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Ready for fewer massive dudes skating around the ice looking to smash each
other into the glass while occasionally attempting to put a small rubber disk
into the goal, hockey fans? Then the new
rule adopted this week by the NHL's general managers is for you. At their
annual meeting, the GMs voted to adopt a five-minute overtime session with
three skaters a side instead of four in an effort to try and reduce the number
of games decided by a shootout. The NHL's Board of Governors approved the
change yesterday and men like Columbus Blue Jackets general manager Jarmo
Kekalainen expressed excitement over the change. “I think it's a good change
and we've seen evidence of a lot more games decided in the overtime with that
change both in the American (Hockey) League and the Swedish league,"
Kekalainen said. Initially, the league kicked around the possibility of a
hybrid overtime that would have started with four-on-four and then gone to
three-on-three for the final three minutes of overtime, but the players' union
was against the idea. The shootout has been a part of the league since the
2004-05 lockout as a means of eliminating ties from the game, but GMs have
grown tired of tired of the high number of games decided by a glorified skills
competition - taking notice, soccer? - and decided to make the change. The NHL
had 170 shootouts last season, representing 13.8 percent of all games. Teams
that lost a shootout still get a point, while those who win get three and
league officials clearly felt too many teams were gaining or losing points
based on a skills contest. "I think what the goal was here was to reduce
the shootouts," Nashville GM David Poile said. "The managers just really felt they'd
like to end more games in an overtime situation versus the shootout.” Having
only six skaters on the ice in overtime would also open up the ice more, so it
could be a winning recipe all around……….
- We
were bound to get here America, even if it took us a while longer than it
should have to waddle our fat asses to our portly destiny. Americans have
officially tipped the scale from “Need to lose a few pounds” to “Get the crane
and cut a hole in the bedroom wall to lift us out of the bed in which we’ve
become entrenched due to our excessive girth,” according to a new report in the
journal JAMA Internal Medicine. The authors of the report found that in the
United States, adults who are obese now outnumber those who are merely
overweight. Researchers from Washington University School of Medicine in St.
Louis estimated that 67.6 million Americans over the age of 25 were obese as of
2012, outweighing an additional 65.2 million who were merely overweight. They
based their findings on data collected between 2007 and 2012 as part of the
National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, an ongoing study conducted by
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It appears that First Lady Michelle
Obama's "Let's Move!" program aimed at children, government efforts
to educate people about proper eating habits and the Food and Drug Administration's
quest to ban trans fats have failed to sufficiently address the problem and
even with longtime fast food titans like McDonald’s moving to make their menus
healthier, a supersized nation is more in need than ever of extra seats
purchases on flights to accommodate their excess flab and structurally
reinforced ambulances to support their weight. The NHANES data includes height
and weight, which are used to calculate a person's body mass index and a sadly
low percentage of Americans fall in the normal BMI range of 18.5 to 24.9.
Anyone with a BMI in the 25-to-29.9 range is considered overweight, while a BMI over 30 qualifies a person as obese.
Women are falling well short in the fight, as 37 percent of them are obese and
30 percent are overweight. In other words ladies, two-thirds of you are above a
normal weight. Men are right there with the females, as 35 percent of men are
obese and 40 percent are overweight. Now, more than ever, it’s time to push
away from the buffet table and go for a walk……….
- So many
jokes to make, such a limited amount of space. The simple version of this is
that Canadian hack arena rockers Nickelhack have cancelled their North American
tour after frontman Chad Kroeger was diagnosed with a vocal cyst. The legit
version is that a band with whom the experience of listening to their music is
the equivalent of having your own vocal cyst has pulled the plug on a tour that
would have assaulted the ear drums and minds of people for whom good musical
taste is more elusive than the bastard offspring of Bigfoot and the chupacabra.
''I am sorry I have to interrupt the party this summer and I am definitely not
thrilled with the prospect of being silent for many weeks to come when I could
be out there playing for our fans. I am relying on my doctor and his team to
help get my voice back in good form as quickly as possible,” Kroeger said in a
statement posted on Nickelback.com. Again, so many jokes. First, the irony is
that the band should be apologizing for the gigs they did play, not the ones they
canceled. Secondly, how can a singer return to “good form” when he’s never
remotetly resembled anything in the general vicinity of good his entire sorry
career? The band also posted a video apologizing for the cancellation of the
tour and yet, they did nothing to express contrition for the hours of terrible
music, vocals that sound as if their author is passing a kidney stone and
lyrcis with less sophistication than a Neanderthal hunter clubbing a tiger with
a massive hunk of wood and dragging it back to his cave. Way to miss the point,
guys. The real hero here is the doctor who diagnosed Kroeger and saved so many
people from having to hear a live Nickelhack performance by ordering the
ultimate poseur frontman to rest for three weeks before having surgery to
rectify the problem. And no, there is still no surgery to rectify sucking
exponentially at music, so don’t expect this procedure to fix much of anything.
Sadly, it’s expected that Kroeger will make a full recovery in time for the
European leg of the tour, which starts in Lithuania on October 14. Sorry we couldn’t
do more to help you out, eastern Europe, but you still have time to avert this
disaster. Write your legislator now and see what you can do……..
- Riot
Watch! Riot Watch! The rage has been flowing deep and the dissidence plentiful
in Paris of late and it kept rolling this week as police in France’s capital detained
five Greenpeace activists after they dangled from a bridge and unfurled banners
on the Seine River that call for cuts in nuclear power. The environmental group
confirmed the arrests, which it said were in response to the fact that France
has the world's highest reliance on nuclear power — about two-thirds of its
current energy production — and also that parliament is debating nuclear power
this week. The enviro-kooks can be forgiven for their choice of location because
there are approximately 79 different bridges over the Seine within the Paris
city limits and they chose on a bridge near the National Assembly, parliament's
lower house. There, they unfurled several banners, including one floating on
the water, showing picture of President
Francois Hollande and his campaign pledge to reduce France's dependency on
nuclear power to 50 percent by 2025. The Greenpeace crew seemed particularly
enraged by the fact that a Senate bill on nuclear power passed last week made
no reference to that deadline. However, the National Assembly has approved the
timetable, and representatives from each chamber are working out the details
this week. Energy and Environment Minister Segolene Royal said Greenpeace wants
France out of nuclear energy production altogether, but was quick to note
"that's not the government's position." She did re-affirm the 2025
date and said "there's no need to polemicize it." In December, Paris
will host a U.N.-backed conference of 190 countries that aims to limit
greenhouse gas emissions as part of efforts to fight global warming and if that
isn't a Greenpeace protestor’s wet dream, then nothing is. "Renewables are
the only way to fight against climate change,” Greenpeace climate activist
Cyrille Cormier said in response to France’s ongoing debate. Keep up the fight,
enviro-kooks……….
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