because he tripped the other player." "That’s not allowed??" "No." "So he has to leave the game??" "No he has to sit out for two minutes." "What about if he tripped him accidentally??" "Uhh.. I don’t think so." "What about if someone is skating really hard up the ice and accidentally bangs into someone and falls down. Does the other guy get a penalty??" ".. maybe.." "What about if? …"
You know how it goes with kids.
Anyway I began collecting hockey cards and playing road hockey with friends. I aspired to be a goalie and emulate Ken Dryden who was my hero. When he allowed 7 goals in the opening night of the famed Canada-Russia series of ‘72 I was so distraught that I almost cried myself to sleep.
Hockey was a much more violent sport back then. Bench clearing brawls were common. There were no designated “goons” who squared off once a night in a pantomime of a fight just to prove they earned their checks. Everyone fought, star players, goalies, even coaches. And if they didn’t fight each other sometimes they waded into the crowds. I remember one game where I think the Boston Bruins invaded the stands and started beating on opposing fans. One person has his shoe off and was hitting a Boston player over the head with it. The players looked huge and insane, the crowd alternated between terror and the type of defensive attacks you see from cornered animals.
One team the Philadelphia Flyers made brawling their modus operandi. In the mid 70’s the Flyers coaching staff led, by the great Fred Shero figured out that if you tried to keep penalties to a minimum then the refs would catch them all and you would be shorthanded. However if you committed tons of infractions you would get away with a lot and the other teams would be intimidated. Hence the building of the Broad Street Bullies a team that dominated the middle of the decade and won two Stanley Cups.
Along the way they left a trail of blood, teeth, and fury. This wasn’t a team that had some silky smooth skill guys and a few pugilists. Everyone on that team could and would fight. The captain was none other than Bobby Clarke who was as tough as nails. Clarke is remembered somewhat infamously as the man who helped win the aforementioned Canada-Russia series by whacking the ankle of Valeri Kharlamov and thereby eliminating him as an effective player. Although I have seen highlights of the series many times and have yet to see the play in question, each time they show the supposed highlight it doesn’t look like something that would hurt a player. I have always thought this was braggadocio that turned into urban myth.
Clarke was joined by a cast of hard nosed players with names like: moose (Andre Dupont), mad-dog (Ted Kelly), terrible (Ted Green) , and the Hammer.
The Hammer being David Schulz a legendary fighter who seemed to spend most of his career in the penalty box.
The Flyers intimidated their opponents and for a period of time it was common strategy that to beat them you had to match them. Boston and New York also had some big tough teams all with players that could fight and make plays. The playoffs of 1974 featured two great series between Boston and Philadelphia and New York and Philadelphia. All hard fought rough and tough games that seemed to teeter on the edge of all out war. With Philadelphia on the ice no one on the opposing team looked down at the puck. You kept your head up and on a swivel most of the time.
In 1975-76 several Russian hockey teams toured the NHL playing exhibition games with the various NHL teams. The champion Central Red Army team that was laden with talent toyed with most of the NHL teams winning easily until they hit Montreal and the Canadiens who could skate with any team fought them to a 3-3 tie on New Years Eve 1976. I still remember it being one of the best games ever and it was the first crack in the seemingly perfect team that the Central Red Army squad was (remember in the Russian league at the time CRA was basically an all star team which for all intents and purposes was the Russian national Team so beating them with an ordinary NHL club team was quite a feat).
The real action however was a week later on a Sunday when the Central Red Army team played in Philadelphia. From the get go the Russians were flummoxed. Here was a team that seemed to be less concerned with winning and more concerned with violence. The first period featured the Flyers at their usual psychotic best and the Russian weren’t quite sure how to handle them.
The European style of hockey was a pure skill game with the much larger ice surface meaning less body contact. Here in the NHL the space was limited and the players were not afraid to skate through a player.
Midway through the first period Soviet Star Valeri Kharlamov was again the victim of a Flyer player. This time defenseman Ed Van Impe (the undisputed best body checker the game has ever produced) caught Kharlamov with his head down and leveled him. The Soviet star crumpled to the ice. For a moment time seemed to stop. And then the Russians decided that discretion was the better part of valour. They gathered up their sticks and left.
It was only about 11 minutes into the game and they were leaving!! I still remember Bob Cole screaming "I can't believe it! They?re going home!! The Russians are going home!! We stayed in 72 when they bugged our rooms!! We stayed in 74!! But now they are goin home!!. " Well they eventually came back and played but they were completely cowed and the Flyers outshot them 49-13 and out scored them 4-1.
So why am I wandering down memory lain with a tale of the good old days of “blood on the ice” (and in the stands)? Well like any good writer I am establishing mood. Or maybe I am laying a framework - exposition to allow me to better develop my thesis. Or maybe I am a grumpy middle-aged fart who likes to think about the good old days.
At any rate, as I remember hockey it was more violent generally than it is now. However if you read the press around the “Bertuzzi incident” this week you would think that hockey has been sliding into an abyss of violence and has now reached such levels of mayhem that mothers are scooping up their children when anything remotely resembling hockey appears on TV.
The collective tut-tutting and exaggerated outrage that have poured forth from the keyboards of journalists in the print and electronic media is no different from the drivel that spewed forth a few years ago when we had the “McSorley incident” and will be no different when the next “incident” happens.
As it stands, the NHL is on the brink of irrelevancy?.. There needs to be a zero-tolerance stance on fighting to save the game, attract new fans, and protect players like Steve Moore Said Michael Holley of the Boston Globe.
What happened between the Vancouver Canucks and the Colorado Avalanche was in part because NHL owners have no faith in their sport and think they have to sell something besides hockey -- namely, bloodshed.
Football and basketball do excellent at the box office without being egregiously violent. If anything, the most glamorous play in football is not about violence, but the threat of violence averted -- the caught pass. Who actually likes to see exhibitions of violence? A certain segment of teenaged boys.
“sport that is barely hanging onto a shred of credibility”
Whilst Tim Layden of Sports Illustrated breathlessly announced the Dying Days of Hockey
"Hockey is mindlessly teetering on the edge of extinction. I take that back. Not extinction, but -- and this is almost as bad -- marginalization. Television ratings remain abysmal. Last month, the NHL All-Star Game got trounced in the ratings by Arena Football. The NHL is on the verge of a work stoppage that could wipe out an entire season. Soon the NHL will live where track and field and skiing and swimming live, in a cable ghetto where only the truly devoted will venture in search of entertainment. The Big Four (football, basketball, baseball and hockey) will become a Big Three."
Wow I guess I should stop watching the game because Americans who never liked or understood the game in the first place aren’t watching?
Ok lets talk about the “big three” sports for a minute.
Football remains the king of TV ratings in the US for one reason and one reason only:
Gambling.
Millions are wagered on football games weekly and if you listen to game recaps on Monday after the Sunday marathon you will hear a lot of talk about teams “covering the spread”. Now, when you hear this type of talk in your run of the mill sports wrap-up you know how big the gambling thing is for football.
Face it, if there were no money wagered on pro football the ratings wouldn’t be much better than its poor cousin - arena football. So much for a “healthy” sport with the type of popularity that hockey should aspire to.
And as for that glorious aversion to violence that makes it sooo much better than our graceless Canadian invention?
Well contrast Sally Jenkins naive comments above about football’s “non-violence” to Hunter S. Thompson’s take on the game:
”About 40 percent of the original Raiders were criminal by nature and deliberately dangerous brutes. They were professional athletes who got paid every week to hurt people. The worse they hurt them, the more they got paid -- especially if you could damage or cripple another team's Quarterback and put him on the Disabled List. That made you an automatic hero of violence, for a while, and entitled you to throw your weight around in downtown Oakland with whores and cops and animals. You were almost above the law”
Hmm maybe Todd Bertuzzi should sign a tryout contract with Oakland. I don’t know that he is getting much respect from cops and whores in Gastown these days. I guess that’s the difference between Canada and the U.S.
As for baseball anyone with eyes can see that if there is a game in more trouble than hockey (if in fact hockey is in trouble) its baseball. Since the labour stoppage of about ten years ago the attendance has plummeted. Turn on any baseball game any time of year in any city and you are practically guaranteed to see more empty than full seats. And there is much hand wringing about how the game is becoming passé. It is widely panned for being too long, too boring and too slow.
Gee I guess if hockey had baseball’s problems we would be ok. Oh and as an aside for all of you who are worried about “fighting in hockey”, there are more bench clearing brawls in baseball every year than there are in hockey. Maybe it is all the violence that are keeping fans away in droves.
Now lets turn our attention to the “NBA” the other “big sport” that is supposedly doing so well compared to hockey. Perhaps this headline sums it up:
That’s right the lowest ratings for the playoffs in over 25 years. I suppose people kept their TVs off on the odd chance they might be subjected to a hockey highlight.
Lets face it all of the major sports are having problems right now. There could be any number of reasons for this but I believe the main one is that the population is getting older and I don’t think aging baby boomers are as “fanatical” as younger people. Sure we will watch a game but we don’t rearrange our lives for it.
Lots of people are also frustrated with the length of the seasons for the various sports and also the dismal quality of the games as compared to the playoffs. This is in large part to the over expansion of all the major leagues (NBA., MLB. NFL and yes the NHL) diluting the talent pool and adding too many games to the schedules in order to squeeze more revenue out of the fans.
Which brings us to the next point; there’s only so much sports we can watch. Once upon a time you watched sports on Sunday because there was nothing else to do. The shops weren’t open and neither were restaurants and bars so you stayed home and watched TV and of course those were the days before the million-channel universe (or whatever its up to right now) so you were either watching sports or political talk shows. Guess which one most of us chose?
While we’re on that subject why hasn’t anyone explored the relationship between the popularity of MTV and video games to the decline in sports ratings? Trust me, the kids aren’t out there exercising.
And speaking of the kids much hand wringing was evident this week over “the children” and what kind of example Todd Bertuzzi and his ilk were setting for the kids.
Tim Layden in a finishing flourish to his hockey obituary summed it up this way:
It is odd to watch the youngsters play now, wondering if they might be the last generation of youth hockey players participating in a game that also has a major league version. Not because many of them ever will reach that level, but because it lends an air of credibility to the activity. A kid can go out and imitate Martin St. Louis in practice. I fear that instead he might go out and imitate Todd Bertuzzi.
Well I guess that it would be terrible for the world if someone emulated Todd Bertuzzi. But then there are so many better examples from the other big sports for our kids to emulate.
Like. I don’t know ... Mike Tyson ? convicted rapist? Kobe Bryant ? accused rapist ? Barry Bonds or Mark Mcquire ? steroid abusers (and don’t talk to me about there being no proof that these guys use steroids ARE YOU BLIND??) Wife Murderer OJ Simpson? Pregnant wife murdering Rae Carruth?
Chris Webber dug abuser ? Shotgun wielding Jayson Williams? Oh and lets not forget Dennis Rodman the wife beating, drug using, cross dressing freak. Can anyone hold the NBA up as an example of leadership to kids when this joker was actually allowed to play in that league??
Murderers? Accused Murderers? Coach Chokers? Drug Abusers? Well the other sports are rife with them.
OJ Simpson wasn’t much of a hockey player. Neither is Kobe Bryant or Barry Bonds. But they don’t and probably will never get into a scuffle during a game so that makes our game a poor example for the youth of today.
The real reason kids aren’t playing hockey is that organized hockey is just too damn expensive. I have a sister with a 5 year old son and she is terrified that he might become interested in hockey. Not that they don’t want to encourage him to take part. They just can’t afford the equipment.
And forgive me if I don’t buy into the bullshit about the NHL marketing the sport’s violence. The NHL has never emphasized fighting in its marketing and I challenge anyone to find me any media advertising from the league that specifically mentions fighting as the reason to watch the game.
And yet today I was flipping around during the commercials while watching the Craftsman Truck Series (glad I mentioned that because I need to talk about Nascar later and I don’t want to forget) and I happened to land on Newsworld where chief bingo caller Peter Mansbridge was interviewing hockey “intellectual” Steven Brunt.
Brunt who did everything but stroke his beard in a professorial manner and say “tut tut” was opining on the “cherryfication” of the game and noted that the NHL shamelessly markets the violent side of hockey. Mansbridge for his part did nothing to challenge him for an example but darkly hinted that the CBC was somehow complicit because it features Don Cherry on Hockey Night in Canada (HNIC).
But yet the myth - ok its not a myth it is a bold faced lie - exists that the NHL is marketing the game as a bloodsport, nothing could be further from the truth. As a matter of fact the league has gradually introduced more and more rules to legislate fighting out of the game. Bench clearing brawls are now the subject of huge fines and suspensions. If you start a fight (instigating) you are thrown out of the game, do it twice and you face a suspension.
Hockey is not an American sport and thus will never engender the type of passion that Baseball or Football does. However when you read the moral and intellectual giants who feel they are experts on the game they all espouse the same tripe that Americans won’t watch hockey because it is too violent.
This is impossible to reconcile when you consider the popularity of professional wrestling in the US or the amount of gun violence that occurs there on a regular basis. I remember once Bob McCowan (the hockey hater who hosts the FAN 590's evening drive slot) holding forth on the inability of the NHL to break into the Southern US market and stating matter-of-factly that it was simply that hockey was too violent for Southerners.
Ok stop and think about it. Texas, Alabama, Georgia, Carolina, are these the areas of the US we think of when we think about non-violence? I’m more likely to think of San Francisco, Seattle and Massachusetts. If the league cannot attract fans in the southern US my opinion is that it isn’t violent enough!!
Which reminds me I was watching the Craftsman Truck race today and I promised I would tie NASCAR (the second most popular sport on US TV) into the mix, and trust me its important.
Remember the “incident” that occurred last year in NASCAR? Sure you do. C’mon it was reported somewhere, I think.
Let me refresh your memory a guy is trying to “get even” with another guy for some slight (real or imagined) and he attacked the other guy.
Remember now?
No?
I am not surprised because it was barely mentioned in the mainstream sports media.
Let me reset the scene for you. You have a fantastic young driver in Kurt Busch and you have a driver in the twilight of his career in Jimmy Spencer. They have some on track incidents and they don’t like each other. Spencer figures Busch is a dangerous driver. Busch feels the same about Spencer.
Oh and I forgot one thing. Busch was still strapped into his racecar. To put it in perspective you don’t have doors to open on a racecar. You have to climb out of the window and before that you have to undo a five-point harness and a head restraint. Spencer wasn’t man enough to let Busch get out of the car. He just started wailing on him. This is the equivalent of beating a suspect in handcuffs.
Where was the outrage? Where was the media outcry? Did anyone dare to write that NASCAR would never be able to break out of its regional popularity because of the violence in the sport? And don’t tell me this is an isolated incident. NASCAR history is full of stories of guys settling accounts after the race, sometimes with their cars. I have seen drivers intentionally drive their cars into the other guys. And lets not forget the intentional attempts to wreck each other’s cars in each and every race.
Don’t tell me that this is driving fans away. That is why they come. And as I write this 22,000 fans are on their feet and cheering in the Montreal forum because they have just witnessed a stellar fight between Tie Domi and Darren Langdon. I guess there are no Southerners in the crowd.
But back to my point about NASCAR I think in terms of mentality NASCAR and the NHL are very similar. The fans like their sport a little on the rough side and the participants play very hard. The intensity of the game makes for short tempers and sometimes accounts are settled. This might be a good thing or it might be a bad thing. You can say it is immoral and wrong or you can say it is fine and dandy. But don’t tell me that it keeps fans away from one sport and doesn’t keep them away from another. It makes no sense.
One more thing.
Vancouver's first game since the Bertuzzi incident, on Wednesday against the Minnesota Wild, was TSN's top-rated West Coast regional game of the season: 449,000 viewers.
Wow way to deal the sport a deathblow!! I bet TSN is hoping more players go all “Nascar” on each other for the rest of the year.
