Olympics and patriotism

As humans we organize ourselves into groups. Our family might be nuclear or extended, patrilocal, matrilocal, bilocal, ambilocal, or neolocal. We organize ourselves economically (in terms of our vocation), religiously, artistically, and in terms of entertainment. We also form political groups on municipal, provincial, and federal levels.

Patriotism is the force binding people at this national level of grouping, and it is akin to a very powerful, addictive drug. This drug makes people feel really good about themselves: they want to sing and dance, tears stream down their cheeks, and they feel very, very proud for simply belonging to a nation state.

Perhaps it is a good thing for a nation state to take this drug now and then. During the Olympics, people in this country felt really good about being Canadian. We began as a nation to collect medals like so many stamps, treasuring our first gold medal in a Canadian Olympics, and celebrating 14 gold medals and 26 in total. Gosh, the pride was palpable. People are still debating whether Sidney's goal was the most important in Canadian hockey history.

However, this drug has a strange and dangerous side effect. While it definitely increases one's emotions and desires, it also seems to inhibit our capacity for reason.










One very ugly example of this took place in the run-up to WWI. An Austrian arch-duke was assasinated by a man who wanted an independent Serbia from the Austro-Hungarian empire. Germany supported Austria that was suppressing this eventuality. Russia supported the Serbs, France was bound by treaty to support Russia, and England was bound by treaty to support France. Canada, as part of the British Empire, was very involved from the outset. During the months leading up to the outbreak of violence, the streets of the capital cities of Europe were thronged by hundreds of thousands of demonstrators clamouring for war. The drug of patriotism had driven people into a mass frenzy, and they demanded that their governments declare war. Eventually, the heads of states did indeed declare war, and patriotic people throughout Europe threw themselves over the top of the trenches to die in the millions. Throughout the British Empire, including Canada, people would give to those able-bodied men not in uniform a 'white feather of cowardice' in public displays of humiliation.

This is just one example of how unbridled patriotism can prevent us from exercising our reason. The basis for that war was downright silly. I am not convinced that had clearer heads prevailed in early 1914, the problems might have been worked out at a conference of all the stakeholders. However, the drug of patriotism was simply too strong, and reason was set aside. My point is this: the drug that inspired people to run into machine gun fire is the same drug that inspired tears of joy at Canada's gold medals.

Now that the Olympics are over, we can set aside this drug for a while.

My daughter's education

My daughter has chosen her courses for grade 12, and is looking ahead to what she will take when she gets to University. She is very good at all of the sciences, pure and otherwise, and up until a little while ago she thought she would like to enter the medical profession. However, for various reasons, including her perception that many doctors don't have a social life, and her perception that the medical world is intellectually far too limited in scope, she has decided to follow a different direction.

About 6 months ago, she started asking me questions about a General Bachelor of Arts degree. I have told her that the purpose of such a degree was to introduce the student to a wide range of human knowledge: for one to graduate, a certain number of subjects need to be drawn from the Humanities, Social Sciences, Fine Arts, Sciences, and English. A graduate from a such a program knows much about many things, and is truly 'educated' in a traditional sense. I also told her not to listen to what Mother Culture is currently whispering in her ear. Indeed, a general trend seems to consider education as more of a 'skill', like dentistry, or accountancy, and something into which a student can enter immediately after graduation. However, this idea is a relatively new one in our culture. Historically, an educated person knew much about what it is to be human in a particular society at a particular time. I hold this traditional view, that while pharmacy is critically important to society today, a pharmacist is probably not truly 'educated'. He or she has not had to and probably has not taken courses in Philosophy (in which a person learns how to think critically), Political Science (what it is to be a political animal), Economics (how economies and business works), History (where we have come from, and perhaps where we are going), Art History (the compendium of our culture's art to this point), Sociology (how society functions), Anthropology (what it means to be human from a cultural and physical standpoint), Psychology (how our minds work), Geography (how the earth works), Biology (the study of life), Physics (the study of the physical world), Religious Studies (what religion is all about), and on and on. A General BA requires that one learns the basics of just about every human intellectual endeavor, and by doing so it broadens one's scope, makes one more tolerant, perhaps more humble, and in the end a better citizen in society. If she wants, she can learn a 'skill' after she is done her BA, and with her background, she will pick it up easily, quickly, and will flourish in it.

As it stands at this point, and even though society continually tells her that she would be wasting her time taking general arts courses, nevetheless she would like to take a BA. As her father, my heart sings. If our roles as parents are to prepare our children to flourish in our culture when it is time for them to spread their wings, there is nothing I can think of that will prepare her better for what is to come. By doing this she will become truly educated in a way that only the super elite of society - the wealthy,connected, male aristocrats - could be even 100 years ago. She will stand on the shoulders of giants, learning things that remain difficult to access and learn outside of the regime of a BA program. Our culture will pass her a precious torch.

Sport's Leap Year

Every four years, the stars line up and the sporting world is exceptionally good.








This year began with a very compelling NFL post season, with clearly heroic New Orleans prevailing through to a very exciting and interesting Super Bowl. The season was made even better for me because this is the first year my son has really enjoyed watching football with me, and we shared a Fantasy Football we called the Rat Bastards. Also, my friend Mike in New Orleans has season tickets to the Saints, and sometimes we would call him on his phone while he was there at the Superdome.










Shortly after the Superbowl, the Winter Olympics began, and it is still all around us, everyday. People talk about their impending trip to Vancouver or Whistler to see an event, and my boy's band played at the torch relay in the build-up. Those who have made the trip to Vancouver rave about the atmosphere at the events and in downtown Vancouver. In the Winter Olympics, we get excited for the first time in four years about bob-sleighing and luge and skeleton, and all the other odd and obscure winter olympic sports. We as Canadians love to beat the US in anything, and while we rarely do so in the Summer games, we have been able to do so repeatedly in these Olympics.








After the Olympics, the Stanley Cup Play-offs will begin and run for 6 weeks, with a game on TV nearly every evening. This is when NHL hockey really means something, and as a sports fan it is impossible not to get caught up in it all. The Vancouver Canucks have a legitimate shot at going deep in the play-offs this year, and the hope around here is palpable. Perhaps this is the Canucks' year, celebrating their 40th anniversary as a franchise, and 40 straight years without a Stanley Cup.








During this time, the final games of the English Premiership and Champions League of soccer will be played. My hope is that Arsenal will prevail over dreaded Manchester United and Chelsea at home, and win the European Champions Cup.











This summer, the World Cup of soccer is being held in South Africa. For me, this is the biggest sporting event in the world, easily eclipsing in appeal the summer olympics. We will get to see the elegant and superb Spanish team play the hard-nosed but brilliant Germans, the whining and ultra-conservative Italians, the creative Dutch, and my favourite, the English, and those are just the European sides. The Africans play with zeal and love to take risks, with Ghanaians throwing three forwards into the opposing team's box, and the Nigerians and Ivory Coastans seem to get better every year. The South Americans are led by the ever brilliant Brazilians, and the whining and loathsome Argentinians never fail to get under peoples' skin. The World Cup is about personalities of both individuals and national teams, and it is always filled with drama and beauty. Can't wait.

A Golden Time

To be sure, our culture has its problems. However, compared to other times in western civilization, we live in a golden period.

This coming week we are covering the Malleus Malificarum (Witch's Hammer) in Liberal Studies. This book was ordered by Papal Bull in 1475, written by two theologians, and represents to me the nadir, the rock bottom, of western civilization. It is a treatise on how to identify, try in court, and execute witches. Some estimate as many as 9 million people were executed as witches during this period, and that the Malleus had much to do with it. Who were these witches? One of my Liberal Studies students (Linda Andrew) has summed nicely the definition in the Malleus :

“A witch is anyone who has evil intentions, a pact with the devil, and permission from God. However, and most importantly, a witch is anyone, regardless of rank, age, or wealth who is so accused by a “reliable” witness—the attributes of and the crimes committed in her “witchfulness” are applied according to the results of her interrogation.”

The Malleus represents to me many things. Institutionalized religions often become far too powerful, and during these times, often very important decisions are made on the basis of faith, rather than on reason. I like to think that we as a culture today make better decisions than the theocracy of the 15th Century Western Europe. Rather than being persecuted as witches, midwives are now honoured by many as experts at delivering babies. While South Park writers may argue that red haired people have no soul, gingers are no longer burned to the stake for their hair colour and therefore obvious witchfullness. People today can decide for themselves what if any religion they choose to follow, or even speak out against religions' excesses, abuses, and dogmas, without fear of being burnt to the stake.

Cute Shmute

My kids are no longer cute. Of course, I liked them when they were little and cute, but 'cuteness' is limited in its appeal. I think we all start out cute because it is Mother Nature's way to ensure that we are nurtured and protected when we are vulnerable and weak. However, perhaps because I am a dad and not a mom, I am happy that they are no longer so cute.

The reason is that they are much, much more interesting now than when they were little. While my 16 year old daughter is still as affectionate as ever, she is now clever and intelligent, and has a really good sense of humour. It brings me joy that she gets my jokes, even if she rarely thinks them funny. She will understand the plot twist to a movie well before most people. Our conversations are always interesting, and they often involve humour.

As for my son, he plays bass guitar in a four-piece rock band. He loves all those 60's and 70's greats like Pink Floyd, The Beatles, and Led Zeppelin, and as I pass his room I will often hear the strains of something like 'Kashmir' or 'Little Wing'. The general tenor and level of our discussions about music is worlds beyond those we had about Power Rangers just a few years ago. Aidan and I also share a love of sports, and he is now a much better soccer player than I ever was. I like to watch him play soccer, as I find his playing style, well, interesting, and wonder just how much of it is genetic, and how much nurture.

I really liked being a dad to two young and cute children. However, and quite surprisingly to me, being a dad to interesting children is far more satisfying and fun.

My Son's Soccer Game

Last year at about this time, my son's Rep soccer team, for which I am the Team Manager, played and lost to the Comox Rep soccer team, allowing Comox to advance to play in the Provincial Cup. It was a heartbreaker of a game, which saw our side take an early lead, surrender a goal to tie, and then lose 2-1 in the dying minutes. Throughout this past year, the team has been gearing for the re-match last Sunday. On a cool, February day, our boys defeated the Comox side 2-1.

Since last Sunday's victory, I have been thinking a lot about team sports, and why it is that we play them. I suppose in our culture we are raised to be independent people, and playing on team sports takes our culturally nurtured competitive dispositions to the collective level. In other words, we treat our team as the individual. This means that we are not upset if we are benched in favour of someone on our team who is fresher, and that we share together in the victories and defeats, the highs and lows. To be successful, we must truly trust other human beings, and we must learn and accommodate each other's strengths and weaknesses. But it is more than this. I think it has to do with joy.

Over the past year, I have seen our team deal with the loss of this game. They opened the season in September winning a number of games in a row, some of them to teams a year older. However, over three games, we met Comox twice, and were defeated by them both times. It was as if Comox had become a 'bogeyman', haunting the spirit of our boys' team. Our boys were certainly as skillful and determined, but this just didn't seem to be enough. However, over the last two months, our excellent coaches have encouraged continually and argued persuasively that we can in fact beat this team. We were able to build on the victories against Comox in two indoor soccer tournaments either side of the Christmas break, and throughout 2010, the idea that we could beat Comox began to grow.

In the pre-game warm-up last Sunday, our boys looked determined. Our Head Coach tuned them up before the game as if they were stringed instruments before a recital. She let them know in general terms that they could win, and in specific terms how it could be done. Every boy listened intently, and each knew he was responsible in some way for the outcome.

I recall certain parts of the game very clearly, particularly the build-up to both of our goals, and the lapse in the back line that led to the Comox team's first and only goal about 7 seconds before the ref blew his whistle to end the first half. The scoreless second half was extremely intense. Comox was often able to prevail in the vertical game, wresting from us nearly every high ball with their chest, head, or otherwise. However, our mid-field was collected and ever so skillful, and continually stopped their rush, delivering with precision the ball to our forwards. We substituted one of our players to the back line with the express purpose of marking their speedster forward so as to shut down their through balls to him. Our back line did not allow the Comox forwards entry into our 18 yard box. The final whistle, after 3 minutes of injury time, rang through the air, seemingly forever. I remember jumping in the air for joy, and looking across the field where our parents had collected and seeing them jumping up and down and hugging each other.

Our boys experienced a joy that perhaps only team sports can bring. It is a joy that is earned through commitment, skill, and a ton of hard work. I am not sure, but I think that to experience this level of joy, one has to first experience heartbreak, pick up the pieces, build up confidence, and then find redemption.

Olympic hockey

It is a pleasure to watch Olympic hockey because it is not nearly so violent as the NHL. The Olympic national teams are comprised of highly skilled players, and the 'goon' element has been left at home.

I live in a country where people feel very protective of hockey, and are unwilling to see it change as has other sports. I remember as a kid, when a baseball pitcher went a little too far in pushing the batter off the plate to allow for outside pitches to catch the plate for a strike, and hit the player, often it led to the batter storming the mound and taking a swing at the pitcher, which then led to bench clearing brawls. However, such things are a rarity in baseball today: in fact, I cannot recall seeing such a thing in baseball for at least a decade. Rule changes and penalties have nearly taken it out of the game.

There is an argument in Canada that hockey is a game that requires a pressure valve. Big people who skate really fast wield sticks that are sometimes used to club other skaters, and the hockey 'fight', it is argued, is an opportunity for everyone - the combatants, other players, and fans - to relieve the pressure. These fights, then, are thought to be cathartic, and actually healthy for all concerned.

This argument is full of holes. Baseball is a much more frustrating game than hockey. Players sit in a dug-out for long periods of time, nervously and passively watching a game unfold, and when the camera sweeps the dug-out, one can sense the pent up tension in the players. Nevertheless, fighting (once part of the game), has since been almost completely removed from it. Nevertheless, records continue to fall, players flourish, and the game seems as healthy as it ever was. At any rate, I have never once heard a sports commentator argue that baseball is any less of a game because people no longer fight.

Second, this argument instructs us that in order to deal with stress, we must engage with other people using our fists. This is what might be expected of young children who 'can't find their words'. That such purging is healthy is simply ridiculous: if one is truly overcome by stress, one ought to learn culturally appropriate ways to deal with the stress, beyond punching someone in the face repeatedly. In other sports, the rules evolve to meet new sets of circumstances, so that referees can enforce rules that serve to lessen stressful situations. Soccer is a really good example: while none of us like the diving at the international level, at the same time, gratuitously injuring people is now almost absent from the game, as is fighting. The NHL might need to treat the disease of highly stressful situations so as to eliminate the symptom of fighting.

Two weeks ago, one of our Campbell River Under 14 boys hockey teams played a road game in Gold River. A few days after the game, I heard from a reliable source that one of our boys had punched the referee in the face. Later, I was told that the controversy in the hockey community was whether this boy should be given a two or a three game suspension. I find such appalling behaviour and such leniency towards it remarkable. Can we be certain that such youths will be able to distinguish what is appropriate at the hockey rink from everyday life? Will they treat policemen, judges, teachers in the same way as they do referees?

And so, why is such behaviour permitted (and perhaps even encouraged) in the NHL, and not in the Olympic games? The standard answer, of course, is that NHL hockey fans like the fighting, and the Olympic games require a higher standard of behaviour. My hope is that the youth of Canada watch an Olympic gold medal game in which the cleanest, most skilful team prevails.

Living in a tent

Last year, for the first time, I stayed in a hotel in Jordan instead of in a tent, and it was pure luxury. I stayed in a room with my son Aidan, and we had our own bathroom. We could have someone change our sheets and make our beds if we asked, and the decor was interesting and tasteful. Our clean lab was in the hotel, and it had a beautiful indoor/outdoor restaurant. All in all, it was a splendid experience.

However, this year we cannot do the same thing. First, the hotel is now managed by a different and private firm, that has increased the price per room out of our range. Second, it required 40 minutes to reach the Eco lodge from our survey area, and when combined over a season, such commuting amounted to about 3 working days. Third, we had no control over what food was served, and sometimes it was pretty dire. Finally, the rooms were not equipped with fans, and so sometimes it got suffocatingly hot.



Instead, this coming summer we will be staying in tents on land owned by the Department of Antiquities. I have stayed there over six seasons, one of which lasted 3 months. I know it very well, and in many ways am looking forward to it. First, we will buy tents, cots, mattresses, and not have to pay rent. We are very close to the sites we are excavating next summer. Aladdin will be in charge of food, and will ensure good, wholesome, clear food that is consistently tasty and nutritious. At night, we can pull our cots out of our tents under a full canopy of stars, and sleep in relative comfort. Furthermore, we have a large flat area to play baseball, ultimate frisbee, soccer, and football. It is our space, and so it is fine that people wear shorts and T-shirts.

Perhaps most of all, a tent camp allows the development of a community that was not really possible in the Eco-lodge. Some of the best times of my life have been living in those tent camps.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Last evening our Liberal Studies seminar covered the book Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. In a nutshell, the story is about Sir Gawain who takes up the challenge of the Green Knight, who has ridden his horse into Arthur's Great Hall in Camelot just after Christmas, and demanded that someone play a game. Gawain plays the game, and duly cuts off the Green Knight's head, and by the terms of the agreement, is required to find the Green Knight (at the Green Chapel) in a year's time to receive a blow from the Green Knight. Eventually, Gawain rides out, battles trolls and dragons, and finds a castle in the woods on Christmas Eve. He is invited in, treated well, and told that the 'Green Chapel' is very near. Gawain then stays at the castle until New Year's Day. During this time, the Lord of the Manor plays a game with Gawain. The terms are that each must deliver over to the other whatever one has been given on the day. On the first day, the Lord is out hunting, and the Lord's wife enters Gawain's bedroom. After much courtly talk, she gives Gawain a kiss. When the Lord has returned from the hunt, he gives Gawain a deer, and Gawain gives the lord a kiss. The pattern repeats on the second and third day. However, on the third day, Gawain accepts from the wife not only a kiss, but also a 'garter' that she says will protect its owner from all blows. Gawain does not present the garter to the lord that evening. On New Year's day, Gawain rides out and finds the Green Knight. The Knight delivers one blow of an ax, but Gawain shrinks away just in time. The Green Knight delivers the second that misses, and at the third blow, knicks the skin of Gawain's neck. The Green Knight then explains that he is in fact also the lord of the castle, and that he did not kill Gawain because Gawain duly played their 'giving' game well. However, Gawain was given a knick because he did not give the lord the garter won by the lord's wife. The Green Knight then explained that Morgan La Faye was behind it all, and had devised this game in order to test the honour of Arthur's court. Gawain then rode back to Camelot, told the story, and they all celebrated his honour and his dishonour, forever wearing a green garter (Knight's of the Garter) to remember the story.

Ths is a ripping yarn. It is at a time when England was thought to be heaving with dragons and trolls, and, while very Christian, was full of magic. In fact, the story is full of what otherwise might be called 'pagan' thinking including the concept of the 'green man', but replete also with praying to Mother Mary and Jesus and a Christian God at fairly regular intervals. There is a serious plot twist, and a really tense series of bedroom scenes in which Gawain must preserve his chastity and honour as a guest while not insulting a beautiful woman intent on having sex with him. These scenes are juxtaposed against the hunting scenes of the lord, in which he chases and captures and kills his prey on three successive days. The more one looks at this story, the more one can see the layers of plot and character development.

The manuscript of this story was found in an English mansion in the 19th Century, and has been translated from its 14th C northern English into modern English by such luminaries as JRR Tolkein. While reading through this tale, one can see glimpses of the Lord of the Rings: the Green Knight (Tom Bombadil), trolls (orcs or goblins), Camelot (Rivendell), Morgan La Faye (Sauron). There is nothing new under the sun.

Hollywood really needs to get hold of this story and run with it.

Digging in the Middle East

I first began digging in the Middle East in Israel, in 1988. I had completed my first year of a PhD program at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne in North-east England, in their archaeology program, and my Tutor had recommended that I 'go dig something out of my comfort zone'. Before then I had been on several Roman period digs, and my PhD topic was on things Roman, and so I chose, applied for, and was accepted on a Chalcolithic period dig in southern Israel, led by Tom Levy of Hebrew Union College, Jerusalem.

The plan was for everyone to meet in Jerusalem, and then take a bus from HUC to the site. However, I arrived late, and made my way to the closest place to the dig, the city of Be'er Sheva. The only clue I had as to the location of the dig was in a 'Figure' in one of Tom's publications, showing the Chalcolithic sites in the area, one of which was Be'er Sheva. I checked into a hostel, and began asking for directions to 'Shiqmim', which in Hebrew means 'Sycamore'. No-one had heard of such a place. After a day, I ran into someone who thought that it was near a town near the Gaza border, and so I caught a bus, got off in the town, asked some questions, hung my head, and boarded the bus back to Be'er Sheva. The next day, someone told me it was near a military installation, and so I made my way out there. I spoke with the guards in the check-point, and they called their Colonel. Luckily, the Colonel and Tom were old army buddies, and the Colonel sent me to his house to stay until he finished his shift. Later on that evening, he drove me in an Israeli jeep with his insignia on its side into the desert south of Be'er Sheva, and into the heart of Israeli military land. Eventually we came to the tents of the Shiqmim camp, and I met Tom in person.







This was a very difficult dig. Water, which had to be hauled in, was at a premium, and so showers had to be short. The food was very bland and predictable, and the weather was excruciatingly hot. We would sweat, and then a cloud of dust would cover us completely. I was given a large circular burial to excavate, within which were the bodies of 10 people of the Chalcolithic period. Somewhere near the mid-point of the dig, I contracted a very bad case of gastro-enteritis, and was eventually brought nearly unconscious back to Be'er Sheva and its hospital. After four days on an intervenous bag (filled with water, sugar, salt, and antibiotics), I was ready to leave, and when I looked for my money belt, I realized that I had been robbed: all of my traveller's cheques were gone. I called my father at home, he wired money to the Foreign Office in Ottawa, who then wired the money to the Canadian Embassy in Tel Aviv. Because it was the holiday of Yom Kippur, they could not find anyone to drive the cheque to the hospital. Therefore, two diplomats drove from Tel Aviv to Be'er Sheva (some of the very religious threw stones at them while they drove) to hand deliver the cheque, so that I could leave the hospital. This was not the first or last time that my dad rescued me from a very tight spot.

I then returned to the dig, finished the season, and went back to England. However, there was something about the place that got under my skin. Perhaps it was because the archaeology was so outrageously wonderful: the artifacts seemed so different and bizarre, and they were so well preserved in a matrix almost completely dry. It also could be that what I had seen of the Middle East I really liked: a dig with living conditions hard as bullets, the majesty of the Old City of Jerusalem, the pastoral and nomadic Bedouin living in tents... it all seemed so alien, so complex, and so very intersting. I would then spend another 4 seasons in Israel, and 7 seasons in Jordan. This summer I am going back to Jordan. Yippee!

Breaking an Arm

My wife Denise has suggested that I tell the story of how I broke my arm. The moral of this story is that 13 year old boys can be really mean, and we should be careful what we wish for.

When I was a kid, I remember being envious of those lucky people who had casts. They seemed to get special attention from teachers, and the accumulating signatures on their casts stood as monuments to their popularity. I remember thinking while ski-ing as a kid that breaking an arm would be totally worth it if it meant that I got to wear a cast.

On November 28th of last year (2009), at my son Aidan's 13th birthday party, I got my wish. Because the rain had let up, and because it was not too dark (where we live in Canada it is dark by 3:30 PM at the end of November), we decided to head up to our local field and play some football. It was decided that we would not play 'tackle', nor would we play 'two hand touch', but rather an odd sort of 'holding for two seconds' style of football. Despite the fact that we had on our team a boy who had never played football (it should be noted that he is a brilliant soccer player), and another kid whose strengths perhaps lay elsewhere, we were able to score. With our team ahead 14-7, Aidan (QB of the other team) threw the ball to Collin, and I managed to grab and hold Collin. However, Collin is a big and strong 13 year old, and in and around 2 seconds, he was able to fling me off. I broke my fall with my right hand hitting the ground at an odd angle, and as I landed, I could feel the bones in my wrist snap. While lying there, I looked up and watched Collin run into the endzone, and then dance around a bit before spiking the ball in celebration. I then announced that I had broken my arm, got up and began heading home. The last thing I heard before leaving the field was: 'Dad, do you mind if we finish the game?'. When I got back home, Denise took me to the hospital, and after an X-ray, the 'Colles' fracture was adjusted and set in plaster.


Let me tell you this: at 48, a cast is not fun. For 7 1/2 weeks I lived with an awkward, unwieldy cast. I bonked Denise in the head twice while we were sleeping, and after about a week the dead skin under the cast began to smell. The itchiness of the skin under the cast made the final three weeks a living hell, and I devised all sorts of tools to penetrate under the cast. When the cast came off, my arm looked deformed, skinny, weak, pasty, and covered in scratches and scar tissue where I had scratched just a bit too hard. As for signatures on the cast, yes, there were those. However, they are perhaps best represented by Kira's, which read: "Daddy, your cast smells, Love Kira". She wrote it in loud pink Sharpie, right at the bottom of the cast where everyone could see it. As time went on, her proclamation to everyone became less and less necessary, perhaps in a way similar to someone painting the word 'Long' on China's Great Wall, 'Tall' on the CN tower, 'Red' on Shawn White's hair. I remember at one point a dog smelling my cast, turning, and quickly loping away, and babies would cry for no apparent reason. Denise, out of the blue, bought highly scented candles. In total, instead of the 'special attention' I had dreamed about as a kid, my cast seemed to evoke jokes at my expense, as well as flat-out derision. Sigh.

About a month ago I had the cast removed. Since then, I am no longer itchy, and by comparison my arm smells like so many pretty flowers outside a perfume factory on a fresh, spring day. My flexibility and strength are returning, and I am able, more or less, to meet the bi-weekly goals set for me by my physiotherapist. I can now write and throw a frisbee, two days ago I ski-ed, and yesterday I played goal (adequately) in a soccer game. It seems the inconvenience, pain, awkwardness, and indignities of having a cast are behind me now. However, at 48, perhaps such things have only just begun: I look forward to incontinence and Alzheimer's.

Mac vs. PC

As has been said recently in The Toronto Star's online magazine,"The ongoing feud between PC and Mac users can be downright vitriolic. Macs have been described as amped-up Fisher-Price toys for the computer illiterate and insufferable snobs... PC users meanwhile, are mocked for being neanderthals who like reading computer manuals in their spare time and fear change."

I am a PC user because the programs that I use for archaeology, including MicroSurvey, AutoCAD, and GIS, run on PC platforms and the emulation required of a Mac to run these programs is inefficient: the programs were designed for PC's and like to run on PC's. Also, we as a family are invested in the PC world, with all the peripherals that work only on PC's, not Macs, and to double up or change from one to the other would be prohibitively expensive. If something stops working on one of our machines, we have several choices of manufacturers' parts, and such competition keeps parts cheap - far cheaper than Mac parts. Finally, we often can repair our machines ourselves rather than relying solely on Mac technicians, and we have a far greater variety of programs from which to choose.

It seems that at hunch.com, where people are advised as to what to buy based on their responses to a series of questions, 76,000 Hunch user responses to the question 'Am I a Mac person or a PC person?' in 2009 revealed some extraordinary stereotypes of the Mac and PC user.

Apparently, "Mac users want to be perceived as "different" and "unique," and trend toward independent films, specialized comedians and design-centric magazines. They describe themselves as verbal, conceptual and risk-takers, and have a distinct esthetic, be it in bold colours, retro-design or highly stylized art. PC people, meanwhile, think of themselves as team players and favour the practical over the theoretical. They enjoy sports, want to be entertained and fall in line with mainstream opinion. PC people describe themselves as numbers-oriented, factual, steady, and hard workers. Mac users find humour in TV shows like The Office, while PC users are more likely to watch Everybody Loves Raymond. Mac users would opt for the Mini Cooper while PC users are more likely to choose a truck or Dodge Charger. Mac users trend to magazines like Wallpaper and Harper's, while PC users read Sports Illustrated and Reader's Digest."

Yikes. One might assume that 76,000 people represent a solid enough sample, and that the conclusions above represent reliably what are Mac and what are PC users. However, while I don't want to speak for anyone else, I for one do not seem to accord to either one. On the pro side, I seem to be a Mac User because I like independent films, am verbal and conceptual, find humour in TV shows like The Office, would love to own a Mini Cooper, and read the magazine Harper's. But I am also a PC user in that I enjoy sports and want to be entertained, and I think of myself as a team player, factual, steady, and a hard worker.

On the con side, apparently I am not a Mac user because I don't desire to be perceived as "different" and "unique," have little interest in design-centric magazines, don't like to take risks, and don't have a distinct esthetic. However, nor am I a PC user, as I don't necessarily favour the practical over the theoretical, and rarely, it seems, fall in line with mainstream opinion. Further, I am more 'word' than 'numbers' oriented, and I downright loath TV shows like Everybody Loves Raymond. I think trucks used for leisure purposes are wasteful, as are Dodge Chargers, and I only read Sports Illustrated or Reader's Digest when there is nothing else in the dentist's office.

Perhaps you feel it too. I constantly feel the pull to side with one 'world' over the other, and yet I see good things in Macs, and good things in PC's. I have that sinking feeling that I am being manipulated by marketeers to form one opinion over another. It seems similar to the time Coke changed its recipe: people subsequently marched on the streets, Coke changed the recipe back to 'Classic', and consumers then bought more Coke than they had ever done previously. People seemed to think that they had taken on a big corporation and won, while the Board of Directors at Coke smugly informed their shareholders of a huge jump in market share.

Furthermore, it is all illusory. A Mac is a machine and an operating system with one brand name, while PC's are represented by a collection of different brand name computers that use the same operating system. There really is no single entity of a 'PC' out there: similar to Sherlock Holmes with his evil adversary Dr. Moriarty, Apple has created for the Mac a monolithic, evil 'PC'.

Soon Mac will present another commercial contrasting a hip, unassuming, confident Mac against a nervous, geeky, incompetent PC. The Mac is David, the PC a lumbering, stupid Goliath. People seem to love these commercials, and happily buy into the illusion, so much so that Mac is gaining ground: the PC world now has only 90% of the world market share. The Mac marketers are wondrously capable puppeteers.

And yes, because I react against all things Mac whenever I see one of their commercials, I realize that I am dancing like a puppet on a string, behaving exactly as the marketers predicted I would do: acknowledging a line in the sand between a Mac and a PC. Every time, I choose 'Classic' over 'New' Coke. Sigh.

Football concussions

Time Magazine's Cover Story this week is entitled 'The Most Dangerous Game'. (I think the title is meant to evoke memories of a 1924 short story by Richard Connell of the same name). The thrust of the article is that over the last few years, science has caught up with the dangers inherent in getting hit in the head, or hitting somebody with one's head. Autopsies routinely show that the brains of football players' actually look different than the average brain. They have a protein called 'tau', which gives rise to 'chronic traumatic encephalopathy', or CTE, and looks like brown 'splotches'. Those brains that have undergone many concussions are as 'brown as the pigskin itself'. Ex-pro players over age 50 are five times as likely as the US national population to receive a memory-related disease. Players 30-49 are 19 times as likely to be debilitated somehow. It is now thought that the thousands of lower-impact blows that most football players receive can be just as damaging as the dramatic head injuries that tend to get more attention. Yikes. We have known for a long time that the crashing of the brain against the inside of the skull cannot be good for it, but the new scientific evidence is particularly damning.

And this is the rub. My boy plays soccer, which although on paper is a 'non-contact' sport, does in fact involve a lot of contact. However, such contact rarely involves the head, and it seems that concussive injuries in soccer tend not to occur through heading the ball, but rather from balls that accidentally hit the head. So far, so good.

However, both he and I love to watch football, particularly the NFL, wherein people hit each other in the head very hard as a matter of course. And so, is it OK to take pleasure in watching these people obtain their goals (first downs, touchdowns, interceptions) while at the same time running a very real risk of battering themselves and others into mental mush?

It may be a bit of a leap, but perhaps we are heading towards a type of entertainment not seen since those raucous days of the Roman Colisseum, where audiences for hundreds of years took such huge pleasure in watching other peoples' pain, misery, and misfortunes.

Perhaps. Presently, however, I feel sick when I see someone lying immobile on the football field after a serious head injury. At the same time, I think I would not find the game of football nearly as appealing if hitting were taken out of it.

Olympics' best moment so far

I have argued in a previous blog that the Organizers of these games should not have tried to compete with the glitz of Beijing. First, such self-aggrandizement is at best tasteless, second, we, and everyone from now on, cannot hope to compete with Beijing's 2006 extravaganza on equal terms, and third, we can do things they could not have done in Beijing, like laugh at ourselves.










Very much in the spirit of such self-effacement, Don Taylor, a local sports announcer in BC, opened his show the morning after the celebrations by discussing the faulty hydraulics that prevented one of the big Olympic flame 'logs' from rising from its horizontal to its near vertical position. He said this: `As a man over 45, when the hydraulics didn’t work in the cauldron I felt it was dedicated to me.”

Thank you Don. In my view, Don Taylor, Mike Myers, and Jim Carrey ought to have orchestrated the opening ceremonies.

Olympic sport?

Most of us have played sports at some level at one time or another, and all of us, I think, can appreciate those athletes in any sport that are able to do things that most others cannot. For me, I think that somewhere in the process of doing what the sport requires - catching a perfect spiral in full flight, bending the ball inside the post, passing the puck to the open man - there is an intrinsic beauty, and some people tap into it better than others. Perhaps when something in sport is beautiful it is because it is simple and uncomplicated, stream-lined and efficient, infinitely variable, and above all, spontaneous. Yes, sport is best when the intrinsic beauty arises spontaneously in a completely uncontrived and unpredictable way; it seems to come out of nowhere, catches us off guard, and takes our breath away.

However, it seems that in many 'sports', beauty has become the objective. In Canada, the two main Olympic events people watch most are hockey and figure skating. At some time many years ago, it could be that a hockey player did a 'spin-o-rama' to score a goal, and although the move was entirely expedient, its beauty was obvious to everyone. Someone then decided that one could capture that beauty, put it in a box, call it a 'triple salchow', and then sanction a panel to judge its relative merits. People then practiced it ten thousand times to get it right. Throughout this process, the original beauty of the hockey move was sucked out of it. To me there is something crude in treating sport's beauty in this way: perhaps it is like the caged Bengal Tiger required to perform tricks for food, or the zoo's polar bear pacing between fake cave and fake pool.

I maintain that those performers who are judged for points are engaged in 'theatre' and not participating in 'sport'. These sorts of pastimes belong on the A&E channel, and not on Sports Centre. Perhaps we might encourage those people who support such things that require judges to form their own break-away world spectacle, and perhaps include professional wrestling among their number. The performers might call themselves 'artists' and not 'athletes', and those of us who prefer sports can watch the Olympics.

Rampant, Mindless Nationalism

The opening ceremonies, Vancouver Olympics, 2010

The Winter Olympic Games opened in Vancouver the other night, and the ceremonies were an emotional ride. K.D. Laing belted out Leonhard Cohen's 'Hallelujah' in a way that only she can, Sarah MacLauchlin sang like an angel, the singing of Oh Canada was fresh and colourful, and I think it was good that the world was welcomed by the four first Nations of the Vancouver/Whistler area. However, everything else made me squirm.

The organizers missed the point. This is a big party, and we all know that the first rule of being a good host should be to do whatever possible to ensure that the guests are comfortable. However, the organizers instead jammed down everyone's throat just how great is Canada. The second rule is that one should try to lighten up the atmosphere with humour. Rather than poems reciting Canada's 'greatness', boys running through virtual wheat fields, and skaters dangling from the ceiling, I would have preferred a stand-up routine by Jim Carrey or Mike Myers that perhaps made fun of Canada: a little humourous self-effacement is endlessly more palatable than rampant, mindless nationalism.

Sheila Broflovski blames Canada during an episode of South Park that satirizes scapegoating.

A stand-up routine also might have blessed the ceremonies with a little balance. We did not hear that Canada is roundly villified in the world for our government's behaviour at successive climate talks and policy on carbon emissions and energy extraction, as well as its flat-out failures in foreign policy. We did not hear that a Canadian winter in most of the country is a time to hunker down and simply survive the brutal cold and darkness, while on the west coast where the games are being held, we try to maintain our sanity during months of daily rainfall. Mike Myers could have set our guests at ease by telling the world what it already knows: that we are far from perfect.

The best answer to the glitz and extravagance of Beijing's opening ceremonies would have been to do something China could not do, and that is to make fun of ourselves. However, the moment has passed, and had I been a visitor at or tuning in to the games, I would have assumed this country to be full of arrogant, humourless, boors.

Dante's Inferno, 2010

Dante and Virgil in Limbo (Gustav Dore)

Tonight will be fun. In our Liberal Studies class we will descend into Dante's 'Inferno'. While we cannot possibly understand all of the Medieval societal framework to which Dante is persistently alluding, nevertheless, there is much to like. The images flash in front of us constantly, and very much like a modern screen-play; and who cannot appreciate the villains and monsters? I often think that it would be cool to use the template of Dante's Inferno in a modern rewrite. Some things should be preserved: pilgrim and guide, circles set upon one another representing a downward spiral of bad to worse moral behaviour, and of course the monsters. However, Dante lets off easily the murderers and pedophiles, while we might look more generously towards suicides than did Dante. Personally, I would place some characters today like Dick Cheney and the CEO's of some particularly iniquitous multi-national corporations and heads of state in the lowest pit of all. Yes, it is time this brilliant 700 year old work was revised.

the water is cold...

OK, here I go. This is my first post. I am inspired by my friend Mike who has been at this for years. If he is able to publish to his blog pictures and videos of himself wearing dresses, I should be able to simply publish my thoughts on a more or less daily basis. It could be that I am doing this simply for myself: if so, the objective is catharsis. However, as it is public domain, one never knows who might find interesting what I have to say. Realistically, it is likely that the only people who will ever read my daily drivel are my mother and loving wife. This would be fine with me.