Raptors and Argos

My dad and I took our four visiting South Korean students to Toronto on Wednesday night. We went to the new-ish Vaughn Mills Mall first, which is supposed to be the coolest/biggest new mall in the Toronto area. It was a nice place, designed in a simple loop rather than a cloverleaf maze like White Oaks Mall. The main attraction is this gargantuan outdoor recreation store. It has a massive water tank at the entrance with various kinds of local fish, nothing exotic, just big fish that you can catch in Ontario water. It also had a big waterfall right beside that.

My dad and I went bowling while we there in this Palasade-like place. The place was so cool they had couches for every bowling lane. I sucked at bowling but at least I broke 100 in both of my games this time, unlike the two games I played at Palasade this past weekend. The last game I played last year I managed to get a turkey (three strikes in a row) and I seem to have lost my touch.

The main event of the day was that we went to see the Toronto Raptors play against the New York Knickerbockers. ("Knicks" is actually a nickname, "Knickerbockers" is the full name.) Toronto beat NY soundly, which was exactly what I wanted to see. Everyone gleefully booed Lenny Wilkens when he was introduced, and everyone viciously booed Vince Carter when he was introduced. And by everyone, I mean me as well. Lenny Wilkens is the coach that allowed Toronto to become a lazy, uncaring team for several years and Carter is proving himself to be lazy and uncaring on the court this year while he seeks a trade. It was great to be a boo-bird for a while.

On the other hand, the crowd loudly cheered for several other Raptors. Particularly Matt Bonner, who has been playing surprisingly well this year. We also cheered proudly for Jerome Williams (JYD, the Junk Yard Dog), a fan favourite as a former Raptor who is now playing for the Knicks. At one point during the pre-game shoot-around he went over by the Raptor mascot and the two of them had some fun putting a few dance moves together.

And the highlight of the night was an unexpected one. As any good Canadian knows, the Toronto Argonauts beat the BC Lions this past Sunday to claim the CFL Grey Cup. (Take that, Joel!) Lo and behold, coach and former star player Pinball Clemons took a courtside seat part way into the first quarter. He received the loudest standing ovation of the night at that point. During the break between the first quarter and the second quarter most of the Argos team came out onto the court, holding the Grey Cup in the air for everyone to see. The crowd went nuts as they walked around with it and took a team picture at centre court. It was fantastic. (Take that too, Joel!)

Playdium, Anyone?

My parents are home and this week we have four 9th-grade South Korean guys visiting us. They all go to a private school in the States. Since the Thanksgiving holidays are happening this week in the States they have to leave their school for the week and they don't want to go all the way back to South Korea. So, they're spending the week with us to do the tourist thing and to practice their english.

Amongst other things, my dad would like to go to the Playdium with these guys sometime this week. We're thinking about going on Saturday. Starting after 8:00 pm you can pay a flat rate of $20.00 for four hours of play.

Is anyone interested in joining us? We would like to have a couple more people to get more of an english-speaking environment. Guys or girls are welcome, whatever age. Actually, even though they're all in Grade 9, two of them are actually a couple of years older than that. Contact me if you want to join us.

Student Statistics: Race and Gender

The Toronto Star had this story this morning about a school in Richmond Hill (suburb of Toronto?) that has experimented for the past three years with splitting Grade 7/8 girls and guys for part of each day. The grades for both the girls and boys increased dramatically. They're now considering expanding the program to other grades. Perhaps the ECE and child-care people that read this blog already know this as a matter of fact.

The Toronto Star has also been following this story about a recent vote by the Toronto School Board in which they decided that they would start tracking school statistics by race. It was a very, very close vote and it has sparked much controversy about racial profiling and the like. The twist in this case is that statistics are already available that show that "kids from the Caribbean, Africa and sometimes South America generally do worse than their Canadian-born counterparts." That's what prompted this vote about official statistics in the first place.

I found it interesting that both stories appeared on the front page of the Toronto Star's website this morning.

If A Tree Falls and Swears and No One Heard It...

ABC airs the shows Monday Night Football and Desperate Housewives, so this past Monday they had a bit of cross-promotion between the shows. The opening for Monday Night Football had one of the star football players, Terrell Owens, accosted in the locker room before the game by an actress who plays one of the characters from Desperate Housewives. He is supposed to go out to play the game and, with a view of the woman's back, you see her take off her towel and suggest that they play hooky together.

Like the Janet Jackson Reveal during the Superbowl half-time show, there were many complaints files and ABC officially apologized. The story is described here.

Now, I read an interesting commentary about this. Anyone know who Mark Cuban is? He's the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, an upper-tier team in the NBA. He's also fantastically rich from his various technology-related companies and he is notoriously outspoken.

He posted some comments on his blog regarding this event, dubbing it an "apologevent." (Clever, but doesn't exactly roll off the tongue.) He thanked the FCC for cracking down on bad broadcasting behaviour like this because the FCC unintentionally became a publicity partner, garnering more coverage for both shows then they would have gotten by themselves.

The part I was most interested in was that he pointed out that "fake naked" and "fake swearing" is a laughable standard. If you don't swear but instead use an acronym or a common synonym and the person who reads or hears you immediately understands that you actually meant the explicit swear word, then did you swear? The list of banned swear words is shorter than it used to be (as decided by the FCC or whomever), but cute derivations of banned swear words are usually fair game on television and radio networks.

It's an idea that I think applies to those of us that do not approve of swearing. Just because we use Eminem-style half-silent swears or acronyms for swear words, if the purpose is to swear and to make others think of the actual swear words, then what's the point of camouflaging?

Sex-Ed vs. Gay-Ed

Here's a controversial news link: Toronto schools are having a bit of debate about whether parents have a choice about their grade school children being taught about same-sex families in school. The one argument says that kindergarden and the youngest grades are being taught according to their age level and that this constitutes necessary anti-homophobia education. The other argument, mostly prominantly vocalized by Muslim parents, says that parents should have the right to excuse their children from these classes in the same way that they can excuse their children from sex-ed classes. Similar to the term sex-ed (for sexual education in physical education courses), these classes were labeled "gay-ed" in this article.

My parents took both approaches when it came to sex-ed classes for me and my siblings when we were growing up. For the first few years I was allowed to take the classes but my parents later decided that my younger siblings and I would not be allowed to do so. In either case my parents taught us about these issues as needed at home. It's a good thing, too, because I remember coming home one day as a grade-schooler and telling my mom that I had learned that a fetus was neither male or female but was only an "it." My mom promptly corrected that and explained to me that the fetus was a living child and was male or female, even if they were still too small to identify their gender. (Um, but not in those words since I just a kid.)

This article notes that one of the arguments against allowing children to be removed from gay-ed classes is that this sends a negative message to the other children about homosexuality. And yet, I faced ridicule whenever I was excused from sex-ed classes in school. In the end, I think that the decision about gay-ed classes should be left up the parents, in the same way that sex-ed classes are.

DVDs and Scramjets

Watch out, there are two competing DVD standards coming out within the next year. Current DVD technology uses red lasers to read the DVD. Both of these new standards use blue lasers to read the DVD. Since blue light has a shorter wavelength then red light (which also explains a blue sky and red sunsets), these new DVDs will be able to store much more then the current DVDs can. Anyone remember VHS vs. Beta? Or Nintendo vs. Sega? Or PC vs. Mac? Hopefully we as consumers won't get burned by this competition.

Ever heard of a scramjet? I heard about it back when it was still in the conceptual stages. The big news is that NASA had their first test flight for their new scramjet plane yesterday (November 17, 2004). They almost reached Mach 10, which is ten times the speed of sound.

Scramjet means "supersonic combustion ramjet." To briefly explain, a large problem with jets and rockets of any kind is that they need to carry a large quantity of oxygen to help ignite their fuel. The idea for this jet is that, once it hits a high enough speed, it can just open a port at the front of the engine and take in oxygen from the air. The oxygen is naturally compressed because the kept is going so fast, so the plane doesn't have to carry extra oxygen anymore. Combine that with a ramjet (which is another tricky explanation) and we have supersonic planes. Good old NASA, what would we do without them?

In Memory Not Alone

Last year on Remembrance Day I tried to get everyone in my workplace to take a ten minute break in order to observe the day and honour those before us. I received encouraging words saying that I could go ahead and do that if I wanted to but in the end no one joined me and it was just another average weekday.

This year I decided to simply observe the moment by myself at my desk. Just after 11:00 am I visited cbc.ca and I read through this article commemorating the day. At 11:11 am I read through the poem In Flanders Fields which is included at the end of that article and I offered up a small prayer of thanks.

I still have several poppies in my van from last year. I kept them on the visor in my van all year as a small reminder to myself about the sacrifices that created the life that I have today. Thanks to those that protected us, thanks to those that protect us now and thanks to God.

Who's In Control?

Rough Draft:
http://radio.weblogs.com/0001011/2004/11/11.html#a8615
Scoble took a link off of his blog because someone expected a link on his blog.

A friend I know intentionally sat in their seat for an extended period of time because someone yelled at them and demanded that they move.

So who's in control here? Do we feel like we're in control just because we did the opposite of what someone asked? I suggest that the other person is still in control in the two examples above. We're only in control if we make our own decisions for our own reasons, not as a reaction to someone else.

Company Growth

Rough Draft:
I was talking to an acquaintance that I know from church who works for a Project Management firm. This firm, called ActivPlan, regularly sends people all over the world to perform Project Management services for numerous types of industries.

His observation: Companies have various stages of growth. There is the initial mcri-company startup. Then there's a painful growth stage between 25-50 people, then there's another ata round 200 people, and so on.

It's a common a repetitive pattern. More management is required at various stages, more formal processes and policies are required, people begin to specialize, etc. It's interesting to see the parallels at AV-Base.

Brains and Beauty

I was chatting with Richard last night and he commented that there are two main things that are valued in our society: Brains and Beauty, and not necessarily in that order.

In terms of beauty, people may respond well to physically attractive people while shying away from others that are not so attractive. People may spend inordinate amounts of time in an effort to improve their own physical beauty.

The cliche about appreciating beauty above any other personal trait is that beauty is only skin deep. While a lot of people do understand that precept, Richard commented that the next trait that we put on the pedestal is being smart. In fact, people that value knowledge most highly are sometimes condescending to people that value physical beauty most highly. And yet, many people respond to people with mental deficiencies or a lower IQ in the same way that others respond to some physical attributes. How is that any different?

Can a person be admired for their servanthood even if they are neither smart nor beautiful? In fact, I've seen several different people in the past two weeks that were dissed for being too helpful. Why do we sometimes have such trouble appreciating servanthood in the way that we appreciate Brains and Beauty?

For myself, I admire those with an independant spirit who can make decisions and stick out from a crowd. I strongly admire people that love children. I admire those that feel free to express themselves in outward worship to God. I admire those that can admit when they are wrong. I presume everyone reading this can add to this list. (Feel free to do so.)

So why do we place Brains and Beauty on a pedestal? Why don't we see beauty everywhere?

Stop and Go

Robert Scoble (a blogger from Microsoft) comments on "Stop Energy." That is, people that complain about something or create roadblocks but do nothing to actually help. He's referring moreso to the IT industry but I also see people that do this with churches and other Christians. Too often I have heard of people that no longer go to church because of various problems in the church. The church may well have problems but what are these people going to do about it? To merely complain is to contribute to the problem.

I remember a pastor who once said that he knew that there were problems with the North American church model and with his particular church model. And yet, in the absence of a better solution, he was going to stick with what he had. He didn't want to but he understood the difference between identifying a problem and solving it.

It takes little insight to point out flaws in people or in churches. It takes great wisdom and equal heart to help solve those flaws in a life-giving way.

Share With Them

Rough Draft: Share in their suffering...
Abe's brother Dan has a blog in which he continually challenges that Christians should share in the suffering of others.

Romans 8:17
2 Corinthians 1:3-7
Phillipians 3:10
2 Timothy 1:8
1 Peter 3:8
1 Peter 4:13

Discussion & Links

Natalie has a new post in which she starts to discuss how she is changing her ideas about dating. She has opened it up for discussion so feel free to join in.

Amanda had some questions and comments last week about whether prayer acts as a placebo for our problems.

I had a post about malicious adware and malware ("malicious software") recently. The Microsoft Monitor has a few more comments to add about this growing problem.

What kind of boss are you? This is an interesting article about leadership by intimidation versus leadership by inspiration. The blogger is an IT guy from one of the giant mega-churches in the US.

And as a nod to Titus, he has "important issues" to discuss on his blog. Look for the post from November 1, 2004 about the US election and Osama Bin Laden's "support" for John Kerry. Sorry, his site doesn't seem to have permalinks to which I can directly refer. And it it just me or was Titus comment-spamming everyone about this post? He posted comments to several different blogs asking people to read his site. Bad manners? It got results, I s'pose.