How to Increase the Number of Canadian Hockey Stars

Posted on 3 February 2018 by Larry Russwurm

I was first pointed out the selection bias in the NHL by the writings of Malcolm Gladwell. He noted that more NHL caliber players were born in the first three months of the year than any other three months.

The NHL has had this proven to them where scientists found that from 1980 to 2007 that 36% of the drafted players were born in those first three months and 14.5% of drafted players were born in the final quarter of the year.

The reason for this is clear. When these hockey players start at ages 4 and 5, there is definite differences between them due to those few months. As a result, those that make the rep teams are more likely to be the oldest kids. And those kids get more coaching and work on skills more. As a result, those minor differences add up in the lifetime of a player to make the older players seem more talented.

My suggestion is simple. Canada should institute two hockey systems. One for those with birthdays from January to June. The other league would have the players born from July 1st to December 31st. It’s only fitting that Canada Day will lead to more good Canadian hockey players.

Anyhow, this whole new branch of Canadian hockey should be just as good as the older kids. Perhaps they could officially be drafted half a year later. Everything else being equal, statistics should bear me out and more players from the Canadian system will be NHL caliber.

This has such a long wait time for the talent and the proof of the talent that maybe it will never be instituted. But if not acted on in Canada I wouldn’t be surprised if some smaller country, like say Sweden, enacted this scheme for exactly the same reasons. Expect that country’s adult teams to eventually be more competitive.

I don’t think this will be a hard sell to hockey parents whose kids are born in the latter half of the year. They will want an equal chance to be NHL ready. Every community big enough to field two or more teams of the same age ought to do this.

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Fewer Colds, Coughs, and Flus?

Posted on 27 January 2018 by Larry Russwurm

I have now heard people my age and older mocking the young for sneezing into the inner elbow part of their sleeve. What? Are you serious? Are you so intent on mocking the young that you don’t realize that this makes sense?

A decade ago when I first saw this I questioned it because it looked strange. But when it was explained that this is obviously more hygienic I had to agree. People sneezing into their hands are worse than just gross. They are obviously spreading illness by using those germy hands on everything. When’s the last time you touched something with your inner elbow? It’s rare, which is why it makes an hygienic and cleaner place to sneeze.

Now I’m not an expert, like germaphobes, but it seems to me that the younger generation has it right by fist bumping instead of shaking hands. This should also help stop the spread of germs like flu or colds.

Also the seeming ubiquitous nature of hand sanitizer seems to have caught on lately, first at hospitals and retirement homes but now also in public spaces like a bus terminal.

So I am betting that today’s younger generation spends a little less time being sick than previous generations. I am currently awaiting the comprehensive studies that prove this. It will never be perfect because with some sneezes clocking in at 100 miles per hour, there is going to be some bounce back from that inner elbow sleeve.

Even if these studies show that there are only negligible improvements in illness rates, the ick factor is certainly less. Do you want to shake the hand of someone who has just sneezed into that same hand? I don’t.

Now that society is waking up to things, perhaps those cooks who dip their fingers into a sauce for a taste can now stop this icky cooking habit. It gets even worse when they double dip their finger for a taste test a few minutes later.

Or could people stop licking their fingers to turn the next page of a book. I quadruply would like this to be true of everyone that reads a library book.

Maybe it is my age showing but I still think that the wearing of face masks is a bit too paranoid a strategy around germs. I would only do this if there was an outbreak of SARS or something similar again. But maybe the younger generation would allow this without being too judgmental on their peers. I think they’re going to have less illness – especially when us not so swift older people are not around to jinx things by our stuck-in-the-past actions.

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See! 1984 Didn’t Happen!

Posted on 20 January 2018 by Larry Russwurm

I am just old enough to have gone through high school in 1984. Being science fiction literate, I was aware of George Orwell’s prognosis for that year. But Big Brother didn’t show up that year, at least not as heralded in the book 1984. Businesses were investing in cameras but only to stop their losses. It was an almost sensible year.

Van Halen came out with an album at the very start of the year. So they stole the title for their album. The album had nothing to do with science fiction which is to be expected for David Lee Roth lyrics. But this just shows that everyone had heard about 1984 – the book – and were largely unconcerned. And why not? Cameras still were expensive enough to be thought of as an investment by business and even government.

Everyone just thought that Orwell was wrong and not that market forces made 1984 an expensive proposition. It may not have happened in 1984 but Orwell simply switched the last two numerals around from the year he published the book in 1948. There was never meant to be a time limit.

So here we sit in 2018 with the signs of 1984 all around us. Cameras cost next to nothing. And it’s getting less and less costly to watch with them. AIs that may be stupid in other ways are getting good enough to man (for lack of a better term) them. And facial recognition software has come a long way.

Then you have various governments using 1984 as a guidebook. Trump is casting aspersions at what remains of the real watchdog media while propping up and praising arms of society known for their atrocious lying. And this is in a country that claims to be free. Just look at what all the dictatorships are doing.

My own government (Canada) has secret trials where you can hire a lawyer but you and your lawyer aren’t allowed to see the evidence against you. They do this all in the name of terrorism. This is not the act of a free country.

Don’t be blinded by the year 1984 pride. We weren’t Orwell’s dictatorship yet because society needed time to get there. Technology needed time to get there.

In the free world we are coming into the fight of our lives. In the dictatorships the battle may already have been lost. 1984 seems a likelihood, now, just not by that due date.

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A Letter to the Editor of the Kitchener Post

Posted on 13 January 2018 by Larry Russwurm

I have written this letter to the editor in response to a letter in the Kitchener Post (a newspaper local to me), Climate Change Gurus Have No Evidence published on January 11, 2018 in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada. I think you can tell the main points of the letter I am disagreeing with by my rebuttals.

Global Warming Gurus Have Plenty of Evidence

Last week’s global-warming-denial letter to the editor got to me because there were problems with the “facts” that Lloyd Fex used.

First of all he called Al Gore “the leading climate change advocate” which I don’t think is true. For instance, based on results, climate change advocates in Europe are much more effective since real policy changes have resulted in those countries. As well, Al Gore has been out of the spotlight of any debate for quite some time.

I almost laughed when I saw that Fex said the polar ice cap increased in size one year by 920 000 sq. ft. This is a laughably small amount compared to the size of the ice sheets. Large shopping malls can have 5 times this square footage and that is only contained by one building. 920 000 square feet is 0.03 of the size of a square mile which polar ice sheets are more properly measured in. I doubt the purported increase is even big enough to be larger than the error margins of the size change of polar ice sheets.

Fex chooses to measure the severity of hurricanes by the amount of deaths they cause. By this measure he says that 2017’s hurricane season was the 17th most severe. But this ignores advances in tracking and knowing which way a hurricane was going that have come about in the end of the 20th century and the start of the 21st.

Of course more deaths happened in the past. In the early 1900s the hurricane prone areas didn’t have that many fast cars to flee with. The space race brought us satellites to spot hurricanes long before they made landfall. Demand for better predictions have brought better hurricane track forecasts. And finally we can board up buildings given warning. So of course fewer lives are lost in this day and age. Imagine Fex’s chagrin if I chose to measure severity of a hurricane in unadjusted dollar values of damage. Of course the most recent years would have the most severe hurricanes. That’s exactly what he is trying to do to us, just with the opposite result.

He says we can easily look up his facts at the NOAA, US Weather online and YouTube. When I tried to find his .07 degrees Celsius increase in temperatures since 1970, I found climate.gov which is an NOAA site and they said that the average surface temperature of earth had increased by 0.8 degrees Celsius since 1970.

I didn’t bother checking his 0.4 m sea level rise in the last two centuries because that is worrying enough. It is especially worrying if Greenland or Antarctica with their miles of ice sheets start to go suddenly. And for low lying islands, even half a meter might spell doom.

I have used facts to correct Mr. Fex since that is all he claims to respect. Global warming is a real problem that the earth faces today.

I don’t care that some scientists deny global warming. More scientists believe in it than doubt it. There were doctors and biologists who denied the science of tobacco being bad for you. Just as there was big money to be made in tobacco, there is big money to be made in carbon releasing via big oil and gas.

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The New Mall Help Desk

Posted on 6 January 2018 by Larry Russwurm

A few months ago the mall that I frequent the most installed a new Starbucks. I sometimes go to this new establishment with my sister. We prefer to drink our teas in the island “patio” which is in the middle of the ample aisle way and it looks to be completely separate from the Starbucks.

Yesterday we were the only ones on the high chairs with drinks on the wall of the island. There were other people too but they were in the much lower tables and chairs. So from a certain direction all that could be seen were two people drinking coffees or teas in a kiosk like environment.

The first lady who approached us said she had a question for us. Then suddenly she said “Oh, I guess you’re not mall information,” I think at this point she saw the lower tables with people at them. “I’m sorry.”

I could have acted like mall information and pointed out where mall information was. But she went quickly away. My sister and I joked that we didn’t get to hear her question which we might have been able to answer.

A half hour later a man came up to us and asked us where the bank was. We pointed to the Starbucks and said that used to be the bank. We told him we could tell him where there were bank machines in the mall. He had to hurry to catch his friend to tell him the bank was no longer here.

About a half hour after this incident, a couple came up to us and asked where the washrooms were. My sister told him that they were in the basement of the Bay. I couldn’t understand how my sister managed to get this wrong so I corrected her and said they were in the top floor of the Bay. We eventually realized we were both right but had been using the washrooms that we knew were there. Turning back to the couple we told them the official public washroom was way on the other side of the mall by the food court. They headed in that general direction so perhaps there were no accidents yesterday.

After three incidents of people asking for information I can only think that the mall had deliberately set the island up to look like information. Then, relying on the good nature of Starbucks customers, they knew that they no longer needed their information kiosk and could save money by shutting it down. I would rather they paid me the amount that a worker at the mall should get.

Or at least they could give me free coffee or teas at Starbucks. Information isn’t free you know.

If they think it can be, my only recourse will be to send my customers to the wrong parts of the mall.

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My Best Posts of the Year 2017

Posted on 30 December 2017 by Larry Russwurm

If you think my annual post about my favourites from the past year is a cop out, you are absolutely correct. I give myself one week a year when I don’t have to think of anything new and shiny. It used to be the easiest post of the year. Until this year.

My memory is slipping this year. In previous years all I had to do was scan the titles of my posts to pick a favourite for each two month period. The posts would then face off in my mind and most times I would pick a favourite easily. But sometimes it’s harder and I have to reread two or three posts to decide which one is truly best.

This year I am not reminded what the post is about from the title. So painstakingly I’ve had to read through almost every single post to remind me about all of them directly. Only the last month’s posts were remembered without reading.

So this year I put in more effort for this list. Thus I no longer see it as a cop out.

For my January and February pick I would have chosen from my sister site Nooz Spun Right my poll about who wore it better me or David Bowie. I captured a really neat photograph of myself with the setting sun’s light coming through the slats on my balcony. It looked like a lightning bolt due to the angles on my face. Unfortunately Poll Daddy wrenched the poll from the post and I really don’t want to sign up with them after that. So instead I will choose A Smoke Filled Bar for my first best post of the year.

The Canadian Duel lightened the month of April. My Plan to Counterfeit and Never Get Caught is a workable plan it’s just that I blew it by telling all of you. Don’t make the same mistake.

SETI: Dumb Isn’t Dumb is my real opinion on the topic, I just had to dress it up with humour to be a piece on my blog site.

The Secret Origin of Tail is a comic page departure from my usual post, but I think a good one. Just pardon me if there aren’t too many more of these in the future. I do want to finish at least one more but I may stop there as these are time intensive undertakings as I have to both draw and write. I can write three normal blog posts in the time I take for one of these.

I’ll leave the year suggesting that you read Water Roads, last week’s post. It is really flash fiction and is an example of my writing which I am very serious about even if this story isn’t quite serious.

Happy new year to anyone I’ve missed saying this to in the last week. I hope it brings good things to you and yours and to this site.

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Water Roads

Posted on 23 December 2017 by Larry Russwurm

“Well,” the tour guide explained to the aliens aboard the gondola, “We humans accidentally had the city of Venice sink beneath the waves. But before that happened, for a long time it sank slowly and we were treated to some fine centuries where the city had water roads and gondolas plied those city streets and it was oh so beautiful.

“So, not to be too saddened when Venice finally disappeared beneath the waves, humanity made a pact. We would build great cities on the seashores and then flood the streets with arctic and antarctic ice. We used global warming as our tool for this mega engineering effort.

“I’m sure that most of you have found that burning fossil fuels leads to global warming and the flooding of much of the coasts. We realized this and also realized because of the beauty of Venice, that we could continue the global warming making all our coastal cities Venices.

“Unfortunately architecture could only manage two thousand foot buildings when the flooding started. But still that flooding led to the beauty of Manhattan on gondolas. The tallest buildings rise over a thousand feet.”

“It is especially beautiful on July 13, today, also known as Manhattan henge. We ply the river roads in our gondola as the summer sun sets slowly. In only a few more moments the sun will be setting and lighting up our cross streets with a beautiful glow on this day. You can already see the colours in the sky as you gaze west. In a moment the setting sun itself will appear.

“So we humans were smart to burn most of our fossil fuels. And now we are a big tourist destination despite still being behind the United Worlds in technical prowess.

The aliens might not have been savvy enough to question these lies. Still one alien said, “I’m just questioning if you burned all your fossil fuels in city centres. I mean that could lead to premature death amongst air breathers. It certainly wasn’t viable for we Sorrhinnians. We had to halt our industrial ways for a while in order to save lives.”

The tour guide was quiet for many long seconds. Finally he began quietly, “Doesn’t everything beautiful have a -”

Beautiful light shone on the gathered aliens so the tour guide turned around and said much more loudly, “Behold the setting sun of the mighty Manhattan henge of the Earthlings!”

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Canada’s Cultural Prosaic

Posted on 16 December 2017 by Larry Russwurm

For those who don’t know, prosaic means boring.

Canada has long been smug about its cultural mosaic. This differs from the American melting pot. Instead of people from different cultures changing to fit in, the official line in Canada is that they don’t have to. They can keep those parts of their culture that doesn’t restrict the rights of others to do the same. Or parts that do not go against the laws of the land.

A mosaic is of course different coloured pieces fit together to make something unique.

Although this sounds very fine and is possibly an improvement on the American system, in practice it ends up being not quite true. Because of bragging rights, most cultures promote their sanitized versions. You know, mention the good parts but just don’t mention the bad parts of your culture.

Of course other cultural differences abound. We just don’t dwell on the nasty parts. So each diaspora has different clothes, different dances and different holidays. This is the stuff we present. Like Oktoberfest (German) in my city of Kitchener, Caribbana in Toronto (Caribbean peoples festival), and St. Patrick’s day for the Irish, specific cultures are celebrated. There are many other celebrations at cultural clubs and theatres and anywhere different cultures can be found. But it is all the good stuff and thus can be bland.

Anyone who knows anything about writing knows that at least half of writing fiction is when things go wrong. Things have definitely gone wrong in many cultures. That can make things more interesting. I’ve heard it said that no one will be entertained by a perfect Utopia. Canada could light up its cultural prosaic if we talked more about the bad things.

Bad things like genocide (Germans, Turkish people, Rwandans, Serbs), the hundred years war (really Britain and France?), the nuclear powers all thinking they’re big shots (USA, Russia, Britain, France, India, China, Pakistan, Israel, North Korea), the Spanish Inquisition, etc. It sure is interesting but there is just one problem. There are so many bad things that if you looked at them all at the same time it’s so depressing that you seize up – but your mind continues to go to scary places.

So maybe a cultural prosaic is the way to go. Just so we don’t terrify ourselves. Fear motivates but I still believe that the things that motivate the most are positive. Fine, I can handle a little blandness. Just so we keep our positivity.

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The Golden Age of Alcohol

Posted on 9 December 2017 by Larry Russwurm

The evils of alcohol were delineated all across North America which eventually led to prohibition, or the dark ages for alcohol. Of course many people were addicts of alcohol so they maintained their supply no matter how severe the penalties. This of course led to the repeal of prohibition and to less overt crimes and criminals.

Then came a long period of time which were the normal days of alcohol. This lasted for a good fifty years. But eventually the other extreme began to be reached.

The mystery of the French began to be “solved”. How could a people eat such a high fat diet and not have the resultant shortening of lifespan that was expected from this? Scientists began to focus on red wine and especially resveratrol. The claim began in earnest that red wine in small daily doses was good for life expectancy.

The rest of the alcohol industry saw this and began to get a bit jealous. It started simply. White wine has resveratrol, only in smaller quantities than red wine.

Then more odd studies began to be done and the surprising conclusion was that all alcohol could be good for your health.

This was the golden age of alcohol. The earliest shots across the bow were that binge drinking alcohol is bad. Binge drinking was defined as consuming more than one or two servings in a day. This small amount is not how most North Americans consume alcohol. Most people would rather binge on the weekend and spend the rest of the week alcohol free.

Maybe North Americans could change their habits away from binge drinking and thus live longer lives. With alcohol of course.

But now, some studies have come out documenting the one or two glasses a day thing and are saying that alcohol is bad for you no matter how it is metered out. It looks like we have hit the end of the road for alcohol being good for us.

There are even rumblings that resveratrol is not that good for you. Maybe there’s another reason for the imperviousness of the French to their indulgent diets.

Personally, I wouldn’t be surprised if one or a few of the alcohol giants had bankrolled the earlier studies that showed alcohol was a plus. Indeed their business might have reached a peak after all those pro alcohol studies.

Those of us who were more likely to binge than meter out alcohol can now laugh at the allegedly responsible alcohol metering types. Now we can laugh and say “At least I get a buzz.”

Regardless, I expect the future alcohol studies to say that alcohol, if anything, is a minus to your health. Especially when you drink at alcoholic levels. I think the golden age of alcohol is over.

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The Star Wars Crapfest

Posted on 2 December 2017 by Larry Russwurm

Star Wars is half decent entertainment for your buck. There are interesting visuals, a fast moving story and even some growth in the characters at times.

But it isn’t very good science fiction.

Why is this a problem for me? It is what it is. But I don’t see it that way. You see, Star Wars takes up about a quarter of the science fiction section at bookstores now. Another quarter is taken up by Star Trek and whatever happens to have been turned into a movie. Only half of the science fiction section is stuff I would actually call science fiction. The book section could be a good deal richer than it is. But it has been taken over by the toy behemoth that Star Wars really is.

I call it a crapfest not only because of the toys but because of the little thought (beyond cuteness) that has been given to the creatures and things that populate the Star Wars Universe.

If a science fiction writer had come up with the furred huge alien that is Chewbacca, I bet pages would be devoted to this creature suiting up in a giant hairnet. Because if hair is bad for food, it is much worse to the electronics that keep the characters of Star Wars alive. The Millennium Falcon should be one giant clean room. Instead it is an unreliable ship with electronics that don’t always work perfectly. My cat is much smaller than Chewbacca and would have the Millennium Falcon disabled within a month by how much she sheds.

R2D2 needs a translator for English or Lingua Franca or whatever language is spoken on worlds a few galaxies over. Really, wouldn’t a translator feature cost about 50 cents judging by the level of technology in the empire? And a vocalization chip and speaker ought to cost about two dollars. We essentially do this now with the Siris and Alexas of the world.

R2D2 and BB8 both can’t manage stairs or rough terrain well. I suppose this is good for the empire. Because the engineers of the empire didn’t want to make things too difficult for their robots, they managed to make almost every building and important setting easily accessed by wheels. This is good thinking for the warlike inhabitants – some of whom will have to survive with wheelchairs after the battle. Better planning through engineering laziness.

So this is my demand. Give me back the science fiction section of the bookstore and I won’t harp on the flaws of Star Wars. Otherwise…

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