Definition of Irony

Irony in the dictionary should just be changed to this story.

Sports (Part I)

I call this Part 1 as I have too much to write about in just one post. I said in the comment section that I will be posting on what constitutes a sport since I said shooting gun is not a sport. I need to comment on the stupid Bryant Gumbel racist comment. I need to talk about the Winter Olympics and a reflection on Canada's performance, which I will leave until we finish our events.

So now the comprehensive list on what is, and isn't, a sport. If you think I'm wrong, leave a comment, but chances are you are just wrong.

So to address what is a sport, I'll start by giving some examples of sports that no one, in their right mind, disagrees with: hockey, basketball, football, soccer, rugby, tennis, baseball, cricket, handball, squash, racquetball, table tennis (no one would disagree with this one if you actually see professionals play), cross country skiing, track/marathon running, bike racing, speed skating, swimming, lacrosse, volleyball, badminton, and Aussi rules football. I probably missed a ton in there, but you should be ale to get the point with any of these. There can be a lot of physical exertion, combined with some level of skill and strategy.

The other common theme of all of these sports is that is completely objective who wins. There is no doubt who won the football game, it is the team that scored the most points. Yes, a referee can get a call wrong, but you look at video replay and come up with an answer if the ref was got it wrong or not. This is not to say that all judged events are not sports, if you can properly assign a score that will consistently be given by different judges under perfect viewing conditions, then I will argue that it is objective.

Which brings me to my first event that I will say is not a sport: figure skating/ice dancing. You cannot call anything a sport that your uniform and music get judged based on artistic merit. I understand it is a very physically demanding competition, it just is not a sport. The new judging system maybe is a step in the right direction, but it still matters what the freaking participant is wearing! This isn't a beauty pageant, if you want to be a sport, act like one. Now that figure skating is not a sport, gymnastics comes into question. Here is the big difference for me: male floor routine = sport, female floor routine = not a sport (this is not sexist, the events are different, if females did the male version it would be a sport). When females do the routine, it matters how they work to their music and how graceful they are between athletic moves. For the male version, only the athletic moves count. You can then assign difficulty and judging criteria based on completely objective actions instead of how "pretty" the thing looked.

Golf is a sport. I hear people say it isn't, mostly because they either think a) it is boring or b) you can be out of shape and do it, it isn't physical, etc. The boring argument is irrelevant, I just hear it all the time, and if you want to argue it, you are stupid, period. On the physicality of golf, I think it requires a tremendous amount of skill to play well. It is a different type of sport than hockey to be sure, as under normal conditions a golfer will not be gasping for air after their round. Why golf qualifies as a sport is that it takes incredible control of strength and agility to hit the golf ball. You have to alter how you are going to swing depending on what the lie is (ie. uphill, downhill, the ground conditions, etc) so it is not just one repeatable action over and over. It is true that you can have a beer belly and be a good golfer, but the best golfers all have personal trainers and work out daily. To swing faster you need to be stronger, and swinging faster has benefits in many areas of the game. Winning at golf also is completely objective as the person with the best score wins, so it does follow all the rules up until now.

The other thing that can make a sport is reaction time and quickness. This is why I will allow someone to consider auto racing a sport, in that they control the car and react to the other drivers. I agree it is borderline, but I am also told the amount of G-force a typical racer feels will also completely tire someone out that is out of shape. I have never seen a fat race car driver, so I will accept this to be a sport. Horse racing/jumping/riding, however, is not a sport. It is a sport for the horse, not for the human. Anything that requires actions that are outside of human control I don't think I can count to be a sport. With cars, humans build them, if they don't work, it is human error at least. If a horse doesn't run fast enough, or buck hard enough, or whatever, it is not due to the skill of the human. It is a competition, not a sport. This also eliminates fishing and hunting, as some people consider these to be sports. If people want to have an extreme hunting competition where the people have to hunt other each other, it is gruesome, but it is a sport. I pretty much pissed off all rodeo fans, too bad.

On the quickness factor, combined with other reasons mentioned in the golf paragraph, downhill skiing and snowboarding events are sports. It isn't pure strength, but it requires very good leg strength, combined with reacting to course and making quick turns. I am going to also allow curling to be a sport as there are times when the sweepers will use a lot of strength to get the stone where it is needed, as well as the competition aspect of it. Luge/bobsleigh/skeleton because they take strength at the beginning, then quick reaction as they go down the course.

Another rule: a sport combined with a random act can still be a sport. Biathalon is one of these. Cross country skiing is a sport, shooting at stationary targets isn't, but the shooting doesn't take away from the skiing. The shooting actually does add something here, to do target shooting you have to steady your arm, but that becomes much more difficult as your heart rate is higher from the skiing. Just shooting by itself is, as I have said, not a sport. There is a laid out shooting range, nothing changes from one day to the next, the act of shooting is in no way physically demanding. If you shot for a couple hours straight, yes you will be sore, but that isn't what shooting competitions do. They take a set number of shots, the one with the best accuracy wins. To shoot a gun requires exactly X amount of force, just need to use that force and the gun will shoot just the same. I am willing to accept types of action shooting events to be sports though, or any shooting that requires movement and reaction. Guns are allowed to be part of sports, but just straight shooting of the gun to a stationary target is not a sport.

I am going to, with some reservations, make this list all be considered sports: half pipe, aerials, diving, ski jumping, and the like. You have to be able to get into athletic positions to be successful in all of these, but the judging aspect of them do give me pause to accepting them as sports. But by my previous rule, if you can develop proper judging, they can all qualify.

Question marks: are billiards and darts sports? I have a lot of trouble with these, neither requires a lot of power, but they are both objective competitions that depend on what you physically do.

Anyways, please leave comments, as well as let me know if any more sports need to be judged that I left out. If there is a sport that is clearly just a modified version of a sport listed, consider it to be in the same category of the listed one (ie. luge is a modified version of skeleton).

Levant Has Balls!

Ezra Levant, the publisher of the Western Standard has said that the magazine will print some of the Mohammad cartoons today, according to the Globe. I say good for them! Fine, the cartoons may offend some people, but the magazine should have every right to print them. They aren't showing them on the front cover, so only people that choose to see the cartoons will see them. If you are going to be offended, I have a very easy solution for you, don't buy the freaking magazine! It is just that simple.

The Canadian Islamic Congress said they will seek to have charges laid, against distributing hate crime literature. Well I have a question, I am not religious, so my beliefs are in the freedom of people, does this mean the Canadian Islamic Congress is committing a hate crime against my belief in free speech by filing this complaint?

When Levent was asked if these cartoons could spark violence, he responded, "We're about to find out." As someone that loves freedom, thank you Mr. Levant! I don't think he is publishing these to be offensive, but to make a point that he will not be bullied into not expressing himself. Judging from the comments I have heard the extremist Muslims say, he may receive death threats. I applaud him for, literally, putting his own ass on the line in the name of free speech!

Edit: I just saw that Ezra wrote this in the Calgary sun. Great article!

Edit2: I was about to look into getting a Western Standard subscription, but it seems much of their website is down. I'm hoping it is down due to high traffic, not any malicious act. Whenever their site is back up, I encourage everyone to reward their courage by subscribing!

The Final Countdown

This has nothing to do with politics, but an issue that is dear to my heart.

I am sad to say the last episode(s) of Arrested Development, possibly ever, aired last night. So this is just my sad attempt of a plea to Fox or any other network to bring the show back! It has to be one of the smartest comedies on TV, and probably the best current comedy. I encourage everyone to buy the DVD's for all 3 seasons (Season 1, Season 2, Season 3 to come out later) to show networks how much demand there is for the show, it worked for Family Guy after all. I always loved sitcoms, and sadly they pretty much all suck now. The only decent ones left are The Office and My Name Is Earl. We need to keep crap like Everybody Loves Raymond and Will & Grace off the air, bring back AD!

Missing the Point

I was watching CTV NewsNet this morning and they were talking to a representative from the European Committee for Prophet Honouring. I understand the Muslim community was offended by the cartoons, but I don't think they (or at least this representative) understands what free speech means. He was saying that before the violence they had petitions and non-violent protests and the government still didn't do anything. He was implying the government should have actually taken steps to ban these cartoons or come out heavily against them. When people say they need to try and achieve their goals from non-violent means, this doesn't mean to do as much non-violence as you can and then when the government doesn't limit the freedom of their citizens you have the right to react with violence. Protesting should be to trying and get the newspaper to apologize or to get awareness of the issue so that the public will boycott the paper and force publications. If their goal is to get free speech banned in the Western world, I don't think the understand what living in a free society means.

Atheist Reaction?

I found this cartoon really funny, and just for the record I will riot after just 4 blank sheets. Some other good ones here.

Aren't We the Party of Freedom?

STATEMENT BY MINISTER MACKAY ON REACTION TO CARICATURES OF PROPHET MOHAMMED

Why why why why why why are we even releasing an official government statement on this? This issue has nothing to do with the government. Some people have cartoons that offend other people, other people protest, none of the government's business! MacKay said, "Freedom of expression is a legally enshrined principle in Canada, but it must be exercised responsibly." [Emphasis added] There are no "but"s about this. The statement, "Freedom of expression is a legally enshrined principle in Canada," does not need a qualifier. Should the government come out and have to say that we have freedom of expression after every person says every thing that could possibly hurt the feelings of another person?

Further along in this unessasary statement, "The Government of Canada will continue to promote a better understanding of Islam internationally, in partnership with Muslim communities." Why is this our job? I don't give a crap what people think about Muslims, Christians, Jews or any other religion, it isn't the government's job to be the public relations department for a religion! If a religion wants to change their image, freaking do it, no one is stopping you!

Freedom of Speech

I was able to post on offensive Islam cartoons and free speech since it seems like the in thing to do, and then I realized that Greg had already done so. I essentially agree with him. I think it is wrong to publish those cartoons, that is why I will not do so. I do not think it should be illegal to publish them. Freedom of speech should not only apply to things that are pleasant. If you are deeply offended by these cartoons, write to the newspapers asking them to apologize, create a petition for them to apologize, start a boycott of all media that published these cartoons, or simply try to inform as many people as you can that these cartoons are not representative of Islam. The reaction that shouldn't happen is violence. The violent reactions and threats that happened are quite ironic, as they are upset with being characterized as violent people. I know it is only a subset that do this, but this certainly won't make the spread of the offensive ideas like this die down (I'm not saying it makes it valid to depict Muslims as terrorists, just it isn't helping disprove it).

I do not believe that people have a right to not be offended by anything. If this was true, I probably would have to cut down about half of the things I say. I have a right to say what I want, offensive or not, on this blog. Google, which owns Blogger, has the right to limit what I say on their website. My ISP has the right to restrict the content I access/distribute over their network according to my service agreement (including Rogers annoying block on bit torrent/P2P progams that I hate). The administrator of Blogging Tories has the right to kick me off the blogroll for making offensive comments, just as any political parties I hold memberships in have the right to cancel my membership if I do not comply with conditions of membership. Finally, you, the reader has the right to not read what I write. I am not forcing you to read this, so if I offend you, stop reading what I write. I try not to be offensive because I do not want to offend people, and please let me know if I do say something offensive, but you do not have to the right to tell me what I cannot say.

Part of the reason I am against any laws that limit free speech (and really only why I'm against implementation of the law, I am against the law in general because I respect freedom) is because there is no standard for offensive. If anyone makes any comment that is contrary to any religion, is this offensive? If a Muslim says, "The Jews are wrong," is this crossing the line? I think it is silly if it is crossing the line because if you are Muslim you implicitly say that you believe you are right and other religions are wrong, or else you wouldn't be Muslim. What about if I say there is no god? I am clearly saying I think every religious person in the world is wrong, and even if that offends you, I don't see how I could face any legal ramifications for the statement. Or what about when Christian groups make comments about gay people being sinners? This may raise more questions about whether it is offensive enough to justify the law getting involved, but many would still disagree. The line cannot, and should not, be set. The line will be set by everyone, and the market will react accordingly. If a newspaper offends enough people, it won't stay being published very long, or at least it won't be a mainstream paper.

(On a side note, I have read certain bloggers, who I won't name because I don't want to start a religious argument when I don't think it is an important enough subject, who seem to say that all "anti-religion" or "godless" people do it to somehow rebel against the religious establishment, as if we really did think there was a god and we just choose to ignore it/him/her. I am not religious or spiritual whatsoever. I am not rebelling against anything, there just is no god. Sure, there are some on the radical left that will oppose anything that religious people do, but this is not everyone. As Penn Jillette said on his radio show, "Atheists are given a bad rap from Socialists and Communists.")

I am not hypocritical either, if any Christian wants to make a cartoon of me burning in hell for not accepting Jesus and my lord and savior, go right ahead (but it isn't like you need my permission to do it)!

I Love Miss Nevada!

This is not a sexist post or anything, I don't even know what Miss Nevada looks like since I didn't watch the show, but she must be the first women to ever say anything intelligent at a beauty pageant in history! I know this is a bit old, but I just heard about it.

Instead of getting the typical question like, "Do you love all the children of the world?" Instead this happened:

In Thursday's interview, Miss Nevada was asked by one of the judges about the
proposed nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain.
The facility has to go someplace, and Yucca Mountain is the best-built facility in the country, Crystal Wosik replied.
And if people die?
"We just have to take one for the team," she replied.

I love this quote! Take one for the team, absolutely classic! You can argue the pros and cons of nuclear power, but she resisted the easy politically correct BS answer to come out against nuclear waste dumping without providing any other alternative. It isn't black and white. If there isn't the nuclear waste dump there, it will be somewhere else. Or if they use a different type of power, there are many other issues.

Support for Separation Falling

This article mentions a new poll showing that support for independence has fallen from 43% before the election to 34% after the election. This is huge. Sure, it may just be in celebration that the Liberals are gone and Harper needs to make sure he makes real change with the fiscal imbalance, respecting provincial jurisdiction, etc. What this shows is that people were wanting separation based on the incompetent Liberal government and not until they left could they feel comfortable in this country. I'm hoping the support for separation continues to fall and gets below 30% once the Conservatives start to implement their policies.