Cabbie Presents Baseball

I just read that drivers in Russia have bought thousands of baseball bats to protect themselves in disputes. And apparently a lot of taxi drivers in particular have them. (You can search Youtube for the videos of Russian cabbie fights if you so desire.) This is one of those stories that's weird on so many levels. For one thing, this won't help the taxi drivers to fight their biggest threat, unless they're headed to Silicon Valley to take some swings at the Uber servers. And no offence Russians, but I still prefer the approach of American Taxi Drivers.

But it also brings up a question I've always wondered about: who are these psychos who sell baseball bats in Europe? This isn't the first time; you'll often hear it after a riot or a clash between soccer hooligans that they had baseball bats. It's never cricket bats: I assume that would be undignified.

Doesn't it occur to anyone as a little suspicious that people are buying equipment for a sport that's not very popular? It's not like they're buying gloves and balls to go with them. Imagine if we suddenly sold ten-thousand Scottish shinty clubs. Wouldn't someone ask some questions?  Why not have some sort of test before you buy a bat in Europe.  Say, you have to explain the infield fly rule in under a minute, or no bat for you.

From Russia With Insecurity

When the Soviet Union collapsed, i was still in high school. I had just learnt about World War II in history class, and it seemed there was a disturbing parallel: we learnt about how the Treaty of Versailles, which ended WWI, had set punitive terms on Germany, and that sense of victimhood had fueled the nationalism the Nazis drew on.

The Russians hadn't lost a war, nor was there a one-sided treaty. But they were plunged into hardship and weakness just months after being a world power. It seemed there was fertile ground for extremist politics there. I was quite disappointed that there wasn't more concern over this in the west. I wasn't expecting a new Marshall Plan or something, but it seemed to me that offering the Russians a little help making the transition to capitalism would have been a wise investment in world stability.

When hard-right Vladimir Zhirinovsky appeared on the scene in the mid 90's, I thought my worst fears were playing out. Fortunately, only a few Russians took the bait.

But now, it occurs to me that I was right, it's just that Russia's lashing out wasn't nearly as dramatic as I had assumed. Instead of a transition to radical politics, it has played out as a angry streak in their dealings with others.  Putin seems to understand this, and is good at exploiting it.  If the results never get worse than the Crimean invasion, we'll be pretty lucky overall.

Back To The Brink

I mentioned earlier that several countries seemed to be tearing themselves apart because large blocks of voters can't agree. Since then, we've seen Ukraine get even more polarized, eventually leading to a new government and Russian military intervention.

I thought it was interesting that during the Ukraine crisis, there seemed to be a real case for splitting the country, since the Ukrainian west and Russian east seemed to differ on culture, politics and economics. But all politicians shrank away from the idea, saying that such a young country (~23 years) didn't want to open that can of worms.

Well, Putin's troops seem to have imposed the separation idea. And at the risk of sounding Chamberlain-y, I'm optimistic that it won't escalate.  Some sort of autonomy for the country's two sides was probably the only way out of the impasse, but too scary to choose voluntarily. Of course, that's assuming Putin isn't crazy enough to grab more or all of the country than the Russian-dominated areas just to spite/embarrass the west. And I don't know too much about make-up of the country; if there are large Russian/Ukrainian minorities on the other sides, it could lead to Balkan-style retribution, which is the country argument to my give-separation-a-chance philosophy.

Cold Olympics

It's too bad we never got to see a real U.S./USSR Olympics. There were only two summer games in the superpowers during the cold war. And both of them (Moscow 1980 & LA 1984) were boycotted by the other superpower. Yes, I know, the USA hosted the winter games a couple of times (Squaw Valley 1960 & Lake Placid 1980) but the winter games have a modesty that tends to defuse nationalism. It's hard to chest-thump over your superiority in events that are, to quote Seth Meyers, 48 different kinds of sliding.

I wish there had been a Cold War Olympics. It would have been entertaining to see each side pretending to play nice, taking subtle shots at each other, and trying to extend each success into a national victory. But more than anything, it would have been good for us. Because at a big event like this, no matter how well scripted it is, humanity will leak out, and the rivals will see each other in a better light.

The upcoming Sochi Olympics may be the closest we'll get to seeing major players at the games really angry at each other. I’m trying to be optimistic and see it as a good thing. Like a lot of people, I disagree strongly with Russia’s new anti-gay law, or their treatment of Pussy Riot and other dissidents. So I don’t like the idea of the country being “rewarded” by hosting the Olympics. But I don’t think it’s really going to benefit them much. In the modern world, a major event doesn’t allow a country to cover up its flaws, it puts them under the microscope.  It would be nice if everyone would figure this out, and only bid on Olympics or World Cups if they have nothing to hide.  Start building that Stadium, Reykjavik.

Ba-Da Ba Ba Baaa, I'm Hijackin' It

Today, McDonald's promoted the Twitter hashtag, #CheersToSochi. The idea was to have people send well wishes to athletes and organizers of the upcoming Winter Olympics.  Not surprisingly, the hashtag was quickly taken over by people protesting Russia's anti-gay laws.

This isn't the first time tweeters have turned a company's hashtag against itself. I'm left wondering how these corporations don't see it coming. It's easy to say that these companies are hopping wildly in to the social media bandwagon before they understand it. We've seen organizations misuse new technology trends throughout the Internet era.  And JPMorgan had a similar problem when they apparently forgot that some people hate banks.

But banks are kind of out-of-touch with public opinion; this is McDonald's we're talking about here. They're the masters of marketing.  If they're that clueless, what hope is there for everyone else?  They do understand that Twitter is a participation medium, not a broadcast medium.  They just don't seem to realize how varied the general public's opinions are.  So have they always believed that everyone loves them?

Bringing Micex Back

A few weeks ago I wrote a post about the Moscow stock exchange, and how it's called Micex, which sounds like "my sex."  Well according to the stats from Blogger, it got about ten times the hits a new post normally gets. 

You might thing that's just because it was one of the few posts I've written that prominently features the word, "sex."  But not necessarily.  In the past, the stats have claimed that I get a lot of traffic coming from Russian sites.  So I wondered if it was interest in Micex itself that was driving the popularity.  But when I looked at the breakdown of visitors by country that day, most of them were either from the U.S. or France. 

So my guess is that it really was the references to "sex" that caused the extra visits.  Mentioning sex in a post generates traffic, because people search for sex.  Yep, that's what people use the Internet for, sex.  That's what's on their minds, sex, sex, sex. 

Why it was so specific to those two countries, I don't know.  We always thought of them as being opposites when it comes to their attitude to sex.  But now we've seen France's division over gay marriage, we realize that they share more with the Americans than you'd expect. 

Playing FTSE

You may have heard the old joke of the guy who named his dog, "Sex."  It was printed by Ann Landers years ago, and has now been around the Internet a few times too.  There are different versions, with excuses for light double-entendres: "Sex keeps me up at night," "I only had Sex before I got married," etc.

I was reminded of this joke recently, when I found out that the Moscow stock exchange is the Moscow Interbank Currency Exchange, which is abbreviated, "Micex" and pronounced "mice-X," or if you prefer, "my sex."  So now there's an excuse for a whole new generation of jokes: My sex is improving, lots of people are interested in my sex, my sex brings in a lot of money.

Neo Tokyo, We Have a Problem

I came across this article about how the Japanese space agency is creating a robot to assist the Japanese astronaut who will soon be going to the International Space Station.  But this isn't some utilitarian machine to do esoteric technical work.  No, it's a cute, human shaped robot whose primary task is to make conversation and keep the astronauts company.

That's what love about Japan: I don't think there's any other country on earth that is as gloriously, unapologetically reaffirming of its own stereotypes.  The Americans didn't put gun racks on the shuttle.  The Russians didn't put a little spacecraft inside a bigger one inside a bigger one.  And the Chinese spacecraft, to my knowledge, was both expensive and made of non-toxic materials. 

Here in Canada, our greatest contribution to space exploration has been the Canadarm.  I suppose that's a little stereotypical: it's practical, it's not flamboyant, in a pinch it can be used as a bottle opener. 

Hockey Night in the Eastern Bloc

Let's face it, this isn't looking good for an NHL season this year. Sports programs are already having trouble filling the 95% of airtime they usually dedicate to hockey. I notice that TSN has even shown some highlights of Russia's Kontinental Hockey League (KHL). That's nice, they have plenty of talented players. But we don't know anything about the teams and don't know who we want to see winning. So I did a little Wikipedia research and came up with some reasons:

Western Conference

Team Name	In English that would be...	People you might recognize	Reason to cheer for them
Slovan Bratislava (Bratislava, Slovakia)	Bratislava Blue Eagles	Miroslav Satan	Czechs got most of the best players in the divorce
Vityaz Chekhov	Chekhov Knights	Danny Markov, GM Alexi Zhamnov	Think of the jokes cheering for Chekhov
HC Donbass (Donetsk, Ukraine)	Donetsk Donbass (Donbass is the area they play in)	Alexi Ponikarovsky	Lots of Canadians have Ukrainian blood, here's your team
Dynamo Moscow	Moscow Dynamo	Nicklas Bäckström, Alexander Ovechkin	They're the Mets to the Red Army's Yankees
Lev Praha (Prague, Czech Republic)	Prague Lions	Marcel Hossa, Alexandre Picard	Czech Republic: home of Pilsner
Dinamo Riga (Riga, Latvia)	Riga Dynamo	Rob Schremp, Mikael Tellqvist	As you may know from international tournaments, Latvia has the loudest fans.
SKA St. Petersburg	St. Petersburg Soldiers	Sergei Bobrovsky, Ilya Kovalchuk, Viktor Tikhonov (grandson of the famous coach)	If you like the St. Louis Blues or Utah Jazz, why not cheer for the Ska
Severstal Cherepovets	Northern Steel presents Cherepovets Steelers		Hamilton, be glad that one steel city got a big-league team.
Dinamo Minsk (Minsk, Belarus)	Minsk Dynamo		Logo has a buffalo that looks like the old Sabres logo
CSKA Moscow	Central Red Army	Ilya Bryzgalov, Pavel Datsyuk, Alexander Radulov, Anton Volchenkov, GM Sergei Fedorov	If you're a fan of the Yankees, Heat, or Manchester United, then this is your team.
Spartak Moscow	Moscow Spartacus	Oleg Petrov	Think of all the fun yelling, “I am Spartacus!”
Atlant Moscow Oblast	Moscow Atlas	Alexei Kovalev, Nikolay Zherdev	Argos, Titans fans, you Greek mythology teams have to stick together
Torpedo Nizhny Novgorod	Nizhny Novgorod Torpedo	Robert Nillson (son of Kent)	Wasn't the Torpedo supposed to be a strategy that would beat the neutral-zone trap?
Lokomotiv Yaroslavl	Yaroslavl Locomotive	Niklas Hagman, Staffan Kronwall, Curtis Sanford, Viktor Kozlov	Seriously, it's easy to cheer for this team after last year's plane crash

Eastern Conference

Team Name	In English that would be...	People you might recognize	Reason to cheer for them
Traktor Chelyabinsk	Chelyabinsk Tractor (but have a polar bear on the logo)	Andrei Kostitsyn	That's some hard core agricultural dedication: even teams on our prairies aren't named after farming equipment
Ak Bars Kazan	Kazan Snow Leopards		Mac fans, this is your team!
HC Yugra	Don't have a nickname, but their mascot is a mammoth		The mascot is because mammoths are often found nearby; sort of a counterpoint to the Nashville Predators
Metallurg Magnitogorsk	Magnitogorsk Metallurgists (or “Steelers,” if you prefer)	Evgeni Malkin, Oleg Tverdovsky, Coach Paul Maurice	“Magnitogorsk” just sounds cool
Neftekhimik Nizhnekamsk	Nizhnekamsk Petrochemists		If you think about it, their name is sort of like “Oilers”
Avtomobilist Yekaterinburg	Yekaterinburg Motorists		“Motorists” may not seem like an intimidating name, but keep in mind that we're talking about people driving Ladas through Russian winters.
Barys Astana (Astana, Kazakhstan)	Astana Leopards	Dustin Boyd, Nigel Dawes	If you saw Borat, you probably owe them one. Also, likely the only hockey team on earth with Arabic script on their uniform.
Amur Khabarovsk	Khabarovsk Amur (Amur is a local river)		In Eastern Russia, near the Pacific. So if you're a fan of one of the NHL's Pacific teams, this may be as close as you get.
Metallurg Novokuznetsk	Novokuznetsk Metallurgists	Chris Simon, Brent Sopel	“Metallurgists” is apparently Russia's “Roughriders”
Sibir Novosibirsk	Novosibirsk Siberians		In high school, we had an exchange program with Novosibirsk
Avangard Omsk	Omsk Vanguard	Alexander Frolov	“Vanguard,” they sound like a band of superheroes
Salavat Yulaev Ufa	Ufa Salavat Yulaev (Salavat Yulaev was a local hero, apparently)	Oleg Saprykin	Seems weird having a whole team of UFA's