be the change you want to see in the world

From TSN:

Commissioner Gary Bettman says officials who don’t call penalties as warranted during the NHL playoffs will soon find themselves watching the post-season from the sidelines.

That message has been made clear to Colin Campbell, senior executive vice-president of hockey operations, and Stephen Walkom, director of officiating, he said on a conference call Wednesday.

“My instructions to Colie and to Stephen are if an official puts his whistle away, they should put the official away for the rest of the playoffs,” Bettman said.

“How long you work in the playoffs is discretionary. It depends how well you are working. And if a guy decides he’s putting the whistle away, then he’s done.”

Finally, the NHL playoffs have a chance of being something more like hockey and less like the WWE, where a closed-fist punch is illegal, but results only in a finger wag and a cheer from the crowd. I know some hockey fans will dislike that comparison, but if the most popular aspect of your game is actually against the rules, you have a problem with the core of your game. If enforcing the rules means the fanbase of the NHL no longer includes the drunken idiot sitting behind me screaming “f&*%#n’ kill ‘em” while little kids are sitting right below him, that make me happy. He can stay home and watch UFC.

The NHL is emerging from its Dark Ages, where expansion into unlikely US markets drove the sport to a lower skill level and higher brutality level. I see a reversal, and the goons sat for most of the past year as a result.

Scroll thorugh my iPhoto Browser and this is what you’ll see, page after page after page. Digital photography makes baby photography irresistable.

Not to take anything away from the little tyke. Great rookie season and great for an 18 year old. He had some help with the obstruction crack-down. Only Hawerchuk did it as a rookie before him. But one thing is missing from the gushing analysis. Gretzky scored 104 points as a 17/18 yr old in the WHA, and 137 points as an 18/19 year old in the NHL. Gretzky does not hold any rookie records in the NHL because he was not a rookie in his first NHL season, even though he was only eighteen when his first NHL goal was scored. TGO’s birthday is January 24th, and Crosby’s is in August. I give it to Crosby that he was the first to score 100 points at his age, but Gretzky scored his 100th NHL point in 61 games, just 28 days after his 19th birthday. So, yes, let’s celebrate Crosby’s achievement. But let’s also keep it in proper perspective. There is and will be only one Great One. Crosby had a great year, but is also the beneficiary of being born at a different point in hockey’s cycle.

I can’t help but feel like I’m seeing something fundamental and ground-breaking when I watch the video of Sven König demonstrating his music video reassembly software. I’ve never seen anything use the voice of an MC to query a database and build not only music, but music video out of it. The result is remarkable. I can only imagine where it will lead, but I know it will be somewhere cool.

The first thing I can think of would be to use it strip out the video and use it to drive GarageBand. Pick an idom and a spectrum of samples and start humming. Instant composition. Imagine instantly turning your voice into a symphony. Make it respond to the volume of your voice by adding instruments.

Or, one could build a database of video imagery that coincides with sounds that we know evoke a certain emotional response. Mastering that spectrum with the voice and enhancing it with video using Scrambled Hackz would be a powerful therapeutic or (gulp) non-therapeutic tool.

I could keep coming up with applications, but I have client who needs a website…click to go to youtube and watch the video. This is a clear mark on the timeline folks. Enjoy.

Oh, I smell a Bobby McFerrin comeback…

The Bowerbird collects a sometimes incredibly beautiful array of objects to decorate the bower it builds. It builds this bower for mating purposes, in the hopes that its grandeur and aesthetic mastery will attract a female. When a female arrives, the Bowerbird will do a dance [rm|wmv]. If all goes well, the two will procreate. Nature is beautiful and fun, though sometimes heartbreaking as well.

This reminds me of the growing inventory of Web 2.0 applications. Every day a collection of newly minted companies trot out another mashup or social software application that leverages a new (or sometimes not so new) aggregation of data from the growing list of open APIs. Then, not unlike the original dotcom bubble, they hope to get laid (attract an investor).

This is not a bad thing. Sex is good. Money is good. I like both, and the dance of investor and start-up is very much like courtship and seduction.

The thing I find funny is the way these start-ups are just like Bowerbirds. APIs are the shiny objects, the bower is the application or mashup, and the dance is, well, the dance - the beautiful swirl of data intermingling and synthesizing to make something meaningful and useful. Gyrations that amuse and excite.

Good luck to you all. I honor you.