Category: News Item

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Not used to so much smoke free

Smoke free restaurants and venues are something I became very accustomed to when I moved to Vancouver. In the states, this is taking effect from the inside out. It starts with hospitals pushing the proximity in which one can smoke further and further away from their walls. From there, it’s moved on to places where you can get a bite to eat, but bars fight back tooth and nail on it. At that point, there is a settlement over how much the percentage of revenue is taking from food compared to other goods that are sold, this often being alcohol. The less food you sell, the more you can have smoking in your establishment.

It’s all baby-steps towards a state-wide ban or stiff regulation on where you can or can’t smoke. In Canada, it gets even steeper. I did a little looking around, and the greater Vancouver area seems to have a more relaxed stance on it compared to other parts of the country. That doesn’t mean that people are content with the way things are.

The city of White Rock is poised to become the first community in B.C. to impose an outdoor patio smoking ban, with council set to vote on the issued Monday night.

Dozens of owners of restaurants along the beach in White Rock plan to be at the Monday council meeting to voice their opposition. [cbc]

No don’t get me wrong and start saying that I hate everyone who smokes. If that’s your habit, then that’s your thing. Enjoy the things you enjoy, and I will enjoy mine. It’s not the healthiest thing that anyone could pick up, but I’m sure no one usually gets cancer from biting their fingernails or picking their nose. Nasty habits, but far less risky.

The crappy thing about this, in terms of living in this city, is that I can recall so many times when Rebecca and I go out to eat and we don’t sit on the patio because of all the smokers. That is one of the best things about Vancouver, too. Enjoying your meal with a cool ocean breeze blowing and over priced, under juiced cocktails. There’s nothing like it, but you can’t do it without the potential company of some one who is enjoying a cigarette while chowing down. And generally speaking, that potential is usually for certain.

It’s a really tough argument. I don’t want their smoke, and they don’t like being pushed deeper and deeper into a corner. What I find it really strange about all of this is that I notice smokers, at least in public places, outdoors more than I ever did indoors. Such is the enigma of Vancouver.

Update: White Rock turned down the ban proposal last night[cbc].

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Sorkin writes television about television pretty well

I recall a certain point in my life where I thought I was better than those who watched television on a regular basis. I’m not sure if would call it being elitist, but it’s just one of those things that results from the “you mean you’re not watching [insert name here]” craze of the 90’s, or at least how I remember things. I blame prime time sitcoms, reality TV, and the communication studies department at the University of Iowa.

No matter what anyone tells you, education and entertainment should not mix. Write enough papers about social ramifications of anything and your take on everything else in life can, and most likely will, change. If you’re really good, then you’ll find some way to enjoy some of the things you can see in this short life that we all have.

Rebecca already made a post about this the other day, but “Studio 60 on Sunset Strip”[imdb] is something we’ve been enjoying quite a bit. It’s another Aaron Sorkin creation that is probably too good for this era of over hype and the need for instant success. I was never impressed with the commercials that I saw for it, but someone said that if I loved Sports Night[imdb], which I do, then I would dig Studio 60.

Sports Night was one of those shows that I caught on Comedy Central while eating lunch between classes in college. At that point, it was in syndication, which is odd being that it had only been on the air for a short time. Actually, I was completely wrong, and the show ended after barely two seasons. It won a few Emmys, but the ratings never went where ABC wanted them. A quality show that never produced the quantity of viewers that the big guys calling the shots wanted. Such is the formula that makes up network television.

Needless to say, I fell in love with Sports Night and bought the entire series on DVD. I don’t care a whole lot about sports, asides from hockey, baseball, and some football, but the way the series was written, I liked it a lot.

Studio 60 is the same way. Sketch comedy is a love/hate genre in so many ways, so this show already had me saying nay. Like Sports Night, Sorkin brings the story of the characters to the forefront while putting the premise of the show into the background. It’s less about making a west coast version of SNL every week and more about the lives of the people making it happen. The interaction breeds drama for and about the show, but you get the picture that there is more to series than just execs, producers, and cast members.

Of course, and in true typical fashion, mentioning this is all in vain.

Here we go: despite receiving an order for three more episodes on Friday, the Aaron Sorkin NBC drama “Studio 60 on Sunset Strip” is about to be put out of its misery.

Cast members are already confiding in friends that the end is near. It’s likely NBC will pull the plug shortly I am told by insiders.

Last week, Studio 60 had 7.7 million viewers. Compare that with competing “CSI: Miami,” with 17.5 million. That gap cannot be closed.

But ‘Studio 60’ has trouble internally at NBC, forget its intramural rivals. According to ratings stats, the “Saturday Night Live” behind the scenes soap opera loses almost half the viewers delivered to it a few minutes earlier by another new show, “Heroes,” which has become a surprise cult hit. [foxnews]

I am almost betting that Sorkin has another Emmy on his hands with Studio 60. It’s smart, well produced, funny, and, most importantly, keeps me coming back to the story every week. Granted that the show has only been on the air for five weeks, but that is saying a couple things. For one thing, the show is highly under estimated by a lot of potential viewers. It might not have mass, wide appeal, but it stands a far better chance than some of the other junk that has come and gone.

The other aspect is the fact that there is no such thing as allowing buzz to grow for the television industry, unless it is in present tense. There’s no room for buzz to take effect outside of what the ratings say about what a select portion of television viewers watch, aka Nielsen ratings. No room for people spreading the word so people can set their VCRs, PVRs, DVRs, DVD-Rs, or whatever they use to record this thing that someone said they should check out because it might be an enjoyable program.

Hollywood always seems to know what’s good for you, and what is good is usually replaced with crap.

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Exercise helps decrease your risk of getting colds

I knew the miles upon kilometers of pavement and trails weren’t all for nothing. Now that science says it’s true, then you have to believe it.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A long-term moderate exercise program can reduce the risk of colds among older women, U.S. researchers said on Thursday.

In the first randomized clinical trial to investigate the impact of moderate physical activity on the common cold, researchers from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center found that post-menopausal women who worked out regularly had about half the risk of colds as those who did not exercise. […]

The researchers found that the ability of moderate exercise to ward off colds seemed to increase over time. In the last three months of the study, the group of women who were only stretching were three times as likely to catch a cold as those who were exercising regularly. […]

“With regards to preventing colds, it seems you really have to stick with exercise long term,” Ulrich said.

The results were seen as important in understanding the health benefits of exercise, Ulrich said.

“It may apply also to other age groups, it may apply to men,” she said. “In the past, immune studies have been quite consistent among men and women. I wouldn’t expect that to be different.” [reuters]

In the seven years that I’ve been running and working out, I find this to be pretty true. College is a petri dish of illnesses, and it seemed like it would be a yearly event that I would go through the various, air born whatever-it-was that was going around. My days prior to that were constant illnesses, some of them linked to a condition that I have called Gilbert’s syndrome[wiki]. It seemed that the “thing that’s going around” would always hit me about a week before it reached the masses.

Working out helps all of these things, not to mention the lack of colds. If and when I have colds now, it’s either very subtle or horribly painful. When something is able to break through your immune system and get you, chances are, you’re going to go down pretty hard. I probably make more effort to get sleep now compared to my high school and college days. That always helps.

Knock on wood, but it’s been nearly a year since I had a run in with a case of strep throat, the flu, and a sinus infection. Oddly enough, that was all a short time after I moved to Vancouver. I chalk that all up to being exposed to new surroundings and getting my initiation to the lower mainland. What a way to welcome me to my new home.

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You have to have a mind of a goalie

This is a combination of two things that I find incredible interesting: hockey and neuroscience. Sounds strange, but my course of study in college was neuropsychology. I also played goalie in various rollerhockey tournaments on campus, so it kind of all makes sense, right?

It would seem that not only do you have to be physically fit to be a good goalie, but being cognitively fit is an added bonus.

Researchers at the University of Calgary’s Faculty of Kinesiology may have found the secret to highlight-reel goaltending with their comprehensive, on-ice hockey study on where elite goalies focus their eyes to make those dynamic blocker, glove and pad saves.

In a study to be published in the medical journal Human Movement Science, graduate student Derek Panchuk and professor Joan Vickers, who discovered the “Quiet Eye” phenomenon, found that the best goaltenders rest their gaze directly on the puck and the shooter’s stick almost a full second before the shot is released.

When they do that, they make the save over 75 per cent of the time.

“Looking at the puck seems fairly obvious,” Panchuk said, “until you look at the eye movements of novice goaltenders, who scatter their gaze all over the place and have a much lower save percentage than the elite goalies.” […]

“Goalies often focus on physical things like improving technique but they overlook the decision making — the cognitive side of things,” Panchuk said.

“I think this study shows that you also need to focus on your decision making and your thinking processes. Having optimal focus is just as important as being in optimal physical shape.” [cbc]

This also brings up the classic argument of nature versus nurture. It’s only logical to think that certain people are going to be born with traits that allow them to do this easier than others, but I’ve read enough studies to understand that the ability to train your brain for tasks like this is very possible. For some, this can be easier than others. It also makes me wonder if there is a correlation between goalies who play in college and their GPA.

More importantly, who did they use for this study? I would love to see how Luongo would test on this.  All I do know is that when I finally started wearing contacts instead of glasses under my mask, my save percentage went up considerably.  Keeping an eye on the puck is all I would ever do.

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Welcome to the world of baseball 2.0

This video report from CNet truly scares me. In case you don’t feel like watching it, I’ll do my best to sum it up.

Cisco demoed new technology to “enhance” your ballpark experience, focusing mostly on the new stadium that is being pushed for the Oakland A’s. Electronic tickets on your cellphone or PDA is alright, but the idea of letting video screens detect you in the proximity of their display and then changing to specifically target you based on what your wireless device says about you is a bit on the tacky side. Of course, it’s all technology meant to get more money out of your pocket.

The other thing that left me not liking what I saw was the concept of using mobile PC’s while watching the game from your seats. Score keeping goes digital, get instant replay as it happens, or get an alert that you were on the fan cam on the scoreboard. You see the picture as well as the many ways that you can purchase the picture, much like going on amusement park rides.

There is something to be said about the simplicity of just enjoying a day at the ballpark, and the last thing that I really want to do is have a whole bunch of gadgets getting in the way. Don’t forget about the dude behind you who just dumped his beer on your mobile PC. The first thing I want to do when it comes to enjoying a baseball game is turning off the rest of the world.

Oh, and don’t think that this is just limited to the ballpark experience. They mention that this is a new concept in the way of enjoying professional sporting events in general. Once again, when I go to GM Place for a Canucks game, I’m all for getting alerts about better seats for a game. After that, I just want to be in my seat and enjoy the atmosphere that is hockey.

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The battle of who could care less

The Killers pointing fingers at Green Day? Say it isn’t so!

The Killers ‘offended’ by Green Day

Brandon Flowers doesn’t want to be an ‘American Idiot’

Brandon Flowers has criticised Green Day for what he sees as their calculated anti-Americanism.

In particular, Flowers singled out the track ‘American Idiot’ and the fact they filmed their DVD ‘Bullet In A Bible’, which features the song, in the UK.

“You have Green Day and ‘American Idiot’. Where do they film their DVD? In England,” The Killers‘ frontman told The Word. “A bunch of kids screaming ‘I don’t want to be an American idiot’ I saw it as a very negative thing towards Americans. It really lit a fire in me.”

Explaining he was offended by the set-up, Flowers added: “You have the right to say what you want to say and what you want to write about, and I’m sure they meant it in the same way that Bruce Springsteen meant ‘Born In The USA’ and it was taken wrongly, but I was really offended when I saw them do that.”

The singer added he felt the DVD was a bit of a a stunt.

“I just thought it was really cheap,” he explained. “To go to a place like England or Germany and sing that song – those kids aren’t taking it the same way that he meant it. And he [Billie Joe Armstrong] knew it.”

The Killers‘ frontman said he believed that his band’s new album ‘Sam’s Town’ is a much better representation of America.

“People need to see that, really, there are the nicest people in the world here!” he declared. “I don’t know if our album makes you realise that. But I hope it’s from a more positive place.” [nme]

It seems like I hear the latest by The Killers every morning when the alarm goes off and the radio in the bathroom gets turned on. Mind you that we don’t own a car, but seems like everytime we are in one, “He doesn’t look a thing like Jesus…”

Someone told me something not too long ago that makes a lot of sense and is completely applicable to this situation. The industry does as much as it can to milk every last drop out of an artist that it possibly can.

Even artists with one album can have their own DVD pushed onto the store shelves. You don’t need a long track record to have that live, special edition to hit your local Wal-Mart or Zellers. Two or three albums later, the “best of” whoever and whatever start showing up.

Politics or truly representing what Americans are, it’s all rock and roll. The record execs want to push more of the product as they possibly can. Brew a feud, create a buzz, and launch more ways to increase revenue. Even if there is truth to what is being said, I doubt anything was that well thought out and planned. The thing that probably bothers people more is the fact that they had to pay $40-$60, per ticket, just to get in and see any of these guys.

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Traveling along the US-Mexico border

In the last year, I’ve become fascinated with the southern border of the U.S. My grandmother crossed the Rio Grande when she was very young, long before a border patrol was established. In those days, it was more considered to be open rather than guarded at all.

A journalist for the Guardian Unlimited recently wrote about his experience of traveling the length of the recent hot topic in Washington, going from west to east. Gary Younge paints a unique perspective about the border and the people who live there, literially on the front lines.

About 10 minutes’ walk from Reyes’s office flows a stretch of the Rio Grande about 15 metres wide. As I drove down to take a look, a car full of people was leaving in the opposite direction. Alone on the bank was a teenage boy with four tyres and a heap of wet clothes. He wasn’t answering any questions, except about fishing, and after a while the car came back empty and picked him up.

At the city of Del Rio, the river starts the first of its elaborate curves before it heads south towards the Chisos Mountains while the main road heads north. A 200-mile detour down back roads hugging the border takes you through towns and hamlets that have occasionally been used for spaghetti western sets. Most look desolate. Then Lajitas, a luxury resort that bills itself as the ultimate hide-out, emerges like a mirage.

At Lajitas the cheapest room in low season goes for $175 a night and the most expensive cottage is $825. For the Texas beau monde there are weekly flights in private jets from Dallas and “Get out of the Dog House” packages for the negligent businessman, which offer prickly pear margaritas and Mexican wedding cookies on your arrival and two 50-minute massages. Behind the hotel complex runs the Rio Grande. On the Mexican side live four extended families; a boat is tied up at the riverside. The nearest official border crossing is in Presidio, 50 miles away. Every day, to avoid the 100-mile round trip, people cross the river by boat in a couple of minutes. You can see their footprints on the Texan side. The afternoon I arrived a man was nipping back to Mexico to repay a debt to a friend. The next day Ms Rodriguez rowed her two children and a rooster over to see their grandmother in Mexico. [guardian]

That’s just a portion of the article, but it’s a good example of the many stories that this issue has. There is also a slideshow with audio commentary by Carlos Cazalis, who photographed the journey along the way.

During my days at KRUI, a group of us made our way to Austin, TX for SXSW. One wrong turn and we were being beckoned by a few hundred day laborers that were standing on a street corner. A couple people freaked out, thinking that we were about to be robbed. I had a quick sense as to what was happening, but there was really no use to explain. One u-turn and we were heading back towards 6th Street, the place where everything seems to be happening in Austin. Clubs, good shows, and great food.

It’s that easy to forget that this problem exists. I’ll be damned if there’s an easy solution though. Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev recently compared the building of the 700-mile long fence on the southern U.S. border to that of the Berlin Wall[mywesttexas]. It’s not that far of a stretch, but maybe I’m missing the element that says “cooperative effort for a solution” in the thing that represents “keep out”.

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Never let the spirit of CBGB’s die

It’s been off and on for a while now, but it is official. CBGB[wiki] is closed and gone for good.

NEW YORK (AP) – CBGB hosted its final concert Sunday night after a 33-year residence in downtown New York as the iconic, grungy bastion of punk.

The concert, headlined by rock poet Patti Smith, was to be the final note sounded in a drawn-out battle to preserve the legendary club. A homeless advocacy group that owns the property, the Bowery Residents Committee, is not renewing CBGB’s lease, which expired in August 2005. The club will close Oct. 31. [myway]

It’s a mecca for rock and roll. There’s not much more to say about it than that. I consider myself thankful for taking in at least one night there. I missed a solo performance by Britt Daniel[wiki] by a few minutes, but I did catch Dressy Bessy[wiki] and I Am The World Trade Center[wiki] in a back to back perfmance. Absolutely amazing and totally my type of venue.

On a bit of a side note, it was completely stupid that I Am The World Trade Center was performing under the name “I Am The World…” when I saw then. The 9/11 paranoia was in full force at that time, claiming that they were trying to capitalize on the tragedy. Truth was that I was spinning them at KRUI long before anything happened. Thankfully, they went back to their roots shortly after I saw them.

Back to CBGB, it’s small, dark, and kinda dirty. At least it was. The layout, as I try to recall, wasn’t at all what I expected. The stage was more accessible to the audience than I thought it would have been. The sound was really good, and the atmosphere was something I just wanted to drink in, figuratively and literally. The group of people I was with didn’t quite grasp the awesomeness of this place, but I didn’t want to leave when they did. Maybe they’ll get it now

The spirit will go on, but it’ll never be the same as it once was. Incredible venues like this seem to be a dying breed in this wham-bam-make-a-superstar-today-gone-tomorrow formula of the music business. The big boys of the industry are constantly trying to harvest the indie scene, where the art is truly free to mold itself into something unique, and scoop it up so they can lay claim to the next, big thing.

If it weren’t for CBGB, a lot of the rock and roll I have come to love would never had the chance to become what it is today. For that, I thank them, and so does The Reverend.

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The vowels of the internet

I’ve been going to the last few Metroblogging Vancouver meetups, and there are usually a lot of interesting conversations. Some of them, as you can probably imagine, stem into the realms of being slightly geeky.

For instance, the point was brought up that there has been a natural progression of using vowels as a prefix to a website domain, company, or product name. For the life of me, I’m not sure where the letter “A” fits into all of this, but “E” and “I” have been front and center for nearly two decades now. Email, iTunes, iPod, and so on. Keep going down the line and one starts to wonder about “O”, “U”, and (some times) “Y”. What’s the next, new, hot thing going to be? What way will these letters be used and abused?

Of course, how can you not talk about YouTube? Everyone is now that Google just picked it up for a pretty penny. Someone brought up the idea that it should have been “uTube” and not “YouTube”. This would have fit into that natural progression in the world of Web 2.0. I’m not sold on it, but the thought made for some good laughs.

However, utube.com does exist. Thing is, they don’t do anything with video.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Utube.com, a Web site owned by a supplier of used tubes and pipes, has been swamped with visitors confusing it with online video service YouTube Inc. and has been barely operational since Google Inc. said on Monday it would buy YouTube for $1.65 billion.

“I’m at a point now, all I want to do is to make the site work,” Ralph Girkins, owner of the site belonging to Universal Tube & Rollform Equipment Corp., told Reuters on Thursday.

“Today, it’s been up the longest it’s been up for a week — an hour and a half,” said Ohio-based Girkins.

utube.com is the sixth most popular U.S. manufacturing Web site, ahead of Whirlpool Corp., according to data provided by HitWise.

On Monday, Girkins told Reuters an intermediary who said he was acting on behalf of YouTube had offered $1 million to buy the Internet address, but he turned down the offer and was holding out for $2.5 million to $3 million.

A YouTube spokesman said it had not made an offer and had no plans to do so.

On Thursday, Girkins said he had received about 20 phone calls from people who offered to sell his site for him. He has not been in contact with Google or YouTube, he said. [reuters]

Now it could be that this guy was thinking way ahead when he registered this domain, but he's certainly sitting on a gold mine. I find it fascinating that there is nothing Web 2.0 to the site itself. It makes complete sense that people would think that when they hear people talking about YouTube, they would think "utube" when they sat down at a browser.