Want smart independent kids? Stay away from Texas

This is truly frightening. This is a direct quote from the official platform of the Texas Republican Party:

We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.

Yes, the Texas Republicans are officially opposed to teaching kids how to think critically. They want their children to blindly believe whatever they are told.

This is a blatant ploy to gain votes from the strongly religious, of which Texas has a great many. If from the time a student was born, he has people telling him that the Earth is 6,000 years old and humans and dinosaurs were around at the same time, we definitely don't want his teachers to start "challenging the student's fixed beliefs" by introducing stuff that contradicts that, like geology or paleontology or pretty much any other branch of science. If mommy and daddy tell you that evolution isn't true and God did it all, well we wouldn't want to "undermine parental authority" and have Junior go and start thinkin' about it, now would we?

The fact that this is the Texan governing party's official position and they want to make this law makes me weep for the children of Texas.

One reason I could never live in Texas. Well, this and the scorpions.

Movie review: Crooked Arrows

There are lots of sports movies out there, and some are iconic for a particular sport: hockey has Slap Shot; baseball has Major League,The Natural or Field of Dreams; football has Any Given Sunday, Friday Night Lights, and Rudy; boxing has a ton including Raging Bull and the Rocky series; basketball has Hoosiers; and the list goes on. But lacrosse didn't really have anything; there hasn't really been a movie that included lacrosse as an integral part of the film. Any mention of lacrosse in movies such as American Pie was generally tangential, and usually involved US prep schools. And there has certainly been no film that looks at lacrosse from a Native American point of view. Until now.

The plot of Crooked Arrows isn't exactly groundbreaking. It follows a relatively tried-and-true formula that has worked in a number of other sports movies, that of the underperforming team that gets a new coach / owner / manager who turns things around and makes them champions. Think Major League with middies. The difference here is that at the beginning, the coach doesn't particularly want to be there either – so rather than Major League, perhaps A League of their Own might be a more apt comparison. Gradually the players start to adapt to their new playing style and gain confidence in their coach and themselves, and the coach realizes that he needs the team as much as the team needs him.

The coach in this case is Joe Logan (played by Brandon Routh, who has distant Native background), a half-Native whose father is on the tribal council. Logan is a former lacrosse star who is coerced by his father into finding his spirit by returning to his roots and coaching the reservation's hapless lacrosse team. As you would expect, he encounters resistance and is pessimistic about his chances of success but gradually wins the team over. After that, it's fairly predictable: most of what you might foresee happening does happen, and nothing really happens that you don't see coming.

That said, I didn't care how predictable it was. Even if you know the destination, how you get there can be entertaining and fun. There were a number of funny lines, particularly the stuffy rich mom of one of the prep school players who asked "when did the Indians start playing lacrosse anyway?" or the double-entendre "wisdom" of the coach – "if you don't go into the forest, you don't have any balls". The characters you're supposed to dislike (opposing team's coach and players, greedy developer) are sufficiently slimy, and you do like the characters you're supposed to like (coach's sister and father, love interest, team benchwarmer). The scenes of lacrosse practices and games are exciting, and though they don't go over the game in much detail (this is a film about the team and the community, not so much about the game itself), you do get a pretty good idea of how fast and exciting lacrosse can be. You find yourself cheering for the Crooked Arrows and are genuinely happy when they are successful.

When I saw the film, I was curious how accurately the Native issues in the film were portrayed. I have no Native blood in me, and I'm not even sure if I've ever set foot on a Native reserve, so I can't personally speak to that. But I did talk to someone who can, and was assured that the movie was accurate and realistic. The reservation in the film looks like any small town in rural America, so anyone looking for fields of tepees and wigwams may be disappointed, as they would be on a real reservation. But the fact that Natives are featured so prominently in a so-called "Hollywood" film is somewhat unusual in itself. Another recent movie that includes Native Americans in a prominent role is the popular Twilight series, and indeed the actor that plays Joe Logan's father in Crooked Arrows also plays Jacob Black's father in Twilight. I did notice that the Native characters in this film seemed a lot more upbeat and generally happy than the grumpy werewolves in Twilight, though I suppose if there were vampires living nearby I might be grumpy too.

One thing I really liked was the juxtaposition of the scenes of Native warriors from 800 years ago playing lacrosse with scenes of the Crooked Arrows team playing now. This was a very effective way to remind the viewer about the history involved with the game and the fact that to the Native community, lacrosse is not just a fun game or a sport that they invented, but an integral and important part of their way of life, and has been for hundreds of years.

Those in the lacrosse community have known this movie was coming for a while now, and the @crookedarrows twitter account was quite active in keeping followers informed on the progress of writing, casting, filming, post-production, and when and where the movie was playing. The filmmakers even managed to squeeze in a few cameos including some of the biggest names in lacrosse: Zack Greer, Brodie Merrill, Paul Rabil, and Gary Gait (though Gait wasn't mentioned by name as the others were).

In a nutshell, I really enjoyed Crooked Arrows, as did my sons (12 and 10). Lacrosse fans will enjoy the action, but you don't have to be a lacrosse fan to enjoy the movie.

Oh Canada! Ribfest 2012

This past weekend was Waterdown's 3rd annual Oh Canada! Ribfest, and not coincidentally, this is my 3rd annual article about it. I find writing these articles helpful, since last year's article helped me remember which ribbers we especially liked or didn't like. In previous years, there were six ribbers but this year, there was an extra one. There were actually two new ones, but we lost Fire Island. This year, we had:

Kentucky Smokehouse – These guys were new, and I have to say we weren't that impressed. The ribs weren't very meaty, and there wasn't much sauce. What sauce there was wasn't bad though. Maybe we got a bad batch, because these guys finished second in people's choice best ribs and people's choice best sauce.

Boss Hog – My favourites last year, and this year I'd have to put them second. The ribs were very meaty, and there was lots of sauce. The sauce was somewhat sweet but not too sweet. Not as smoky as last year. These guys swept the awards: best judged ribs, people's choice best ribs, and people's choice best sauce.

Tennessee Fatbacks – Another new one and again, no big deal. The ribs were OK, the sauce was OK, but nothing to write home about.

Ribs Royale – Didn't think much of these guys last year, though lots of other people seemed to like them. This year, again I heard lots of good things but they just didn't do it for me. The ribs were OK but didn't "fall off the bone" as with the other ribbers. The sauce was interesting though – tangy but not sweet. Had a kick, but wasn't exactly spicy. Hard to describe, but pretty good. They got 3rd place in the best judged ribs.

Camp 31 – The ribs were really good, and the sauce wasn't bad. Had a bit of a kick and wasn't as sweet as last year.

Silver Bullet – Our favourite. The ribs were really good, with an awesome spicy sauce. For the second straight year, we bought a bottle to bring home. For the first time, we also tried a pulled pork sandwich from these guys, and that was fantastic. They got second in judged ribs and third in both people's choice best ribs and people's choice best sauce.

Bone Daddy – we didn't get there. Really liked them last year, but this year the timing just didn't work out.

Once again we volunteered as a family, first on Saturday afternoon from 3pm-7pm and then again on Monday from 11am-3pm. We originally signed up to be in the recycling tent, just like last year, but we said we'd go wherever they needed us. On Saturday they needed people at parking, so we stood at the entrance to the parking lot and collected money. This worked out pretty well, and the boys both got into it and were very helpful, collecting money and making change and everything. Despite the "No in and out privileges" sign, lots of people asked if they could leave and come back later. If they had a decent reason for it (my kid is sick and I'm going to drop him off at his grandparents place and come right back, I brought my dog who is not allowed in the park so I have to take him home) and they could be back in five minutes or so, I generally let it go, but there were people who wanted to come back "in an hour or two". Come on people, get real. And a couple of people didn't want to pay at all, so they just turned around and left. One guy said he was just going to the skate park and not the Ribfest, but I told him too bad, this was Ribfest parking. He said OK and drove into the parking lot, saying he was just going to turn around, and never came back out. The number of selfish jerks out there who just try to take advantage of everyone really amazes and disappoints me sometimes.

Anyway, on Monday, they split the four of us up, and Gail and Nicky went to one of the far entrances to the park and counted people coming and going, while Ryan and I were given the most glamorous of volunteer jobs, the one everyone strives for: walking around the park in 32° heat for four hours picking up garbage off the ground. After an hour or so Ryan was pretty hot and tired and was starting to get grumpy, so I sent him to sit with Gail and continued by myself. Have to say, there were an amazing number of cigarette butts lying around, considering smoking was not allowed anywhere in the park. One of the Rotary Club guys who was in charge of volunteers stopped me after about 3 hours, told me I was doing a great job, and then asked "Hey, would you like a beer?" Needless to say, I took him up on his offer – did I mention it was 32° and humid? It was only a ten minute break or so before I continued with my work, but man, that was nice.

I have but one complaint about the whole event – and I also heard it from a number of other people I know who went – and that's the beer selection. A local microbrewery called Nickel Brook was the only beer choice, though they did have a couple of types of coolers (Smirnoff Ice being one). Not a huge fan of the Nickel Brook. This year I only had one, which was an organic beer. (Yes, I'm the last guy who's likely to buy anything organic, but this was the one that the Rotary guy, Nick, bought me.) It wasn't bad, but I won't be partaking again. Once again though, I did enjoy Nickel Brook's root beer.

One thing that was new this year was the fireworks on Canada Day, which lasted a good 20 minutes and were excellent. There was no world record attempt this year, though maybe that's for the best. Last year we set a new record for "most people singing simultaneously live on a radio broadcast", with about 650 people. As it turns out, the record was smashed a week later in England, when 3,885 people sang at Wembley Arena. It's kind of too bad that so many people worked to make that happen, and then we only held the record for a week. Oh well.

Once again this year, snaps go out to the Rotary Club, the sponsors, and the rest of the volunteers who made this great event happen. Looking forward to next year already!

Lost one tree, gained another

Following are three short stories that seem quite unrelated, but they converge at the end in a wonderfully meaningful way. At least it's meaningful for our family.

Gail and I moved into our house in Waterdown in July of 1997 (the day before my 28th birthday), almost two years after we were married and two weeks before I started working at Sybase (where I still work). The next summer, we hired a landscaping designer to help us do something different with our front yard. We changed the shapes of some of the gardens and planted a bunch of new things including a euonymous bush, a standard pee gee hydrangea (which lasted about ten years before dying), a dwarf Japanese cedar that I loved (but it also died after only a year or two), and a purple-leaf sandcherry tree. The sandcherry wasn't a sapling when we bought it – I don't remember for sure but I have a feeling it was already 5-6 feet tall. It thrived in front of the house and we've loved the purple leaves and pink flowers ever since. But a couple of years ago we started to wonder if it was getting too big. Every year we had to trim off some branches and cut it back and eventually, the only branches left were huge and thick and not many actual leaves were growing on it. It was also maybe ten feet from the house, and we wondered if the roots could cause problems. By this point the top of the tree was up to the second-storey window, so it had grown quite a bit. This spring, it looked pretty sickly with mostly branches and very few leaves so we made the tough decision to take it down. Two weeks ago, Gail's dad came down with his chain saw and we removed the tree.

---

In Ontario, public schools test all grade 4 students to see if they should be identified as "exceptional", which includes things like autism, giftedness, speech impairments, as well as other physical or learning disabilities. We became familiar with this process when Ryan was identified as gifted three years ago. He continued at Allan A. Greenleaf public school (where he had been since kindergarten) for grade five, but we found he was "coasting" and not trying very hard. He just wasn't that engaged. We decided to move him to a special class for gifted children (at a different school), and he's been there for two years and doing pretty well.

Nicky just finished grade four at Greenleaf, and we received his test results about a month ago – he is also gifted. (Warning: proud daddy bragging ahead) In the Visual Comprehension test, the school VP said that Nicky's score was in the 99.9th percentile "or even higher" across the entire Hamilton-Wentworth district school board. This means that on average, of every thousand kids that took the test, at most one of them scored higher than Nicky. (OK, bragging all done.) We talked to his teacher and the learning resource teacher, and they both thought the gifted class would be the best place for Nicky. We agreed, and requested that he be moved there. They offered him a spot and since Greenleaf doesn't have a gifted class (which is why Ryan moved), Nicky will be attending Dundas Central public school in the fall. For the first time since 2003, we will have no children attending Greenleaf next year.

---

When Ryan started kindergarten at Greenleaf back in the fall of 2003, Gail decided she wanted to know more about the school and the community so she went out to a couple of school council meetings. You don't need to join the council to attend the meetings so she didn't actually join, just observed. The next year, she decided to join the council and at the first meeting agreed to be "co-chair". The school had had co-chairs for several years and it seemed to be working fine, so they continued having two. She was co-chair the next year as well, and then in the third year, the guy who had been the other co-chair left because his kids had all moved on to high school. Someone else stepped up as co-chair for one year but after that Gail just did it herself, and has ever since. This past year was the eighth year that Gail has been chair or co-chair of the school council at Greenleaf. She knows all the teachers and staff on a first-name basis and is involved in just about every fundraiser and event that the school puts on.

The school has "free family movie night" once a month, where kids and their families and friends can come to the school on a Friday night and watch a movie. The school council sells popcorn and drinks and it's a pretty popular event. That was Gail's brainchild. Every February, the school holds a spaghetti dinner and silent auction, which is very popular and raises thousands of dollars for the school. Gail helped create that as well and until this past year when she was busy with her own studies, she co-ordinated the event every year. Make no mistake, Gail had lots of help from other parents and members of the council, and I've been volun-told myself on numerous occasions when she needed help, but nobody has done more for the Greenleaf community over the past eight years than Gail has. All the teachers love her, and if I had a nickel for every time one of them told me how great she was or how lucky I was, I'd be a wealthy man indeed.

---

In the words of Bill Cosby, I told you those stories to tell you this one.

On the second-last day of school this year, the librarian at Greenleaf (Nirogi) called Gail and asked her if she would come to the final assembly of the year the next morning. Gail knew that something was up, since parents don't usually go to the end-of-school assembly. But we also knew that this would be the last day we had kids at Greenleaf, and they would likely be doing something to say goodbye to Gail. We were right. They did a little thing for each of the five or six teachers that were leaving, and then they brought Gail up. A grade eight girl who has been involved with the student council also got up and read some stuff about how much Gail has done for the school, how much they appreciate everything she's done, and how the school won't be the same without her. After much applause from the teachers and students, Gail got up and said a few unscripted thank-yous through tears.

But the best part is that in Gail's honour, the school will be planting a purple-leaf sandcherry tree behind the school in the fall. Nirogi knew how much we like the sandcherry in front of our house, so that's what she picked to plant for Gail. She didn't even know that we had had to take ours down.

As much as we're excited about the new opportunities awaiting Nicky next year in his new school, we're very sad that we're leaving the Greenleaf community. But the fact that for the next however-many years there will be a tree at the school that was planted for Gail is supremely cool. We may not have kids at the school anymore, and I don't know if there'll be a plaque or anything near the tree with her name on it, but we'll know. And every now and again we'll stop in at the school for no other reason than to see Gail's tree.

Live long and prosper

I saw a posting on facebook recently about Lonesome George, the giant tortoise who passed away last week. He was the last of his species, and some comments lamented the loss of another species from the planet and talked about how humans are destroying the habitats of many animal species, which I cannot disagree with. But then I saw this comment (emphasis mine):

I'm not much into doomsday prophecies, but I do think that if we don't reduce our number VERY soon, nature will do it for us. Perhaps a world-wide epidemic, or mass-psychosis causing war. This is not the right time to make people live longer and treat infertility. Too stupid for words.

As someone whose mother (in her 70's) is currently fighting cancer and whose sister recently had a baby via a surrogate because of infertility (also due to cancer treatment), I think making people live longer and treating infertility is not only a good idea, it's our duty as human beings.

Firstly, I thought it funny that this person says they're "not much into doomsday prophesies" and then proceeds to make one. The infertility thing I disagree with, but I suppose I can understand the logic. There are lots of unwanted children born around the world, and infertile people usually have the option of adopting one of them, rather than making a whole new one. But this is a very personal choice and who are you to decide that someone else should not have a child who is biologically theirs just because they have to jump through a few more medical hoops to do it than the average person?

But the other comment is mind-boggling. How do we as a species not try our hardest to make people live longer? What does this person suggest we do? Abandon medical research? Deny the elderly medical care? Don't bother curing childhood diseases that we can cure like polio and smallpox because that reduces the number of people who survive to adulthood (and therefore the number that will procreate)? A girl we know survived life-saving transplant surgery when she was six months old; she is now fifteen. Should they have just let her die as a baby? Hell, I had my own life-saving surgery two years ago – should they not have bothered?

Too stupid for words indeed.

A child's perception of time

Planet-watching

"I swear, this is the weirdest planet I've ever watched," said Yargo as he rolled his chair back, shaking his head.

"Which planet is that?" asked Gren indifferently. The planet Gren was watching was in the early stages of a major war, and she didn't want Yargo's problems to distract her from watching it unfold.

"They call it 'Earth'. Population about 7 billion, one moon, five or six big land masses plus a big chunk of ice at the bottom. You know the one – in the system with nine planets but they just decided they only have eight?"

"Oh, them," said Gren. "Where that idiot Drood crash-landed a bunch of years ago?"

"Yeah, that's the one. We got him and his kid out just before the humans found them. His kid was playing with some rocks when we got there and we just left them standing. Do you believe it? The rocks are still there and those nuts are still talking about it. They call it 'Stonehenge'. Anyway, that's not the weird part."

Gren realized that Yargo wasn't going to let it go until he told her about it, so she turned her monitor off and sat back. She closed her middle eye, as she always did when she was bored. "So what's the weird part?"

Yargo sighed. "Their scientists have made so much progress over the past couple of their centuries. They've travelled to their moon, sent probes to the next planet out, and can send messages between any two points on the planet within seconds. Their doctors can take pieces out of one person and put them into another person and have both people survive. They're slowly but surely starting to solve problems like hunger and disease, and they're realizing that they're slowly killing their planet with heat and are starting to do something about it, though they've got a ways to go on that one. They're even taking some baby steps into the world of quantum physics."

"Sounds like they're making fairly standard progress. Cold fusion will likely be their next big discovery, right? So what's weird about it?" asked Gren.

"They still have all the old superstitions that far more primitive societies have. Supernatural beings, healing people with magic, people who claim to see the future, all that kind of thing."

"So? Lots of planets have different cultures that are at different levels of development."

"But that's the thing" said Yargo. "This is all within the same culture, the same country, often the same town. You could easily have a nuclear physicist living right next door to someone who makes a living convincing people that they have some kind of energy field flowing through their body and he can manipulate it and cure diseases. It's the juxtaposition that's the weird part."

Oh, here he goes, thought Gren to herself. He's using the big words. Means he's getting all worked up. "But once their scientists figure out that there is no such energy field, all of that will go away. Happens all the time on planets all over the galaxy."

"No!" exclaimed Yargo, clearly agitated now. "They have explained it! They know there's no such energy field, but millions keep believing it anyway. They've done study after study and there's zero evidence that this stuff works, but it's still a huge industry. You wanna know the funny part?"

Not really, thought Gren, but she knew he was going to tell her anyway.

"There are people who believe that you can mix stuff in water and then keep adding water so many times that by the time you've finished mixing it, there's none of the original stuff left. They believe that the water remembers the properties of the stuff and so it can be used as a medicine. The less of the original stuff in the water, the more effective it is." Yargo laughed.

Gren got up and walked over to the foam machine. She poured herself a tall glass, her third of the morning. She looked at Yargo to see if he wanted one as well, but he was staring at his monitor again. She quietly made her way back to her station, hoping he'd just continue watching and stop his little rant, though she had to admit that this water memory thing was pretty funny. They'd heard some doozies over their years of planet-watching, but that was one of the more original ones. But she'd had enough of Yargo's weird little planet. She wanted nothing more than to just watch the war while she enjoyed her foam. She flipped the switch and saw the screen come back on, then closed her middle eye again as Yargo continued.

"Early in most of these civilizations we watch, they can't explain all kinds of natural phenomena, like lightning or tornados, or health-related things like diseases or even death. They have no idea what causes any of them, so they make up imaginary spirits and things like that." Yargo waved his arms in the air, conducting an invisible orchestra. "Eventually they figure out what's really causing these things and the superstitious thoughts are no longer necessary, so they get abandoned. Eventually, they look back and laugh at what their ancestors used to believe."

"But these humans, I don't get them. Their scientists explain things to the point where the magic isn't necessary anymore, but people continue to believe it anyway. I think many of them understand that their beliefs and their science are disparate, but they manage to keep things separate in their minds anyway. But those people aren't the problem. There are many who actively try to dissuade people from believing the scientists."

That got Gren's attention. She opened all three eyes and spun around. "What? Why? What's the point of that?"

"Well, as I said some make their living selling this stuff. If you're selling magic bracelets or ineffective "remedies" or energy field manipulation or whatever and scientists say it doesn't work, you want people to believe you and not them otherwise you're out of business, aren't you?"

"So they're all crooks?"

"Well, no. There are lots who honestly believe it really works, likely because the human brain is really weird. You can give people something that has no medicinal ingredients at all but if you tell them it does and they believe it strongly enough, it can actually have a real, measurable effect."

Gren was really starting to find these humans interesting. Her war completely forgotten, she asked "Sorry, what? You can give them fake medicine and it works?"

"Yup."

"So what the hell's the point of having doctors?"

"Well, it doesn't actually cure things, it's more for temporary relief of symptoms. It doesn't always work that well, and it works differently for different people, and sometimes it doesn't work at all. It's weird."

Gren laughed. "I imagine all of these energy field people would be out of work if human doctors knew about this."

"They do know! They call it the 'placebo effect'. They've been studying it for two hundred years. Many of them even know that this is what allows all of these so-called 'alternative medicines' to appear to work. But the people who believe in these supposed 'therapies' think the scientists and the medical community are in some kind of conspiracy to keep people sick."

"What? Why?" said Gren again.

"They say it's because the doctors make more money from the medicines they have than they would make from the cures they're covering up."

"That's hilarious."

"I know, right? So millions of scientists and doctors and nurses all over the planet are supposed to be involved in this huge co-ordinated cover-up to keep people sick. And they're manipulating the results of every study done everywhere so that it looks like these alternative therapies don't work and their expensive medicines and treatments do. And over the last hundred years, not one person has had a change of heart and stepped forward to expose the conspiracy."

"Well, of course not," agreed Gren, putting her foam glass down to avoid spilling it as she shook with laughter, "the doctors would have to kill them to keep them quiet, wouldn't they? Probably arrange to have them overdose on that memory water! Or would that be 'underdose'?"

Gren and Yargo continued to laugh until their boss stuck his head in the doorway. "Everything OK in here?" he asked, unsmiling.

"It's all good, boss", said Yargo as he rolled his chair back to his station.

Gren went back to her screen, watching the war continue, wondering whether the people on Yargo's planet made any more sense than the ones killing each other on hers.

Baby come back

Hey baby, how YOU doin'?

I quit running last year, and our break-up was rather public. But I've been doing some thinking over that time, and I've reconsidered. Maybe if you're not doing anything next week, we could... you know... get together?

The issue is that without you in my life, I've grown as a person. No, not figuratively, I'm really getting kinda big. I weigh myself every Wednesday, and have for about six years, and I record it in an Excel spreadsheet. All last year, 2011, my weight was in the 170's except for one week in September when it went to 180.5, and the last week of December when I hit 180 again. From January until May this year, 2012, there have only been three weeks when I dropped below 180. Since that article was written, in early November, I've gained about 8 pounds and kept it on. My goals of hitting the weight bench never materialized, so other than my weekly (indoor) beach volleyball games from January to March, I got pretty much zero exercise through the winter. Add in my increasingly lousy eating habits, and well, let's just say some of my large T-shirts aren't so large anymore. And they haven't shrunk.

So I've been thinking of giving you a call for a few weeks now but just like the weight bench thing, it just kinda never happened. The last straw was yesterday when I got a haircut. I got my standard summer buzz cut – #4 clippers all over. I don't quite look like I'm joining the Marine Corps, but it's close. This is quite a change from my shaggy "winter" haircut, so naturally when I look in the mirror the first few times after doing this, I get a bit of a shock. But this time, it wasn't "whoa, your hair's different", it was "whoa, you're fat". And you know, the baggy XL T-shirts won't hide the difference in your face.

So right then and there, I made the first move – I plugged my iPod Nano in to charge. I use the Nike+ thing on my iPod to track my runs, and that's the only thing I use that iPod for (I have all my music and podcasts on a different one), so the battery was completely dead. Note that I hadn't decided that I would go running, I just decided to plug it in so it would be ready to go... whenever I got off my lazy ass and decided to actually run. Maybe tomorrow. Or the next day. But over the course of the rest of that day I happened to glance in the mirror a few more times and by the end of the day, I had had enough. The iPod was charged, so I grabbed it, changed into my running shorts and shirt (after blowing the dust off of them first), and out I went – and once again, my dear, we were together again.

I walked for the first and last couple of minutes and for a couple of minutes in the middle as well, but I probably ran about 2/3 of the whole thing which ended up being 2km. Not bad for my first time in six months. Was it good for you? I was pretty tired afterwards but not completely wiped out. To be honest, I probably could have gone longer, but I didn't want to overdo it my first time out. No, really!

The really dumb thing about this whole affair situation is that I picked the worst possible winter to not run. We had a bit of snow here and there, but it was generally gone (or minimal) on the sidewalks and roads a week later. It was also far warmer than our average winter, so there were only short stretches would I wouldn't have been able to run outside. You know how I hate running on the treadmill, but I really could have been running outside almost all winter long.

Anyway, it felt pretty good to be back with you again. I'm not yet sure whether it was the running itself that I enjoyed yesterday, or the fact that I was running. Either way, I'm glad I went. I really hope I can stick with it this time because to be quite honest, you're the one "mistress" that Gail really doesn't mind me spending time with. I had a different one this past winter called "lacrosse blogging", and Gail wasn't so thrilled with her. She took up a fair bit of my free time, including most Friday and Saturday nights and most of the day every Sunday from January to mid-May. I may see you just as often as her but it's for shorter periods of time, and frequently before Gail's awake. Plus she's happy that I'm getting exercise and staying in shape.

I know Gail doesn't care if I have a bit of a spare tire around the middle, but I certainly do, and if you can help me get rid of it, that'd be great. Thanks babe, it's good to have you back.

All blogged out... for now

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you may have noticed a slowdown in the number of postings over the last five months or so. This is because of the other two blogs I've been writing for: NLLChatter.com (my own lacrosse blog) and ILIndoor.com, the premier box (indoor) lacrosse blog anywhere. Since late December, I've written twenty articles on ILIndoor (listed here) and almost eighty articles on NLLChatter. By way of comparison, I've written all of ten here.

The National Lacrosse League season ended a little over a week ago. There are indoor lacrosse leagues in the summer, as well as a field lacrosse league, but I don't really follow them, so I'm pretty much done with lacrosse until next winter. So now that I have more free time to not write about lacrosse, and because the weather is beautiful outside, I'm finding that sitting at the computer and writing about other things is a little less of a draw now than it has been in the past. I'm quite sure this is temporary, and I do have a number of articles in the queue either needing polish or waiting to be written. In fact, one of them will likely be posted later today.

So do not worry, faithful reader, that I have quit the blogging game. Stick with me and there'll be more articles coming – and I guarantee that you'll get the same amount of insight and wisdom as you've always gotten from me. Interpret that last sentence as you will.

Cubs, mushrooms, and a decimetre

This past Saturday was JOTT, or Jamboree On The Trail, a day where all members of Scouts, of any age, around the world are encouraged to go for a hike. The 3rd Waterdown group that my kids (and wife) are part of does this every year. They generally arrange things so that all the groups – Beavers (ages 5-7), Cubs (8-10), Scouts (11-14), Venturers (14-17), and Rovers (18+) all hike different trails that end up at the same place at the same time for a barbecue. The Venturers start early and hike 10-15 km, the Scouts a little later and a little shorter, the Cubs shorter still, and the Beavers start last and hike 2-3 km. Nicky is a third-year Cub while Ryan is a third-year Scout, and Gail is a Cub leader. Gail was busy this past weekend so I took her place and hiked with the Cubs.

We walked along part of the Bruce Trail from northern Burlington to Camp Manitou, a Scout camp south of Campbellville. We went through forests and meadows and farmers' fields and up and down steep hills and across wooden and metal bridges and boardwalks over swampy areas and rivers, and even along residential streets through the little town of Kilbride. We saw no fauna other than a few birds, but lots of flora including giant mushrooms eight inches across, trees growing on top of huge rocks, ferns, and thousands of pink and white trilliums.

I made a map of the trail we covered. Of course, the straight lines through the forests are very rough approximations, since you can't see the path on the map. I can assure you that the paths through the forests were not straight for very long, so the 3.67 miles (5.9 km) that Google Maps reports is rather low.

Of course, when you have thirty or so 8-10 year olds and no TV or video games, you end up with some interesting conversations. Here are a couple that I overheard snippets of and one that I was involved in:

A: [Talking about digging a hole with a chainsaw] Then I sit on the chainsaw and dig down.
B: Then you'd go all the way to China.
A: You know what? China isn't on the other side of the world.
C: You couldn't do that anyway. This earth has a core in the middle. If you get too close to the core, you'd die. You'd disintegrate.

---

A: Do you believe in God?
B: Do you?
A: No. You don't have to, you know. It's a person's choice whether they want to.
B: So if God didn't make the world, then who did?
A: I dunno.

---

A: How long would it take to get to the moon?
Me: I think it took the astronauts about three days to get there.
A: But in space time, it only took them, like, two minutes. Time goes slower in space.
Me: Well, the astronauts were going pretty fast, but not fast enough to slow down time for them.
[At this point, I'm impressed that he has even the most vague knowledge of relativity. Then...]
A: I knew a guy who could stack cups, like, almost the speed of light. Like, a decimetre.
Me: Ummm...
A: How fast is a decimetre?
Me: Ummm...

[A decimetre is a seldom-used measurement of length equal to one-tenth of a metre, or ten centimetres. This is about four inches.]

---

When it was all said and done, the GPS said we walked about 9.8 km in 3hrs 15 minutes. The Scouts walked a little further, about 10.3 km. Everything worked out really well at the end of the trail – the hot dogs were ready when we got there, and there were lots of apples and oranges and watermelon and of course watery Kool-aid (I believe that is a Scouting requirement). All the different groups arrived within about half an hour of each other, with no missing kids and no injuries. It was also the first JOTT in at least a couple of years with no rain; actually the weather was perfect. I hope the other Scouts from around the world who participated had as great a day as we did.

These kids today and their social acceptance

When I was a kid, I hated getting my hair cut. Hated it. My mom or dad would say "Graeme, get your shoes on" and I'd ask "where are we going?" and one of my least favourite answers was "you need a haircut". Even going to the dentist wasn't as bad. Was this because I was particular about how my hair looked, and the barbers we went to didn't do a good enough job? No, I didn't generally care what it looked like. Was it an unpleasant place? Did the barber smell bad? I don't think so, but I actually don't remember where we went the times when my mom didn't do it herself. It was because of school. Whenever I got a haircut, the kids at school would make fun of me, and I hated it.

You may be surprised to learn that despite the mountain of manly musculature you see before you today, I was bullied a lot as a kid. (I'll just pause a minute here while you get your laughter under control. Dum de dum de dum... all better now? Great.) I wasn't really short, but in the lower half of the class height-wise. I was also pretty scrawny and not exactly a star on the sports field. This was not helped by the fact that I did grades one and two in the same year and so was a year younger than everyone else. I don't remember being beaten up all that often, it was more verbal bullying, i.e. being made fun of. Whenever I got my hair cut, there were always a few kids at school the next day pointing and saying "Ha ha! You got a haircut!" The brilliant comeback "So?" never occurred to me, nor did the concept of simply not giving a shit, so I just put up with the teasing, silently cursing my parents for not letting me grow my hair to the floor.

I don't imagine I was unique in having to deal with this. I was lucky enough to never wear braces and I didn't wear glasses until high school, but I knew kids who had one or the other (or even worse, both) and they went through endless teasing as well. It was not unusual at all to hear "brace face" or "metal mouth" or "four eyes" or other names thrown about. I remember going to school and seeing a friend wearing glasses or braces for the first time and feeling sorry for them – not because of the problems with their eyes or teeth, but because it meant years of teasing were about to begin. Gail got her glasses in grade two, and endured years of it.

Eventually my classmates and I matured to the point where the teasing stopped. When I got glasses in grade ten, I don't remember being called names or being made fun of at all. For the next fifteen years or so, that kind of teasing was a thing of the past. It was something I just didn't think about. It wasn't until I had kids of my own who started school that I thought about it again. I almost apologized to Ryan when we took him to get a haircut for the first time after he started kindergarten because of the teasing he'd have to go through at school. The next day I asked him about it, and he had no idea what I was talking about. Being made fun of because of a haircut? Why? I was very glad to hear that this wasn't an issue, at least in his class.

A little while later, Ryan said that a girl in his class came to school with glasses for the first time. Again I asked if people made fun of her, partially to make sure that Ryan wasn't one of them, and again he was puzzled. "No," he said, "most people didn't say anything, and some just said they looked good on her." The further he got in school, the more I found that this was the norm for them – people get haircuts all the time, some have to wear glasses or braces, and that's just how it is. Nobody is made fun of because of it, and nobody dreads going to school because of it. Ryan got his glasses back in 2008, just having finished grade 4. I remember being at the optometrist and Ryan didn't even blink when the doctor told him he needed glasses. He didn't get the glasses until something like the third week of June, so we didn't bother making him wear them to school for the last week, but he didn't care either way.

The original inspiration for this article is that this past week, Ryan had a (fixed) retainer put in, and will be getting braces in a few months. We've known this has been coming for a couple of years, and Ryan has never shown any unhappiness or concern about it at all. In fact while I can't say he's exactly excited, it's a bit of a novelty to him right now, and he's curious about how it will work. Two days after Ryan got his retainer, I took Nicky to the optometrist for his annual eye exam, and now he needs glasses too. Similarly, his reaction was a nonchalant "Oh. Cool."

I realize that this is quite a different thing, but I hope that other forms of verbal bullying and discrimination similarly vanish over the years. Right now, I could tell my kids "Not long before I was born, black people had to use different entrances in schools and sit at the back of the bus while the white people sat at the front!" and they'd be amazed. They'd ask me why that was the case, and I wouldn't be able to give them a compelling answer, or even one that makes any sense at all. I envision my kids talking to their kids in a few decades, telling them "When I was a kid, gay people weren't allowed to get married!", and their kids being amazed. They'd ask why, and my boys would have to give the same "That's just the way it was back then" non-answer.

Of course, kids are still kids. The bullying is still there, but it's a little different now: "Ha ha! Alexis' dad only has an iPhone 3, and Matthew's mom still uses a Blackberry! LOSERS!"

Dumbest spam ever

I received a spam email this morning with the subject "Summary of junk emails blocked – 1 Junk Emails Blocked". It was ironically intended to look like a report from some kind of spam filter saying that an email was blocked. There were a number of links on the page for how to manage lists or configure your settings for this non-existent application. I knew it was spam because (a) it didn't mention what spam application or web site it was using (I'd expect that in big letters across the top), (b) I have never signed up for any such service, (c) my company used to have a similar service but stopped it a few years ago (and this wasn't it), and (d) the email was sent to an old email address of mine that I no longer use but still works.

But the real giveaway that this was fake was that all of the links in the email go to the address 192.168.0.22:10080. Any address beginning with 192.168 is what's known as a private address, which means that it's a special address that's only accessible from another machine on the same network. By "network" I don't mean the Internet, I mean, basically, the collection of computers connected to your local router. My machine currently has the IP address 192.168.0.108. Posting your IP address on the internet for all to see might be considered a security risk, but there is no security problem with posting private addresses because unless you are connected to my network, you can't get there. Not because I'm clever and have set up fancy rules or anything, just because that's the way TCP/IP addressing works.

So if I were to click on a link in this spam email, first of all you'd have my permission to come to my house and smack me upside the head. Secondly, nothing bad would happen in this case, because for it to work, there would have to be a machine inside my network with that address, with an HTTP server listening on non-standard port 10080. The odds of there being a machine on my network that just happens to have that IP address and just happens to have an HTTP server listening on that port and just happens to have evil software running on it are beyond remote. The only other possibility is that some hacker has already penetrated my network, set up a machine with that IP address and an HTTP server complete with malware, and then sent me a spam email to get me to visit that machine. This is unlikely as well – you've already broken in, why bother with the spam? This is like breaking into a bank in the middle of the night, then calling a bank employee from the inside, and while pretending to be the bank manager, asking him to unlock the front door. You don't need the front door unlocked, you're already inside.

The most likely scenario is that the people who created the spam email are idiots. They set up a server on the internet that they wanted you to connect to (that had malware or whatever on it). Since they set up the server in the first place, it's likely on their local network and the way they connect to it is through the 192.168 address. That's not the way the rest of the world would get to it, but they didn't know that. The result is that they have sent out this spam email (and likely paid to do it) and will never get any hits, even from people who do foolishly click on the links.

Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of guys.

The Leafs and Raptors need a Terry

A little over three years ago, I wrote an article about the General Managers of the Leafs, Raptors, and Rock. The Leafs had just hired Brian Burke as their new GM, and it seemed that the Toronto media had already decided that he was going to save the team; in fact, I facetiously referred to him as Our Saviour for a while after that. Bryan Colangelo had been the Raptors' GM for a year or two, and had done a pretty good job of turning around the mess that Rob Babcock had left behind. The Rock still had Mike Kloepfer as GM, and the team sucked.

My article suggested that the Rock needed to get rid of Kloepfer and hire themselves a "Brian" who would overhaul the team and make them not suck, which Burke and Colangelo were obviously about to do with the Leafs and Raptors. One of the suggestions I gave for who could take over was Terry Sanderson, and another was Jamie Batley. Ironically, less then four hours after I posted that article, the Rock did fire coach Glenn Clark, who was at least part of the problem, and Batley was hired as coach. The rest of the problem was solved at the end of the season when Mike Kloepfer resigned. A month later Sanderson was re-hired as GM. The next season (2010), the Rock went to the Championship game and in 2011, they won it all. We're now midway through the 2012 season, and the Rock are tied for first place in the Eastern division. I'd call that mission accomplished.

I could pat myself on the back for predicting the Rock's next course of action (kind of – I suggested Sanderson though I said it was unlikely), but the original point of my article was lost. It wasn't so much that the Rock needed a new GM,  it was that the Rock needed to do what the Leafs and Raptors did and replace their rookie GM who screwed the team up with a proven veteran who could turn it around. The Rock did that, but the Leafs and Raptors haven't had nearly the success that we all envisioned when Our Saviours came to power.

In the 3 seasons prior to Burke's being hired, the Leafs had 91, 83, and 81 points and missed the playoffs every year. In the two full seasons since, they had 74 and 85 points and missed the playoffs every year. This year they're on pace for 83 points and missing the playoffs. They don't have any first-round draft picks for a couple of years because of the Kessel trade, so the rebuilding process will be continuing for a long while.

Update: My timing was off. The picks involved in the Kessel deal were for the last two drafts, so that's done now. Thanks Faisal for the clarification!

Bryan Colangelo was hired by the Raptors in February 2006, six years and a week ago. In the first couple of years, Colangelo looked brilliant. The Raptors finished first in the Atlantic division the very next year, and Sam Mitchell was named Coach of the Year and Colangelo Executive of the Year. The Raptors lost in the first round of the playoffs, but made the playoffs again the next year. They lost again in the first round, and then things went south quickly. They haven't made the playoffs since and haven't really been much of a threat at all. Last season they were a hopeless 22-60 and this year they're not much better at 11-25.

Barring miracles, the Leafs and Raptors are not likely to win championships during the Burke / Colangelo eras. I'm not suggesting firing them now, though I think the Colangelo era has run its course and unless the Raptors start turning things around on the floor very soon, Colangelo should be done at the end of the year. I don't think Burke has done a terrible job; he's acquired some players who have been great like Phaneuf and Lupul. The fact that the goaltenders play like Turk Broda one week and a turkey sandwich the next isn't entirely Burke's fault. I'd give him another year or two to right the ship but unless obvious improvement is made, he's gone too.

Three years ago, I said that the Rock needed to find their Brian, and they did. Now the Leafs and Raptors need to find their Terry Sanderson.

There is no reverse discrimination

A friend of mine posted a Facebook status yesterday about a man who did something, well, dickish. I am not here to defend him; in fact I don't even know the man and I have to assume that the description of what happened is accurate, though I do trust the source. Anyway, someone else (who I don't know) left a comment to the effect that the reason he did this thing was because he was a man and must have been "overcompensating for some deficiency".

I did not leave a response to this comment since I don't know the person who posted it, and it would have been off-topic for the original status, but this person's comment really pissed me off. Why is is still OK to be sexist towards men? If something similar had happened but the offending party was female, and I had posted something like "must have been that time of the month", people would have come down on me like a ton of bricks for being a sexist bastard, and rightly so. Even worse, what if I had made a snide comment about the size of her boobs? That would also have been way out of line, but it's apparently OK to say that this particular man must have a small dick. I thought we as a society were trying to get rid of these kinds of "jokes" and no longer accept sexist, racist, or homophobic humour.

Just because the joke is at a man's expense and not a woman's doesn't make it any less sexist.

Decoded: Brad Meltzer's Decoded

Recently we happened upon a TV show called Brad Meltzer's Decoded, which was about Fort Knox and what may or may not be inside it. The idea of the show was to take a critical look at Fort Knox, visit it, and talk to people involved to see if they could figure out what's inside. They investigated rumours that all the gold that was originally in the vault is now gone, but they maintain the security to make people think it's still filled with gold because otherwise chaos would erupt. The show was certainly entertaining, and we all enjoyed it.

It turns out that this is a series which just began its second season. Each week they investigate something different, and we've watched three or four of them now. As a skeptic, I was excited by this. Perhaps this would be TV's first show to investigate these kinds of rumours and urban legends from a truly skeptical point of view – a TV version of the Skeptoid podcast. There have been other shows that claimed to investigate these types of things, but they generally sensationalized what they were investigating and ignored the scientific method. I've seen a number of shows that start by assuming rumours to be true and then decide that because they failed to disprove them, they must be true. That's not how it works. A prime example is a show called Ancient Aliens, which Ryan and I watched a few weeks ago. I will have to get to that one in another article, which means I'll have to watch the show again. It may be difficult to write through the fits of laughter I will undoubtedly have at what they called "evidence".

Brad Meltzer is an author who writes political thrillers as well as comic books. I had never heard of him until this show – or didn't think I had. A couple of weeks after we first watched the show, my son was looking over our "bookshelf of books we hope to read someday if we ever find some free time" and found a book of his called The Tenth Justice. I don't even know where it came from. Anyway, Meltzer only appears in the show in front of a green screen showing weird symbols (including the phrase "U83R L33T H4X3RS") and on the phone. He has a team of three investigators (a lawyer, a historian, and an engineer) who do the real work, travelling around the country (and across the globe – they were in Germany in one episode) visiting places, doing research, and interviewing people.

They do manage to find people who were really involved in the things they're investigating. When talking about Edgar Allen Poe's connection to the Declaration of Independence, they talked to a distant relative of Poe's. They talked to General George Patton's granddaughter as well as descendants of both Billy the Kid and the man who killed him, Pat Garrett. They talked to the national head of the KKK (and you could see the discomfort on their faces as they interviewed him). They talked to someone who's actually been inside the vault at Fort Knox, or at least claimed to have been. They talked to the last living person who helped carve Mount Rushmore. But sometimes their interview choices are less useful, like the head of some fringe conspiracy theory group. One time they interviewed the bartender at a bar near Fort Knox, and another patron happened to overhear and offered up his own theories.

In one or two episodes, I found that Meltzer seemed to be sensationalizing a bit – he'd say something like "We've learned that <X> happened" when we'd learned nothing of the sort. We'd heard someone say that X happened, or we've perhaps surmised it, but he seemed to jump to "learned" a little too quickly for my liking. But most of the time, they do a pretty good job of ignoring the rumours and meaningless "evidence" and taking the anecdotal evidence with the appropriate grain of salt. I was impressed that after investigating the death of General George Patton (there have been theories that he was murdered ever since he died in a car accident in 1945), one of the crew basically stated the null hypothesis – that unless we have compelling evidence proving otherwise, we must assume that the accident that killed Patton was just an accident.

Unfortunately, they don't always find what they set out to find. This is not a failing of the show; sometimes the required information is just not available. We still don't know what's inside Fort Knox. We still don't know where the original Declaration of Independence is. We still don't know whether Billy the Kid was actually killed by Pat Garrett at Fort Sumner. But some things do seem to have been dug up. For example, General George Patton died in a car accident, but the soldier who was at fault in the accident was never charged and there was no autopsy. This led conspiracy theorists to suspect that he was murdered, and some nutcases extremists even suspected it was done at the command of Dwight Eisenhower. But after the investigation, it was discovered that Patton himself ordered that the man at fault not be court martialled, and that his wife requested that there be no autopsy. The cynic in me wonders if these things were truly "discovered" by Meltzer's team and weren't previously known, or if they just set up the episode to make it look like they'd discovered it.

My kids and I are enjoying Decoded, so we've set up the PVR to record new episodes. The boys also like to listen to Skeptoid, which I encourage. I'm happy to play my part in raising the next generation of critical thinkers. Unfortunately, the History channel won't let us watch episodes from season 1 online, though it does give a helpful link so that I can buy them from iTunes. It'd be nice if History would get with the times and let us watch past episodes online like many other channels and networks do. Hey Brad Meltzer – decode that.

\m/

This is an actual conversation that took place at my house tonight. Note for the record that Nicky is 9 and has been playing the guitar for about a year and a half.

Me: Nicky, can you practice your guitar please?
Nicky: I can't find my song sheet. It's not in my book.

We searched his room and the office for a while, no luck.

Nicky: Can we look on the internet for the music and print another one?
Me: Sure.

<Fires up the browser, heads to google.ca>

Me: What's the name of the song?
Nicky: Master of Puppets.
Me: O_O

Nicky and some friends, when his hair was longer.

In Lax We Trust archive

I was part of the inlaxwetrust.com writing staff for almost five months, and wrote 23 articles in that time. Here are links to all of them. I'm not posting this because I expect you, dear reader, to read any of them. This article is mainly an archive for my own use so that if I want to link to one of them, I can easily find the link here.

However if you do want to read one or two, the Salaries of Lacrosse Players one was very popular (especially among lacrosse players!), and the entry draft one too. My personal favourites tended to be the funny ones – I had fun writing the "looking forward" one (more satire than comedy; let me know in the comments (here – comments on that article are closed) if you're one of the few that got the "price is right" joke) and the one about lacrosse movies. For more analysis and less comedy, I also liked the NLL Awards article.

 

Update: In June 2012, In Lax We Trust changed hosting companies and became inlacrossewetrust.com. When that happened all of the archives were lost, and so none of the links below will work. I wish I had saved copies of the articles before this happened but I didn't. As far as I know, all of these articles are gone forever. <sad>

Title	Description
NLL Season Preview: Philadelphia Wings	I investigate the personnel changes and preview the offense, defense, and goaltending of the Wings in the (then-upcoming) 2012 season.
Other Stories from the NLL Hold Out List	There was a lot of talk about the NLL Hold-out list because of the drama surrounding Anthony Cosmo, so I made up some other stories. Teddy Jenner didn't like this one.
Salaries of Lacrosse Players	Probably my most popular ILWT article – several NLL players retweeted the link to this one. I compare the salaries that NLL players make with those of other pro athletes.
Teachers and Firefighters in the NLL	Almost all NLL players have jobs outside of playing lacrosse, but it seems that a lot of them are either firefighters or teachers.
NLL Off-Season in Review: Colorado Mammoth	Review of the changes made by the Mammoth after the 2011 season.
NLL Off-Season in Review: Buffalo Bandits	Review of the changes made by the Bandit after the 2011 season.
NLL Off-Season in Review: Calgary Roughnecks	Review of the changes made by the Roughnecks after the 2011 season.
NLL Off-Season in Review: Washington Stealth	Review of the changes made by the Stealth after the 2011 season.
Upcoming Lacrosse Movies	Some ideas for movies that could be made involving lacrosse. Another fun one.
NLL expansion: Just say no	Another writer suggested that the time might be right for the NLL to expand. I disagreed.
A look back: Looking forward to 2002	Satirical article on how the future of the NLL might have looked in 2002.
Trivia contest answers	Former NLL player and current radio host Teddy Jenner won the contest.
In Lax We Trust Trivia Contest	A year or two ago I won a lacrosse shaft in a contest, so I came up with some trivia questions to give it away.
Renaming the NLL Awards	If the league were to rename its MVP, Rookie, Goalie, etc. awards after people like the NHL and others have done, who would they be?
Behind the scenes at the NLL entry draft	I enjoyed writing this mock conversation among the GMs at the entry draft.
Parity in the NLL: Who do we make fun of now?	Which team do we make fun of as the laughing stock of the league? There really isn't one.
The biggest surprises from the dispersal draft	Some surprising picks from the Blazers dispersal draft.
Farewell to the Blazers	Kind of a post-mortem on the Boston Blazers.
More New Rules Being Considered by the MLL	The MLL announced that they were considering using lacrosse sticks with heads that lit up to indicate who has the ball. This was such a silly idea that I came up with some other potential silly rules the MLL might think about.
Last year's NLL blockbusters: John Grant and Matt Vinc	Analysis of the trade that sent John Grant to Colorado and Matt Vinc to Rochester.
Last year's NLL blockbusters: Tracey Kelusky	Analysis of the trade that sent Tracey Kelusky to Buffalo.
Last year's NLL Blockbusters: Josh Sanderson	Analysis of the trade that sent Josh Sanderson from Calgary to Boston.
Lax Links 8/5/11	My first article for ILWT. Marisa used to do a daily list of links to stories from around the lacrosse world, and she asked me to put the list together on that day.

The Hockey Hall of Fmae

Considering I've lived in or near Toronto almost my entire life, and have been a hockey fan for that entire time as well, it's somewhat surprising that I have only been to the Hockey Hall of Fame twice. The first time was in the summer of 1991, and I have a short story about that visit. The second time was this past weekend, and I have a few things to say about that as well.

Overall, if you're a hockey fan the HHOF is a must-see, though I'm sure that statement surprises nobody. There are hundreds of pieces of memorabilia from over 100 years of the NHL and from around the world. Here's a picture of the stick and gloves Sidney Crosby used to score the "Golden Goal" in the Vancouver Olympics, as well as the puck itself:

There's also this thing:

Back in 1991, I visited the Hockey Hall of Fame when it was still located at the old Exhibition grounds. My friend Beth and I were at the CNE and decided to check out the Hall while we were there. When we got into the trophy room, the Stanley Cup was sitting in the middle of the room on a table similar to this one. There was no security anywhere to be seen; the closest thing was another table nearby where there were two teenaged girls siting. They had a Polaroid camera and would take your picture with the Cup for $10. I assume they worked for the Hall, but maybe they were just resourceful.

Beth and I walked around the Cup looking at the inscriptions, when one of the other visitors said aloud "I wonder how heavy it is". He put his arms around the Cup and lifted it. Beth and I took a step back to let the security guys through, and put our hands over our ears to protect ourselves from the wail of the sirens, except... nothing. No security guards, no alarms, nothing. The girls with the Polaroid didn't even look around. The guy who lifted it said something like "Huh! Not that heavy" and put it down again. Of course, I took the opportunity to do the same thing, something every Canadian kid dreams of doing: I hoisted the Stanley Cup. It's not that heavy.

When we were there last weekend, I did not attempt to lift it, as there was a security guard there. I asked the security guard how many replicas there were, and if this was one of them or if this was the real Cup. He gave me an interesting answer: there are two Cups and neither one is a replica. There's the "presentation Cup", which is the one the winning players raise on the ice, and the one they take back to their home town. And then there's the one in the Hall (he had a name for it other than "replica" but I don't remember it), which is an almost-exact, well, replica of the presentation Cup, though there are a few names spelled differently on each one. To me, this sounds like there's "The Cup" and "the replica", but the guy at the Hall said that both are officially "The Stanley Cup".

The Cup and the rest of the trophies are usually kept in a place called the Great Hall, but it's closed for the next couple of months for renovation. They moved the trophies elsewhere so we could see them, but it means we didn't see the complete list of Hall inductees. There were a number of displays for individual inductees like this one for Mario:

There were stats and facts and a signature and jerseys and a stick and even a box of Corn Flakes with Mario on the front. There were similar displays for Wayne Gretzky, Bobby Orr, Denis Potvin, Luc Robitaille, Roger Neilson, Ace Bailey (which included one of his golf clubs (?)), Borje Salming, and a bunch of others. There was a computer listing just about every town in Canada; you could select a town and find out what NHL players were born there. Guess who's from Waterdown? Well, nobody. But I grew up in Pickering, Ontario, home of both Glenn Healy and... um, nobody else. OK, I guess I can admit it. I am from the same town as everyone's favourite hockey douchebag, Sean Avery. We even went to the same high school, though he would have started at least five years after I graduated.

There is also a large section of the Hall for international hockey, including the Canada Cup, the Summit Series, various IIHF tournaments, and the Olympics. There are jerseys from just about every country – did you know Ireland had a team? Greece? Mexico? South Africa? Canada won four hockey gold medals in a row at the Olympics from 1920 to 1932, but would you believe their streak was broken by none other than Great Britain in 1936 – the most recent of only two hockey medals Britain has ever won?

One thing that surprised me about my visit to the Hall is the number of mistakes I found. Canada didn't win any hockey gold medals from 1952 until 2002? That can't be right. Seriously though, thinking back to all the places I've visited including castles in the UK, various chateaux in France, museums and other touristy things in London, Edinburgh, Paris, New York City, Boston, Chicago, Las Vegas, San Francisco, Vancouver, Toronto, and others, the number of mistakes I found was zero just about everywhere. I'm sure I've seen errors but I can't think of any offhand, and I'm sure I'd have remembered if there were more than one in the same place. At the HHOF, I found at least four in the couple of hours I was there.

In the same room as the Stanley Cup was a big timeline, listing all kinds of events relating to the NHL. The timeline included not only dates of NHL events, but birthdates of future NHL stars, like this one:

Winning the Cup first and the Calder second is a pretty impressive feat, but doing them 55 years apart is even better. This next one contains two mistakes:

The first mistake is not so much a factual error as one of punctuation ("it's" should be "its"). The second mistake was FoxTrax itself.

There was a display of the "lucky loonie" from the Salt Lake City Olympics, although in the middle of the description they spelled the word "looine". I'm sure my dad pointed another one out to me but I forget what it was.

On a somewhat related note, there are also the misspellings on the Stanley Cup itself – a number of players have their names spelled wrong, and there's even one team spelled wrong (Leafs is spelled "Leaes" in one place). Former Oilers owner Peter Pocklington famously put his father in the list of people to have their names engraved on the Cup, and when this was discovered his father's name was X'ed out.

Anyway, as I said the HHOF is a must-see for any hockey fan. There are the trophies and memorabilia and lots of information and stats, a couple of short movies, and some simulation games for the kids – two where you are taking shots on a net, one where you are standing in a net where real pucks are flying at you (similar to the commercial below), and one where you're standing in front of a virtual net trying to react to virtual pucks. There's even a section on collectibles and NHL branded products – hockey cards, toys, lunchboxes, bobbleheads, cereal boxes, stuff like that.

My dad and I spent two or three hours in the Hall. QA issues aside, it's quite the interesting place, and when combined with dinner at the Marché upstairs and a Rock game after that, made for a fun day.

HHOF TV commercial

The best lacrosse writers in the world... and me

I announced back in August that I was joining In Lax We Trust as a writer, and ended up as co-manager and editor as well. I enjoyed my time at ILWT and wrote lots of articles. A few of them got lots of attention: one on lacrosse players' salaries from November is still getting talked about. Some I really liked and had fun writing: a satirical one about what the "future" of the NLL might have looked like in 2002, an imagined conversation among GMs at the entry draft, and some fictional movies about lacrosse.

In December I made the decision to strike out on my own, and created my own lacrosse blog, nllchatter.com. Around that time, I jokingly asked Teddy Jenner if they were hiring at ILIndoor.com, which is part of Inside Lacrosse magazine, and is pretty much the premiere indoor lacrosse blog anywhere. Rather than the expected "yeah, right", Teddy told me to email Bob Chavez. I don't know if Teddy was saying "That's a great idea! Email Bob!" or if it was Teddy's way of getting Bob to say "no" rather than doing it himself. I thought "what the hell, the worst they can do is say no", and emailed him. He got back to me with a proposal, and now I can announce that I will be joining the staff at ILIndoor.com and will be writing a weekly column called The Moneyballers this season. My column will run every Monday starting on January 16.

ILIndoor.com has some of best-known names in indoor lacrosse, including the aforementioned Teddy Jenner, a former player and current blogger, radio show host, and in-game announcer for the Washington Stealth; Ty Pilson, sports editor for the Calgary Sun and former Tom Borrelli winner (that's the NLL's award for the best writer of the year); Brian Shanahan, another former NLL player who has done colour for many lacrosse TV broadcasts (and yes, he's Brendan's brother); Marty O'Neill, the former GM of the Minnesota Swarm; and other great writers like Bob Chavez, Stephen Stamp and Casey Vock.

The Moneyballers will be a weekly look at the clutch players in the league from a statistical point of view. We have a system that assigns points to players for goals and assists that either tie a game or put their team ahead. Goals later in the game count for more than goals earlier, and OT goals count the most. Each week, I will tally up the points for that week's games, and keep track of the league leaders as the season goes on. Here's a link to last year's season-ending article.

I am very excited about this opportunity, but very nervous as well. The Moneyballers is a series that has been on ILIndoor.com for a few years, and up to this year, was written by another legendary lacrosse writer, Paul Tutka. Tutka won three straight Tom Borrelli awards, so that's a pretty tough act to follow. However, I am up to the challenge. But if you call me on a Sunday evening during NLL season, don't expect me to answer the phone.

Canadian Blog Awards redux

Back in November, I found out that my blog had been nominated for a 2011 Canadian Blog Award. Well, the results from the first round of voting are in, and I am excited to say that I placed fifth out of 39 in the Best Personal Blog category. Thanks very much to everyone who voted for me, but we're not done yet! The final round has already begun, and now there are only five nominees. The vote counts have been reset to 0, and we vote again.

My blog got 34 votes in the first round, while the blog in the lead got 81, so I've got some ground to make up but with your help, dear reader, we can do it. Please vote, and I don't want to put any undue pressure on anyone or use guilt trips or anything, but if you don't tell your friends and family to vote too, well I guess the terrorists have won. And it's your fault.

Voting began on December 24, and ends on January 20. Go and vote now! (Note that I was unable to see the names of the nominees on the voting page when using Chrome, but IE and Firefox work.)

Again, thanks to whoever nominated me and to everyone who voted for me.