"Old Macdonald had a farm. E-I-E-I-O. And on his farm he had a [delighted, mischievous grin appears] MONKEY!!!"
Followed by the explanation: "Monkeys don't live on the farm! They live at THE ZOO!"
Followed by the repetition of the above comments approximately forty-seven times in a row.
Give her this: she knows what goes
where.
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Friday, October 22, 2010
robin's bedtime poem
Every night (at least, every night that I put Robin to bed), the last thing we do before I tell Robin that I love her is recite a poem. This is a poem I remember my mom telling me when I was young, and it always made me feel very calm.
Recently Robin has started demanding the poem from Andy, who unfortunately does not know Mommy's particular childhood poems. So I'm writing it down for him.
Good night Mr. Beetle.
Good night Miss Fly.
Good night Miss Ladybug.
The moon is in the sky.
Good night Mr. Rooster.
Good night Miss Sheep.
Good night Mr. Horse.
We must all go to sleep.
Good night Miss Kitten.
Good night Mr. Pup.
We'll see you in the morning
When the sun comes up.
Recently Robin has started demanding the poem from Andy, who unfortunately does not know Mommy's particular childhood poems. So I'm writing it down for him.
Good night Mr. Beetle.
Good night Miss Fly.
Good night Miss Ladybug.
The moon is in the sky.
Good night Mr. Rooster.
Good night Miss Sheep.
Good night Mr. Horse.
We must all go to sleep.
Good night Miss Kitten.
Good night Mr. Pup.
We'll see you in the morning
When the sun comes up.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
our funny bunny and her little sister
I'm sure I'll remember these things, but let's face it, I won't...- Robin, when asked whether she's a "funny bunny" or a "silly billy," invariably answers whichever one you say last. Then she immediately changes her mind.
- When asked "Do you know how much I love you?" she spreads her arms wide and says, "Biggest much!"
- She's a bit of a neatnik. She likes to walk around with a washcloth wiping surfaces, saying, "I'm cleaning." She also likes to take the cloth after a meal and clean her own tray. Or at least smear the mess around.
- Robin is now at the stage where she constantly asks, "What's that?" It's often a random guess as to what she's pointing at, but she rarely lets us off the hook.
- She has a great imagination. She likes to
climb into the footstool and pretend she's in Papa's boat, then jump out and "swim" on the floor, demonstrating her kicking, then splashing, and then blowing bubbles. She puts her stuffed animals to bed many times a day and sometimes picks up my knitting needles, clicks them together and informs me, "I'm knitting a sweater." She also puts the wrong end of her spoon in her mouth and hums, then tells me, "I'm playing my flute."
- She is an amazing talker, although she calls her sister Isla. She speaks in full sentences; her record, as far as I can tell, is ten words: "Isla is having a sleep in Mommy and Daddy's room." It's quite remarkable. Really. And not just because I'm her mom.
- When asked to say cheese, Robin puts on her "ham smile." It looks more like a grimace of pain, but it comes in handy when brushing her teeth.
Robin is very, very good with her little sister. She likes to gently pat her face and give her kisses (which entails lightly touching her lips to Olivia's face and saying mmmmaaa). She keeps close tabs on Olivia's activities and keeps us updated: "Isla is sleeping." "Isla's awake now!" "Isla is squirming."
- She is also very aware of what babies eat: breast milk. Several times a day I am advised, "Isla needs breast milk now." She occasionally breastfeeds her stuffed animals.
Ollie-Dollie is doing well also. Compared to Robin, she's enormous; 5.5 kg (12 lb 3 oz) compared to 4.6 kg (10 lb 2 oz), and is almost out of her 3-month-size clothes. She sleeps incredibly well, knock on wood -- usually from 10 pm to 5.30 am or so, though recently as late as 8.30!!! She smiles at us when we pick her up out of the bassinette. She humours us by sitting quietly while we read Brown Bear, Brown Bear, mainly to ourselves as she's not the least bit interested in actually looking at the book. She's a big-time talker too. What she lacks in articulation, she makes up for in cuteness and quantity. Andy has a great video here.
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
scientific literacy, or the lack of it
By "scientific literacy," I do not mean advanced knowledge in one or more areas of science. I mean an understanding of the scientific method, and of its strengths and limitations.
Put simply, the scientific method is just a means of objectively answering a question using a certain set of steps. First, the question is asked -- for example, does reducing the amount of cholesterol in one's diet reduce the chances of having a heart attack? Next, a hypothesis (a fancy term for a guess at the answer) is generated -- yes, reducing cholesterol reduces the chance of a heart attack. Then an experiment is thought up to confirm or refute the hypothesis -- this group of a thousand people will eat one diet, this group of a thousand people will eat that lower-cholesterol diet -- and carried out. Next, the results are analyzed -- the lower-cholesterol group had the same number of heart attacks as the regular-diet group. Last, the conclusion is drawn and the question is answered -- a diet that is lower in cholesterol does not reduce the chance of a heart attack. (That's actually true, as dietary cholesterol is broken down before it reaches the bloodstream, so it doesn't affect the arteries very much at all.)
That's the scientific method right there: question, hypothesis, experiment, results, conclusion.
That's it.
In the real world, designing and carrying out the experiment such that "confounders" are accounted for can be tricky. A confounder is something that was not accounted for in the experiment that impacted on the results and might affect the conclusion -- for example, what if half of the low-cholesterol-diet group were smokers, while almost nobody in the regular-diet group smoked? That would definitely impact on the results, and you could come to a totally wrong conclusion!
It can also be tricky to figure out exactly how to collect and analyze the data. How do you know that someone had a heart attack? Ask them? Check their hospital records? How did the hospital know whether or not they had a heart attack? And what statistical method do you use to compare the results?
So yeah, the practical aspects of the scientific method can be difficult to deal with. But that doesn't change this: the scientific method is the best method ever identified in human history for answering questions and advancing our understanding of the natural world.
We sometimes laugh at other methods used in the past, like reading tea leaves and relying on "everybody knows it" reasoning. And in the real world, we often have to rely on plain ol' common sense and our own experience because not everything we encounter in our daily lives has been subjected to rigorous investigation. But there are all kinds of examples of how conclusions based on those systems of answering questions are completely wrong. A few examples include the idea that the sun orbits the earth, and that white people are superior to black people, and that it's a good time to buy Company X's stock.
Many things have been subjected to rigorous investigation, and while there is always the possibility that in the future more information may come to light and change what we think we know, in these cases we at least have some empirical evidence (ie. we didn't just assume or guess, but actually checked) that a particular course of action is a better choice, or at least no worse, than another.
It is not okay to bury one's head in the sand and pretend that just because I don't know something, nobody else does either. The body of human knowledge is so vast that it's just not possible for one person to master it all, but that's okay. One person doesn't need to know it all -- they just have to know who to ask when they need to know about something that's outside of their area of expertise. You can get into issues of what an expert's motives and influences are, but it's important to differentiate between one's desire or need for a particular piece of information, and one's actual knowledge. It takes humility to see this in ourselves, but it's true. (A case in point: a parent passionately wants to do the right thing for their child, but that does not in and of itself make them knowledgeable about whether or not that vaccination is a good thing.)
Judging from the media, there are a lot of people who fall into the "I don't know, so nobody else does either" trap. Look, I'm not advocating blind faith in anyone. I think it's perfectly all right, even a good idea, to not just take someone's word for it. But we need to recognize the limits of our own knowledge. And when we are up against these limits, we need to recognize that someone else might have the answer.
How do we find someone with the answer? That's an art, but for what it's worth, here's my approach. First, it needs to be someone with motives in line with mine; even if my motivation is not the same as theirs, it should not be at odds. I may want information about what stock to buy, but asking a broker who benefits more if I choose Stock A over Stock B is probably not as reliable as the broker who gets paid the same regardless of what stock I pick (better yet, who gets paid the same even if I choose no stock at all). Here my motivation is a return on my investment; the broker's, I hope, is to impress me with his or her knowledge so much that I seek their advice again next time. Those two motivations, while not the same, are not mutually exclusive. On the other hand, if the broker's motivation is to earn a better commission, then our motivations might very well be in opposition to each other -- he might get make more money if I pick the stock that's going to tank next week.
Second, they need to be knowledgeable. Generally I think it's reasonable to accept that if someone has the proper credentials, they can be thought of as knowledgeable. That's not foolproof (it depends on what it takes to earn those credentials), but practically speaking it's probably the best we can do in an area that we are not experts in ourselves.
Third, and most importantly, we can ask them to show us the evidence, to ask why they recommend one course of action over another. Ideally, there's a formal experiment following the scientific method that they can refer to. There are some areas in which it's more realistic to expect solid experimental evidence (like medicine) than others (like the stock market), and in those cases, we should expect to receive concrete answers, or at least an admission of a gap in the knowledge base.
I'm not saying this is easy. There are a lot of questions out there that haven't been examined properly, and as I said we often are stuck with nothing more than our common sense. But our own personal experience is a form of evidence too; it's the lowest form of evidence (meaning that it's the most likely to lead us astray), but it's sometimes the best we've got.
The key is to recognize the limitations of relying exclusively on our own experience, and recognizing that more reliable information might be out there somewhere. And then having the humility to go and find it.
Put simply, the scientific method is just a means of objectively answering a question using a certain set of steps. First, the question is asked -- for example, does reducing the amount of cholesterol in one's diet reduce the chances of having a heart attack? Next, a hypothesis (a fancy term for a guess at the answer) is generated -- yes, reducing cholesterol reduces the chance of a heart attack. Then an experiment is thought up to confirm or refute the hypothesis -- this group of a thousand people will eat one diet, this group of a thousand people will eat that lower-cholesterol diet -- and carried out. Next, the results are analyzed -- the lower-cholesterol group had the same number of heart attacks as the regular-diet group. Last, the conclusion is drawn and the question is answered -- a diet that is lower in cholesterol does not reduce the chance of a heart attack. (That's actually true, as dietary cholesterol is broken down before it reaches the bloodstream, so it doesn't affect the arteries very much at all.)
That's the scientific method right there: question, hypothesis, experiment, results, conclusion.
That's it.
In the real world, designing and carrying out the experiment such that "confounders" are accounted for can be tricky. A confounder is something that was not accounted for in the experiment that impacted on the results and might affect the conclusion -- for example, what if half of the low-cholesterol-diet group were smokers, while almost nobody in the regular-diet group smoked? That would definitely impact on the results, and you could come to a totally wrong conclusion!
It can also be tricky to figure out exactly how to collect and analyze the data. How do you know that someone had a heart attack? Ask them? Check their hospital records? How did the hospital know whether or not they had a heart attack? And what statistical method do you use to compare the results?
So yeah, the practical aspects of the scientific method can be difficult to deal with. But that doesn't change this: the scientific method is the best method ever identified in human history for answering questions and advancing our understanding of the natural world.
We sometimes laugh at other methods used in the past, like reading tea leaves and relying on "everybody knows it" reasoning. And in the real world, we often have to rely on plain ol' common sense and our own experience because not everything we encounter in our daily lives has been subjected to rigorous investigation. But there are all kinds of examples of how conclusions based on those systems of answering questions are completely wrong. A few examples include the idea that the sun orbits the earth, and that white people are superior to black people, and that it's a good time to buy Company X's stock.
Many things have been subjected to rigorous investigation, and while there is always the possibility that in the future more information may come to light and change what we think we know, in these cases we at least have some empirical evidence (ie. we didn't just assume or guess, but actually checked) that a particular course of action is a better choice, or at least no worse, than another.
It is not okay to bury one's head in the sand and pretend that just because I don't know something, nobody else does either. The body of human knowledge is so vast that it's just not possible for one person to master it all, but that's okay. One person doesn't need to know it all -- they just have to know who to ask when they need to know about something that's outside of their area of expertise. You can get into issues of what an expert's motives and influences are, but it's important to differentiate between one's desire or need for a particular piece of information, and one's actual knowledge. It takes humility to see this in ourselves, but it's true. (A case in point: a parent passionately wants to do the right thing for their child, but that does not in and of itself make them knowledgeable about whether or not that vaccination is a good thing.)
Judging from the media, there are a lot of people who fall into the "I don't know, so nobody else does either" trap. Look, I'm not advocating blind faith in anyone. I think it's perfectly all right, even a good idea, to not just take someone's word for it. But we need to recognize the limits of our own knowledge. And when we are up against these limits, we need to recognize that someone else might have the answer.
How do we find someone with the answer? That's an art, but for what it's worth, here's my approach. First, it needs to be someone with motives in line with mine; even if my motivation is not the same as theirs, it should not be at odds. I may want information about what stock to buy, but asking a broker who benefits more if I choose Stock A over Stock B is probably not as reliable as the broker who gets paid the same regardless of what stock I pick (better yet, who gets paid the same even if I choose no stock at all). Here my motivation is a return on my investment; the broker's, I hope, is to impress me with his or her knowledge so much that I seek their advice again next time. Those two motivations, while not the same, are not mutually exclusive. On the other hand, if the broker's motivation is to earn a better commission, then our motivations might very well be in opposition to each other -- he might get make more money if I pick the stock that's going to tank next week.
Second, they need to be knowledgeable. Generally I think it's reasonable to accept that if someone has the proper credentials, they can be thought of as knowledgeable. That's not foolproof (it depends on what it takes to earn those credentials), but practically speaking it's probably the best we can do in an area that we are not experts in ourselves.
Third, and most importantly, we can ask them to show us the evidence, to ask why they recommend one course of action over another. Ideally, there's a formal experiment following the scientific method that they can refer to. There are some areas in which it's more realistic to expect solid experimental evidence (like medicine) than others (like the stock market), and in those cases, we should expect to receive concrete answers, or at least an admission of a gap in the knowledge base.
I'm not saying this is easy. There are a lot of questions out there that haven't been examined properly, and as I said we often are stuck with nothing more than our common sense. But our own personal experience is a form of evidence too; it's the lowest form of evidence (meaning that it's the most likely to lead us astray), but it's sometimes the best we've got.
The key is to recognize the limitations of relying exclusively on our own experience, and recognizing that more reliable information might be out there somewhere. And then having the humility to go and find it.
Friday, April 02, 2010
love hurts
Mommy: Can I have a hug?
Robin: [Faceplants into Mommy's hip in enthusiasm.]
Mommy: Doesn't that hurt?
Robin: Yes! (Said with equal enthusiam.)
Robin: [Faceplants into Mommy's hip in enthusiasm.]
Mommy: Doesn't that hurt?
Robin: Yes! (Said with equal enthusiam.)
Friday, March 26, 2010
on birth
I suppose it's not really all that surprising that I've been thinking about birth more and more lately, seeing as I've hit the eight-months-pregnant mark and all. It's interesting to see how many people think they have the right to impose their views on a pregnant woman when it comes to labour and delivery choices (of course, that's after they've also felt free to rub her belly and express their thoughts about her pregnancy, but before they'll tell her how to raise her kids). I mean, it's one thing for close friends and family to tell you what they think -- in a lot of ways, we rely on that -- but it's something else entirely when random people on the street or internet try to tell you what you "need" to do.
I have been involved with something like eighty or ninety births, and it's an interesting exercise to think about the process from different perspectives.
When I was pregnant with Robin, I had a few different feelings as the birth drew nearer. First, I was looking forward to being not-pregnant again. Being nine months pregnant is not a particularly comfortable state. Second, and more importantly, I was looking forward to meeting this little person and getting to interact more meaningfully than just feeling kicks and hiccups. Although I was somewhat nervous about the delivery, I fully accepted it as a necessary step and was looking forward to getting through it and starting this parenthood gig. Not that Andy and I particularly felt that we knew what we were getting into, but I was pretty sure we'd be able to figure things out as we went along.
I didn't really have any "expectations" for the birth other than having a safe delivery with a healthy baby at the end. Of course I was fully aware that there are no guarantees in L&D (or the rest of life, for that matter), but it is the norm in this day and age in a developed country. It's very easy to take for granted, and I did.
I definitely didn't have any pre-set ideas about what I was going to choose in labour. I'd considered things like labour positions and pain-control methods, and knew what the options were, but I was pretty sure that these would be game-time decisions -- that I'd have to see how things went and decide what was going to work best at the time. My birth plan was (a) call my parents to look after the dog and (b) go to the hospital. Everything after that I considered up in the air.
But as a birth attendant (and by this I mean a doctor, nurse, midwife or other person trained to oversee the process of L&D -- as opposed to a support person, like a spouse or doula), I thought of things very differently. My goal for each birth was the same as when it was my own: a safe delivery with a healthy baby and mom at the end of it. But my job was to do everything possible to make sure that happened, not to simply hope for the best and assume that things would work out as I did when it was my own delivery.
I had spent years learning about L&D, but most of this time was spent learning about all the things that can go wrong -- and that's a LONG list. Sure, most of the time things go more-or-less well, and in those cases the delivery is, from the attendant's point of view, "easy." Obviously I recognized that the mom usually wouldn't agree -- it's called labour for a reason -- but in these cases she didn't need a whole lot from me (although even in the most straight-forward situations, there was almost always something that I was needed to do).
The thing is, the whole point of having a birth attendant is not really to manage "normal" birth -- it's to have someone who can identify problems and take action if things take a turn for the worse. Things can go wrong, slowly or suddenly, in a minor way or catastrophically. And it's not always predictable -- they can go wrong even when everything has been perfectly normal up to that point. Catastrophe is not all that common but it can happen, and that's why throughout history (and even now in developing countries) maternal and infant mortality have been serious problems. Lots of people minimize the risks of childbirth by saying something to the effect of, "Women in Africa have babies all the time without doctors," and that's true -- but far more of them die, or their babies do, than women and babies who have access to good care. Want to know how much this actually matters? The WHO estimates that in Canada, maternal mortality in 2003 was 7 per 100 000 live births, whereas in Rwanda in 2005 it was 1300 per 100 000 live births.
I have been involved with something like eighty or ninety births, and it's an interesting exercise to think about the process from different perspectives.
When I was pregnant with Robin, I had a few different feelings as the birth drew nearer. First, I was looking forward to being not-pregnant again. Being nine months pregnant is not a particularly comfortable state. Second, and more importantly, I was looking forward to meeting this little person and getting to interact more meaningfully than just feeling kicks and hiccups. Although I was somewhat nervous about the delivery, I fully accepted it as a necessary step and was looking forward to getting through it and starting this parenthood gig. Not that Andy and I particularly felt that we knew what we were getting into, but I was pretty sure we'd be able to figure things out as we went along.
I didn't really have any "expectations" for the birth other than having a safe delivery with a healthy baby at the end. Of course I was fully aware that there are no guarantees in L&D (or the rest of life, for that matter), but it is the norm in this day and age in a developed country. It's very easy to take for granted, and I did.
I definitely didn't have any pre-set ideas about what I was going to choose in labour. I'd considered things like labour positions and pain-control methods, and knew what the options were, but I was pretty sure that these would be game-time decisions -- that I'd have to see how things went and decide what was going to work best at the time. My birth plan was (a) call my parents to look after the dog and (b) go to the hospital. Everything after that I considered up in the air.
But as a birth attendant (and by this I mean a doctor, nurse, midwife or other person trained to oversee the process of L&D -- as opposed to a support person, like a spouse or doula), I thought of things very differently. My goal for each birth was the same as when it was my own: a safe delivery with a healthy baby and mom at the end of it. But my job was to do everything possible to make sure that happened, not to simply hope for the best and assume that things would work out as I did when it was my own delivery.
I had spent years learning about L&D, but most of this time was spent learning about all the things that can go wrong -- and that's a LONG list. Sure, most of the time things go more-or-less well, and in those cases the delivery is, from the attendant's point of view, "easy." Obviously I recognized that the mom usually wouldn't agree -- it's called labour for a reason -- but in these cases she didn't need a whole lot from me (although even in the most straight-forward situations, there was almost always something that I was needed to do).
The thing is, the whole point of having a birth attendant is not really to manage "normal" birth -- it's to have someone who can identify problems and take action if things take a turn for the worse. Things can go wrong, slowly or suddenly, in a minor way or catastrophically. And it's not always predictable -- they can go wrong even when everything has been perfectly normal up to that point. Catastrophe is not all that common but it can happen, and that's why throughout history (and even now in developing countries) maternal and infant mortality have been serious problems. Lots of people minimize the risks of childbirth by saying something to the effect of, "Women in Africa have babies all the time without doctors," and that's true -- but far more of them die, or their babies do, than women and babies who have access to good care. Want to know how much this actually matters? The WHO estimates that in Canada, maternal mortality in 2003 was 7 per 100 000 live births, whereas in Rwanda in 2005 it was 1300 per 100 000 live births.
That's right, in a country where access to perinatal care is limited, maternal mortality is almost 200 times higher than in a country where high-quality perinatal care is the norm.
So as a birth attendant, I felt a tremendous responsibility to make sure that I knew how to identify very quickly things that were starting to go badly, and to know how to react to reduce the risk as much as possible. That was my job, and I was too focused on that to worry very much about the smaller details, the "niceties" that some of my patients were focused on. Perhaps it was callous, but things like nice wallpaper and the ambient music were not helping me accomplish the "healthy mom and baby" goal. It was fine if someone else wanted to worry about those things, but it was not my role; I had other things to think about.
So as a birth attendant, I felt a tremendous responsibility to make sure that I knew how to identify very quickly things that were starting to go badly, and to know how to react to reduce the risk as much as possible. That was my job, and I was too focused on that to worry very much about the smaller details, the "niceties" that some of my patients were focused on. Perhaps it was callous, but things like nice wallpaper and the ambient music were not helping me accomplish the "healthy mom and baby" goal. It was fine if someone else wanted to worry about those things, but it was not my role; I had other things to think about.
Virtually every birth I was involved in (and I was only an active participant in low-risk births; I was involved in some high-risk births but didn't do much more than observe) had at least one "uh oh" moment, where I wondered if things were starting to go sour. That's just the nature of birth -- even when things are completely normal, it's one of those extreme events, when both mom and baby really are on the edge. These "uh oh" moments were almost always relatively brief and sorted themselves out, but sometimes they didn't. Even in the cases where I had to take some kind of action, it was usually a simple maneuver that often the mom didn't really notice at the time.
Most of us, when in a position of responsibility and faced with something that we think might be going sour, feel an overpowering need to take action, to do something, rather than simply wait and see. Obstetrics is no different. Like other areas of medicine, OB is becoming more evidence-based (ie. more and more things are being properly studied to see if they are actually helpful or not), which is a tremendously good thing. But there's still a lot of things that just haven't been studied yet -- sometimes because it's so rare that it's hard to find enough cases to study, sometimes because nobody's thought to do the study yet, sometimes because it's very difficult or impossible to study accurately or ethically. So in these cases people just have to do the best they can with what they've got. It's not a perfect world; we just have to muddle through.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
reducing dangerous plays in hockey
Every so often, some NHL player does something unbelievably stupid and seriously injures another player. These dirty shots are often just sickening to watch -- for example, Marty McSorley clubbing Donald Brashear in the head in 2000, or Todd Bertuzzi sucker-punching Steve Moore in 2004. The world is shocked, hockey gets on the front page for all the wrong reasons for a few days and the player who delivered the shot expresses his profound regret. Usually, though, it's not much more than a blip in the career of the injurer, but the injuree often has to live with the consequences indefinitely.
Hockey has become much more cognizant of the long-term effects that head injuries can have, which is a good thing. They are currently working on a plan to discourage headshots in particular, though frankly I was underwhelmed by the plan recently announced: they can call penalties. Holy moly. That'll learn 'em!
May I present my suggestion: the You-Don't-Play-Till-He-Plays Rule.
It's pretty straight-forward: a player who is deemed to have committed a wantonly reckless act that was clearly intended to injure another player and results in a career-threatening (or worse) injury, is suspended until the injured player is also able to return to the game. Yup, that means that if you end a guy's career with a a$$*@&# play that if committed anywhere else would result in jail time, you'd end your own career too.
Sure, there are definitely some areas open to debate here. First and foremost, nobody can prove beyond a doubt what a player's intent was; that would have to be left to the league's discretion. But that's already the case anyway -- nothing new here. And there would have to be an appeal process, since we're talking about a very, very serious punishment -- but again that's nothing new. And I'm not talking about incidents where the contact was accidental, or a nasty-but-routine play that happens to result in serious injury -- I'm talking about the incidents where the action taken can result in nothing other than serious injury, like the incidents mentioned above.
Why? Because I think that if you're willing to end another player's career, you are forfeiting your own privilege to play.
This rule would create a very strong disincentive for players to let their emotions run away with them during the game. Sure, there may have been a long history of animosity between Bertuzzi and Moore, but in the real world, you can't break someone's neck just because they've been harassing you for a while.
This would also create an incentive for the injured player to stay out of the lineup longer if the other player is a bigger asset to the team than the injured player. But would this really be a big deal?
The biggest stumbling block to this rule would likely be the NHLPA, the players' union. It has a mandate to protect its members from unfair discipline, because historically sports leagues do not exactly have a great track record for looking out for the players. (Of course, the NHLPA has not always been great for its members either.) And I can see the union not liking the idea of indefinite suspensions, even though it's been done before.
But shouldn't the NHLPA it have a mandate to try and protect its members from each other as well? How can they justify standing behind, say, Bertuzzi (other than to make sure he gets his due process with the league) when Moore, who's just as much a member as Bertuzzi, has suffered a catastrophic injury at his hands?
I'm not saying this rule would eliminate career-ending injuries in hockey. It's a rough game and accidents happen. But it might reduce the non-accidental injuries, and would demonstrate the NHL's desire to foster some degree of respect between players, which is one of the reasons we want our kids to play sports in the first place.
Hockey has become much more cognizant of the long-term effects that head injuries can have, which is a good thing. They are currently working on a plan to discourage headshots in particular, though frankly I was underwhelmed by the plan recently announced: they can call penalties. Holy moly. That'll learn 'em!
May I present my suggestion: the You-Don't-Play-Till-He-Plays Rule.
It's pretty straight-forward: a player who is deemed to have committed a wantonly reckless act that was clearly intended to injure another player and results in a career-threatening (or worse) injury, is suspended until the injured player is also able to return to the game. Yup, that means that if you end a guy's career with a a$$*@&# play that if committed anywhere else would result in jail time, you'd end your own career too.
Sure, there are definitely some areas open to debate here. First and foremost, nobody can prove beyond a doubt what a player's intent was; that would have to be left to the league's discretion. But that's already the case anyway -- nothing new here. And there would have to be an appeal process, since we're talking about a very, very serious punishment -- but again that's nothing new. And I'm not talking about incidents where the contact was accidental, or a nasty-but-routine play that happens to result in serious injury -- I'm talking about the incidents where the action taken can result in nothing other than serious injury, like the incidents mentioned above.
Why? Because I think that if you're willing to end another player's career, you are forfeiting your own privilege to play.
This rule would create a very strong disincentive for players to let their emotions run away with them during the game. Sure, there may have been a long history of animosity between Bertuzzi and Moore, but in the real world, you can't break someone's neck just because they've been harassing you for a while.
This would also create an incentive for the injured player to stay out of the lineup longer if the other player is a bigger asset to the team than the injured player. But would this really be a big deal?
- Most players want to get back into the game sooner rather than later as it's not good for their careers to stay out longer than necessary. As the saying goes, you can't make the club sitting in the tub. Of course, it's possible that management could take the decision out of the hands of the injured player, but most clubs aren't eager to pay guys to sit on the bench unnecessarily either, at least not for long. Historically, management has been far more likely to rush players back into the lineup before they were ready than to keep them out too long. Particularly if the injury is a concussion, this might actually be to the injured player's long-term benefit.
- It's unusual for a "skill" player (eg. Gretzky, Crosby) to injure a goon, but they are much more likely to be a goon's target. In other words, it's the skill players who need the league's protection more, and it's also in the league's interest to protect them, as they're the ones people pay to see. So the issue is more important when one goon hurts another and there's a significant difference in their importance to their respective teams.
- This is also more important when the teams involved are in the same conference or division and are competing for the same playoff spots. And these teams play each other more often, so they are more likely to be involved in these sorts of incidents. However, these factors are nothing new -- they're already reasons for a player to be more likely to injure someone in his own conference.
The biggest stumbling block to this rule would likely be the NHLPA, the players' union. It has a mandate to protect its members from unfair discipline, because historically sports leagues do not exactly have a great track record for looking out for the players. (Of course, the NHLPA has not always been great for its members either.) And I can see the union not liking the idea of indefinite suspensions, even though it's been done before.
But shouldn't the NHLPA it have a mandate to try and protect its members from each other as well? How can they justify standing behind, say, Bertuzzi (other than to make sure he gets his due process with the league) when Moore, who's just as much a member as Bertuzzi, has suffered a catastrophic injury at his hands?
I'm not saying this rule would eliminate career-ending injuries in hockey. It's a rough game and accidents happen. But it might reduce the non-accidental injuries, and would demonstrate the NHL's desire to foster some degree of respect between players, which is one of the reasons we want our kids to play sports in the first place.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
why one-year-olds are not generally left to look after their younger siblings
Robin is fond of her doll, and is very enthusiastic, if not very cautious, about looking after it. In a space of less than five minutes, Robin had dangled the doll upside down by one leg, gripped it by the neck, "burped" it with sufficient vigor to break its spine, dropped it, attempted to stand on it, accidentally kicked it when another toy caught her eye, put it to bed on the extreme edge of the couch and almost asphyxiated it with an absolutely filthy blanket that she'd pulled out of a nearby basket of dirty laundry. You know, so it wouldn't get cold.
Saturday, January 09, 2010
every publisher's dream come true
This is what happens when you keep secrets about what you're getting someone.
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