Congratulations Cindy!

Cindy Klassen, pride of Winnipeg, won the Lou Marsh Award as the Canadian Athlete of the Year today. Klassen, for those living under a rock last spring, won 5 medals at the Turin Olympic Games, the most ever at one games by a Canadian. Those 5 plus the 1 she won in Salt Lake City are the most medals won by any Canadian.

And Klassen's still young enough to be a major competitor in Vancouver in 2010, so she'll likely add to her lifetime total.

The Sports Reporters on TSN were talking about who would be chosen yesterday. The consensus was that Klassen would likely win, but that Steve Nash was who they would likely have voted for.

They favoured Nash, because his sports achievement - winning a 2nd NBA MVP award - was even more unlikely for a Canadian than winning a pile of Olympic medals. It was also suggested that competition for the NBA MVP is stiffer, and maybe loaded against someone who'd won the year before, than for speed skating, so the competitive situation of Nash's is greater.

A non-politically correct thing that they didn't mention but is consistent with the competition pool argument is that more men play sports, whatever sport it is, than women, so the men who rise to the top have climbed over more guys than gals the top women have climbed over. I'm not too hip on this line of argument.

A more interesing point the Sports Reps. made was that Nash and some other possible Lou Marsh winners, like Justin Moreau, the AL baseball MVP, and Joe Thornton, the NHL MVP, were under consideration because people voted for them as league MVPs, which is an indirect result of their acheivements, while Klassen's acheivements are the direct reason she was considered.

If Kobe won the NBA MVP (Q: what's the official name of the NBA MVP trophy?) or Derek Jeter won the AL MVP, then Nash and Moreau, respectively, are not big contenders for the LM award. And that could have happened even with the Canadians having the same stats as they did.

Of course, Klassen, Nash, et al. don't compete to win the Lou Marsh Award, or MVP awards, or anything like that. They play to win. In the case of Klassen, that's reflected in medals. Team sports players wins are reflected in championships, which sadly none of those MVPs won this year.

But you know they would trade their MVPs for a Championship, as I'm sure Klassen would trade the Lou Marsh for a gold medal.

Happily, she needn't make that choice.

Quote of the Day

Changing your mind is the surest proof that you have one.

- Roger Scruton, English philosopher/writer interviewed on CBC's The Sunday Edition.

Rube Goldberg was a real person

Planned actions of ordinarily unrelated objects are known as Rube Goldberg devices. I didn't think of Rube Goldberg as a real person, but he did exist. I found that out at The Library of Congress last month, which had an exhibit on cartoonists including some work by Rube Goldberg, who was an editorial cartoonist in the early 20th century.

Vous ou tu?

Oh la la, the French!

Anything to declare?

My customs declaration was for $150. When asked what I was bringing back, I responded books. That's pretty much what all of it is.

The books I bought on my trip to the mid-Atlantic states were:

Vendetta by Michael Dibdin

Figures of Speech: 60 Ways to Turn a Phrase by Arthur Quinn

Design it yourself by Ellen Lupton (Ed.)

Calder by Jacob Baal-Teshuva (a Taschen book on Alexander Calder)

Mutts: The Comic Art of Patrick McDonnell

Good stuff all.

Home tomorrow

Back at my cousins in Phoenixville, PA today. Have had a great time visiting folks in the Mid-Atlantic states. In DC, I went to the Hirshhorn Gallery, which has 20th century to contemporary art and is part of the Smithsonian Institute, as well as the Library of Congress, which is a fabulous building and has some very interesting exhibits going on right now, and the Supreme Court, which is an amazing buiding also.

Those aren't the three sites someone would likely have as their top three to see in DC, but they were all very good to visit. I sort of chose them at random - just wandered upon them and then lingered therein.

I also went to Tilghman Island on Maryland's eastern shore where Kenny has a place with his brother that is right on the water looking onto Chesepeake Bay. It was cool to visit out there.

And then I spent last night visiting Ann and Lee up in Wilmington, DE where they're living with their great little girl Kayley, who's two but as precocious and full of energy as they come.

Back to the big house tomorrow, and get back at it. Whatever it happens to be.

In the Capital of the Free World

Drove up to DC today from Charlottesville, VA, where I was visiting with my PhD advisor who's at UVa now. It's nice little town, and it was really good to visit with Jerry.

I also went to two Presidential homes. Monticello - the former home of Thomas Jefferson, which is right near C-ville, and today on the way to DC I stopped at Montpelier (pronounced /mont-peel-yur/, btw, not /mount-pell-yay/ as it would be in French), former home of James Madison.

Montpelier is undergoing major renovation to take it back to the state that it was in when Madison lived there. I thought that would be a drag, but it's actually really interesting, because it's all gutted now, pretty much.

Thus, you can see and hear about what they have found during the gutting process. And the discussion of his life and stuff is the same regardless, so all in all it was a good time to go.

Maybe I'll go visit the current President's house while I'm up here.