A Squidmas Carol

On the first day of Christmas, 
my true love sent to me 
A squid in a pear tree. 

On the second day of Christmas, 
my true love sent to me 
Two turtle squid, 
And a squid in a pear tree. 

On the third day of Christmas, 
my true love sent to me 
Three French squid, 
Two turtle squid, 
And a squid in a pear tree. 

On the fourth day of Christmas, 
my true love sent to me 
Four calling squid, 
Three French squid, 
Two turtle squid, 
And a squid in a pear tree. 

On the fifth day of Christmas, 
my true love sent to me 
Five golden squid, 
Four calling squid, 
Three French squid, 
Two turtle squid, 
And a squid in a pear tree. 

On the sixth day of Christmas, 
my true love sent to me 
Six squid a-laying, 
Five golden squid, 
Four calling squid, 
Three French squid, 
Two turtle squid, 
And a squid in a pear tree. 

On the seventh day of Christmas, 
my true love sent to me 
Seven squid a-swimming, 
Six squid a-laying, 
Five golden squid, 
Four calling squid, 
Three French squid, 
Two turtle squid, 
And a squid in a pear tree. 

On the eighth day of Christmas, 
my true love sent to me 
Eight squid a-milking, 
Seven squid a-swimming, 
Six squid a-laying, 
Five golden squid, 
Four calling squid, 
Three French squid, 
Two turtle squid, 
And a squid in a pear tree. 

On the ninth day of Christmas, 
my true love sent to me 
Nine squid dancing, 
Eight squid a-milking, 
Seven squid a-swimming, 
Six squid a-laying, 
Five golden squid, 
Four calling squid, 
Three French squid, 
Two turtle squid, 
And a squid in a pear tree. 

On the tenth day of Christmas, 
my true love sent to me 
Ten squid a-leaping, 
Nine squid dancing, 
Eight squid a-milking, 
Seven squid a-swimming, 
Six squid a-laying, 
Five golden squid, 
Four calling squids, 
Three French squid, 
Two turtle squid, 
And a squid in a pear tree. 

On the eleventh day of Christmas, 
my true love sent to me 
Eleven squid piping, 
Ten squid a-leaping, 
Nine quids dancing, 
Eight quids a-milking, 
Seven squid a-swimming, 
Six squid a-laying, 
Five golden squid, 
Four calling squid, 
Three French squid, 
Two turtle squid, 
And a squid in a pear tree. 

On the twelfth day of Christmas, 
my true love sent to me 
Twelve squid drumming, 
Eleven squid piping, 
Ten squid a-leaping, 
Nine squid dancing, 
Eight squid a-milking, 
Seven squid a-swimming, 
Six squid a-laying, 
Five golden squid, 
Four calling squid, 
Three French squid, 
Two turtle squid, 
And a squid in a pear tree!

The NHL Shoot Out

The Hockey News has a blog entry on the shoot out that nicely agrees with most of my thoughts on the NHL's shoot out. The shoot out was put in place after the Great Lock Out of 2005-2005. It was intended to be a way of ensuring that every game had a winner and a loser. There were two problems with this idea. The first was the assumption that the fans wanted a winner and a loser for every game. Many fans were quite happy to award a tie if the two teams both played well and deserved a tie. The second was the idea that shoot outs were a fair and exciting way of determining who won a close game. They are not fair. The odds of scoring in a one-on-goalie situation are about fifty-fifty. The goalie either guesses what the skater is going to do and stops the puck, or he does not. In many ways shoot outs are little more than a coin toss.

It is the exciting part that I want to type about today. The above-mentioned blog entry makes the point that fans love the shoot out. I hate to admit it, but that is true. And it is not just the NASCAR cross-over fans that love it, it is the life-long hockey fans who have have taken to it too. I realize that many fans still hate the shoot out. Some refuse to watch it. Others are waiting fot the day that Gary Bettman gets run over at a Zamboni crossing so that things can go back to the way that they were in the mythical glory days of hockey (which usually means when the speaker was ten years old). However, the reality is that the shoot out has proved to be popular amongst a wide swath of hockey fans. It is unlikely to go away, and people will miss it when it does. Even I have to admit that it is fun to watch.

I still dislike shoot outs. I would rather see regular season games that end in a tie after three periods be declared a tie. No five minute overtime. No shoot out. Play-off games should continue the way that the are with teams playing until someone scores the winning goal. However, if the shoot out does stay, I am not going to lose sleep over it.

My New Home

It has been a busy couple of months, so I have let this blog fall by the wayside since August. In the last two months Joan and I bought a house and moved into it. It is a fairly large house in a nice neighbourhood in Greenbelt. It takes about fifteen minutes to walk to the centre of town, and about fifteen minutes in the other direction to walk to the elementary school. There is a bus stop about five minutes away where I can catch a bus to work, or to the local subway station. All in all the location is great. Greenbelt is one of the few places left in the US where it is possible to carry out everyday activities (like shopping and getting to work) without a car. It is amazing what a sense of freedom not needing a car gives one. The car is in the driveway for when I do need it, but knowing that I can just walk down to the store to pick up some milk and cigarettes is a very nice feeling. It makes Greenbelt (at least the part of Greenbelt that I live in) actually feel like a town instead of just a storage shed for people like so many suburbs do.

The down side to owning a house is that there is no landlord to ring up whenever something breaks. For the most part that is not a big deal. Most of the minor things that go wrong in a house are fairly easy to fix, but when something major happens it is nice to be able to off-load the problem onto someone else. Our new house needs a bit of work, but for the most part it is in fairly good shape, and nothing needs doing quickly. This means that we can do the repairs and upgrading on our schedule, which will probably take years.

And now, I need to walk down to the centre of town, get a haricut and some groceries, and then walk home and rake up the leaves.

The Olympics on Tv

I have been watching the games of the 29^th Olympiad and I have been pleasantly surprised by NBC's coverage. The previous Olympic Games were almost unwatchable in the US. The tv coverage was awful. This time, however, the US networks seem to have gotten it right. I do wish that they would show more events where US athletes are not amongst the front-runners, but that is just US nationalism rearing its ugly head. Every nation showcases their own athletes, and the US is no different.

The 2008 Man-Booker Prize Longlist

The longlist for the 2008 Man-Booker Prize has been announced. The full list is given below.

Title	Author
The White Tiger	Aravind Adiga
Girl in a Blue Dress	Gaynor Arnold
The Secret Scripture	Sebastian Barry
From A to X	John Berger
The Lost Dog	Michelle de Kretser
Sea of Poppies	Amitav Ghosh
The Clothes on their Backs	Linda Grant
A Case of Exploding Mangoes	Mohammed Hanif
The Northern Clemency	Philip Hensher
Netherland	Joseph O'Neill
The Enchantress of Florence	Salman Rushdie
Child 44	Tom Rob Smith
A Fraction of the Whole	Steve Toltz

I hate to admit it, but I only recognize one entry in this year's long list, and that is Salman Rushdie's The Enchantress of Florence. The other authors and books are unknown to me. This is a bit embarrassing, but in my defense I have not had a lot of time to read over the past year, and my local library does not carry most of these titles. Not having a lot of time to read is not a good excuse. The reality is that when I have sat down to read books I have tended to read pulp rubbish like Sandworms of Dune (yes, I am a Dune fan) or non-fiction. In fact, most of my recent reading has been non-fiction. I certainly could have made more of an effort to keep up with the literary world. The other reason, the lack of these titles in my local library, is hard to overcome. I get most of my reading material from my town's public library. It is cheap, it supports public libraries, and I usually have a good selection of books to choose from. The fact that they only carry five of the thirteen Man-Booker nominees is disturbing, but given that the Man-Booker prize is for fiction by a Commonwealth author, not a US author, that is not too surprising.

So, my goal for the next month is to plough through as many of the five titles that are in my local library as I can in the next month. I expect to get through two or three by the time that the short list is released. The short list will be announced on 9 September and the winner will be announced on 14 October.

Video of a Giant Squid being Dissected

Here is an interesting video of scientists at Melbourne Museum in Australia dissecting a giant squid. This video is not for the squeamish, but if you do not mind seeing squishy internal organs flopping around, and various squid bodily fluids flowing, then it is a fascinating insight into how the anatomy of giant squid is studied. Unfortunately, I am a bit squeamish. I never liked the idea of dissecting things in high school, and for years I used to shoo flies out of the house instead of just swatting them (I have gotten over that now). Dissection was one of the things that kept me out of the biological sciences. It is partly responsible for me being an astronomer instead of a marine biologist. After seeing this video I do not regret my decision, even though it does mean that I will probably never get my name on a scientific paper about squid.

The Washington Capitals Need a New Logo

The Hockey News has decided to rank the logos of the thirty NHL teams. The team logo ranks reflect only the opinions of The Hockey News editors, but it is an interesting list. The first thing that caught my eye is that The Washington Capitals rank 22^nd in a league of thirty teams. The reason give is

"Love the uniform, love the secondary eagle logo, but we need more than words for the primary."

After getting over the disappointment of my favourite team being ranked in the bottom half of the league I realized that The Hockey News was right (as they so often are). The Capital's logo is boring. A hockey stick stuck in the middle of the name of the team does not stir feelings of pride. In fact, I barely notice it. The classic logos, such at Montréal's and Boston's are emblematic. They have come to signify not just the team, but hockey itself. Now asking that The Washington Capitals be a team that is synonymous with hockey is asking a lot. In fact, given that most people in the DC area care more about bowling and poker than they do about hockey, it is even a bit silly. Still, the Caps have Alexander Ovechkin, who is perhaps the most recognizable name in hockey today, and he has signed on with the Caps for the long haul. Any attempt to build a fan base around Ovechkin is going to involve turning the Caps into one of the NHL's signature teams. To do that the Caps need a better logo. Come on fans, put on your thinking caps and let's see some ideas. After all, there is not much else to do sportswise in August.

Detroit and Octopus Abuse

I am watching the Pittsburgh Penguins lose game six of the Stanley Cup Finals, and I am not happy about it. In general I do not care much for the Penguins. They have a silly name, and I do not consider Sidney Crosby to be the greatest thing to ever happen to hockey. He is a great player, and he is on track to become one of the game's superstars, but I am really tired of him being the face of hockey, and the saviour of the NHL. The NHL does not need a face, or a saviour. It needs to remember who its fans are and make sure that the games excite those fans. Hockey is not NASCAR. Hockey is not poker. Hockey is not the NBA. So stop trying to be. The fans of car racing, card games, and hardwood courts are not going to become fans of hockey. The sports are too different and appeal to very different demographics. The NHL needs to understand this. However, I doubt that that is going to happen while Gary Bettman is running the league.

Anyhow, enough about the state of the National Hockey League. What I really want to say is that I am feeling disappointed that Pittsburgh is probably going to lose to Detroit tonight, which will give Detroit the Stanley Cup. I really hate Detroit. This hatred dates back to when I was short and the Red Wings used to beat the Vancouver Canucks. In fact, in the 1970s, the Red Wings did not just defeat the Canucks, they humiliated them in almost every game that they played. Three decades have not healed those wounds. However, what really burns me up about Detroit is their blatant octopus abuse. It is a tradition in the motor city to toss an octopus onto the ice to celebrate goals, wins, and good fights. This is not acceptable. Octopuses are meant to be admired, either while diving, or at an aquarium. Octopuses are not meant to be sprawled across a sheet of ice. So, while I generally like the concept of traditions, this is one tradition that needs to end.

It's Time to Step Aside

Please Hilary Clinton, for the good of the country, step aside.

Hockey Sadness

The Washington Capitals are out. The New York Rangers are out. The Montréal Canadiens are out. The Vancouver Canucks did not even make it in. All of my favourite teams are being systematically eliminated in this year's Stanley Cup race. The only team left that I really care about is the Philadelphia Flyers. So far, they have done very well. The eliminated both Washington and Montréal, but I suspect that they are not going to be so lucky when they face off against Sidney Crosby and the streaking Pittsburgh Penguins later this week. The Flyers have gotten as far as they have by being a scrappy team, and by riding the outstanding goaltending of Martin Biron. However, they have also been lucky. They barely beat the Capitals in teh first round, and the Capitals only barely made the playoffs themselves. They also got lucky when they faced a Montréal team that played well below their capability in the quarter-finals. They will not be so luck against Pittsburgh. So, while I will be rooting for the Flyers, my prediction is that the Penguins will end up representing the East in the Stanley Cup finals.