Slice ‘o’ mid-eighties punk-metal crossover:

Popularity: 18% [?]

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Seven years ago the world was a different place. Bush was in the White-House the economy was roaring along. The Iraq war had gone from mission accomplished to an ugly insurgency and I was blogging far more regularly than I do now. And writing long posts as well.

Turning on the radio this morning the talk on the Fan 590 was focused exclusively on the latest outrage, namely the Chara hit from last night on Montreal Canadiens forward  Max Pacioretty. While the hit might have been outragous and borderline dirty or even outright dirty and deserving of suspension the reaction from the radio hosts was typical in that they are once again claiming incidents like this are the reason that hockey isn’t beloved in the US where our much more passive neigbour doesn’t go for violent sport like us Canadiens.  I call bullshit on that theory now and I did seven years ago after Bertuzzi assaulted Colorado Avalance forward Steve Moore. For the record I think Bertuzzi should have been suspended for a lot longer but I don’t think the act or the subsequent discipline affected Hockey’s popularity in the US. The game is not hugely popular stateside but no one could say that the number of fans have declined significantly since the “Bertuzzi Incident” seven years ago as was predicted on both sides of the border.

Anyway here is my original post unedited. The hyper-links don’t work any more and I am too lazy to fix them - apologies in advance.

I Come to Praise Hockey Not to Bury It.

I’m a hockey fan. I love to watch the game. I loved it the first time I saw in on a small black and white TV in our kitchen. It is one of my earliest memories. Buffalo and Toronto were playing. I am trying to understand why there are penalties. My mother who has zero knowledge of the game is patiently trying to answer my questions:

“Why did that guy get a penalty?”
“Because he tripped the other player.”
“That’s not allowed??”
“No.”
“So he has to leave the game??”
“No he has to sit out for two minutes.”
“What about if he tripped him accidentally??”
“Uhh.. I don’t think so.”
“What about if someone is skating really hard up the ice and accidentally bangs into someone and falls down. Does the other guy get a penalty??”
“.. maybe..”
“What about if?…..”

You know how it goes with kids.

Anyway I began collecting hockey cards and playing road hockey with friends. I aspired to be a goalie and emulate Ken Dryden who was my hero. When he allowed 7 goals in the opening night of the famed Canada-Russia series of ‘72 I was so distraught that I almost cried myself to sleep.

Hockey was a much more violent sport back then. Bench clearing brawls were common. There were no designated “goons”who squared off once a night in a pantomime of a fight just to prove they earned their checks. Everyone fought, star players, goalies, even coaches. And if they didn’t fight each other sometimes they waded into the crowds. I remember one game where I think the Boston Bruins invaded the stands and started beating on opposing fans. One person has his shoe off and was hitting a Boston player over the head with it. The players looked huge and insane, the crowd alternated between terror and the type of defensive attacks you see from cornered animals.

One team the Philadelphia Flyers made brawling their modus operandi. In the mid 70’s the Flyers coaching staff led, by the great Fred Shero figured out that if you tried to keep penalties to a minimum then the refs would catch them all and you would be shorthanded. However if you committed tons of infractions you would get away with a lot and the other teams would be intimidated. Hence the building of the Broad Street Bullies a team that dominated the middle of the decade and won two Stanley Cups.

Along the way they left a trail of blood, teeth, and fury. This wasn’t a team that had some silky smooth skill guys and a few pugilists. Everyone on that team could and would fight. The captain was none other than Bobby Clarke who was as tough as nails. Clarke is remembered somewhat infamously as the man who helped win the aforementioned Canada-Russia series by whacking the ankle of Valeri Kharlamov and thereby eliminating him as an effective player. Although I have seen highlights of the series many times and have yet to see the play in question, each time they show the supposed highlight it doesn’t look like something that would hurt a player. I have always thought this was braggadocio that turned into urban myth.

Clarke was joined by a cast of hard nosed players with names like: moose (Andre Dupont), mad-dog (Ted Kelly), terrible (Ted Green) , and the Hammer.

The Hammer being David Schulz a legendary fighter who seemed to spend most of his career in the penalty box.

The Flyers intimidated their opponents and for a period of time it was common strategy that to beat them you had to match them. Boston and New York also had some big tough teams all with players that could fight and make plays. The playoffs of 1974 featured two great series between Boston and Philadelphia and New York and Philadelphia. All hard fought rough and tough games that seemed to teeter on the edge of all out war. With Philadelphia on the ice no one on the opposing team looked down at the puck. You kept your head up and on a swivel most of the time.

In 1975-76 several Russian hockey teams toured the NHL playing exhibition games with the various NHL teams. The champion Central Red Army team that was laden with talent toyed with most of the NHL teams winning easily until they hit Montreal and the Canadiens (who could skate with any team) fought them to a 3-3 tie on New Years Eve 1976. I still remember it being one of the best games ever and it was the first crack in the seemingly perfect team that the Central Red Army squad was (remember in the Russian league at the time CRA was basically an all star team which for all intents and purposes was the Russian national Team so beating them with an ordinary NHL club team was quite a feat).

The real action however was a week later on a Sunday when the Central Red Army team played in Philadelphia. From the get go the Russians were flummoxed. Here was a team that seemed to be less concerned with winning and more concerned with violence. The first period featured the Flyers at their usual psychotic best and the Russian weren’t quite sure how to handle them.

The European style of hockey was a pure skill game with the much larger ice surface meaning less body contact. Here in the NHL the space was limited and the players were not afraid to skate through a player.

Midway through the first period Soviet Star Valeri Kharlamov was again the victim of a Flyer player. This time defenseman Ed Van Impe (the undisputed best body checker the game has ever produced) caught Kharlamov with his head down and leveled him. The Soviet star crumpled to the ice. For a moment time seemed to stop. And then the Russians decided that discretion was the better part of valour. They gathered up their sticks and left.

It was only about 11 minutes into the game and they were leaving!! I still remember Bob Cole screaming “I can’t believe it! They?re going home!! The Russians are going home!! We stayed in 72 when they bugged our rooms!! We stayed in 74!! But now they are goin home!!. “
Well they eventually came back and played but they were completely cowed and the Flyers outshot them 49-13 and out scored them 4-1.

So why am I wandering down memory lain with a tale of the good old days of “blood on the ice” (and in the stands)? Well like any good writer I am establishing mood. Or maybe I am laying a framework - to allow me to better develop my thesis. Or maybe I am a grumpy middle-aged fart who likes to think about the good old days.

At any rate, as I remember hockey it was more violent generally than it is now. However if you read the press around the “Bertuzzi incident” this week you would think that
hockey has been sliding into an abyss of violence and has now reached such levels of mayhem that mothers are scooping up their children when anything remotely resembling hockey appears on TV.

The collective tut-tutting and exaggerated outrage that have poured forth from the keyboards of journalists in the print and electronic media is no different from the drivel that spewed forth a few years ago when we had the “McSorley incident” and will be no different when the next ìincidentî happens.

As it stands, the NHL is on the brink of irrelevancy?.. There needs to be a zero-tolerance stance on fighting to save the game, attract new fans, and protect players like Steve Moore

Said Michael Holley of the Boston Globe.

Sally Jenkins of the Washington Post continued the theme:

What happened between the Vancouver Canucks and the Colorado Avalanche was in part because NHL owners have no faith in their sport and think they have to sell something besides hockey — namely, bloodshed.

Football and basketball do excellent at the box office without being egregiously violent. If anything, the most glamorous play in football is not about violence, but the threat of violence averted — the caught pass. Who actually likes to see exhibitions of violence? A certain segment of teenaged boys.

Mark Herrman of Newsday thundered that hockey is a

“sport that is barely hanging onto a shred of credibility”

Whilst Tim Layden of Sports Illustrated breathlessly announced the Dying Days of Hockey

“Hockey is mindlessly teetering on the edge of extinction. I take that back. Not extinction, but — and this is almost as bad — marginalization. Television ratings remain abysmal. Last month, the NHL All-Star Game got trounced in the ratings by Arena Football. The NHL is on the verge of a work stoppage that could wipe out an entire season. Soon the NHL will live where track and field and skiing and swimming live, in a cable ghetto where only the truly devoted will venture in search of entertainment. The Big Four (football, basketball, baseball and hockey) will become a Big Three.”

Wow I guess I should stop watching the game because Americans who never liked or understood the game in the first place aren’t watching?

Ok lets talk about the “big three” sports for a minute.

Football remains the king of TV ratings in the US for one reason and one reason only:

Gambling.

Millions are wagered on football games weekly and if you listen to game recaps on Monday after the Sunday marathon you will hear a lot of talk about teams “covering the spread”. Now, when you hear this type of talk in your run of the mill sports wrap-up you know how big the gambling thing is for football.

Face it, if there were no money wagered on pro football the ratings wouldn’t be much better than its poor cousin - arena football. So much for a  “healthy” sport with the type of popularity that hockey should aspire to.

And as for that glorious aversion to violence that makes it sooo much better than our graceless Canadian invention?

Well contrast Sally Jenkins naive comments above about football’s “non-violence” to Hunter S. Thompson’s take on the game:

“About 40 percent of the original Raiders were criminal by nature and deliberately dangerous brutes. They were professional athletes who got paid every week to hurt people. The worse they hurt them, the more they got paid — especially if you could damage or cripple another team’s Quarterback and put him on the Disabled List. That made you an automatic hero of violence, for a while, and entitled you to throw your weight around in downtown Oakland with whores and cops and animals. You were almost above the lawî

Hmm maybe Todd Bertuzzi should sign a tryout contract with Oakland. I don’t know that he is getting much respect from cops and whores in Gastown these days. I guess thatís the difference between Canada and the U.S.

As for baseball anyone with eyes can see that if there is a game in more trouble than hockey (if in fact hockey is in trouble) its baseball. Since the labour stoppage of about ten years ago the attendance has plummeted. Turn on any baseball game any time of year in any city and you are practically guaranteed to see more empty than full seats. And there is much hand wringing about how the game is becoming passe. It is widely panned for being too long, too boring and too slow.

Gee I guess if hockey had baseball’s problems we would be ok. Oh and as an aside for all of you who are worried about “fighting in hockey”, there are more bench clearing brawls in baseball every year than there are in hockey. Maybe it is all the violence that are keeping fans away in droves.

Now lets turn our attention to the NBA the other “big sport” that is supposedly doing so well compared to hockey. Perhaps this headline sums it up:

NBA Allstar ratings at an all time low

Ok so its an allstar game and who the hell cares about all star games anyway. What about last yearís playoffs??

NBA Finals ratings hit record low

That’s right the lowest ratings for the playoffs in over 25 years. I suppose people kept their TVs off on the odd chance they might be subjected to a hockey highlight.

Lets face it all of the major sports are having problems right now. There could be any number of reasons for this but I believe the main one is that the population is getting older and I don’t think aging baby boomers are as fanatical as younger people. Sure we will watch a game but we don’t rearrange our lives for it.

Lots of people are also frustrated with the length of the seasons for the various sports and also the dismal quality of the games as compared to the playoffs. This is in large part to the over expansion of all the major leagues (NBA., MLB. NFL and yes the NHL) diluting the talent pool and adding too many games to the schedules in order to squeeze more revenue out of the fans.

Which brings us to the next point; there’s only so much sports we can watch. Once upon a time you watched sports on Sunday because there was nothing else to do. The shops weren’t open and neither were restaurants and bars so you stayed home and watched TV and of course those were the days before the million-channel universe (or whatever its up to right now) so you were either watching sports or political talk shows. Guess which one most of us chose?

While we’re on that subject why hasn’t anyone explored the relationship between the popularity of MTV and video games to the decline in sports ratings? Trust me, the kids aren’t out there exercising.

And speaking of the kids much hand wringing was evident this week over “the children” and what kind of example Todd Bertuzzi and his ilk were setting for the kids.

Tim Layden in a finishing flourish to his hockey obituary summed it up this way:

It is odd to watch the youngsters play now, wondering if they might be the last generation of youth hockey players participating in a game that also has a major league version. Not because many of them ever will reach that level, but because it lends an air of credibility to the activity. A kid can go out and imitate Martin St. Louis in practice. I fear that instead he might go out and imitate Todd Bertuzzi

Well I guess that it would be terrible for the world if someone emulated Todd Bertuzzi. But then there are so many better examples from the other big sports for our kids to emulate.

Like. I don’t know …
Mike Tyson ? convicted rapist?
Kobe Bryant ? accused rapist ?
Barry Bonds or Mark Mcquire ? steroid abusers (and don’t talk to me about there being no proof that these guys use steroids ARE YOU BLIND??)
Wife Murderer OJ Simpson?
Pregnant wife murdering Rae Carruth?

Latrell Sprewell who tried to choke his coach?

Chris Webber dug abuser ?
Shotgun wielding Jayson Williams?
Oh and lets not forget Dennis Rodman the wife beating, drug using, cross dressing freak. Can anyone hold the NBA up as an example of leadership to kids when this joker was actually allowed to play in that league??

Murderers? Accused Murderers? Coach Chokers? Drug Abusers? Well the other sports are rife with them.

OJ Simpson wasn’t much of a hockey player. Neither is Kobe Bryant or Barry Bonds. But they don’t and probably will never get into a scuffle during a game so that makes our game a poor example for the youth of today.

The real reason kids aren’t playing hockey is that organized hockey is just too damn expensive. I have a sister with a 5 year old son and she is terrified that he might become interested in hockey. Not that they don’t want to encourage him to take part. They just cant afford the equipment.

And forgive me if I don’t buy into the bullshit about the NHL marketing the sport’s violence. The NHL has never emphasized fighting in its marketing and I challenge anyone to find me any media advertising from the league that specifically mentions fighting as the reason to watch the game.

And yet today I was flipping around during the commercials while watching the Craftsman Truck Series (glad I mentioned that because I need to talk about Nascar later and I don’t want to forget) and I happened to land on Newsworld where chief bingo caller Peter Mansbridge was interviewing hockey “intellectual” Steven Brunt.

Brunt who did everything but stroke his beard in a professorial manner and say “tut tut” was opining on the ìcherryficationî of the game and noted that the NHL shamelessly markets the violent side of hockey. Mansbridge for his part did nothing to challenge him for an example but darkly hinted that the CBC was somehow complicit because it features Don Cherry on Hockey Night in Canada (HNIC).

But yet the myth - ok its not a myth it is a bold faced lie - exists that the NHL is marketing the game as a bloodsport, nothing could be further from the truth. As a matter of fact the league has gradually introduced more and more rules to legislate fighting out of the game. Bench clearing brawls are now the subject of huge fines and suspensions. If you start a fight (instigating) you are thrown out of the game, do it twice and you face a suspension.

Hockey is not an American sport and thus will never engender the type of passion that Baseball or Football does. However when you read the moral and intellectual giants who feel they are experts on the game they all espouse the same tripe that Americans wont watch hockey because it is too violent.

This is impossible to reconcile when you consider the popularity of professional wrestling in the US or the amount of gun violence that occurs there on a regular basis. I remember once Bob McCowan (the hockey hater who hosts the FAN 590’s evening drive slot) holding forth on the inability of the NHL to break into the Southern US market and stating matter-of-factly that it was simply that hockey was too violent for Southerners.

Ok stop and think about it. Texas, Alabama, Georgia, Carolina, are these the areas of the US we think of when we think about non-violence? I’m more likely to think of San Francisco, Seattle and Massachusetts. If the league cannot attract fans in the southern US my opinion is that it isn’t violent enough!!

Which reminds me I was watching the Craftsman Truck race today and I promised I would tie NASCAR (the second most popular sport on US TV) into the mix, and trust me its important.

Remember the incident that occurred last year in NASCAR? Sure you do. C’mon it was reported somewhere, I think.

Let me refresh your memory a guy is trying to “get even” with another guy for some slight (real or imagined) and he attacked the other guy.

Remember now?

No?

I am not surprised because it was barely mentioned in the mainstream sports media.

Let me reset the scene for you. You have a fantastic young driver in Kurt Busch and you have a driver in the twilight of his career in Jimmy Spencer. They have some on track incidents and they don’t like each other. Spencer figures Busch is a dangerous driver. Busch feels the same about Spencer.

Last year after a race in Michigan Spencer approached Busch and physically attacked him.

Oh and I forgot one thing. Busch was still strapped into his racecar. To put it in perspective you don’t have doors to open on a racecar. You have to climb out of the window and before that you have to undo a five-point harness and a head restraint. Spencer wasn’t man enough to let Busch get out of the car. He just started wailing on him. This is the equivalent of beating a suspect in handcuffs.

Where was the outrage? Where was the media outcry? Did anyone dare to write that NASCAR would never be able to break out of its regional popularity because of the violence in the sport? And don’t tell me this is an isolated incident. NASCAR history is full of stories of guys settling accounts after the race, sometimes with their cars. I have seen drivers intentionally drive their cars into the other guys. And lets not forget the intentional attempts to wreck each others cars in each and every race.

Don’t tell me that this is driving fans away. That is why they come. And as I write this 22,000 fans are on their feet and cheering in the Montreal forum because they have just witnessed a stellar fight between Tie Domi and Darren Langdon. I guess there are no Southerners in the crowd.

But back to my point about NASCAR I think in terms of mentality NASCAR and the NHL are very similar. The fans like their sport a little on the rough side and the participants play very hard. The intensity of the game makes for short tempers and sometimes accounts are settled. This might be a good thing or it might be a bad thing. You can say it is immoral and wrong or you can say it is fine and dandy.
But don’t tell me that it keeps fans away from one sport and doesn’t keep them away from another. It makes no sense.

One more thing.

Vancouver’s first game since the Bertuzzi incident, on Wednesday against the Minnesota Wild, was TSN’s top-rated West Coast regional game of the season: 449,000 viewers.

Wow way to deal the sport a deathblow!! I bet TSN is hoping more players go all “NASCAR” on each other for the rest of the year.

Popularity: 19% [?]

Image via Wikipedia

I say Maryland style, because it’s a Maryland delicacy. This is NOT to be confused with BBQ, because it’s cooked over direct heat for a relatively short amount of time. Proper BBQ is cooked at lower temperatures for a much longer period of time. Very simple recipe and fairly simple to make, this is just flat AWESOME to eat.

Never heard of it but I could sure go for some right about now
Read More Here

BTW The pic is just some steaks. I just wanted to add a meat photo.

Update: for those in Canada who click through to the recipe top and bottom round roast are the same as what we call inside and outside round roast

Popularity: 19% [?]

Interesting article over at Pajamas Media entitled “Is Science Fiction Getting More Conservative?”

I was a huge reader of sci-fi as a child and into my teens however largely abandoned the genre  not for political reasons but mostly because I became tired with all types of fiction in general.

Of late I have been coaxed back to fiction by the discovery  of Cormac McCarthy and I have also read the odd sci-fi short story. I hadn’t noticed any particular right-wing slant but then again I haven’t heard of any of the authors in this article either.

Here’s the quote that stood out for me:

“nobody converts anybody; we, as a society, are way past that. Right and left don’t share basic assumptions, don’t use the same words with the same meanings, and generally just talk past each other.”

Pretty much sums up where we are right now as if you ask me and you can look no further than the blogosphere (do kids still use that word) as a perfect example.

Background reading: “The City and the City” (and I pretty much nailed this guy’s politics about 25 pages in.)

Popularity: 20% [?]

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Hey remember when everyone thought blogging was fun and great? Not so much any more

There are about 31 million blogs in the United States, a number expected to swell to 34 million by the end of this year. But Mr. Harbison is part of a small but growing trend of blog quitters. Last year, the number of blogging teens and adults ages 18 to 33 declined, in the first reported drop in blogging, according to Pew Research Center data.

Some have simply switched to another blog-like medium, say, Twitter or Facebook. Others have faced unpleasant facts about blogging. It’s cheap to do but usually doesn’t pay. Having a platform may be fun at first, but building a following takes much more work than simply typing and posting.

 For a practical example - just look at my blog output for the past three years.

(Possibly) Related articles

• Should you quit your business blog? (content1st.wordpress.com)
• Why Do I Bother? (stacey-rose.com)

Via: Mediagazer

Popularity: 19% [?]

You betcha!!!

Popularity: 20% [?]

Stompin’ Tom’s classic hockey song reworked for the Gold Medal victory last week:

Mild Content Warning: The song contains the word “ass” and a picture of an ass. So some people might not like that. Or some people might feel that it would be inappropriate for kids to watch. Because I guess kids don’t know what an ass is. Or maybe kids don’t get an ass till they are 13. Or something. So if you have an aversion to ass, congratulations. You’re not gay.

Via: Puck Daddy

Popularity: 33% [?]

Image by Dinur via Flickr

Well at least one NHL Team (the New York Rangers) appear to be.

January 14th/~3pm: I get an email from the agent and anxiously scroll down to see Chad’s contact information. Now, what I am about to say next is something that I have not told anyone before. The email address by which to contact the “real” Chad was the exact same one I saw on the Facebook just days earlier. I quickly open Facebook to double check only to find that the whole profile had been deleted (it has since been restored). Annoyed and confused, I then email Chad telling him what his agent told me and that we were good to go. He responds very quickly saying that it was not a problem, and just to clear it with Rangers Public Relations.

January 14/~4pm: I email the Ranger PR Director, who I will simply refer to as PRD (for PR Department). I am not expecting an email in return from him because I had never gotten a response in the past with any of my inquiries. I explain to him the situation and that I have the permission of both Chad and his agent to conduct the interview. PRD responds to me within ten minutes saying that I should have gone through his office in the first place and that Chad will not be available to do the interview. So I guess the human being himself wanting to do the interview isn’t good enough?

January 14th/~5pm: I CC an email to Chad and his agent telling them of my response and apologizing for any inconvenience. I then return PRD’s email saying that I did not go through him in the first place because I had never gotten a response back ever before. He replied, “You just did on the first email you ever sent to me.” Which is false because I had previous inquiries with both him and his assistant and they were never responded to.

The great thing about blogging is that it has eroded the ability of certain entities to “control the message”. When your attempts to control the message look ham-handed and foolish you end up worse off than if you had just let it go.

Read more: Ranger Rant: What Really Happened to the Chad Johnson Interview

Popularity: 31% [?]

Popularity: 32% [?]

My experiences with three dogs (one who died of cancer at age 5) versus my father who wasted away from a debiliating disease resonate well with this reasonTV piece about human health-care vs dog health-care.

The crux of this piece is more focused on the relative ease with which animal hospitals are allowed to open vs human hospitals. My initial thought was that human hospitals are more complex and there has to be more regulation around operating one.

Nope, it’s other local hospitals trying to protect their monopoly and keep out the competition.

Treat Me Like a Dog: What Human Health Care Can Learn from Pet Care

Via Instapundit (still relevant after all these years)

Popularity: 32% [?]

Kate McMillan who is possibly the best Canadian blogger on the right these days is a woman who I have a great deal of fondness for despite having never met her. She and I share similar political views, both are motorcycle riders (although I sold my bike two years ago). drive trucks and love dogs and rural life.  Kate’s dogged (no pun intended) coverage of the recent Climategate affair which I wrote about on Tuesday deserves the type of award they used to give to reporters but then again Kate is not a reporter  (and is proud of that)

Kate recently had an op-ed piece in the National Post regarding a conflict that is brewing (or already exists) between breeders of purebred dogs and some veterinarians. The crux of it  (as I understand it) is that certain veterinarians are objecting to the practice of tail docking and ear cropping which is an important feature of some purebred dogs (Doberman Pinscher for example).  If I understand it correctly many vets now refuse to perform these minor “surgeries” whilst still advocating spaying and neutering as well as “declawing kittens for profit”.

The crux of Kate’s argument is that veterinarians have no business sticking their nose into the world of dog breeding to the point of advocating for legislation to restrict certain elements of dog breeding they find objectionable.  As someone who is no fan of state expansion into our lives I agree with her wholeheartedly. If veterinarians don’t want to perform certain procedures they should simply refuse and let other veterinarians who want to charge a premium for them have that option – a government edict would have the effect of forcing all veterinarians to conform thus taking choice away from breeders, vets and pet owners.

The world of dog ownership is becoming increasingly regulated these days many countries have banned certain breeds outright because they are considered dangerous. Other nations have banned or are seeking to ban certain dog sports that focus on guard dog activities (Schutzhund, French Ring Sport and KNPV). Dogs are given very little room for error in most modern societies either. If we lose our temper we might face some sort of censure either legally or via peer pressure however dogs get no second chances. Even what any dog behaviorist would count as disciplinary biting on the part of a dog (where the skin is not broken) will usually result in the dogs immediate seizure from its owner and destruction by the state.

Thus it is absolutely right for breeders like Kate to be concerned about yet another advocacy group trying to insert legislation into the life of dogs and their owners. However (you knew there was a however coming, right?) there is an issue that needs to be discussed when it relates to purebred dogs. In fact it is a debate that has been occurring for a number of years in the dog community and appears to be reaching a boiling point.  In Kate’s op-ed piece she mentions the following:

Purebreds (of all species) carry health risks derived from their genetic founding fathers. Breeds weren’t created to compile longevity records, but to perform tasks for mankind — to dispatch vermin, predators, and enemy barbarians, locate game, retrieve over water, to pull sleds, or warm a dowager’s bed on a cold winter night. And so, they remain imperfect.

The Borzoi is living history of czarist Russia, the giant Mastiff a modern echo of ancient Rome — but they suffer high rates of bloat. Poster artists recruited the English bulldog as a symbol of resolve in World War II, but the massive head that encouraged a nation results in caesarian sections. The Dalmatian’s spots are beloved of Disney and children everywhere, but the genetics that create them can result in deafness. The merry spaniel can wag an undocked tail to bloody pulp, but no one hunts woodcock in these parts. Better no cocker, they say, than no tail.

Kate is being truthful here but there is more to the story. Certain dogs breeds do have genetic traits that lead to health issues that is true. But the purebred dogs as they exist today are very different (in some cases extremely different) than the same purebred dogs from 50-100 years ago.

Why? Because of the nature of dog shows and breed standards. You see when a dog is shown to its “championship” it doesn’t mean  (as a lot of lay people assume) that it has won some great obedience competition or has performed a certain number of tasks better than other dogs. The show champion dog is simply the one who has been picked by a judge to conform most closely to the “breed standard”.  The breed standard being a set of rules outlined by national and international organizations that define exactly what a dog of a certain breed should look like. This is on the surface a very good thing because you should have a set of rules that determine what differentiates a Beagle from a Beauceron and when breeders conform to those standards it allows the dog buying public to make well informed decisions and to not pay outrageous amounts of money for a dog that isn’t really the breed it was supposed to be.

Yet the breed standards that some breeds are held accountable to these days have not been helpful to the breeds and you can make a strong argument that they are causing great damage to certain breeds. Why? Because there has been a gradual evolution towards certain exaggerated features in these dogs that have nothing to do with the purpose of the breed as it was originally founded.  A perfect example?  The German Shepherd Dog.

Back in the late 90’s when our first Belgian Tervuren was still young  (and still living – he died of cancer in 2003 at only age 5) we were looking for an activity to do with him. Something that would be a good outlet for his energy but that also suited the breed.

After some research (we had the Internet back in the 90’s for all you young’uns reading this) we discovered Schutzhund.

Schutzhund  is a dog sport that originated in Germany. The name translates to “protection dog” and the sport was developed as a way to test German Shepherd dogs for suitability in police work. Hence the sport requires dogs to achieve proficiency in tracking, obedience and above all protection (i.e. biting criminals).

Our dog being a purebred Belgian Shepherd we figured he would be well suited to this type of activity. And while he clearly enjoyed the sport and seemed to have great fun while partaking it became abundantly clear from the get-go that he was never going to be a proficient Schutz-hund.

Why? He came from “showlines” 

Most people who have a dog (and obviously people who don’t) aren’t familiar with the terms “showlines” or “working lines” when it comes to dogs. The titles are self explanatory but in the interest of being overly long winded let me elaborate.

A show line dog is one that is bred purely for display in the show ring. You know those dog shows you see on TV like the Westminster Kennel Club etc.? Those dogs are showline dogs. They as I mentioned earlier are bred to conform to the breed standard and are awarded championships based on that alone. In other words they are bred to compete and  win beauty contests and nothing else.

A dog from working lines conversely is not built for showing but to do actual work, usually the work the breed was originally conceived for.

When we were told at our Schutzhund club that our dog probably wasn’t going to be a good schutzhund dog because he came from “showlines” I was confused. What difference did it make? A shepherd is a shepherd, a Doberman is a Doberman why would two dogs of the same breed be so dramatically different in behaviour  - especially in breeds that were originated for specific types of behaviour?

The answer: dogs bred for show are only bred for a certain “look” all other traits are irrelevant.

This was the source of some consternation to me for a while but it all became crystal clear when we attended a club competition as spectators some weeks later (our dog was not nearly ready for competition  - and never would be). Their were tons of people and of course tons of dogs. Immediately there were some differences that jumped out at me. For one a lot of the dogs especially the Rottweilers and Dobermans seemed to be a little bit on the small side.  But this wasn’t necessarily a huge difference between show and work dogs in  my mind.  Then I spotted a man taking a dog out of the back of his truck.

The dog was obviously a shepherd of some sort but I couldn’t quite identify what breed. It looked mostly like a German Shepherd but it was not like any German Shepherd I had ever seen before. For one it wasn’t the traditional black and tan color with the black “saddle” that most German Shepherds have. This dog was more of a smoky grey colour. it looked like it had rolled in soot. The dog actually looked scruffy and mangy – like a junkyard dog. And as the handler began walking the dog toward the field another difference jumped out. This dog had a different shape. The back was hardly sloped at all. It was almost square. This was a radical departure from most German Shepherds I had seen at dog shows whose backs always had this odd downward slope that looked unnatural to me. Aside from that this dog’s eyes had a fierce wolf-like intensity about him.  

So I asked one of our club members what kind of dog it was. “A German Shepherd” I was told. “Really? It doesn’t look like any German Shepherd I’ve ever seen”

“Oh it’s from East German stock. They weren’t breeding for show behind the Iron Curtain it was only for work.”

I have tried to find a picture of a dog that looked like the one I saw that day and the one on the left is  the closest I have ever come to finding one on-line.

This day was the beginning of a revelation for me and as we continued to work with our own dog the differences between show lines and dogs bred for work became more stark. The most obvious one was temperament. The working line dogs of all breeds were high energy dogs that never seemed to turn off. Our dog was laid back and relaxed (almost all the time).

This is not a bad thing if you just want a pet. In fact most working line dogs make lousy house pets. There’s a reason why Hollywood dog trainers scour animal shelters for dogs to use. Typically they have been abandoned by owners who selected a dog that turned out to be a true representative of the breed and needed to work. Dogs that need to work and don’t get an outlet will create those outlets. Usually in behavioral problems. 

But if the difference between show and working dogs were only temperament that wouldn’t be a big problem. Those who wanted their dogs for work could buy working line dogs and those who wanted a good pet could buy show lines right?

Generally yes. But there is another more serious problem. Lets go back to the German Shepherd Dog. Remember how I said that he working line shepherd from East German Stock had a back that didn’t seem that sloped?  Well there is a reason for that.  There are a large number of herding breeds out there. None of them except the German Shepherd have this feature because structurally it doesn’t help a herding dog if it needs to perform quick turns. So why do German Shepherd Dogs have that pronounced back angularity? Because somewhere along the line someone decided that a dog with an angular back looked better at a “trot” in the show ring.   Suddenly dogs with angular backs were winning more championships and breeders began responding.  And the results were dramatic.

On the left is an American/Canadian show shepherd on the right is a working line shepherd. Notice the difference?  Now partially the dog on the left looks so extremely sloped because it is in a “show stance” but go to any dog show and watch most of the German Shepherds walking around outside the ring and you will still notice a pronounced slope to much of their backs.  This is not what the original German Shepherd dogs looked like.  They looked a lot more like the dog on the right.

So it is not quite fair for breeders of show dogs to flatly state that they are preserving the dog breeds are they were meant to be and the health problems are just a sad side effect. The British Bulldog as we know it today couldn’t have survived without modern medical science. There were no Cesarean sections for dogs 100 years ago. So to hold this dog up as an example of  a breed that was bred to serve man but not to compile longevity records is ridiculous. There is a reason that someone decided to create an Olde English Bulldogge and it was a reaction to the extremes that British Bulldogs had begun to reach. They had breathing problems. Their heads were so large they couldn’t be born naturally and the males were not interested in mating. Does that sound like a breed that would have arisen at any time before WWII? David Leavitt who created the Olde English Bulldogge breed didn’t think so:

My dogs can now breath. They will never be like hounds, able to run for miles during the hottest weather of summer, but they’re three times better than the restricted modern Bulldog. Cesarean section births are not necessary. Artificial insemination, due to male ineptness and lack of drive, has been replaced by natural ties. Life span in over eleven years. All breeding stock have had hip x-rays. No dog with bad hips is bred. I’m now achieving my goal of producing a Bulldog with the health and temperament to be able to serve people, instead of forcing people to serve him.

There are several breeds of dog that are still used purely for work that are rarely seen in dog shows.  For a long while breeders of Border Collies tried to resist having the dog recognized by the various kennel clubs due to fear that it would lead to diminished working capacity. The dog is now present on the show circuit and differences in  structure are starting to become apparent.  The Dutch Shepherd which is a relative of the German Shepherd Dog and Belgian Shepherd is not recognized by the AKC and both breeders and owners of this dog are almost universally happy about that. In fact Dutch Shepherds are often bred to certain other breeds (such as the Belgian Malinois – a variety of Belgian Shepherd) to increase the health and working ability of the line – a positive side note is that it keeps the breed from being recognized because no cross-breeding is allowed in show dogs.  The dogs that run the Iditarod race in Alaska are referred to as “Alaskan Huskies” and are also not recognized as an official breed because they are not purebred but are bred for one thing: to race in harsh conditions.  Thus the main focus is on health and the ability of the dog to run.  The dogs are mostly Husky but have often some hound or other breed in their lineage. 

Purebred dogs are a wonderful example of our ability to create traits and characteristics in an animal to serve a certain purpose.  The Irish Wolfhound had a different purpose than the Shetland Sheepdog hence the two breeds look different despite both being dogs.

However the current focus on conformation to standard has eroded many characteristics of many dogs so that not only are they unfit for their original task but are structurally unsound as well.

This is not something that is difficult to correct however it does require an admission from purebred breeders who breed for conformation that their breed standards need to be reevaluated. Unfortunately this doesn’t seem to be a dialogue that most kennel clubs are interested in having.

Some links:

 Balance Problems in the American Show Shepherd

Working vs Show Lines

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You can refer to my previous post about why am writing this series of posts here.

There was a huge internet ballyhoo recently upon the discovery of years of emails from the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia that appeared to show scientists engaging in all manner of decidedly unscientific behavior when studying and publishing results that purport to show a planet slowly (or rapidly) being brought to a boiling point by the wanton production of Carbon Dioxide from modern industrial society.

For those who are skeptical of the entire AGW (if you don’t know already AGW is shorthand for Anthropogenic (or man-made) Global Warming  as opposed to Global Warming caused by natural events) theory and I count myself as one of the the news hardly came as a surprise. However the reaction of those who support the AGW theory was in a word disappointing.

The typical reaction to date has consisted of the tried and true “taken out of context” canard that is now the reflex response of every politician whose words have gone beyond the heavily managed and mangled utterances their spin doctors and handlers allow them to make in public.

However I have seen very few AGW defenders explain exactly what the context was. Just to say something was taken out of context and then moving on is not a defense but an avoidance.

Which brings me to my second point. The other defense being mounted on the pro-AGW side is that this is a minor thing and doesn’t bear discussion because in the grand scheme of things so much other data exists proving the theory that the CRU results can be thrown out altogether but the science behind AGW is still solid.

That may be true but it is hardly the way to handle the matter. Any good public relations professional will tell you that the best way to handle a PR problem is to confront it head on and to be open and honest as possible (Tiger Woods take note – you need new PR advisors).

Good PR people will also tell you that while public relations nightmares seem to be incredibly damaging initially with some work they can be turned into opportunities to bring more people around to your point of view. Having said this I am now going to give the AGW proponents some advice on how to turn Climategate to their advantage and in turn help their cause  (if indeed it is worth helping)

The first thing AGW defenders have to do is stop ignoring or downplaying this. The main criticism that has been leveled at AWG proponents by skeptics over the years has been that the science is flawed or at the very least somewhat suspect. The CRU emails play right into this theory and pretending that this is not big deal is the worst thing to do.

If the AGW theory loses all credibility with the public because of the perception that the data was not only flawed but deliberately manipulated then this becomes not only a problem for climate scientists but for all scientists. Unless the CRU controversy is dealt wit properly the ramifications could go beyond climate change research and into full blown and hysterical skepticism of all branches of science – and that is not a helpful situation.

Those who want to defend the science behind the AGW theory should be the ones at the forefront of the criticism of the CRU in East Anglia. If you really believe your science is solid you should be the most outraged over all of this. Why? Because if you are a climate scientist and have been diligently and honestly working on this for years independently of the CRU folks then you have suddenly been tarred with the same brush and guilt by association is as difficult to escape from as being just plain guilty.,

So what to do? There is an old saying in Judo that goes :”When an opponent appears welcome him, when he leaves send him on his way”. The saying illustrates one of the key principles of Judo (and Aikido) which is to defeat an opponent using his own momentum. It is true in martial arts and often it is true in life.

So how to use the opponents momentum in this case?  Simple all climate researchers who wish to divorce themselves from the stink coming out of East Anglia must adopt the weapon of many successful technology companies: Open source your data.

That’s right make your data and findings widely available on the net  to anyone. Allow the critics to examine it pick it apart critique it and try to destroy it.

If the data is solid it will hold up. If it isn’t then any scientist should welcome the discovery of errors, after all what what scientist with any ounce of integrity would want to build his or her career on bad data and false findings?

One of the features of my business is that I have to collect, track and manage a lot of information over the course of the work I do. I am rarely asked by my clients to share the actual information but on occasions when a project is not going well they do ask to see my work. I gladly share it with them and welcome any critique no matter how hard they might be on me. Why? Because I am 100% confident in my work and I am 100% confident in what my data tells me because I know I haven’t fudged anything. 

So if you are a climate scientist and you are 100% confident in your work and your findings why would you want to hide behind the plaintive and mealy mouthed defenses that we hear mounted by those who are now on the defensive because of the hacked CRU emails?

These defenses are wishy-washy and only hurt your cause and along with the other critiques of AGW skeptics like calling them deniers, dismissing them because they haven’t had peer reviewed work or smearing them by suggesting they are in the pay of oil companies make you look like you aren’t confident in your own work.

If you are confident in your own work and someone criticizes or questions it you should be happy to address these criticisms because you can only make your case stronger by how you respond to such criticisms.  And if you respond well you will only gain supporters.

I am perfectly willing to accept the AGW theory if it stands up to rigorous scientific scrutiny but when those who expound the theory react like school children when anyone dares ask a question it doesn’t really give me confidence that they themselves believe in their own work.

So here’s the challenge: open source your data. Embrace criticism in the name of science.

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I have had great intentions to blog more this year but alas work keeps me away from blogging on a regular basis. One of the pitfalls of running your own business is the absolute commitment you need to make to it 24-7. It is a rare evening that I am not working and that includes Saturday and Sunday nights as well.

When I do have free time it is not blogging that comes to my mind first. But other things that take me away from my desk and office and into the physical world. So if given the choice between blogging and woodworking or blogging and hiking with the dogs I am more likely to take the latter option. That is, I know an abrogation of my responsibilities to the people who enjoy reading my blog ( I know you exist – I see the hits that come from RSS readers) but one of the pitfalls of living your life on-line 24-7 as blogging and twittering and other forms of social media are allowing us to do is that it divorces us from the tactile and 3D world outside our window.

There was a funny little statistic that I saw some time ago that said if people who watched cooking shows actually spent the 30 minutes in the kitchen that watching a show entailed they would actually become better cooks and actually cook real meals for themselves. To a degree we have fallen victim to this in the on-line world. We spend to much time commenting on the commentators who are commenting on other commentators and that really isn’t as productive as we think, is it?

Work is lightening up somewhat for me this year heading into Christmas ( I hope it isn’t a portent of a “soft landing” by the economy") so I am going to try and post some thoughts about things that have occurred over the year and also things I have been thinking about. I hope you will enjoy them.

Up first: Cilmategate.

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Some interesting thoughts on searching for intelligent life beyond the solar system.

Image by varrqnuht via Flickr

A prime target for our early efforts to find a twin Earth is our nearest star system, Alpha Centauri, 4.4 million light years away, (ED: actually it’s 4.4 light years away) which means that light (or an extraterrestrial message) takes 4.4 years to reach us.

It’s been the destination of interstellar travelers in science fiction writing for so long now that one would almost be forgiven for thinking we’d already colonized it. But Alpha Centauri, the three-star system closest to our own Sun, is now the center of some very exciting science.

Javiera Guedes who headed up a NASA-funded project to analyze the possibility of detecting an Earthlike planet in orbit around Alpha Centauri B, has shown that terrestrial planets are likely to have formed around Alpha Centauri B, and that these planets should be orbiting in the “habitable zone.”

“It’s so close to us, and the position of the other stars is such that it should be very possible to find a small planet,” she explained. She also found that, based on astronomers’ current understanding of how solar systems form, the existence of a planet the size of our own is very likely, and that there’s also a chance that it would lie in the habitable zone.

Now, the planet-hunting team is using a telescope in Chile to keep an eye on the star for the next three years, in order to collect enough data to determine whether or not the next Earthlike planet lies next door.

“If they exist, we can observe them,” said Guedes also showed that such planets would be observable if a telescope was dedicated to their search.

Guedes used a series of planet formation computer simulations to determine that terrestrial planets have probably formed around the star. The team ran repeated computer simulations which ran on a time frame of 200 million years each time. They varied the beginning conditions each time, and thus created a different result each time. However, each time a system of multiple planets evolved with at least one planet – approximately the size of Earth – forming. In many of these simulations, this planet was often found to be orbiting within the habitable zone of the star.

Its brightness and its position in the sky are both positive factors that make the Alpha Centauri search plausible; the latter giving the team a long period of observability each year from the Southern Hemisphere.

But the profound implication of the iron-clad law of astronomical time is that we see Alpha Centauri only as it was 4.4 years ago.In other words any message from inhabitants of Alpa Cenauri saying “Our planet is dying!” and our reply would consume a total of almost nine years.

Read More here

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I used to love this record back in 1983. This is a video made by target videos so it is lip-synched which isn’t a bad thing because you can appreciate just how tight the band was at the time of this recording. The singer died recently which surprised me because I thought he had died long long ago.

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Steve Horowitz from The Austrian Economists blog has a simple. short and pithy essay on the causes of the current US recession.

Worth reading and it won’t take you long. A sample:

2. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac The U.S. government imposed a variety of other institutions and policies that encouraged the lending binge that led to the recession. Fannie and Freddie are not products of “capitalism;” they are organizations created by the U.S. government, which has given them special privileges as well as an implicit taxpayer guarantee. Fannie and Freddie were mandated to purchase a certain percentage of the mortgages that banks originated with the credit created by the Fed, giving mortgage lenders every incentive to keep on making loans, even if the borrowers didn’t meet traditional lending criteria.

The rest

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Holy Crap this guy is fucking buzz-saw.

Hat tip to Hot Air

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Image via Wikipedia

In pictures taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in 1999, the motion of M87’s jet was measured at four to six times the speed of light.

The outburst is coming from a blob of matter, called HST-1, embedded in the jet, a powerful narrow beam of hot gas produced by a supermassive black hole residing in the core of the giant elliptical galaxy M87. HST-1 is so bright that it is outshining even M87’s brilliant core, whose monster black hole is one of the most massive yet discovered.

The glowing gas clump has taken astronomers on a rollercoaster ride of suspense. Astronomers watched HST-1 brighten steadily for several years, then fade, and then brighten again. They say it’s hard to predict what will happen next.

M87_jet NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has been following the surprising activity for seven years, providing the most detailed ultraviolet-light view of the event. Other telescopes have been monitoring HST-1 in other wavelengths, including radio and X-rays. The Chandra X-ray Observatory was the first to report the brightening in 2000. HST-1 was first discovered and named by Hubble astronomers in 1999. The gas knot is 214 light-years from the galaxy’s core.

The flare-up may provide insights into the variability of black hole jets in distant galaxies, which are difficult to study because they are too far away. M87 is located 54 million light-years away in the Virgo Cluster, a region of the nearby universe with the highest density of galaxies.

“I did not expect the jet in M87 or any other jet powered by accretion onto a black hole to increase in brightness in the way that this jet does,” says astronomer Juan Madrid of McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, [ed note: Local boy!!!!] who conducted the Hubble study. “It grew 90 times brighter than normal. But the question is, does this happen to every single jet or active nucleus, or are we seeing some odd behavior from M87?”

Read more here

Hat tip Space Future’s awesome twitter feed.

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I think one might argue that we were first and the fish were second.

Something in the Water Is Feminizing Male Fish. Are We Next? | Popular Science

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Image via Wikipedia

No, none of this is logical. It’s petty and silly. But it is why ad hominem attacks on everyone from Michael Moore to Sarah Palin are so enduringly popular.

Logical types who are caught up in Robert’s Rules of Order and all those ancient boring and frankly arbitrary rules for debate and rhetoric just don’t get it; the average person doesn’t care about your elaborate arguments and statistics and clever quotations, which are probably read only by people who more or less agree with you already.

They just know Al Gore seems like a fat pushy scold with too much money, and Sarah Palin has too many kids for their liking, and Ron Paul is as cuddly as a rusty bear trap, and I have an ugly voice and frown all the time.

They’re too busy living ordinary lives to spend hours reading Ayn Rand or Koranic apologists or William F. Buckley or to find out that the number of Catholic priests who’ve abused children is about 0.1%. They make judgements based on the evidence of their senses, then rush off to the next thing.

It’s all very shallow. Most of us are.

More

(for the record I consider myself a libertarian and would legalize pot in a heartbeat even though I don’t and won’t partake in it. - I also don’t smoke or drink but wouldn’t make it illegal for others to do it either.)

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