Final Bruins Blog

I don't know if its a good thing or a bad thing that I was pretty close about the Bruins' final point tally. They finished up 35-41-6, for a total of 76 points. Very close to my final asessment in March of 36-40-6, and not too far from my 32-38-12, 78 point attempt earlier in the season. What will they do in the off season? Not too much, I'm afraid. This team is a long way from any kind of playoff run. They're not missing a sniper or a great defenseman or even a goalie. They're missing all of those. They've got Murray, who got 28 goals last year, and Marc Savard, who's got the best chance at being a true talent in the league, he had 96 points last year on a very strong line, and thats great too. Problem is, Murray is 35, and Savard is 30. Zdeno Charra had an extremely disappointing year, if you ask me, with a whopping -21 +/-, and though he had good points on defense, and was certainly an upgrade to Hal Gil, he's still not a superstar, if you ask me. Not alone. But there are very few defensemen who truly are. The Bruins need to break down, toss out all the old guys for draft picks better than their 8th this year, and some true young talent, and aim for a cohesive unit, and keep that cohesive unit by actually paying those players to stay together. Bergeron and Kessel are a huge help, and they'd be a great nucleus for a team to build around. Here's what I suggest:
1) Trade for a really good goalie prospect, or better yet, a true #1 goalie. This will give the opportunity for Hannu to look, learn, and hopefully settle down. Because Hannu is minor league talent right now, and no better. 3-9 with a 4.23 GAA is horrible, even for a second stringer. But he's young, and even though he looks like the Dutch Boy paint kid, he's got some talent in that body, even if he's psycho, even for a goalie. But you can't expect him to come in, and become a 1st stringer. And Tim-may isn't a 1st stringer either.
2) Trade Murray and Savard for good young defensive talent. They're getting old/are old, and Savard had a career year this year. Trade him before he comes back to earth.
3) Open up the pocketbook. I don't need to reiterate why this is so important.
4) Get some local talent. Get guys that were big names in BU/BC/UNH, and you'll see more interest from the fans. Pay them to stay, and voila, you've got a good nucleus for a good team.
5) Get a goon. Preferably a smallish goon. This city likes its small scrappy players. If the guy can score, even better, but getting someone who can fight that will be outsized will bring back some of that Jay Miller feel to the building.
6) Know that there will be some rebuilding years. Make that clear to the players and the fans, but bring in young talent that shows prospect, and you'll see the tickets sell and the fans be excited, a la the Celtics the last 2 years. Bergeron and Kessel are still young, and if you start honestly rebuilding now, they'll be invaluable in 3-5 years.

Well, this might be the last Bruins post until October or so, when I can once again curse the Icecapades.

I don't exist.

I found this way too funny.

HowManyOfMe.com

There are: 0 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

Brainwashing

I was browsing the interweb today, and I was shown the grand folly of the web site http://www.conservapedia.com by a friend(thanks Joe!). This is a wikipedia written by homeschoolers and their ilk, and its highly disturbing. Its disturbing to me because it does precisely what a reference guide should NOT do, it puts forth an agenda, and is, and I quote:

...an online resource and meeting place where we favor Christianity and America. Conservapedia has easy-to-use indexes to facilitate review of topics. You will much prefer using Conservapedia compared to Wikipedia if you want concise answers free of "political correctness".

Well, isn't that just ducky. Instead of being a neutral document, lets put out a Christian reference to make sure that the brainwashed masses remain so. Some gems from the conservapedia include claims of live dinosaurs, which ironically is criticized for not being creationist enough for some, and this doozy:

The existence of unicorns is controversial. Secular opinion is that they are mythical. However, they are referred to in the Bible nine times,^[1] which provides an unimpeachable de facto argument for their once having been in existence.

Wow. Just, wow. The existence of unicorns is neither here nor there, but the idea of the bible being complete fact is just ludicrous to me. You know how someone mentions astronomical speeds or distances, and it just blows your mind? For example, that the brightest star in the sky is over 50,000,000,000,000 miles away but you can still see it? Your mind just shuts off, and just can't comprehend that kind of number. I feel that way about the infallibility of the bible, except in reverse. I can't comprehend how anyone can possibly believe that, and still have the right number of chromosomes.

Its not just the animal world that's getting abused like a buffet at a Ramadan sunset. The physical world is getting the left hook of God, too. The conservapediacs suggest that because the moon is moving away from the earth,(this is a fact, they can measure it with a laser) that is proof that gravity does not exist. What. The. Fuck. The moon weighs 7x10^32 kilos, if gravity didn't exist, it would certainly move away from the earth at a much higher rate than 3 cm a year. In fact, the difference seen by the apollo lunar laser ranging experiment(a very cool experiment name, by the way) puts the upper limit of change in Newton's gravitational constant at 1 in 100,000,000,000. Saying that the distance to the moon changing proves that gravity does not exist is like saying water is explosive because it contains hydrogen and oxygen. No, its not that simple, its even more idiotic. Its like saying someone I only know over the internet doesn't exist because I've never met them. No, thats not it either. See what I mean about not being able to fathom the horrible logic used?

For shits and giggles, I checked out their entry on Sir Isaac Newton, who I know was a VERY devout Christian, and studied nature and his surroundings to learn more about God. They put forth his bio pretty well, but they have to add this little tidbit to it as well:

The majority opinion holds that Newton was a unitarian (one God) and an Arian (Jesus was divine but did not exist eternally and was created by God at some point before coming to Earth)Both are commonly regarded by conservative Christians as the foulest of heresies, and Newton's adoption of them illustrates the folly of adopting personal religious beliefs rather than submitting to lawful authority.

Sigh. What does this possibly add? What does this whole farce of a reference document add? Nothing, really. All it does is provide a way for homeschoolers and conservative christians to further brainwash their kids. "Oh no, kids, don't go use the Wikipedia, use the Conservapedia!" Compare the Conservapedia entry on Sir Isaac Newton, and the Wikipedia entry on the same man. One is 4 paragraphs long, the other is more along the lines of 40. Its simply more informative. I'm not against homeschooling, per se, I think that given the right parents and right kids, it can be a great thing. However, when its used to brainwash the kids into the same backward, close-minded thinking that their parents suffer from, its a tragedy. And it's a disservice to the kids, because they're going to grow up, get a job, and tell Jim from accounting that he's going to hell because he believes that gravity exists. What good does that do anyone? I guess it continues the word of God, or at least their version, which, if you listen to them, is the correct version.

Should I leave a comment telling them that Isaac was most likely gay? Nah, it'd make their heads explode.

Bruins Blog 3

I moved my sumo stuff to another blog for easier reading, and for my own sanity. So now it looks like I haven't posted in 2 months.

What to say about the Bruins? They put together a good streak after my last B's blog, and managed to make it to the #7 spot or so, and were a good 5-6 games over .500. I was hoping it could last, but the wheels have fallen off of the bus now. They've dropped something like 8 of their last 10, and 6 in a row at one point. They're being forgotten by the fans, by the media, by ESPN, and by nearly everyone. No one picked them to do anything in the beginning of the season, but for a major team in a major market, you don't hear boo about them, other than the occasional score, even in Boston. They've been relegated to the "show a score but no highlights" team on ESPN, and the fans are starting to not show up for games. With a record of 24-25-4, and 52 points, they're 10 points out of the playoffs, and only above Florida(51) and the lowly Phlyers(34) in their conference, 25th overall. My prediction of 32-38-12 and 76 points doesn't seem out of the realm of possibility, certainly.

Personnel-wise, there's some talk about moving some of the bigger-name players to get some youngsters and possibly help the team rebuild for next and future years. Brad Stuart, Marco Sturm, and even Glen Murray(I almost said Wesley) are up on the blocks, and have rumors flying about them. I'd normally be all for trades, but with this team, I don't even know if it matters. They need a new goaltender with some modicum of talent to back up Thomas, who's just too old to be going 44 out of 53 games, and Hannu's just not ready for prime time, 3-7 in 15 games, so its more like 3-12, with a 4.5 GAA. Ug-Leee. The other problem I have with trading for youngsters is that the team won't pay for good players over a long period of time. Its happened so many times I can't count. I guarantee that you'll see some Stuart, Sturm, and/or Murray get traded for some has-been who comes to Boston and has a good season or two, and makes a run for the money.


I'll be a Bruins fan until I die, but their current crap has to stop, and soon. (I've been saying that for the last 15 years)

Latest prediction: 36-40-6, for 78 points, slightly better than last prediction. Still out of the points, but 24th overall, 12th in their division.

Bite me!

Lately, I've been bitten by the creation bug. Its a horrible time of the year to get such a bug, as I'm incredibly busy, and I've vowed not to shirk on my holiday responsibilities like I did last year. I have managed to create some PHP pages for a friend's online game, and that's helped, but I really want to do something more than that, like write a novel, or create a D&D campaign, or some other intellect-bending undertaking.

Part of this I blame on Gunch, who asked what kind of MMO we would make if we could. I proceeded to spit out a description of a game that's been building in my head for some time.

I'd make a good space MMORPG, or attempt to make one. Something on an epic scale, with various starting planets for each race. After starting on your home planet, you go on planet-based quests to get the equipment, notoriety, and respect needed to get on a vessel, captained by another PC. The vessels would be based off of templates, but could be altered and designed in such a way that they would be unique for each vessel. Then there would be vessel based quests as well, and skill-based "stations" on the ship, like navigator, weapons tech, communications, etc. Each of these stations would have tasks that needed to be done while on mission. What quests would there be, might you ask? Well, there would be "bad guy" alien ships to fight, space stations to loot, other PC ships to attack and loot, and of course planet based missions. The ship-to-ship fights can be shoot-to-destroy, or shoot-to-loot, where your ship would try to disable the other ship so you could board it. Once a ship is boarded, hand-to-hand fighting ensues on the ship, with the uniqueness of each ship playing out in the floor plan. The planetary missions could range from the simple recon missions for a reward from your government to full on raids with dozens of ships fighting off the planetary defenses to invade and eventually take over the cities and perhaps the whole world. The planetary defenses would probably be NPC based, with PC defender ships pitching in if they're in the neighborhood. Of course there'd be faster than light speed travel, but through wormholes or space highways, like in the Freelancer game. If battling for turf isn't your fare, there's always discovery missions to find new planets. Of course, there wouldn't be FTL highways to the new stars, but there'd be an in-game mechanism to make it not so boring going through space to the new locations.
Crafting would have its form in planetary play, with the ability to craft weapons, engines, shields, or whatever for ships, as well as chemistry and physics based skills to find new technologies and alloys to give your race, or even just your team, more of an edge. Death wouldn't have a penalty, or if it did, a small penalty, but if you died on a ship, and that ship was destroyed, the ship doesn't respawn, its gone. You've got to find a new ride, or if you're the owner, you've got to raise the funds for a new one. Think about it, a whole galaxy in flux, with planets changing hands and space stations getting built, then destroyed, etc.

Oh, I'd love to be able to make this game, and really get people in to it, but I know that its beyond my scope, currently. My other aim is to make a good Harry Potter style duelling game, and I've got all sorts of ideas for that, but I don't want to reveal them at this point. I've come up with all sorts of ideas lately for some pretty cool things, including an XBox Live Arcade Sumo game, an XBLA curling game,(I think this would be REALLY popular, in some kind of weird culty way) and other weird off the wall things.

But, real life comes in to play, as it always does, and can take us away from our creativity and "free time". I'm really hoping to hear tomorrow about a possible new job, and the holidays are crazily upon us, and that's taking a toll, and I of course still have lots to do at my current job, and there are games for the 360 and Wii that I haven't played nearly enough of, and 2 seasons of Dr. Who to watch, on and on. Its all quite a mess.

In short, I've got a bug, and thank goodness its not the Norwalk Virus. Once was enough for me. Stay tuned for updates, maybe I'll have something to show in a few weeks. Or not.

Don't Call it a Comeback(Bruins Blog 2)

I've been here for years...Huh? What? LL Cool J references? At this time of night? No, its just another Bruins blog. Wow, its been a month since updating this silly thing. But if you blog and there's no-one there to read it, does it matter? Did you know that I learned how to clap with one hand, just so I could answer that philosophical question, a la bart simpson? Its darn useful. Anyway...
After starting off horrifically, the Bruins are starting to make a comeback. Well, I hate to call it a comeback, as they've just reached mediocrity, and are still of little quality. The offense, as I predicted, is starting to gel,(or is it jel? I think its gel, and that the use of jel was inspired by the demon dessert, jell-o) and actually putting up the goals. But there's still the problem of not being able to stop the other team from scoring, especially in the third period, or when they have a large lead. Give these B's a 3 goal lead, and they fall asleep. I know its happened at least 3 times this year, against Toronto, Carolina, and the Habitants of Royal Mountain most recently. And having seen two of those games, I'm here to say that it definitely wasn't the goalie's fault. The defense was just letting the opposing team take shot after shot, like some crazed sideburned samurai.
So yes, they're looking better, and are over .500, with a 13-10-2 record. Hey ESPN, would it kill you to put up a graph a la what you do for MLB? I know that hockey is now 6th on your list, below NASCAR and "Autos", and barely above college basketball, which is just beginning, but show a little love, will you?
Ugh, I just looked at the NHL Power chart on ESPN, and I think I threw up in my mouth a little. The top teams are: Buffalo,(and their horrid new logo) the Anaheim Ducks, the San Jose Sharks, the Nashville Predators, the Atlanta Thrashers, the Carolina Hurricanes, and the Dallas Stars. Are you kidding me? If people want to know why hockey is failing, maybe they should look to expansion and the movement away from the traditional cities. I know that Hartford, Winnipeg and Quebec aren't exactly huge markets, but I certainly would rather have a team there than in Kansas City or Oklahoma City, or Salt Lake City. Cut the team in half, and you'll see some amazing hockey, and people will start coming back to the game. Or alternatively, do what the English Premier League does, and cut the league in half, with an NHL Premier and an NHL Standard league. The worst team in the premier league goes to the standard league, and the team that wins the standard league cup moves up to the big time. I've made this same argument for baseball, and I think it shows that I like it. Yeah, it would kill me to see the Bruins be in the standard league, but thems the breaks.
Back to the Bruins. Savard is looking very good, and he's fast as lightning. He reminds me a bit of Brian Rolston from a few years ago, except without the defensive capabilities. Marc is one of the reasons they're getting burned on turnovers and defense, he's always got an eye up-ice for that elusive breakaway. Phil Kessel is trying his hardest, but isn't coming out the way I had hoped, but he's trying, and he's young. Of course, I said that about Kyle MacLaren. I think Phil may end his season in Providence, but I could be wrong. I hope I'm wrong. Patrice Bergeron is blazing fast, and has eagle eyes. He's got 25 points, but would have 30 if you add his pipe-ringers. I haven't seen this kind of accuracy on the Bs since Ray was here.
Speaking of the defense, no one's standing out, and I do like Zdeno Chara, but I don't think he's captain material. Why not make Glen Murray captain? Because 1)He doesn't want it, and 2)if they continue to stink, he'll be out of town before the year's end. The D is overall a young group, and they're showing it, chasing around speedy players like a cheerleader after a jock. Players like Martin St. Louis make them look stupid, as do skilled players like Rod Brin'd'Amour.
I guess I was wrong when I said that Hannu was going to be the go to guy this year, he folded like a paranoid poker player, and got sent down to the minors for it. Who's the #2 in Boston right now? No one. Timmy T is between the pipes, and is 11-6 for his efforts, which is not a bad total, until you look at his goals against, which is a manwich-sized 3.10, though his save percentage is a little better, at 90.4%. For those stattos out there, that puts our man Tim at 33rd out of 41 in GAA, but a better 23rd in percentage. He's looked better of late, but still not great.

My new prediction is a sight better than last one, but not by much. New prediction:
32-38-12, for a total of 76 points, and a 12th place finish in the East, 25ht overall. Smack dab in the middle of half-crappy land, where you don't get a great pick, but you don't get into the playoffs.

Of Songs and People

There are certain songs out there that remind me of certain people. I was just listening to the music on my IRiver, and I caught one that always reminds me of my wife, and I'm not sure why. The song is Chez Seychelles, by Michael Doucet and Beausoleil. Its old-timey, and its a fiddle song, and I heard it at our wedding, but its something more than that. Its sweet, and simple, and homey, and happy. In my mind, I can picture us in early 19th century costumes waltzing to this song, and being very very happy. Some days when I hear this song, I even get choked up.

There are other songs that I associate with her, such as "Summertime", as sung by Ella Fitzgerald. I associate this song with her because early on in our courtship, I was at her apartment, and heard a tune coming from the living room, and there she was, quietly hand sewing something, and singing Summertime. She's got a lovely voice, I wish she used it more often. On that day, she looked up and saw me looking around the corner at her, and she was very embarrassed. Little things like that remind me how special she is, and I suppose Chez Seychelles does that as well, but I can't pin down why it does, it doesn't have the same kind of direct link that Summertime does.

I associate Cold Beverages by G Love and Special Sauce to my old roommate and good friend Matt, he introduced me to the Philadelphonic sounds, and many a hot summer day were spent in the blue Subaru going to and fro, listening to G Love or A Tribe Called Quest.

Unfortunately, I can't think of any others right now, but I know there are others. Another interesting phenomenon I suffer from is music-induced memories. It might not sound very interesting, but when I hear certain songs, I think to times or places that I heard them in. "Well, duh," you say, "That happens to everyone." But its not the typical "Oh, I was at so and so's house when I heard that" business. It happens the most when I hear songs that I was listening to while reading on the T. I remember the book, I remember the scene, I remember the weather, and I get a distinct remembrance of my feelings at the time, even those not associated with the book or with the song. I've told some people about this, and they attest that they've had the same thing happen to them, and we generally attribute it to a subliminal-type trigger, that our brains and senses remember more when more of them are in use, or when concentrating on something like reading a book.

I'm reminded of a story from Richard Feynman,(noted physicist and one of my heroes) who, while in college, did a study with his friends. Loosely put, he noticed that his friends thought and processed thought differently than he did. This may seem obvious, but its still an interesting study if you ask me. He asked his friends to silently count out what they thought was a minute while doing different things, including reading a book, talking, typing, walking up and down stairs, playing an instrument, etc. He found that while he was able to read a book and count at the same time, his friends had a hard time doing the same, while on the other hand, they were able to talk and count at the same time, but Richard had a very difficult time doing so. He posited that it came down to how a person counts. Some people said they count by seeing the numbers in their head, to others it was a kind of beat in their head, and others spoke the numbers to themselves. Try it yourself some time. Count to 60 doing different activities, and see which takes the longest and is the most difficult to you. I find it easy to count while listening to something else, but I have a very hard time counting while reading or writing something I've never read before. If I type something off of a page, I don't have any problems, though.

Once again, I've ended somewhere completely different than where I started off, or even where I intended to go, but life's all about the journey and not the destination, eh?

I think Feynman would tend to agree with me.

Blog Zero?

I found myself in an interesting state of mind today. I found out that one of my favorite blogs to visit is authored by a very Christian person. He goes to Christian rock concerts, his kids go to bible school, he does a lot of Christian web sites, and so on. Now, I grew up Catholic, and I generally believe that what a person believes is their own business. At the same time, I hate preachy types. If you're Catholic, Christian, Jewish, Mormon, Pagan, Buddhist, Atheist or whatever, I don't want to be converted. The more you try to force me to be something, the more I'm going to resist.

Back to the blog. The author isn't a preachy type, at least in his blog, and I find this to be good, and refreshing for someone who seems to be such a staunch Christian. The difficult part is that I saw one of his web pages that he did for a pro-life group, which bothered me.

I'm not sure why I'm put aback by the revelation that someone is very religious, especially very Christian. For pete's sake, my mother was almost a nun! Maybe its because it often is followed by a certain kind of inability to be accepting of others and people with other views.(something that my mother has no problem with, she loves everyone, including the psycho, evil, heartless girlfriends I've had in the past(until they broke up with me(which was somtimes my fault) and broke my heart(i just added that last bit to mess with more parenthesis))) And with staunch Christianity often comes a militant rejection of the possibility of gay rights and pro-choice rights. I think that's why I dig the Unitarians so much, they are welcoming of everyone, as long as they're kind and welcoming of others themselves. Its a friendly, warm atmosphere, and even anti-social me enjoyed their coffee socials. Sure, I was still a little uncomfortable, but I was more at ease than normal.

I know plenty of pagans, and I'm happy that most of them are accepting of others, and their views, because I've also met pagans that are as hard-core as any Christian, and as anti-Christian as any Christian is anti-pagan. Tolerance is the key to me, and I think that should be the message at the core of every religion. Some are more geared towards this idea, such as Buddhism, others aren't. Islam, ironically, is geared towards tolerance and equality, at least in the teachings of Mohammed. Like any religion, his teachings have been skewed to match the views of the ruling group, and now many people think of Islam as the most intolerant religion around.

And don't get the wrong idea that I dislike people being religious. I think I've made that clear here, but in case I haven't, I have no problem with people celebrating their faith, as long as they've consciously looked at what their religion is putting forth, and believe in it, or believe in enough of it to follow. I took a good look at Catholicism, and I decided that I couldn't call myself part of a church that held the views that the Catholic church does. Do I still uphold some Catholic ideas? Sure, but in no way would I call myself Catholic. There's a pagan I know that is afraid that whenever she practices her religion, I'll be offended or I'll rebuke her for believing in something bigger than herself. I have to keep telling her that I'm not that way, that she can believe what she wants, and she can practice the way that she wants, as long as she truly understands why she believes what she does, even if that reason is "it makes me happy and more at peace".

Back to the blog, again, and my reactions to finding out that the author is big time Christian. I guess that I just have to push through the disappointment that I feel in finding out some of his views, and accept that he is the way he is, like I ask everyone else to do. After all, he's not advocating on his blog for anti-abortion anti-gay marriage laws, so what should it matter to me? On the other hand, he probably supports and votes for politicians that are in favor of such laws. Its a fine, fuzzy line. Either way, until he starts putting it into his blog, I doubt that I'll let it affect me that much, I'll just note it, and add it to the things I know about him, and realize that those views may affect other views that are seemingly unrelated.

I hate the circus and the Ice Capades(Bruins Blog 1)

And not for the reason most would. No, I hate Barnum & Bailey's and Disney on Ice/Ice Capades not for their treatment of animals, not for the clowns, not for the horrible dance numbers, nor the thousands of plague-infested rug rats infesting the events,(all valid reasons) but for their schedule. Their schedule puts one or the other in Boston for the beginning two weeks of October. Why should this matter? It puts my beloved Bruins on the road for two weeks at the beginning of the season, that's why.

For pretty much as long as I can remember, the B's have started off on the road. This has several bad effects on the team, which I will go into briefly. First off, the team's on the road for an extended time, which is demoralizing, tiring, and can really wear a team down. Secondly, its at the beginning of the season, which means that team chemistry often takes a hit because there's no time to rest, no time to congeal, and no practices at home to help make the team better as a team. This year's Bruins have suffered from this quite a bit, having no sense of cohesion at all, and have started off with a 1-3-1 record.(fine, 1-3-0-1, its still 3 points in 5 games) Thirdly, or maybe Secondly part two, the beginning of the season means that the other teams are having their home openers, which apart from the playoffs, are often the most anticipated games of the season, faces fresh and new, hopes high, and thoughts awash with Lord Stanley's Cup. For the Bruins and their fans, it consistently means being the bad guy for 2 weeks, the black hatters, often with a greatly reduced chance simply because they're on the road on an opening night. Fourthly, it hurts the Bruins because by the time they HAVE come home, its mid-October, and the hockey newbies just don't care aboot the season anymore. Add to that a more losses than wins, and the mood is more somber than it should be when they're finally home.

The Bruins are not going to be good this year. Some are picking them to make the playoffs in the 5-8 slot, which last year meant 92-101 points. I doubt they'll make it at all. Its early, but the chemistry isn't there yet, and they're mainly a young team with a few exceptions, including Glen Murray, PJ Axelsson, and Tim Thomas. I like Phil Kessel, I like the addition of Zdeno Chara, I love Patrice Bergeron, and I can't say that they have any slackers like they did last year in the likes of Alexei Zhamnov. They're just young or inexperienced, and have to take some time to get together as a team. Do I think Hannu has the goods to be a number 1 goalie? Sure, he's young, only 22, and has good fundamentals. As sad as it is to say, I'm in favor of ditching this year. Trade Glen Murray to a cup-worthy team for some young guns and maybe a young defenseman or some room under the cap, not that I'm expecting such genius from Harry's Gang.

I'm pretty disgusted with the managerial moves since the end of the lockout, but its nothing new compared to the last 20 years. They poised the team to have a lot of contracts end the year before the lockout, in anticipation, and that worked wonderfully, giving them the lowest salary cap going into the lockout, poising them to snap up some real talent that other teams simply couldn't afford any more. Instead, they got washed up and tired old hags that were selfish and had no team dynamic. This lead to a listless Glen Murray and a early-season crumble that lead to the unexplainable trade of Joe Thornton. I'm not going to get into it deeply in this post, but I was okay with the thoughts of trading Jumbo Joe, he tended to hang onto the puck too much in the corners, waiting for Murray to get open in front of the net. He just didn't seem to fit in Boston, and as much as I loved him, I was willing to see him move on, provided the B's got back something decent in return, like a Ilya Kovalchuck or Danny Heatley. Nope. They get three nickels for a quarter, Marco Sturm, Brad Stuart, and Wayne friggin Primeau. Next, they trade away Samsonov, and end up in the cellar.

My predictions for the team is 25-45-6-6, for a final point total of 62 dismal points, and 2nd worst in the standings, the lowest being godawful Phoenix. They're in a tough division, they look like crap, and they can't gel.

Chaos theory, and why its full of crap.

This post is to continue on the mention I made earlier about humanity's propensity towards self-centeredness with regards to chaos theory, as it relates to the physical world.(self-centrism sounds much cooler, but its not a real word) Chaos theory was first brought to the general public by Michael Chrichton and Jurassic Park, where that freakishly tall knob, Jeff Goldblum, explains chaos theory by dripping water down the back of whatshername's hand, stating that the path can not be predicted because of subtle movements in her hand, her pulse, etc. For you more technical types, here's the definition of chaos theory from wikipedia:

For a dynamical system to be classified as chaotic, most scientists will agree that it must have the following properties:

• it must be sensitive to initial conditions,
• it must be topologically mixing, and
• its periodic orbits must be dense.

Sensitivity to initial conditions means that each point in such a system is arbitrarily closely approximated by other points with significantly different future trajectories. Thus, an arbitrarily small perturbation of the current trajectory may lead to significantly different future behavior.

Sensitivity to initial conditions is popularly known as the "butterfly effect", suggesting that the flapping of a butterfly's wings over Tokyo might create tiny changes in the atmosphere, which could over time cause a tornado to occur over Texas. The flapping wing represents a small change in the initial condition of the system, which causes a chain of events leading to large-scale phenomena. Had the butterfly not flapped its wings, the trajectory of the system might have been vastly different.

Sensitivity to initial conditions is often confused with chaos in popular accounts. It can also be a subtle property, since it depends on a choice of metric, or the notion of distance in the phase space of the system. For example, consider the simple dynamical system produced by repeatedly doubling an initial value (defined by the mapping on the real line from x to 2x). This system has sensitive dependence on initial conditions everywhere, since any pair of nearby points will eventually become widely separated. However, it has extremely simple behavior, as all points except 0 tend to infinity. If instead we use the bounded metric on the line obtained by adding the point at infinity and viewing the result as a circle, the system no longer is sensitive to initial conditions. For this reason, in defining chaos, attention is normally restricted to systems with bounded metrics, or closed, bounded invariant subsets of unbounded systems.

Even for bounded systems, sensitivity to initial conditions is not identical with chaos. For example, consider the two-dimension torus described by a pair of angles (x,y), each ranging between zero and 2π. Define a mapping that takes any point (x,y) to (2x, y + a), where a is any number such that a/2π is irrational. Because of the doubling in the first coordinate, the mapping exhibits sensitive dependence on initial conditions. However, because of the irrational rotation in the second coordinate, there are no periodic orbits, and hence the mapping is not chaotic according to the definition above.

Topologically mixing means that the system will evolve over time so that any given region or open set of its phase space will eventually overlap with any other given region. Here, "mixing" is really meant to correspond to the standard intuition: the mixing of colored dyes or fluids is an example of a chaotic system.

I don't even care about the second two points, because, much like many mathematical theories, the first point of chaos theory falls apart when applied to real life, specifically nature. There are patterns everywhere in nature, and yes, they may seem chaotic to us, but they usually have some sort of symmetry and balance and an underlying system. Here are some examples, using some of the famous "butterfly effect" examples:

A butterfly flaps its wings in Tokyo and a tornado happens in Texas, eventually. Why? Because the butterfly changing the miniscule amount of air around it causes the weather patterns to change, therefore creating a massively energetic meteorological phenomenon half a world away. Bull. Crap. That butterfly's wing flap injects a tiny amount of force and energy on to the surrounding environment. This energy is diffused, dampened, and scattered into relative nothingness within a few seconds by my friend and yours, entropy. The butterfly flapping its wings doesn't matter because compared to the massive amounts of energy coming in from other sources, namely the sun and moon and earth's core, the energy expelled by Mr. butterfly is nothing. Negligible. Irrelevant. In the big scheme of things, it changes nothing.

Perhaps a more concrete example is dropping a pebble in a pond, another popular chaos theory "lets bring it to the masses" example. Again, this is in nature, and again, it doesn't hold up. Dropping a pebble in a pond causes ripples. This is true. The ripples extend out radially. Also true. But if you stood on the other side of the pond, you could not detect that a pebble has been dropped way across the pond, now could you? No. Once again, its is because the energy diffuses, takes other forms, bounces off of a bank and is absorbed as impact, and so on and so forth. In fact, I'm looking out at sailboats and motorboats that are leaving wakes, sizeable wakes, in the harbor, and those waves are not even making an impact on the water close to me. Yes, the water close to me is exhibiting signs of disturbance, but much more from the big tankers and wind than any 20 foot sailboat cruising along. Is it detectable? Maybe, but that 20 ft sailboat, for the sake of predictions, can easily be ignored. Which brings me to my next point, size comparisons and total sample.

The previous two examples were both examples of a very small effect on a very large system. The small effect can usually be ignored in a large system. That brings us to the example used in Jurassic Park. That system was one drop, falling down a hand that may be what, 4 or 5 inches(10 cm) long, max? The changes in environment on the hand, namely veins pulsing, hand twitching, are miniscule to us, but not to the environment they are considered in. To the whole environment(the hand) they are what, 1:1000? (assuming a 1/10 mm twitch or pulse) And to the actual moving object, the drop of water, we're talking 1:5, maybe 1:10. If you dropped a 1 foot wide rock in a 1000 foot wide pond, you'll be able to detect it across the pond. Or, in the butterfly case, you'd need a Mothra the size of Virginia to make a difference. An average hurricane delivers 10^14, or 100000000000000 Watts of energy per day, or 200 times the total energy production capability of mankind. To say this can be changed by something as small as a butterfly flapping its wings half a world away is ludicrous.

This all brings me to what I think is the real failing of the butterfly effect, which is man's general self centeredness. Man tends to like to think he makes a difference in his surrounding world, and in a sense, this is true. Man can have an effect on his neighborhood, his town, possibly his state, and maybe even his country. Powerful people can affect the world of man. However, even the most powerful person in the world can not truly affect the Earth, let alone the solar system or galaxy. Even if every nuclear bomb was set off simultaneously, the earth, while devastated, would recover eventually, given enough time. Would it change? Yes, but in the grand astronomical scheme of things, nothing would change. Earth would continue to be a mostly water covered planet 93 million miles from its parent star. And it would still be able to sustain life. Meager at first, but eventually the earth would return to human-habitable status.

The butterfly effect supports this theory of "even the littlest change can have an effect". In reality, the littlest change often means nothing, and gets swallowed up and forgotten by the larger, more important changes.

How's that for a cheery outlook?