A Few Quick Notes 401

-While today wasn't particularly bad, nor was it particularly nice, the forecast seems to be suggesting that we could be in for another round of intense wind and rain. So far, aside from some slightly more aggressive wind, these predictions have not yet come to pass.

-Unfortunately, my trusty predictive tool, satellite imagery, seems to be indicating that we are in fact in for another blasting of something or other (presumably rain and wind as it is too warm for snow and wind).



-We had our first game of our Ultimate league's playoffs yesterday. After a somewhat shaky start we managed to overcome a three point deficit and win by three points (I think the final score was 27 to 24). Unfortunately the intensity of the game lead to a number of players making somewhat risky catch attempts; one guy on our team slammed into the wall pretty hard, another guy slid through a door into the hallway next to the gym, and, with only about 30 seconds left in the game, a player on the opposing team dove for a pass and managed to smash his face on the floor.

-Turns out that Canada just won the Olympic gold medal for hockey (though they had to go to overtime to do it).


Blog-off Score

Neil: 9
Cameron: 63

Winter Rain: 8

It is now just after 10:00 PM and still no rain. Not surprisingly, the wind is still howling blowing steadily.

Neil and I were about to go on a last minute beer run (just to be on the safe side of things), though I recently discovered that our intended destination closed a few minutes ago. This is probably a good thing as we both have better things to do with our time than drink beer. One of these things might be to pre-pop popcorn in case we lose power and then get a taste for popcorn.

If you are curious, a power outage would likely limit Neil and Rebecca's Olympics viewing, though maybe they would just put the TV, computer, and modem on the battery back up and give'er until it ran out.

Blog-off Score

Neil: 0
Cameron: 48

Running the Numbers: Vancouver 2010

For the past few weeks I have heard a fair bit about various funding programs that were put in place to help Canadian athlete succeed/win gold at Vancouver Olympics. For the most part, exactly what the money was being used to cover and where it was coming from was a little unclear. Yesterday I finally got around to doing a little looking into some of these details, though sadly I am not sure that they really clarified much for me (though they did explain the source of some of the numbers I have been hearing).

One of the things that got me interested in this topic was repeatedly hearing that the Own the Podium program was valued at $110 million. Somehow this money was to have been distributed to athletes to help them win gold, the overall goal being for Canadians to win more medals than any other Vancouver 2010 participant nation. When I went to their website and looked at their various funding programs the largest winter Olympics related number that I could find was $97 million, which is about $13 million shy of the frequently cited value. I guess I should mention that when I looked through their news releases the larger number was cited, though without reference to specifics as to how this money was spent.

It should also be noted that the Own the Podium initiative supports both summer and winter sports (though the previously mentioned $97 million related only to winter sports) and is supported by both government and corporate sponsors. The website suggests that the Canadian government is their largest contributor, with an annual contribution of $47 million a year (only $11 million of which is targeted at winter sports). Provincial governments (other than New Brunswick) also seem to contribute to this program, though it is not immediately clear how large these contributions are. A similar lack of clarity exists regarding the size of corporate donations (and whether they are in the form of good and services rather than cash). I guess what I am saying is that a detailed budget outlining the sources of revenues would shed light on quite a number of these things, especially as it seems that about $86 million is coming from sources other than the federal government.

From the Own the Podium website I ended up at the Canadian Heritage website, the federal government department responsible for a big chunk of federal government sports funding. What I quickly noticed about this source of funding is that the mysterious $110 million made another appearance, though this time it was backed up by details to show the distribution of the funds.



Source: Winter Olympic Quadrennial History

I am now starting to wonder if there has not been some confusion between the aspirations of the Own the Podium program and the actual budgetary allotment made by Canadian Heritage. I should mention that it is not clear to me whether these numbers include the federal government contribution the Own the Podium program or not (so their contribution could easily be $121 million for this year's winter athletes).

I guess what I find most remarkable about all of this is the quantity of funding per athlete. If we take the $110 million from Canadian Heritage and $86 million from Own the Podium (I won't include the $11 million in federal funding that might otherwise be double counted) we can see that about $196 million in athlete funding was available for this year's winter Olympic athletes (and this isn't even counting smaller private funding initiatives like b2ten).

If we place this $196 million next to the fact that the Canadian winter Olympics team is composed on 206 athletes it seems that the per capita cost of a Canadian winter Olympics athlete is close to a $ 1 million (or $250 000 per year). Another way of looking at it is in terms of medals. While Canada has won 10 medals at the moment, lets assume that Canada wins a total of 16 (2 in curling, 2 in hockey, and 2 miscellaneous). This would make the per medal cost about $12 million.

Of course it would be one thing if the athletes representing Canada were known years in advance and could take advantage of these resources, but in many cases it is not clear which athletes will be representing Canada until just weeks before the events. If this is the case, and athletes are preparing for qualification events with their own resources, what exactly is this money being used for? For instance, how is the $9.25 million that is going to 'curling' being used to benefit Canadian Olympic curlers? This one is particularly worthy of attention as the two teams that represented Canada at the last Olympics are nowhere to be seen this time around, though both teams won medals in the last games. Hockey, with its $14.5 million in funding also boggles my mind as the male half of the program are pros who have their primary training and coaching costs covered by their professional teams.

I guess all of this leaves me wondering what the overall goal of these funding programs are and whether they are in any way justifiable? If the goal is to encourage participation and healthy living we seem to have failed as the emphasis seems to be on the 206 athletes currently representing us at the Olympics instead of the wider population. If the goal was to win medals this too seems to have failed as 10 medals doesn't even get Canada close to top of the medal standings. Of course these programs also need to be placed in the context of the current economic and taxation climate. Can such extravagant (I think $12 million bronzes are extravagant) expenditures be justified in the face of possible tax increases and program cuts? Would Canada really be all that worse off without an Olympic speed skating team (or luge, or any other sport that is infeasible without government funding)?

These thoughts are probably a little disorganized and incomplete, but they are somewhat representative of some of the things I started thinking about once I started to get a better sense of the athletics funding regime in Canada (and this doesn't even include summer sports of the cost of the Olympics). In many ways actually looking at the numbers confirmed my fears that the Olympics are a huge burden on taxpayers for very little return (except for those companies lucky enough to cover them). It also confirmed my suspicion that the media coverage regarding funding has been vague at best.

Blog-off Score

Neil: 0
Cameron: 38

A Few Quick Notes 399

-It seems that the temperature has dipped below freezing, which is about as cold as it has been at any point for the past few days. These relatively low, but not quite always below freezing temperatures are rather annoying and dangerous. Hopefully these temperatures, when combined with the snow we are forecast to get tonight do not result in particularly dangerous conditions tomorrow.

-Though Neil and Rebecca were not here for dinner tonight I decided to make a tomato sauce free cornbread tamale pie (or something like that. The premise of the recipe seemed to be a chili-like (though in this case tomato-free chili) base topped with cornbread. While I was relatively pleased with the meat/bean base, the recipe for cornbread top was somewhat underwhelming. Not only was the batter insufficiently moist to properly spread based on the original recipe (I added enough water to make it functional) I am not sure that it was as tasty a cornbread recipe as the one I normally use. So while I would consider making this again I think that there are a few modifications that I might make based on my experience with the dish tonight.

-Canadian hockey fandom really annoys me. Particularly when a national team is involved this aspect of Canada is really annoying, almost unimaginably infuriating. So many Canadians act as though Canada is the homeland of hockey, yet the sad reality is that we regularly don't do that well and likely can no longer accurately make this claim (if we ever could). The consequence of these feelings is that I really like to see Team Canada lose, particularly on home ice (as they did tonight). This is all the sweeter when the victorious team is a US team, as was the case tonight.

-As I mentioned earlier tonight, I still have a cold and am feeling a little out of it. I can't seem to keep my ideas straight, which is probably a sign that I shouldn't make any more posts tonight.

Blog-off Score

Neil: 0
Cameron: 35

Reading week kick-off

So we have now rolled into another reading week, a week long mid-term break that occurs in the Spring semester at Dalhousie. My general sense of things is that, at least for the most part, all three of us plan on using the week to catch up on various types of school-related work, though with maybe a little more relaxation than is the norm.

I know that I have a fair bit of reading to do in association with a few papers that will be due at the end of the term. I also have some research work to do, as well as TA related work. So I certainly have enough things to keep me busy without taking too much time away for social activities.

Of course we did end up starting things off with a rather unproductive evening on Friday night. As I wasn't feeling particularly full of energy on Friday night I decided to stay in rather than attend a political science grad student event that was to involve a compressed period of alcohol consumption (something that I really didn't feel up for) I decided to stay at home with Neil and Rebecca. We ended up watching two movies, In the Loop, a very funny take on modern politics and the Iraq war, and Sunshine Cleaning. All three of us were pretty pleased with both of these movies (which is a pretty unusual success rate). It should be noted, before anyone complains or raises this issue, both of these movies were rented with free rental coupons, so they weren't things on which we spent all kinds of money.

After the movie watching, we continued to lounge around by watching some of the Olympics coverage. If I recall correctly we watched some of the curling. As some of you might have sensed, Neil and Rebecca, by constantly streaming Olympics coverage, have caused me to watch more of the Olympics than I originally wanted.

Blog-off Score

Neil: 0
Cameron: 32

Another follow-up

It seems that my previous two posts were likely coming from positions based on limited or mis-information.

Not only have some of the major media outlets, even those who are providing national coverage, covered a number of the problems that have been faced by the games thus far, they have even dedicated stories specifically to such coverage (though one might question whether the level of criticism leveled is equal to what we might expect had they not paid to cover the event).

Anyway, what I guess I am say is that I am glad to see that some of the problem associated with the Vancouver Olympics thus far have been covered, but that I am somewhat hesitant to accept that they are getting as much as they might given alternate circumstances. That we have heard little about the removals of the homeless seems to suggest that some of my concerns are at least marginally merited.

I guess we have another two weeks to really get a much better sense of the coverage of these Olympic games. Assuming that I am unable to avoid such coverage in the coming days it seems likely that I may have additional comments as more trends become apparent (or as randomness increases).

Blog-off Score

Neil:0
Cameron: 25

Follow-up

Since my last post (which wasn't that long ago) I have been thinking about things and thought that I should clarify a few aspects of my last post.

Firstly, to some extent I understand why major Canadian sponsoring news sources (as well as the others) are not crapping on last night's opening ceremonies. No one really gets much from such a critique, and there isn't much anyone can do about it at this point anyway.

On the other hand, to overlook some of the major flaws and to generally overemphasize the overall quality of the event is problematic. Not only does such coverage, in the face of televised flubs, raise questions about the reliability of media coverage (of this and other events) it also encourages others to highlight what they perceive to have been missed by the major media sources (aspects which were quite obvious in this case).

I imagine that part of the problem is that this is seen as a sporting event and an investment rather than real news. So instead of treating the coverage as though they are covering a real news event media outlets are instead acting as event boosters. This is probably in part because these media outlets paid so much to cover the event and they need to ensure that they don't turn away viewers (thus loosing the opportunity re-coup their initial investment and turn a profit). In some ways this highlights a fundamental conflict when news outlets cover events that they have paid to cover (and is probably why many of the more reputable media outlets don't like to pay for interviews/leads/exclusives). No only do we loose all pretense of those covering the event being unbiased news sources, we aren't even exposed to some of the more flawed aspects of the events.

Obviously, this picture is not perfectly clear as a number of media sources have been covering the snow problems and cost overruns (as well as a number of other problems) that VANOC experienced in the run-up to these games, but I do think that it is likely a pretty fair representation of overall coverage and explanation of media behaviour.

Blog-off Score

Neil:0
Cameron: 24

A rather inauspicious start

So, as some of you may already know, the Vancouver Olympics officially started yesterday night (or early this morning on Canada's east coast if you count from the time of the final torch lighting). While the events of last night caused the Globe and Mail to use the headline "Our Shining Hour," I think that it is clear that this is really quite far way from an accurate depiction of yesterday's Olympic related events.

In some ways, it is necessary to start with events that occurred before the opening ceremonies even started. In the early evening I was saddened and disappointed to learn that the Olympic luge track has already taken the life of one Olympic hopeful, an athlete from Georgia. The diagram of the accident site that I saw in today's paper makes it clear that those who do a poor job of executing the final turn may face serious consequences as instead of just shooting out of the track, you are likely to be propelled directly into support beams. Though I am not a luge track designer, this does seem to me to be a serious design flaw.

Later in the evening, after several hours of regional stereotype after regional stereotype the opening ceremony finally moved onto the big finale, the lighting of the torch. Then, in front of millions of viewers (I couldn't find a total number of viewers though there were supposedly about 13 million in Canada), there was a major technical problem that delayed the progression of the ceremony and then couldn't be rectified. A $40 million dollar event that failed at the critical moment, "our shining hour" indeed.

A more personal problem that we experienced related the coverage that was offered by CTV. Presumably because of the time-overrun related to the aforementioned technical difficulty, the streaming coverage cutout just moments before they were eventually to light the torch, the event to which the whole thing had been building. In a strange way it was a rather fitting conclusion to the evening's events.

Oh, and just moments ago I learned that the riot police were called in to deal with a group of several hundred protestors (some of whom engaged in vandalism and property destruction). Yum!


Blog-off Score

Neil:0
Cameron: 23

Two thumbs down to the Olympics

In the early days, Montifax was quite willing to to come out either in favour of something or as opposed to something. One example of this that sticks in my mind was Montifax's position that Avenue du Parc should not have had its name changed (in the end the name was not changed). For one reason or another, this practice seems to have fallen off a little over the past few years. Fortunately, this morning, I encountered something that disgusted both Neil and I and has lead me to revive the practice.

On the front page of today's print edition of the Globe and Mail there is a picture of an Olympic torch bearer running through the House of Commons, with MPs present, while carrying a lit torch. Not only does this suggest that longstanding parliamentary rules regarding strangers on the floor of the House were broken for the torch bearer, it also suggests an alarming disregard for safety (particularly in a set of buildings that have already had at least one run-in with fire). Generally torches inside aren't a particularly good idea. The incredible arrogance demonstrated by Olympic organizers in this instance has allowed me to feel relatively confident that I am correct in firmly planting Montifax in the anti-Vancouver 2010 Olympics camp.

To be perfectly honest, both Montifax and I had been leaning in this direction for some number of years. Not only do the Vancouver 2010 Olympics generally upset me because they are Olympics (which are generally wasteful and unpleasant), but they are also Winter Olympics (which are even more ridiculous than the Summer version). Also, for some number of years the Vancounver 2010 Olympics have been hogging an unreasonable amount of space in newspapers and media reports (the stories are frequently about either cost overruns or female ski jumpers who have not been allowed to compete). More recently, this media hogging has been really stepped up in the context of the torch relay. At least a half-page has been devoted to this non-story by the Globe and Mail since it started, and I presume that this will continue until the Olympics start in 2010.

Though this isn't my primary concern (the newspaper issue is), it seems quite clear that this event is likely to be incredibly environmentally unfriendly. Not only are thousands and thousands of athletes and tourists going to fly to Vancouver, but they have been taking greenhouse gas emitting torches to almost every corner of Canada for the past number of weeks. It is though they are making a show of their environmental unfriendliness.

And while I have nothing against businesses making money, I am not a particularly big fan of foreign broadcasters making millions on the backs of Canadian tax payers (and other equivalent situations). While I don't have the precise numbers in front of me, I really don't see how this will work out as a net positive for Canada in a financial sense in the end.

It is probably a little too late for our editorial position really to change much of anything, but it seemed worth putting out there, if only for educational purposes.

A Few Quick Notes 373

-Today was another great day in Halifax. Though it was above 10 for the better part of the day it is apparently forecast to drop as low as -2 tonight. I am somewhat curious whether this will actually happen or not. At the moment we need to drop another 10 degrees to get there (and that is on top of the 5 that we have already lost since today's high this afternoon).

-We had another tofu stir-fry for dinner tonight.

-Neil and Rebecca attended a few of the torch ceremonies yesterday evening. I was a little bit confused about when and where things were happening so I didn't participate (though I did get a free pre-torch Coke Zero while I was at Dal). Apparently they saw people like Dexter, Campbell, and maybe Crosby.

I guess I should also note that I am probably not a particularly big fan of the Olympic torch relay. The thing about it that I have been finding particularly frustrating is that every day they have been including a half-page story on page 3 of the Globe and Mail about the torch relay. This wasn't news to begin with and it certainly isn't news now that we are three weeks.

-I spent the afternoon in the Nova Scotia archives. While I wasn't as productive as I might have liked to have been, I think that in the end it should be considered a pretty productive trip. Not only did I find some of the stuff I was looking for, I also found a neat letter about Newfoundland in the 1920s.

-I just got back from the grocery store, where I had gone to buy another 10 pounds of carrots before the store closed for the night and the next week's pricing scheme was implemented. In the past week we have purchased 30 pounds of carrots at $1.99 per 10 pound bag. At the moment we have almost 30 pounds of carrots in our fridge.

-The German Marshall Fund sponsored defence conference is supposed to start tomorrow. According to a website I found a few days ago the protest plan is to picket the hotel's entrance tomorrow afternoon (if I recall correctly) and then hold the full-fledged protest on Saturday. I may or may not be here while the pre-protest is on-going tomorrow, but I will definitely try to grab a few pics of Saturday's events.

-I am in the midst of some marking, which is definitely going more slowly that I would like it to be.