TPC wrap, Gushue rumours
July 2, 2008
Glenn Howard (Insight Sports photo by Anil Mungal) ended up stealing some of K-Mart’s April thunder by winning yesterday’s men’s title tilt, which now puts Howard directly into the 8-team 2009 Canadian Olympic Trials, alongside Martin.
Howard also won the last two Capital One Grand Slams of the season, while Martin took the first two. And, of course, there was that abysmal Brier final which really didn’t settle anything at all between these two giants, and which still leaves a sour taste today, a full month later.
The women’s final was intriguing, if not particularly well-played. Regina’s Amber Holland was the better skip on the day, and now has another year-plus to bring her teammates up to speed on the nuances of big-league curling. Runner-up Krista McCarville has won two of the last three Ontario championships, so she is clearly no slouch.
Al Cameron was the first to report that Brad Gushue is losing at least one player, and a key one at that. The rumour mill is is full swing and seems to center on Winnipeg’s Ryan Fry and, wait for it, former Gushue castoff Jamie Korab both joining (in Jamie’s case, re-joining) the squad.
Meanwhile, is anyone asking the Newfoundland & Labrador Curling Association why they would change the residency rules now? In other words, were they on the hunt for Schille’s scalp?
And one last Grand Slam thought – for now, anyway… how is it possible that CBC’s website didn’t run one official photo from any of the Grand Slams all season long? In other words, why did they run file photos from previous Olympic Trials (some as old as eight years ago) or from other non-Slam events to accompany all the Slam copy? Is anyone at CBC Sports or Insight Sports talking to their online partner? Just asking …
Elsewhere:
• CurlTV wants your vote for Shot of the Year! Just head to this here page and click away, then cast your vote …
• Here’s Donny Barcome’s thoughts on his hometown Worlds; and all of us at The Curling News wish Don and family the best as the family patriarch, Don “Doc” Barcome Sr., battles on …
• It was Johnny U Day in Lac du Bonnet …
• Finally, have you seen the video for Team Shattered Dreams? ’Tis a classic, we fear …
Kerry Burtnyk finally acknowledged that he is bringing an Edmonton import into his team: and it is, of course, former Kevin Martin third Don Walchuk. Story from the usual suspects here and here, but only The Curler posted a photo of the news conference, which you can see here. Uh, a photo without Walchuk, although we was on the telephone. And with two team sponsor reps who look somewhat out of place. Whatever.
Some are questioning why Burtnyk held a news conference to announce what everybody already knew? First of all, if arch-rival Jeff Stoughton is going to hold a news conference, then you can be darned sure Bubba is going to host one. Secondly, there was additional Bubbaspec on who is going to play lead – perhaps another Edmonton import? – and Burtnyk took the opportunity to declare that Garth Smith will be returning.
Still with Manitoba:
• Much like the recent long-overdue celebration of the 1976 Canada Cup hockey champions, Burtnyk’s 1981 Brier and Worlds team (see ancient photo above) were recently inducted into the Manitoba Curling Hall of Fame. The only sour note was the no-show by lead Ron Kammerlock (at right), who was supporting a curler who got the chop from Burtnyk’s squad just a few days earlier – his son.
Ron should have been there, plain and simple.
Here’s what Burtnyk said about that particular team, back when the inductees – which also includes former Stoughton third Jon Mead, Winnipeg skip Janet Harvey and the infamous Johnny U – were first announced. The Curling News ran this quote in our popular They Said It section of the April issue:
I think it put us ahead of many experienced teams that played the wide-open game. And it’s hard to believe, but there were actually a lot of experienced teams that feared us because we’d basically draw to anything early in the game, and people just couldn’t understand what we were doing. So at the time, I think we were kind of ahead of the curve for what young teams were normally like.
We did something that nobody else has really been able to do as that young a team. And I think that was an outstanding accomplishment. We were almost a team that maybe was a bit ahead of its time.
• Naturally, there’s a bunch of other men’s changes taking place in the Peg …
• Earlier on, Jim Bender had an interesting possible prediction of Burtnyk’s new third: Joe Frans?! Meanwhile, over at Hacks & Wonks, PolicyFrog thinks young Reid Carruthers is… er, making a mistake …
• This fellow suggests a list of reasons why Ryan Fry took off to The Rock to begin with …
• A fan built this tribute video to Team Jennifer Jones and then posted an apology on the team website for not having enough images of the front end! Judging by the skip’s personal reply, the result is a fine piece of work …
• And finally, DID YOU KNOW that the arson suspect in Winnipeg’s 2006 Thistle Curling Club destruction – who had confessed – was freed by the judge? Want to guess why? Well, here is the story, and here is an editorial comment on the matter.
And here is another link to Paul Wiecek’s “Memories Of the Thistle” story we linked to back in June, 2006 …
Alexa Ray Joel – People Magazine
July 2, 2008
Alexa Ray Joel – People Magazine Alexa Ray Joel
New York Daily News
People Magazine -
After a day of gripping testimony from her ex-husband and his former teenaged lover, Christie Brinkley says she "heard a lot of new things I didn't know" in the opening of the couple's divorce trial Wednesday.
Salacious details launch Brinkley divorce trial
Tearful Start to Brinkley/Cook Divorce Drama
Nasrallah: Prisoner swap set for on or around July 15 – Ha’aretz Nasrallah: Prisoner swap set for on or around July 15
Ha’aretz -
By Yoav Stern, Haaretz Correspondent The prisoner exchange with Hezbollah will take place on or around July 15, the group's leader Hassan Nasrallah said in a press conference on Wednesday in Beirut.
Hezbollah Agrees to Prisoner Swap With Israel
Hezbollah agrees to prisoner swap with Israel
Obama challenges nation to give back – Washington Times
July 2, 2008
Obama challenges nation to give back – Washington Times Obama challenges nation to give back
Wall Street Journal
Washington Times -
Sen. Barack Obama outlined Wednesday the national-service expansion that his White House would push and fund, saying that the nation must remember that "history calls us" to give back.
Video: Obama Touts Volunteerism, Cribbing a Bush Theme
Upstart Rays take juice away from Red Sox-Yankees – Newsday Upstart Rays take juice away from Red Sox-Yankees
Boston Globe
Newsday -
Let it be known that Newsday offered Rays executive vice president Andrew Friedman a chance to apologize Wednesday. It's his fault, after all, that this holiday weekend's big series in the Bronx, starting Thursday night, has been relegated to a battle …
Three's company in AL East showdown
Rays Top Wakefield and Red Sox, Adding to Their Division Lead
ESPN: Brett Favre Considers Returning To Football – CBS News
July 2, 2008
ESPN: Brett Favre Considers Returning To Football – CBS News
(AP) Brett Favre is considering coming out of retirement, according to an ESPN report. ESPN’s Chris Mortensen said Wednesday a Green Bay Packers source told him the 38-year-old Favre told coach Mike McCarthy in the past two weeks that he has the itch to play. The Packers’ former quarterback retired
SuperSonics, Seattle reach last-minute settlement – Seattle Times
The city of Seattle and the SuperSonics reached a last-minute settlement before a judge was to rule in their KeyArena lease dispute. The settlement was reached Wednesday just hours before U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman was to announce her verdict in the trial between the city and the team. The
Colombia rescues Betancourt, 3 U.S. hostages – Reuters
BOGOTA (Reuters) – French-Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt, three Americans and 11 other hostages held for years in jungle captivity were rescued on Wednesday from leftist guerrillas by Colombian troops posing as aid workers. The rescue was a huge coup for popular President Alvaro Uribe, an
McCain promotes free trade on visit to Colombia – Boston Globe
July 2, 2008
McCain promotes free trade on visit to Colombia – Boston Globe
CARTAGENA, Colombia (Reuters) – U.S. Republican presidential candidate John McCain promoted free trade on Wednesday on a visit to Colombia he was using to subtly score political points against Democrat Barack Obama. McCain’s push for congressional approval of a stalled U.S.-Colombian free trade
Oil prices top $144 on supply concerns – Xinhua News Agency
NEW YORK, July 2 (Xinhua) — Crude futures topped 144 U.S. dollars a barrel Wednesday as the U.S. inventory reported a bigger-than-expected drop last week and the tension in Middle East continued to weigh on the market. Light, sweet crude for August delivery jumped 2.6 dollars to settle at a record
Police Say Missing Vt. 12-Year-Old’s Body Found – ABC News
A 14-year-old girl told authorities that Michael Jacques, the uncle of missing Brooke Bennett, took the 12-year-old to Jacques’ Randolph home on June 25 to be initiated into the ring. Brooke has not been seen since then. (AP Photo) Vermont State Police say they have found a body believed to be that
ThoughtMesh: An Innovative Scholarly Publishing and Discovery Model
July 2, 2008
ThoughtMesh: An Innovative Scholarly Publishing and Discovery Model
ThoughtMesh is an unusual model for publishing and discovering scholarly papers online. It gives readers a tag-based navigation system that uses keywords to connect excerpts of essays published on different Web sites.
Add your essay to the mesh, and ThoughtMesh gives you a traditional navigation menu plus a tag cloud that enables nonlinear access to text excerpts. You can navigate across excerpts both within the original essay and from related essays distributed across the mesh.
So let’s say you are reading an essay on Modern art. You can pick a single word out of that essay’s tag cloud- -say Picasso- -and view a list of all the sections from that essay that relate to Picasso. Or you can view a list of sections of other articles tagged with Picasso, and jump right to one of those sections. You can also combine tags to narrow your search, such as Picasso + Cubism + 1900.
As an author, you can choose to post your essay in a central repository hosted by the Vectors program at USC, the sponsor of this project. Or you can self-archive your essay on your own Web site. [snip]
Features
Innovative Search Options
- Use tags to find text blocks within the current article
- Use tags to find related blocks in outside articles
- Use search-as-you-type lookup to find words in current article
Expandable Navigation Menu
- Offers more traditional navigation
- Breaks long essays into easy-to-read screen-sized chunks
- Can be used interchangeable with tag-based navigation
Automated Tag and HTML Generation
- Paste in your essay sections and easy-to-use software generates a ThoughtMeshed version
- Software can auto-generate tags for each text block
- Or author can assign custom tags
- Overall tag cloud gives quick sense of article’s themes
Meshes (Features For Future Releases)
- Users can view a map of where the current article fits in the larger mesh.
- Publications and groups of authors can define and administrate their own meshes.
- Users can choose only lexias from current mesh, or from all meshes
FAQ
What’s a tag cloud?
A bunch of keywords in a box. Click on one to see text excerpts related to that theme, or click on several to see excerpts tagged with all of those keywords.
What’s a lexia?
A text excerpt from a longer essay or Web site–usually a couple of paragraphs. Lots of blogs and newspapers have tag clouds. How is ThoughtMesh different?Most of these sites are data-base driven collections of text blocks run off a single server. ThoughtMesh’s tag registry (or mesh) can connect articles on different servers across the Internet.
Is this the “Semantic Web”?
Yes and no. Like the long-term vision of the Semantic Web, ThoughtMesh treats every page on the Web as a potential “database record” to be searched. Unlike the conventional XML-powered vision of the Semantic Web, however, ThoughtMesh’s data are only minimally structured in the page itself; instead, a registry of tags housed on a remote host serves to connect all the individual pages. But it’s still a model of distributed publication, since in principle the same pages can be navigated via independently operated registries.
So it’s like del.icio.us?
Sort of. Del.icio.us’s global folksonomy of tags is great, but it only indexes entire pages, which is less efficient for finding relevant passages in long academic papers. ThoughtMesh helps trace thematic connections between particular sections of online essays. And ThoughtMesh’s tags (and the meshes that connect them) are determined (or at least validated) by the authors of the pages.
Is this “Web 2.0″?
ThoughtMesh exploits participatory media, remote scripting, and lateral navigation. So yeah, you can call it that.
Demos
How to Navigate Essays[http://thoughtmesh.net/media/thoughtmesh_preview_alpha.mov]
How to Tag an Essay[http://thoughtmesh.net/media/thoughtmesh_how_to_add.mov]
People
Jon Ippolito
Conceptual architect, client-side designer, and client-side engineer
Craig Dietrich
Designer and server-side engineer
John Bell
Telamon.js author and remote scripting contributor
Chirag Mehta
ThoughtMesh uses Mehta’s Tagline software
[http://chir.ag/tech/download/tagline/]
Article
/ ThoughtMesh” Tag Your Writing. Join the conversation / Jon Ippolito & Craig Dietrich / Vectors: Journal of Culture and Technology in a Dynamic Vernacular / Volume 3 Issue 1, Fall 2007 /
[http://vectors.usc.edu/index.php?page=7&projectId=84]
White Papers
/ New Criteria for New Media / New Media Department, University of Maine / Promotion and Tenure Guidelines Addendum: Rationale for Redefined Criteria / Version 2.2, January 2007 /
ABSTRACT: An argument for redefining promotion and tenure criteria for faculty in new media departments of today’s universities.
[http://newmedia.umaine.edu/interarchive/new_criteria_for_new_media.html]
ThoughtMesh Author’s Statement
[http://three.org/ippolito/thoughtmesh_author_statement.html
ThoughtMesh Forum
[http://vectors.usc.edu/forums/]
Technical
[http://thoughtmesh.net/media/thoughtmesh_author_flow@m.pdf]
Related Work
/ New Age Navigation: Innovative Information Interfaces for Electronic Journals / Gerry McKiernan / The Serials Librarian, Vol. 45(2) / 87-123 / 2003 / DOI: 10.1300/J123v45n02_06 /
ABSTRACT. While it is typical for electronic journals to offer conventional search features similar to those provided by electronic databases, a select number of e-journals have also made available higher-level access options as well. In this article, we review several novel technologies and implementations that creatively exploit the inherent potential of the digital environment to further facilitate use of e-collections.We conclude with speculation on the functionalities of a next-generation e-journal interface that are likely to emerge in the near future.
[http://www.public.iastate.edu/~gerrymck/NewAge.pdf]
UMKC dancers perform in KC Ballet’s ‘Romeo & Juliet’
July 2, 2008
UMKC dancers perform in KC Ballet’s ‘Romeo & Juliet’
Six lucky male dance students from UMKC’s Conservatory of Music & Dance earned the opportunity to perform in a professional production of “Romeo & Juliet” presented by the Kansas City Ballet Company. The classic romantic tale was presented at the Music Hall as the final piece of the Kansas City Ballet’s 50th anniversary season, April 25-27 and May 1-3.
Some Announcements
President Brodhead’s Review
Just a reminder that you still have a couple of days to send your comments regarding President Brodhead to the committee conducting his performance review for the Board of Trustees. The deadline for submitting comments is October 29.
If you do not have enough time to write a letter, send a postcard or send an e-mail. Make your voice heard.
Tell them that Duke can do a lot better.
In formation on how to participate is here.
Another group has taken the lead in rallying the Duke community to participate in the comment phase for President Brodhead’s review. They are called Friends for a Better Duke or FABDU and they want a Duke to be a fab place once again. You can check out their website here.
Stuart Taylor
Our other friends at Duke Students for an Ethical Duke have are hosting a book signing and lecture by Stuart Taylor, the co-author of Until Proven Innocent at Duke on November 2. The book signing will be at 6:00 and the lecture will follow at 7:00. Details, including directions to the venue, Love Auditorium are here.
Stuart is an excellent speaker and his lecture will be every bit as interesting and informative as KC Johnsons’s a few weeks ago. Incidentally, DSED informs us that Stuart originally signed on to debate any of the book’s critics who wished to come forward. However, there have been no takers so far so he will give a lecture instead.
UMKC nominates local volunteer for CASE award
July 2, 2008
UMKC nominates local volunteer for CASE award
Mary Kay McPhee, a local volunteer, has spent more than 30 years contributing to the well being of UMKC, and now administration is taking the time to thank her.
Chancellor Guy Bailey, along with community volunteer Adele Hall, nominated McPhee for the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) Distinguished Friend of Education Award.
Police investigate offences they consider acceptable behaviourPolice have
July 2, 2008
Police investigate offences they consider acceptable behaviour
Police have released another review of the Section 59 legislation.
Beth Wood from EPOCH says its all good news. That’s because the Police state there is a reduction in smacking events attended in the past quarter. So why does Family First’s Bob McCoskrie say there is a substantial jump? 
Here’s why. Police have divided corrective discipline into “smacking” and “minor forms of physical violence”, the latter rate having gone up every quarter. I asked Belinda, who heads the Police team who did the report, what the distinction is between these two categories.
She defined smacking as a corrective smack on the bum with an open hand; which most people – even in the police, but perhaps not Sue Bradford – would view as acceptable discipline. She said there was no difference between smacks and minor forms of physical violence, but agreed that the latter constituted “something more than a smack on the bum” .
Like two smacks, perhaps.Which most people would also view as acceptable. She also agreed that the wording should have been ” minor forms of physical discipline” as per the wording of the report and to reflect the corrective aspect of physical discipline, and the majority were of the kind that would be successful in a reasonable force defence in court. Any discipline with an implement is child assault.
So, Police consider most minor forms of physical violence are acceptable smacks. Police investigated over more than cases of corrective discipline since the law change, with an increase each quarter. Two were charged with assault so they were obviously not minor forms of physical violence.
Colin Espiner makes the point that law abiding parents haven’t been prosecuted. Well, neither have parents who have been investigated and found to have inconsequentially broken physical discipline laws. Parents are being investigated for things that police view as acceptable, and they are incorrect to claim that they are attending less smacking events.
Mike Hosking does a pretty classic interview with Rob Pope; and also Sue Bradford and doesn`t believe a word she says.
EU Pushes Unity Government in Zimbabwe – Voice of America
July 2, 2008
EU Pushes Unity Government in Zimbabwe – Voice of America EU Pushes Unity Government in Zimbabwe
Voice of America
Voice of America -
By Tendai Maphosa The European Union said on Wednesday that Zimbabwean opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai should serve as prime minister in any national unity government with President Robert Mugabe.
Zimbabwe Opposition Leader Will Not Join Unity Government
Zimbabwe opposition rejects unity government call
Bipartisanship marks McCain's Senate tenure – The Associated Press Bipartisanship marks McCain's Senate tenure
New York Daily News
The Associated Press -
WASHINGTON (AP) – Republicans deemed it beyond the pale when Sen. John McCain crossed the Capitol, set up shop in an office belonging to House Democrats and lobbied wavering lawmakers on legislation to reduce the role of money in politics.
Poll Shows Nation Holds a Negative View of Michelle Obama
Quayle: I respect Obama 'because he beat the Clintons'
