Although I've never been a member of one, I love the concept of book clubs, and One Book, One Vancouver is a book club on a city scale. The Vancouver Public Library is holding an online vote which closes on April 15th to determine which book is selected for the club, so vote early and vote often!
Marginal Revolution, an excellent economics weblog, points to the Bertuzzi incident as an example of explicit rules having costs and quotes a no longer available Los Angeles Times article:
The incident ignited a firestorm of criticism of the NHL's tolerance of fighting and rough play. But many players, observers and officials say Bertuzzi's attack was an indirect consequence of the instigator rule, which was adopted in 1992 as part of the league's effort to minimize the fighting that bloodied its image in the 1970s.
In its current form, the instigator rule mandates penalties and suspensions for players who start fights and accumulate instigator infractions over the course of a season. However, many say it has made players reluctant to retaliate against cheap shots for fear they'll get an instigator penalty and put their teams at a disadvantage.
Penalties—or the fact that the refs actually called penalties—were the story of the game tonight as the Vancouver Canucks soundly defeated the Calgary Flames in game 1 of the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs. The Canucks effectively scored all of their goals on the power play, 4 of them while a Calgary Flame was in the penalty box and the other, by Mattias Ohlund, while the Flames were about to be called for goaltender interference. Ohlund joined the rush because he knew he wouldn't have to double back if the Flames got the puck, but even then, since defensemen have joined the rush all season, a case could be made that Ohlund would have joined the rush anyway.
The Flames were successful on the powerplay as well, especially when the Canucks were called for too many men on the ice. I have to question some of the calls as being makeup calls—and both teams benefited from them—and I hear that first games of series are called tight before the refs "let them play" as series progress. I'm all for "letting them play", but every violation of the rules must be called every time in every situation, whether it be the second period of the first game of the season, late in the game when a team is trying to make the playoffs, and yes, even in double overtime of a playoff game. It's the last point where I depart from many fans, who think that no team should be given a power play in sudden death overtime in the playoffs, but we don't let students cheat on final exams, when the final grades are on the line. So under what principle do we let hockey players cheat when the game is on the line?
The best things in life are sometimes free. Check out Jim Monroe's novel, Everyone in Silico, set in Vancouver in 2036. Download the e-book in .rtf (Rich text for MS Word), .txt (plain text without formatting), .pdb (for your Palm also plain text without formatting), or .pdf (Acrobat reader required)
More info at No Media Kings
Check out what the city thinks Vancouver's neighbourhoods are:
We should probably add a generic "Downtown" section. The Drive is definitely a neighbourhood, but what about Main Street?
Decisions, decisions.
Darren Barefoot is seeking writers for his weblog while he travels to Ireland and South Africa, and his idea for having a mix of experience bloggers with new bloggers is an excellent one. Many weblogs start out without knowing best-practices (there is still much room, however, for experimentation, so there's no need to follow everybody else's style), and apprenticeship blogging with "masters" both contributing and helping out the newbies—and hopefully learning from them as well: I've done Internet training and I learned just as much about the people and their interests as I taught about the Internet—will help encourage those who are unsure about how blogging can help them and those around them.
To prevent the site from going completely fallow for a month, I'm seeking some guest writers who can post to this site. Ideally, I'm looking for three to four people. A couple would be blogging noobs--maybe you want to try out online writing and a couple would be experienced bloggers with other sites. I've already got one noob lined up, but it anyone else wants to volunteer, that'd be swell.Seeking Guest Writers
Penny at Milk Factory points to Bill 38 which is designed to balance individual privacy rights with the ability of businesses to do business efficiently and effectively:
I attended a privacy law seminar today that got me thinking from both a personal and a business perspective. The Act is in place to protect personal information and everyone should know their rights and/or obligations to comply. Had I not been required to attend for my employer, I may not have found out about my rights as an individual.Milk Factory: Know Your Rights
The British Columbia Civil Liberties endorsed the legislation and the Archives Association of BC had some concerns about the broad definition of "personal information" as well as the ability (or willingness) of organizations to centrally file every bit of "personal information".
Vancouver Canucks Op Ed is looking like a excellent source for Vancouver Canucks playoff coverage, and they point to the Calgary Sun making a joke at Canucks' fans expense (so does that make the joke "teamist"?):
Four hockey fans are mountain climbing. Each climber happens to be a rabid fan of a different NHL team. One from Ottawa, one from Calgary, one from Toronto and the other from Vancouver.
As they climb higher and higher, they argue more and more about which of them is the most loyal to their particular hockey team. As they reach the summit, the climber from Ottawa takes a running leap and throws himself off the mountain, yelling, "This is for the Ottawa Senators!" Not wanting to be outdone, the climber from Toronto throws himself off the mountain, shouting, "This is for the Toronto Maple Leafs!" Seeing this, the Calgary Flames fan walks to the edge and yells, "This is for hockey fans everywhere!" He then pushes the fan from Vancouver off the cliff.
This doesn't just affect Vancouver, the fall out is global.
So what are the BC poultry farmers going to do? They're going to spray all their farms with massive doses of chemical poisons, wait six months, and start up all over again. They plan no changes whatsoever to their operations.
How to Save the World (Dave Pollard): When will they ever learn?
(Emphasis from the original)
It's information like this that makes me strongly question whether I want to continue eating commercially-produced meat.
I've been a fan of DJ Shadow for some 7 years now, and a fan of Quannum since they put out Quannum Spectrum. (A real fan would have been a fan of Quannum's precursor, Solesides, but what can I say, I joined that bandwagon a little later.) DJ Shadow made his third appearance in Vancouver, and the second appearance that I've seen. He had toured with Jeru tha Damaja before I lived in the Lower Mainland and before I had heard of the former. This was the first time that the whole Quannum collective was touring together, and they put on a hell of a show at the Commodore Ballroom on April 5th, 2004.
The highlights for me—and evidently for the crowd as well—were "Lady Don't Tek No" and "Aim For the Flickering Flame"; I had first heard the latter, it only now occurs to me, on the show the collective did for Breezeblock. I'm a little surprised they didn't play "The Wreckoning" by Latyrx (Lateef and Lyrics Born) which was produced by DJ Shadow, but it's a pretty depressing song, so I don't blame them. A friend who wasn't going had told me to tell him how Lyrics Born was going to be, and he stole the show. Early on, someone tried to tug at his collared shirt, but it didn't faze him as he seemed to have the crown under more control than the rest of the rappers. He seemed to be the most charismatic of the rappers too, and while for some the night smacked of effort (especially The Gift of Gab, who is very talented, looked as if he needed to put all he had into it). While all love what they do, Lyrics Born seemed to be having the most fun out on the stage. The three (actually four, but they only had turntables enough for three) were D-Sharp on the audience's left, DJ Shadow in the middle, and Chief Xcel on our right. D-Sharp was the most charismatic of the three, as Shadow and Xcel seemed a lot more interested in their records than the crowd, while D-Sharp was the opposite (though he was talented). It was never established to my satisfaction who the fourth—white—DJ was.
