2006 Sports Pool Update

Well, the baseball points are in so time for another table in the Gen X at 40 2006 Spring Sports Pool. The right answers for the baseball questions at #5 and the total of 60 available points were:

Boston won on 1 May.
No winner – there was a rain out on 2 May.
Wakefield and Wang were the starting pitchers.
Boston led New York by one game at 9 am on 3 May.

How have we made out so far?

~
NHL
Playoffs
Other
Hockey
World
Cup
Other
Fitba
Baseball
Other
Sport
Total
Hans 69 0 0 0 20 0 89
Alan 36 0 0 0 20 0 56
Rob 38 0 0 0 20 0 58
Scott 61 0 0 0 20 0 81
Ranald 103 0 0 0 20 0 123
CM N/P 0 0 0 N/P 0 0
Don 67 0 0 0 20 0 87
Mike 116 0 0 0 20 0 136
Matt 75 0 0 0 40 0 115
Marcia 35

N/P N/P N/P N/P N/P 35

The Road Of An Evening

Sir John A, 401, 12, 7, 407, 427, 409, parking garage access road, garage, parking garage access road, 409, 427, 407, 7, 12, 401, Sir John A. Getting someone at Terminal 3 is a piece of cake even if a 575 km piece of cake. Thank God the Sox beat the Yankees and the Buffalo signal on 550 AM was clear until the New York City signal was clearer on 880.

What or who was a “bramp” anyway? The suit, the mailbox moneied and the tappers of ground and tree ought to witness Brampton from the 407 once in a life to see the deal. It doesn’t matter if you have got a million tonnes of this or that – if it doesn’t get packaged and shipped out it is just a pile. Brampton is the hive.

Radio Orchestra

I had no idea there was one of these still around:

Trombonist and composer Alain Trudel has been named the principal conductor of the CBC Radio Orchestra. He’ll officially take over musical leadership this fall at the Vancouver-based orchestra, North America’s only radio orchestra.

I am sure this puts me a few rungs down the ladder if any of you are CBC 2 types but I can only go so far to accommodate you people. But, really – who knew? What we really need is a state light orchestras. And state ale, cake, (pipe) and tea houses where they might play. One pal has a father-in-law who is/was a member of a state folk orchestra. Followed him around with brass band players for the days before his wedding. Best wedding video ever: there’s your pal, there’s central Europe, there’s the om-pah band. That is what the CBC needs to bring to the nation.

John Kenneth Galbraith

It is hard to say you are sad to hear of the passing of someone at 97 but it is the case with John Kenneth Galbraith. I have enjoyed a few of his many books and appreciate that he played a role in the economic modernization that helped bring the boom of wealth to North America that the combination of social welfare and well-regulated, well-taxed capitalist freedom has provided over the last 50 plus years. My favorite recollection of his observations was his description in the book Money: Whence It Came, Where It Went of the amazement of, I think, a US Secretary of the Treasury coming to the realization that banks, when loaning money, create the money loaned out of thin air as opposed to partaking of any sort of transfer away from A to give to B.

But it is his autobiographies that I would recommend first. In The Scotch he wrote about his south-west Ontario roots, including a great discription of his family’s weekly rushed clearing our of the local market town at the end of Saturday afternoon as the drunken brawls of less temperate but temporarily funded neighbouring farmers began pouring out into the streets. In another autobiography, I remember him describing the work he did as a economist for the US Navy after WWII figuring out the effect of Allied bombing on German industry as well as seeking out the basis for the Nazi war machine. He was quite shocked to learn there was no machine, that the Nazis refused to run factories on more than one eight-hour shift a day or employ women in them due to their puritanical belief in their “traditional family”.

Even if your economics are mere faith-based contrarianism, you may try to resist but should not as you will find the bright quality of his mind reflected in the writing nonetheless, the sort of mind which, when asked as an election night pundit at 7 pm who would win replied ask me at 11 pm and was happily never asked back to be an election night pundit.

Friday?…what do I do on Fridays?…hmmm

Friday. The last Friday of April as a matter of fact. I always run into May
with as much surprise as despiration as when March arrives. The magnolias are
coming into bloom here. Saw “mag-noooo-lias” like one of those Bugs Bunny
southern-gent-in-white-suit characters. Can’t do that in March. No sir.

  • Bye bye aggregation. Last summer, I was getting around 92% of visits through
    RSS. Now it is down to 76%. Comment spam is to blame I figure. Plus who the hell
    wants to read 250 feeds a day. I got an email from a pal asking me about the
    spam torrent on my comments but I had to tell him I never noticed as this blog’s
    format hides them from the front page pretty well automatically except that they
    show up on RSS. So for you aggregation readers, sorry. But there’s not much you
    can do given aggregation is going the way of usenet.

    Update: should this
    come to pass, kiss email goodbye, too.

  • Baseball is a game of failure and the Red Soxs are doing a good job the last
    week or so of proving that. Having the bazillion channel package just makes the
    down times worse – leaving me clicking back to find out that is it 0-6, 2-9,
    2-15…Good
    Lord
    . But it brings perspective to my hollow shell of an inner life, right?
    That is why I follow them. Must be.

  • I am thinking of throwing my hat into the ring for the Liberal leadership
    race. Every single person in the country appears to be doing it so why not me?
    It is a largely uninspiring bunch. I am still backing Iggy from a distance but
    really only because I can call him Iggy. El Tigre makes a fairly good
    point about the vision-ettes
    of the Dryden and Kennedy candidacies
    but I think Harper harkening to
    anything other than devolution is a bit off. No, it is all about planning the
    new social engineering of one localizing sort or another these days. Really, it
    is all about blandification as far as I see as so much as been shifted away from
    the Feds that they really have a small amount of effect on day to day life. You
    can’t harken back to the pre-60s without planning to reinstate the massive
    Federal presence as we were then a proud nation of the post office and the train
    system, bureaucracies like Health and Welfare Canada and the St. Lawrence
    Seaway. We always have been a nation of inspectors and the inspected. There has
    been and will be no great Canadian vision without the “national project” of one
    sort or another. Unless someone comes up with one, don’t expect any undoing of
    Grant’s Lament for A
    Nation
    otherwise.

  • Chiz is my pal. Reading this, I feel very badly
    for Chiz as Chiz is a really good guy.

Certainty

I have always considered the desire to firmly fix the future – to seek certainty in the uncertain flux of what is to be – a sign of some sort of weakmindedness, hubris over the temporal. No wonder, then, that the news of the day, a cap on trade in lumber to the US and set dates for Federal elections has assured me once again that we now live in Simpleton.

The second is being proposed for reasons antithetical, to avoid early elections. Well, having had two Federal elections in the last two years and no one having lost an eye I simply do not see the reason. We started having maximum terms between votes to assure that we got a vote sooner or later. I like voting. If we voted more I would be happy as that is when I get to be involved in the process. Fixed election dates only stop idiots with perceived leads from getting the boot when they dare to go to the pools early. Serves them right. Leave me and my boot that pleasure.

First of all, why would we think that maxing out the amount that we can sell to anyone? We are a nation of exporters of raw goods, all vanities otherwise aside. What good comes of shutting down a resource market to get a payback of what was improperly taken by a buyer? We aren’t needy. Especially as this country is experiencing a sustained economic boom despite the unfair imposition of that duty. Especially when the amount we are to receive is about half to be blown on the beer and popcorn money. Chicken feed in the big picture. It would seem that economically we are able to deal from a position of strength as a nation but the new negotiators weren’t told.

There. Believe it or not, I lack faith in the new mid-minor masters based on the evidence of their deeds. Who’d believe it? Sooner or later I will put that second string on the banjo…I suppose.

Update: Hey, they listened to the complaints. That’s good.

Sports Pool 2006 Points Table

I have created a table for points for the pool and another complete table for all picks data. The data one needs me dropping in more of the picks so will take a little more time but it has the NHL picks in now. Make sure I have it right – even though this may be ultimately useless. And, yes, all manual so this year we will not have running totals.

And if anyone can figure out why there is this gap in between the text and the table please let me know…Got it! Just some unnecessary break tags at a few points.

~
NHL
Playoffs
Other
Hockey
World
Cup
Other
Fitba
Baseball
Other
Sport
Total
Hans 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Alan 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Rob 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Scott 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Ranald 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
CM 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Don 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Mike 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Matt 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Marcia 0

0 0 0 0 0 0

Now Returning You To Your Normal Programming

I’m still trying to think about what to do with this place. I thought about it a lot on the trip which is sort of odd but I spend a lot of my time writing away here and reading what you leave it is respectful I think to have a think. Despite the numbers, I think blogging is way past the stale date and, if activity on many of my favorites from when I started writing is anything to go by, so do a lot of other bloggers. Yet it still chugs on, eating up the work day, proving once again that the greatest product of time-saving devices will always be more slackery.

One think that is nice to see is the demise of the A-list. Except among techie geeks, there is not many now running to read what X or Y said about something as if they have special authority on a subject. Many of them have actually been assimilated in to the grown-up real money paying media. The rest have been gently, quietly discredited and no longer hold conventions about themselves. Similarly, the idea of corporate blogging has died a natural death. Just as there is no new law and definitely no new economy, no new race of men of enterprise has arisen willing to share business secrets openly, risking discrediting the firm through describing the downside. Nothing has really changed and that is good. While we hear words about business reaching out to customers in real time and providing an on demand product it is all the blah of IBM commercials and, when stripped, is no different than the purchase of a can on beans at the store. Note again as well that none of you buy your cans of beans anywhere but at the store. Because you like going to the store where the people are. You like to have a good look at the can first.

No, it has resolved itself nicely into a more genial hobby, sort of like group penpalsmanship. This is good. People should speak freely with each other in a medium that allows for speedy cross-referencing from an archive as well as easy participation from anyone interested. Even if you make a little money on the side, as I am happy to do now, no one has illusions anymore that there is a private career around the corner. I used to question those who spoke about making community but now I think that that is one of the few claims about blogging from, say, 2002 that has actually stuck. People like to chat about stuff. That is why parties have not stopped.

But it is not a collaborative community. This is something that has disappointed me. People really do not use blogs to write something together, to figure a problem out collectively. These spaces are only like light bulbs. Certainly light bulbs more than lighthouses, let alone factories. Your town is full of people relying on 27 cent light bulbs to get ahead in their day to day lives. But no one thinks it is a miracle anymore and few devise ways to make their millions off of them.

Friday Chat From The Road

Here I am in the lobby of the Comfort Inn in East Greenbush NY a little east
of Albany (an excellent
spot
I might add) when what do my eye’s perceive? Gary’s
lament
:

(trembling slightly….)
but, Alan, if you’re on
the road…wh-wh-ooo wiiilll run Friday chat? We, we we gotta have our
fix…..
(shakes, shudders, pale trembling face…)

So it is both
with a warm heart and yet a feeling somewhat like coming to terms with one’s
stalker that we have today’s Friday chat from the road:

  • Highway hotels are a favorite thing of mine. They play much the same role as
    airport terminals. You are in transit. It is not like a resport hotel or one in
    your favorite destination for an urban fix. Gotta have a pool, gotta have
    snacks, free breakfast and a gas station nearby that doesn’t give you the
    creeps. This particular gas station here has large bottles from nearby Ommegang
    as well as a Dunkin Donuts outlet. You got to love that: local craft for the
    beer during the Phillies and Braves and generic international for the morning
    zap. This sort of travel is also something in that style of being nowhere and
    anywhere. I really have no time to learn anything about East Greenbush NY and I
    do not want it foisted upon me. I want pleasing dislocation because by 10 am
    I’ll be gone. Like a Gordon Lightfoot song with someone who will bring you more
    pillows if you just dial the front desk and ask.

  • While on the road, even if just since 4 pm yesterday, you immediately get a
    sense that you don’t know what is going on. US sports talk radio doesn’t help.
    Why Canada can’t sustain a sports talk radio network when every city over 75,000
    in the US has its own local guy going on about the local team is beyond me.
    Yesterday I got a very good hour from WHEN 620 on the AHL team for
    Syracuse, the Crunch, and their prospects in the upcoming first round of the
    playoffs against the Mantiboa Moose. Imagine the guy in Syracuse who is fixated
    on taking apart the Manitoba Moose in four: Crush them! Crush them!

  • Apparently, according to Dick, George gave Dick and George the right to
    declassify information in an executive order. But
    Dick won’t say when they used it, who else has the general power and won’t (I am
    assuming maybe) show anyone the actual executive order. This is a lot like a
    general warrant, something barred by the US constitution, which was an
    appointment of an officer by the British pre-Revolution to search anywhere
    anytime on suspicion. It is much better for accountability and transparency to
    make folk write down on a piece of paper what facts exist and why they are
    relying on a power in like of those facts so that there is something to test the
    use of the power against. One would hope that the executive order would contain
    a test as well – a purpose which justifies declassification – so that if the
    purpose does not exist then a declassification would be unwarranted. And the
    scope of the disclosure as well. Not defining who gets to
    know
    is fairly stunned, like the time Dad let the mouse out of the cage
    without shutting the door to the room. Lots of scurrying where you never
    expected you’d be scurrying.

  • If the Jays really are good this year, I know I will bandwagon with the best
    of them, I will say I liked them when – and frankly having watched them when
    there was nothing else to watch during the Jose Cruz Jr era I am owed that
    right. But it sure is depressing listening to them beat
    the Red Sox
    for the second night in a row. Tonight, however, Ichiro is
    at Fenway. I love Ichiro. I try to excell at all things in life if only to be
    like the tiniest speck of grey in the shadow of the man that is Ichiro. I will
    drive though southern Vermont and New Hampshire today on highway 9 in an
    Ichiro-like manner.

Well, there you are time to get the DD java and
wake everyone up. Miles to go before I see the sea.