Fourteen years, four bankruptcies, three franchise moves, two lockouts, one lost season and no effective leadership.

Yeah, that about sums it up.

Gary Bettman has been poor to awful for the NHL. Perhaps it's not all of his own doing--I certainly wouldn't blame him for the FOX broadcast inanity, such as dueling goal robots--but he certainly has been on watch for it, and needs to go.

The thing that has always annoyed me about the broadcast situation is how every other sport gets to build its audience with national weekend broadcasts, starting at some point a ways into the season and continuing until the end. Hockey? Everytime they swing a network deal--FOX, ABC, NBC--it's 5 games, non consecutively, and then playoffs. Even if they have to take a hit in the per-game rights fees--or hell, subsidize it--they have to get on every weekend, so viewership can drop in, get interested, and come back at some point, even if it's not the next week. What they do now doesn't help grow the fanbase one bit.

Booze and Islamic Cab Drivers

Since I haven't had much time to write, I'll let you chew on this story. In which, we see there is a religious conflict brewing in Minneapolis. It seems many of the Muslim cabbies believe their religious prescription against alcohol extends to not transporting it in their cabs--such as, airport customers who have partaken of duty-free goods. The airport, of course, doesn't want a large fraction of its taxi fleet refusing to serve a sizable fraction of its customers.

So the question is, upon whom will the hammer fall? Those trying to stay true to their faith, or those legally purchasing an entertaining chemical? The general principle of allowing free practice of religion in this country (as long as it does no harm to the unconsenting) butts heads with the notion that all people should get equal service (if they are not being belligerent or threatening.) I guess the question is if "waiting for the appropriate cab" is sufficient harm ask people to decide between their faith and their meager livelihood.

The thing that gets me, that the story doesn't answer, is what these cabbies do in regards to one of their other societal roles--getting drunk people home from bars safely. Do they refuse service to the intoxicated? If so, is that person more likely to get in their car? Or even to have driven it in the first place, instead of taking a cab? To me, it would seem that taking someone to a bar is just as much "making money off of alcohol" as is transporting someone with a bottle of wine. I'm curious about this angle, and how it affects public safety, but apparently the reporter is not.

Given that, and the fact that as word gets out, people will just stuff their duty-free booze in a bag and not say anything about it (making the cabbies transport it anyway), I want to say I'd side with the airport commission here, but it's not as if most cabbies could easily slip into another line of work. For many it's the best living they'll be able to make, and it seems harsh to tell them to take it or leave it. And it's not like taxicabs are some inalienable human right. So I don't know. Thoughts?

Hockey Close-Up

We got really good seats (below face value) from Stubhub for the 1/9 Capitals vs. Flyers game. No doubt they were being dumped at the last minute because the Flyers are awful this year. Anyway, you can see from these pictures from Julie's cell phone how close we were--that's Kolzig on the left, and the face-off dot directly in front of us. We were about ten rows back for a nice 6-2 Caps win.



I like to splurge on lower-bowl seats once a year, if I can. There's nothing wrong with watching hockey from the "cheap" seats, but there's something to be said for being able to see faces shmushed into the glass, as well. And the speed is even more incredible up close. Now, if the prices more adequately reflected demand and quality of product, so that more people could get a look at the game, maybe the game could re-establish footholds and be in position to take Mark Cuban's advice.

About Damn Time

I love Edy's. I really do; they make excellent No Sugar Added Ice Cream in a variety of interesting flavors.

But for years, I have begged them to make a Cookies and Cream. It's my favorite flavor, and given that both NSA Vanilla and artificially sweetened Oreo clones exist, it shouldn't be so hard, right?

Finally.

Now, could they send me a notice or coupon to reward my pestering? Noooooooo.

Also my nearest Safeway doesn't carry it. I may have to threaten to take my shopping elsewhere.

Capital Punishment and the Social Contract

Something struck me in this Eric Zorn blog entry, and it was this sentence:

I can't make a persuasive moral case that, say, Timothy McVeigh or John Wayne Gacy deserves to live; that it is wrong for a society to hang a Saddam Hussein.

If you don't have time to read the whole entry, he's arguing that his opposition to capital punishment is pragmatic, as opposed to on moral grounds, in that he admits there are criminals so heinous and obvious they should be executed (but that in most case, we can't know guilt with enough certainty that execution benefits society).

I don't see these things as necessarily following from one another. I wouldn't argue that the most awful tyrants, terrorists, mass murderers and genocidal maniacs have abused their right and privilege to breath the planet's oxygen. But I would argue that a society should not execute any one of them. The question in my mind is, "At what point can a group of individuals, bound by social contract, perform an action that it is wrong for any one individual to perform?" And I would argue that, no matter how duly constituted the social body, it does not have the right to terminate the life of a human being.

The entire justice system, of course, is an illustration of that question; it allows a means for determining and punishing guilty actions where an individual would be a vigilante for doing so; the civil system provides a means restitution where individual retribution would be no more than self-justified theft. But I'm not comfortable with the justice system ending life in my name. (And it is in my name, in part, in this government of, by, and for the people.) So I guess I seem to hold the contradiction in my head that there are those who have so wronged decent society that they don't deserve to live, but they should continue doing so anyway.

I guess that makes my objection principled.

Well, it's been fun...

But I suppose I have to put an end to the creative exhortations for me to post. They were counterproductive though--I was enjoying them too much to give a reason to stop. :P

Well, what's new? I've been watching the Steve Yzerman number retirement ceremony and game tonight. Pretty good, if the production is as cheesy as expected . My favorite moment was the part of his speech where he questioned his reputation as a leader, saying all he did was go out and play hard like everyone else did. In this day of pampered superstar/Terrell Owens crap, that is leadership, especially from your one-of-the-greatest stud players.

What other newness? Applying for faculty jobs again...no word yet. I think most of you know I've been seeing a wonderful woman named Julie for several months now...we've survived family Christmases into 2007. We barely survived United airlines though. I'll repost a diatribe I wrote for elsewhere as a comment in this thread. I haven't decided whether to bowdlerize it yet. I mean, the cursing's creative, but I suppose this is public, you know?

I have taken care of some of my reading list. Cryptonomicon and Bringing Down the Househave been finished, but World War Z and The Last Town on Earth have been added. I've decided this is how I should keep pressure on myself to read--always have a list of at least half a dozen things to shame me into not watching "Celebrity Deathmatch" or some such nonsense.