What An Impressive Loss

I already noted that the Brazilians have surprised me with their lack of enthusiasm for the billions spent on the World Cup.  Now they've impressed me with their ability to take a loss.  It can't be easy to take an embarrassing loss, in the sport that means the most to them, at home, while the world is watching.  Here in Canada, we've lost at hockey, but at least we know no one else cares. 

As the game was going on, I saw numerous tweets worrying of violence on the streets in Brazil, as people take out their frustrations.  But that doesn't seem to have materialized.  I saw one TV report that mentioned fear of violence, given the protests against the World Cup.  That seemed like odd reasoning: there's been violence over government spending, so there'll be violence over losing a soccer game. 

So maybe that's why the Brazilians have been able to deal with the loss more maturely: they've been forced to examine their priorities.  There were lots of sad people on the streets, but most were keeping it in perspective.  Again, I don't think we in Canada compare well, considering Vancouver's riots over their Stanley Cup loss a few years ago.

Fancy Meeting You Here

In our connected world, we often see mash ups similar things.  But it's rarer to see very different things put together. And it's really odd to see two normally-separate areas of your life come together.  It's like finding out that two people you know already know each other.

I got another of those moments when I read an on-line article about Linux, in Car and Driver.

Weirdly, they don't even go through the awkward explanation of what it is, or even what the penguin has to do with it.  Though they do avoid defining what the Linux community is, instead making vague statements that "Linux wants..."

This is the strangest cultural collision for me since Dan Savage tweeted an article in my home-town Woodstock Sentinel Review.

Let's Agree You Disagree

Like most people, I hate it when people disagree with me.  But it actually bothers me more when people disagree with themselves.  We've seen an example of that in the World Cup.  Brazilian star Neymar is out of the tournament with a fractured vertebra.  Since he sustained the injury getting kneed in the back by a Colombian player, we're now hearing complaints that referees aren't doing enough to protect the star players. We know that teams focus their defense on such star players, and there seems to be a blurry line between "playing physical defense" and "hoping for a lucky injury."

I welcome the concern for players' welfare, as well as the acknowledgement that talented players make the game entertaining.  But while I may agree with these urging a crackdown on rough play, I doubt that the people doing the urging agree.  If you listen to sports people talk long enough, you'll notice that for every claim that talented players aren't protected, there are at least ten pleas to "let them play," keep the game physical, let the defense do its job, or other polite ways of asking for the rules to not be enforced.

Nobody seems to realize that there is no easy or obvious solution here.  We have to find a balance between physical play and player safety, or between empowering the defense and letting the offensive stars perform.  If you want the stars protected, you have to learn to bite your tongue when the game is slowed by the referee's calls.  Or, if you want a sport that doesn't really have rules, you have to expect that star players are going to get injured.  If only we could get more countries to watch hockey, they'd understand this.

We Can Never Get Away From The Sprawl

Maclean's has a graphic showing the relative density of Canadian cities.  The premise is that it shows how much space the population of Canada would take up if it was packed in with the same density as various Canadian cities. It's probably inspired by this map comparing cities around the world.

The around-the-world version is more informative, since it's comparing similarity large cities that differ only in their location and age. There's not much that can be gleaned from comparing the density of Toronto and Iqaluit.

But it brings up a pet peeve of mine when people start comparing different cities. Often, large cities are held-up as paragons of environmental virtue because of their density and reliance on public transit. There is some truth to the concept, and the point is important because many people - including environmentalists themselves - often assume that big and artificial things are always worse.

The problem is that when it comes to environmental righteousness, Toronto and Vancouver kind of cheat. That's because the political entities known as "Toronto" and "Vancouver" are really just the centres of much larger cities. The suburbs of those cities spread out with miles of suburbs (just as any Canadian or American city does) but those suburbs aren't officially part of the city.

I looked it up, and if you include the entire Greater Toronto Area, Toronto's density drops from 4,149 people per square kilometre to only 850. That's actually less dense than here in the city of Kitchener.  In contrast, they give the impression that Halifax is some sprawling, empty place.  But that's just because it's city limits stretch far beyond the actual developed area.  If you only count the urban area, the density again turns out to be more than 1,000 people per square kilometre.

Mr. Roe, Throw Out This Wallet!

Well, I'm finally getting rid of my wallet. I've had other wallets that I've used for the proliferation of cards we've had over the years, but for the last twenty years, this has been my main wallet.

And here's what's so remarkable about it.

Yes, it says, "Made in German D. R." And if you know your twentieth-century geopolitics, you'll know that is the German Democratic Republic. And you'll further recognize that as the official name of East Germany. Yes, my wallet was one of the few products made during the eleven months between the fall of communism and the German reunification. I'm sure there couldn't have been much produced in that time. Say, a few hundred wallets, some watered-down beer and three-and-a-half Trabants.

But I appreciate the work of those semi-socialist workers and leather from The People's cows. Aside from the historic curiosity, I've enjoyed the irony of getting my money out of a communist wallet.

Giving Away History

Are you looking for more reasons to hate the New York Yankees? I don't know how you could be in the midst of the Derek Jeter season-long retirement/canonization. But if you do need a reason, I'll point out today's big giveaway to the first 18,000 fans.

Yes, it's Lou Gehrig bobblehead day. It's not merely a posthumous bobblehead of a revered athlete and tragic hero, it's depicting him during his tear-jerking retirement speech.

That got me thinking about what other highly emotional moments in baseball history might be commemorated with a bobblehead:

• Jackie Robinson breaking the colour barrier
• Dave Dravecky's comeback
• Babe Ruth promising a home run to that kid in hospital
• Ford Frick announcing the asterisk on Roger Maris's home run record
• Kirk Gibson limping to the plate in the 1988 World Series
• Armando Galarraga getting cheated out of a perfect game
• Casey striking out

An Exceptional Game

The USA was knocked out of the World Cup today. That's a shame; I was cheering for them. That was partly out of the novelty of American underdogs, and to represent North America well on the world stage.

The US in soccer is always surreal, but it seemed extra weird this time around as Americans started to take notice, and even care about their team.

Of course, you don't want to read too much into the fandom of one tournament. Ann Coulter's screed against soccer has made the rounds of the internet, with much laughter at its Colbert-esque hyperbole. This article in The Atlantic is more analytic, but also bites off more than it can chew by paralleling soccer and Obama support. But it does summarize the uniqueness of soccer amongst American sports: it's not the sport itself, but America's place in it. The US is just another country in soccer, not unique or dominant. Today's massive clash was against Belgium. Where else had the US ever been on even terms with Belgium? And their nemesis over the last three World Cups has been Ghana.

This may not seem like a big shift, but it's remarkable how unusual it is for Americans to see themselves as being on a level with other countries.  We have a tendency to think American exceptionalism is exclusively practiced by far-right thinkers like Coulter.  But really, the attitude infects all parts of the political spectrum, with the more international-friendly pundits seeing themselves as friendly but still special.

Accepting the World Cup and the U.S. role as just one of 32 shows that many Americans are ready to take a less-hierarchical international perspective.  Losing in the Round of 16 may challenge that new-found acceptance; we'll see if it sours their view of the competition, or if they see their team's good-play-but-no-championship as the positive achievement that it was.