From the CBC:
Prince George RCMP have issued a public alert after a moose attack in the city on Thursday morning.
A female moose with two calves attacked a 60-year-old woman while she was walking her dog. The woman was taken to hospital with minor injuries while her dog, a cocker spaniel, was so badly injured that it had to be euthanized.
Earlier this month, a moose with calves chased a man in a residential neighborhood that backs onto a hillside.
I would hereby like to claim name creation rights for the musical genre known as “nickelrock”. Nickelrock, whose foremost member is Nickelback, is characterized by crunchy guitars and cheesy sap lyrics. If you hear a song and it sounds like Nickelback, it’s nickelrock. Synonyms for this genre are “shite” and “christ is that Nickelback on the radio again?”
In early January sextuplets were born in a Vancouver hospital. Born after 25 weeks of gestation, the survival rate for the babies was not incredibly high — for single births the survival rate is about 80%, and it’s even lower for multiple early births.
Since then, two of the babies have sadly died.
And were it not for the actions of the BC government, more of the babies would have died. See, the parents are Jehova’s Witnesses, and they don’t believe in blood transfusions. Three of the sextuplets were seized against the will of the parents, and two of them were given transfusions.
The parents are upset, saying that their religious freedoms have been trampled on. They’re right, but it doesn’t matter, as the government’s duty to protect its citizens trumps the individual’s religious freedoms in Canada. In 1995 the Supreme Court ruled on a similar case, stating
while the right to liberty embedded in s. 7… may very well permit parents to choose among equally effective types of medical treatment for their children, it does not include a parents’ [sic] right to deny a child medical treatment that has been adjudged necessary by a medical professional and for which there is no legitimate alternative.
See, in Canada you have the freedom to believe in whatever religion you see fit. But when you try to shield your unwilling children behind the cloak of religion when they’re dying, the government has a duty to protect them. You can choose to pull the wool over your eyes and believe that the Bible forbids blood transfusions (erroneously, some biblical scholars say), but to do it to your children when they don’t have that choice…
As Phil Plait says,
There are so many reasons to fight fundamentalist religion. Your very life — and the lives of your kids — should be at the top of that list.
Hat tip to the Bad Astronomer for the headline ripoff. :-)
One of the more annoying things about watching Los Angeles Kings games on FSW is you’re barraged with Sean Avery. He’s easily one of the most hated players in the game, and I can’t stand him.
You can understand the joy I feel with the news that he’s been traded to the Rangers. No more Sean Avery on my TV!
Now if only they’d get rid of Crawford…
Today’s Bad Baby Name is truly unique. It’s so unique you’ll… well, you’ll just have to see.
First, there’s the usual collection of run-of-the-mill Bad Baby Names: Shaelynn, Khaisyn, Angell, and Madilyn. They’re bad, but they’re starting to get a little boring.
Reef spices things up a tad. I guess living in the tropics you get influenced by your surroundings, so I guess it’s a good thing this little boy didn’t get named Papaya or Vog.
Then there’s Xeighvian. I’m not at all sure how this is meant to be pronounced. Two things I do know about this name, though: the kid’s going to have a hell of a time spelling it in school, and it’s a Bad Baby Name. I haven’t seen Xeighvian before, so it’s pretty unique.
But this week’s winner is even more unique. It’s so unique you’ll shake your head. Ready for the Bad Baby Name of the week? It’s unique, I’m telling you. Unique.
That’s right.
Unique.
Cue the comedy routine:
Teacher: “And what’s your name?”
Unique: “Unique.”
Teacher: “I’m sure it is, given the idiocy of parents these days, but what is it?”
Unique: “Unique.”
Teacher: “What is it, Chevyaughn? Reef? Xeighvian?”
Unique: “No, it’s Unique!”
Teacher: “…”
Unique: “I don’t know who’s on first!”
The Bad Astronomer talks to Adam Savage. Too cool. I wonder if The Amazing Meeting could count as a work conference…
While the rest of you were getting snowed on or frozen or blown over, I’d just like to pass along the news that this past weekend we went to Hapuna Beach for some body surfing. Two to three foot with the occasional four (and maybe five) footers. Upper 80s, not a cloud in the sky. I got a slight sunburn on my face, even though I was lathered up with sunscreen.
Two weekends ago we went walking through Devastation Trail in Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park where we saw three nene, two parents and a chick.
Here’s hoping the rest of you are bundled up nice and warm. :-)
Over at Slate there’s an excellent recap of Rorygate, complete with graphs and whatnot. The final paragraph is pretty much bang-on:
It’s been almost two years since a lockout almost ruined the sport. Now the league has baited, misled, and rejected its fans. The NHL has hit a new low. It’s turned the All-Star Game—an event that’s supposed to be about giving people what they want—into a repudiation of the game’s most loyal supporters.
In related news, Rory scored the game-winning goal in the Canucks’ 2-1 victory over Ottawa last night. Well done, Rory!
About 40 minutes ago there was an 8.4-magnitude earthquake in the Kuril Islands north of Japan. It is currently unknown if it generated a tsunami, and we’re under a tsunami watch. If a tsunami is generated, it will hit Hawaii at around 12:30am local time (2:30am PST, 5:30am EST).
Follow along with the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center‘s bulletins.
We’re heading out right now to go see a musical revue at Kope Kope. That should show you how concerned we are at the moment. :-)
Update at 10:02pm: Just got home to this:
TSUNAMI MESSAGE NUMBER 004
PACIFIC TSUNAMI WARNING CENTER
0933 PM HST 12 JAN 2007TO – CIVIL DEFENSE IN THE STATE OF HAWAII
SUBJECT – TSUNAMI WATCH CANCELLATION
THE TSUNAMI WATCH IS CANCELLED FOR THE STATE OF HAWAII EFFECTIVE AT 0933 PM HST.
…at least, he would be if the NHL hadn’t “lost” votes for him.
The Vote For Rory campaign was started to choose a player to start in the 2007 NHL All-Star Game who wouldn’t normally be there. A player who isn’t flashy and doesn’t score goals, but is hard-working and gritty and represents the average NHL player. Rory Fitzpatrick, a defenceman for the Vancouver Canucks, was picked to be the representative. By writing in his name in the All-Star ballot, the public could vote for him and show their appreciation of the under-appreciated players.
And by all accounts the campaign was a success. After the first release of voting numbers, Rory was leading all Western Conference defencemen. After the second release he slipped to second (behind Scott Hannan), but after the third he took the lead again. Update: I got this wrong. Rory was actually somewhere around 12th after the first release, then up to fifth or sixth for two releases, then up to second on the fourth release. End Update After the fourth fifth release he had slipped to third, and he maintained this position when the final starting lineups were announced. Rory the All-Star was not to be.
But hold on a second. The NHL released voting numbers during the voting. Let’s take a look at those numbers.
First set, the votes reported by position. Since you have to vote for three forwards, two defence, and one goaltender, it would stand to reason that there would be twice the votes for defenders than for goaltenders, and the number of votes for defenders would be two-thirds that for forwards. Let’s take a look at those numbers:
ECF ECD ECG WCF WCD WCG 30-Nov 1,578,291 1,017,087 508,553 1,525,618 1,048,400 508,549 6-Dec 2,880,247 1,880,803 963,948 2,785,232 1,928,387 884,857 13-Dec 4,189,654 2,769,013 1,412,477 4,136,875 2,821,758 1,399,882 20-Dec 5,199,591 3,468,025 1,757,524 5,179,649 3,522,706 1,744,655 26-Dec 6,178,433 4,125,273 1,981,631 6,158,014 4,076,743 2,076,061 2-Jan 6,815,588 4,537,022 2,304,041 6,762,566 4,483,754 2,281,060 Notes: First two weeks of WCG only included 8. The remainder included a 9th goalie. 26-Dec results for ECG didn't include write-in Huet's totals. WCD always showed 13 players for each week.
The columns stand for, going left to right, Eastern Conference Forwards, Defence, Goaltender, Western Conference Forwards, Defence, Goaltender. Let’s look at the ratio between forwards and defence (you’d expect this to be roughly 1.5):
ECF/ECD WCF/WCD 30-Nov 1.55178 1.45519 6-Dec 1.53139 1.44433 13-Dec 1.51305 1.46606 20-Dec 1.49929 1.47036 26-Dec 1.49770 1.51052 2-Jan 1.50222 1.50824
And the ratio between defence and goaltenders (you’d expect this to be roughly 2):
ECD/ECG WCD/WCG 30-Nov 1.99996 2.06155 6-Dec 1.95115 2.17932 13-Dec 1.96040 2.01571 20-Dec 1.97324 2.01914 26-Dec 2.08176 1.96369 2-Jan 1.96916 1.96564
And for completeness, the ratio between forwards and goaltenders (which you would expect to be roughly 3):
ECF/ECG WCF/WCG 30-Nov 3.10349 2.99994 6-Dec 2.98797 3.14766 13-Dec 2.96618 2.95516 20-Dec 2.95878 2.96887 26-Dec 3.11785 2.96620 2-Jan 2.95810 2.96466
The numbers for the western conference show something odd happening for the defencemen’s vote total releases on December 26 and January 2. They also show something odd happening for the Western Conference on December 6, but given the uncertainty in goaltender numbers for the first two releases (only 8 were reported for the first two releases, and 9 for the rest), we’ll focus on the last four voting count releases.
In the voting period between December 20 and 26 there was either a large increase in the number of votes reported for Western Conference forwards, or a large decrease in the number of votes reported for Western Conference defencemen. Correspondingly, there was either a large increase in the number of votes reported for Western Conference goaltenders or a large decrease in the number of votes reported for Western Conference defencemen. Given that the ratio of forwards to goaltenders doesn’t appreciably change in this timespan, that would mean that either the relative numbers of votes reported for both the forwards and goaltenders increased while the defencemen stayed the same, or the relative numbers of votes reported for defencemen decreased while forwards and goaltenders stayed the same.
Perhaps the most telling statistic is this, the number of votes gained for each position from one reporting period to the next. You’d expect these to be roughly the same, as fans voted for both conferences at the same time. Looking at each conference’s defencemen:
ECD WCD 30-Nov 6-Dec 863,716 879,987 (+/- 16,271 - 0.9% margin) 13-Dec 888,210 893,371 (+/- 5,161 - 0.2% margin) 20-Dec 699,012 700,948 (+/- 1,936 - 0.1% margin) 26-Dec 657,248 554,037 (+/- 103,221 - 8.5% margin) 2-Jan 411,749 407,011 (+/- 4,738 - 0.6% margin)
So somehow between December 20 and 26 over 100,000 votes weren’t reported.
Let’s look at the votes gained between each reporting period for the top Western Conference defencemen (all others received less than 5% of the vote):
Votes Rec'd: 6-Dec 13-Dec 20-Dec 26-Dec 2-Jan Scott Niedermayer 96,135 60,371 57,474 92,878 51,277 Nicklas Lidstrom 102,584 53,664 56,327 94,981 50,724 Rory Fitzpatrick 113,509 124,229 159,784 58,010 63,335 Chris Pronger 85,187 63,156 58,413 48,401 44,630 Dion Phaneuf 98,401 65,737 42,894 41,495 36,097 Scott Hannan 73,890 168,105 56,748 24,009 20,587
Rory Fitzpatrick’s votes dropped from 159,784 to 58,010 between December 20 and 26, a loss of over 100,000, and at a time when media coverage of the Vote For Rory campaign was at its highest. And strangely enough, over 100,000 votes for Western Conference defencemen weren’t reported for the December 26 release. Rory ended up 23,000 votes behind second place vote-getter Nicklas Lidstrom.
A strange coincidence.
All data courtesy Rusty Krustyman.