I’ve got a secret. I’m not sure I should tell anyone because it really seems that I’m the only one who knows this, but I guess I’ll tell. You are not the only one who cheers for the underdog in sporting events. Everyone does.
If your team isn’t playing, you always cheer for the underdog, that's just what is supposed to be done. But for some reason everyone believes that they are the only one doing it. “Oh, I guess I’m going to cheer for New Orleans in this Super Bowl, I always cheer for the underdog. I’m different like that.” No sir, this makes you exactly like everyone else.
People love the underdog story, that’s why movies like Rocky do so well. Nobody seems to like the favourite unless it’s their team, but for some reason everyone thinks that they’re the only one that thinks that way. Even Peyton Manning’s cheering for New Orleans today.
We are now three weeks into the New Year and I bet most people have already given up on any resolutions they may have set. If you haven’t already given up, by this time next month you probably will have. But there are a few people who have kept up with their resolutions and will continue all year; and hopefully they’ll continue past this year. Some of those people are just determined people who want to see a positive change in themselves. But most people that continue their resolutions do so because their resolutions tend to have one consistent trait: they’re simple.
So many people at the end of December make a resolution to do something drastic. “This year, I’m going to work out for two hours every single day.” “I’m never going to eat any more junk food!” But by the end of the first week they’ve found that they’re too busy to go to the gym two hours every single day. Or they find that with Pringles, once you pop, you actually can’t stop.
Resolutions shouldn’t come at the start of every year; they should come whenever you want to bring about a change in yourself. It makes sense why so many people set them in December. The end of the year reminds each of us of how quickly time passes and how we should be seizing every moment. But you can bring about a change in yourself any time of the year. The key is to just do it in baby steps.
Most people want to read more. Some set vague goals that they’re going to read a book a month, so they buy twelve new books that serve as paper weights for the remainder of the year. Other people say that they are going to read perhaps two hours every Sunday, but then never get around to it because they have too many other things to do on Sunday. So rather than reading a large amount of time on one day a week, just read fifteen minutes every day. As busy as you are, most people can find fifteen minutes every day to read, even on your busiest day. Wake up fifteen minutes earlier or go to bed fifteen minutes later. If you can’t even find fifteen consecutive spare minutes in the day, break it into three five minute increments. If it takes you two minutes to read a page (a conservative estimate) then you’ll read about seven pages a day. That’s almost fifty pages a week and two hundred pages per month. That’s about a book a month. If you can find thirty minutes (or three ten minute breaks) you can read two books a month.
But it doesn’t have to just be with reading. Take fifteen minutes every day to learn a new language or learn a new hobby. Those fifteen minutes will add up to you making the most of your New Year. If last year you had just taken fifteen minutes every day to read, you could have read twelve more books. That’s twelve more topics that can serve as clever anecdotes at a cocktail party or at the water cooler. That could be twelve more topics that relate to your work that can get you that promotion you’ve been vying for. If you had just taken fifteen minutes every day over the past year, you could have made that difference. Looking back on your last year honestly, most people would agree that they could spare fifteen minutes every day. Just remember it this way: a year from now you’re going to wish you had started this today. So do it. It just takes fifteen minutes. It just takes baby steps.
Back in July, Bill Mayer wrote an article where he said that not everything in America has to make a profit. He talked about the noble days when hospitals weren't big business, but rather were there to, you know, help people. The goal of hospitals shouldn't be to make money; they should be to help people. I'd like to think that they could maybe do both.
I don't think that there is anything inherently evil about making money. Because of that, I don't see anything wrong with hospitals being self-sustaining and, dare I say it, turning a profit. However, it is a problem and it is evil when people have to suffer. Drug companies, insurance providers and hospitals are making money; which isn't wrong until you consider the fact that people aren't getting the care that they need. I believe in the universality of health care: that health is something that should be available to everyone regardless of how much money they make. If you can have a system where everyone, and I mean everyone, can have affordable, and I mean affordable, health care and companies can still profit, then I say go for it.
In Canada, we don't think twice about not having to pay for health care. We were born knowing that if we fall and hurt ourselves that we can go to the hospital and get looked after without worrying about mortgaging our house to pay for the visit. However, despite what some people will tell you, we do tend to wait a long time at the hospital. Sometimes very long. But while our system is far from perfect, it is leaps and bounds ahead of the US system, where millions of people don't buy medical insurance because they can't afford it. To me, that's appalling. How, in a first world democracy, can someone not be able to afford a visit to the hospital?
So the problem is that a completely nationalized system tends to be somewhat inefficient, but at the same time means that every single person in the country has access to health care. A completely privatized system means that hospitals are more efficiently run and people can make money, but the result is that far too many people are left without coverage. The choice between the two seems obvious: nationalize (or "socialize" if you want to be a baby about it) so that everyone has health care. But what if you didn't have to choose between the two options?
When the US passed their recent health care reform, it left one very notable thing off the list: the public option. The reasoning behind leaving it off was that even with a super-majority, the Democrats needed every single person to be on board to pass the bill and they feared that having the public option on the bill wouldn't have made it pass. They were undoubtedly right. Some reform is better than no reform and while the new reform is far from perfect, it certainly is a step in the right direction.
I believe that the public option could give the best of both worlds. For those that couldn't afford the private option, there would be a public option where every single person would still have access to medical care regardless of their income. With the private option, those that wanted more efficient service could get it. I idealistically call it "efficient" service and not "better" service for a reason. My biggest fear with this idea is that the private option would attract all the good doctors and all the best equipment. Ideally, the public option would still have these. The doctors working in the public option would still be making considerable money for their abilities, specialization and schooling. On top of that, it would attract the best kind of doctors: those that aren't in it for the money, but actually want to help people. As for where the money to fund this option would come from, I hate to say it, but it would come from the government and from the rich. I know, this must make me a terrible person. I must be a socialist or even a communist because I believe that the people who can most afford it should carry some of the burden with helping to ensure quality of life for their fellow citizens. I guess it's socialist to believe in helping other people.
I believe that the free market can do a lot. It can solve some of the economy's most complex problems, but I hate to say that it isn't solving health care. If it did, there wouldn't be so many people in a first world nation with the inability to afford health care. There wouldn't be so many people who can't afford to live.
I think I’m going to stop getting the flu shot. I’ve had the flu shot three of the past four years and I’ve found that I’ve gotten sick just as often whether or not I got the shot. That’s not why I’m going to stop getting it. I’m not even going to stop getting it because I’m worried about the mercury level or that the government is trying to control my mind with the flu shot. The real problem is that doctors don’t seem to be getting the flu shot.
That bothers me. Not that I think it’s some sort of massive conspiracy, but just the fact that if medical professionals aren’t getting it, then why should I? If doctors are going to be promoting it, then they should be getting it. It’s like a celebrity promoting a product that they wouldn’t personally use: it just isn’t right. If you aren’t going to use it, don’t tell me to use it. The problem for me is that if they aren’t getting it, then they obviously believe that it isn’t worth their time, so why is it worth my time?
As a Canadian, I feel like I have to like hockey. I feel like I’m genetically designed to enjoy the game, but the truth is that I don’t. I used to love hockey. I played road hockey as a child, although admittedly never ice hockey, and even enjoyed watching it on TV. But then I just stopped enjoying it. I love watching the NBA or NFL. Hell, I’ll even watch a baseball game now and then, but for some reason I’ve just lost my enjoyment for hockey.
There are a lot of things that bother me about the game. A great deal of them aren’t even about the game itself, but more about the NHL in general. I wholeheartedly believe that the NHL is by far the worst run of the big four professional sports leagues in North America.
The problem that I’m going to address for today: why do you get a point if you lose in overtime? I can’t for the life of me understand why you would award a team a point for losing. Congratulations, you made it to overtime. Apparently, that is an accomplishment. So much so, that even if you lose the game, you’ll still get a least one point. FOR LOSING. I thought the point of sports was winning? Don’t we award championships to teams who win? If you lose in overtime, you still lose. That’s why it’s called an overtime loss, not an overtime sort-of-win-but-not-really. If you take it to overtime and lose, I hate to break it to you, but it’s a loss. It’s a loss in the NBA, it’s a loss in the NFL and it’s a loss in the MLB. You want to add an asterisk saying that you at least took it to overtime? Fine. Just don’t reward them for it. It will also take away from the people who believe that if a team is 15-15-5 that they’re at “.500” because they have fifteen wins and fifteen losses. Actually, no, you have fifteen wins and twenty losses. You just for some reason got awarded for five of those losses because apparently they were a little less embarrassing than a regulation loss.
The NHL has a long way to go before it can be considered a well run business, at least by my standards. But little things like this need to be improved to win me back as a fan. Oh well, at least I’ll give them a point for trying.
Imagine that a team has been down the whole game and battled back to tie things up. Or maybe the game has been close the whole time and it’s heading into overtime. Both teams are excited; so are the fans. You’re expecting to see two teams play the game of their lives in overtime to win the game. Then one team wins the coin toss, has one mediocre play and kicks a field goal. The game is over. Wow, that was terrible.
NFL overtime sucks. Let’s face it. You’ll have a hard time finding someone who actually likes the NFL overtime system.
The slight majority of the time, the team that wins the coin toss wins the game. That means that more often than not, you’re putting your fate in your ability to guess the result of a coin toss (tails never fails, by the way).
But the remaining times it doesn’t happen on the first possession. Sometimes you get to see two or three mediocre possessions and then someone kicks a field goal to win. Terrible. Just terrible.
There are three ways that the NFL can change their overtime to make it better:
1) No field goals
Make it so that you have to get a touchdown to win the game. Field goals are for quitters.
2) College style overtime
This is really the best option. Each team starts in their opponent’s territory. The first team gets a possession of the football and then the second team gets a possession of the football to try to match their opponent's score to keep the overtime going, or better the score to win it. If they don’t at least match the score, they lose. Each team gets an equal opportunity to win. You aren’t basing winning off the luck of the coin toss and it isn’t gimmicky like the NHL’s shootout. The team that wins deserves to win.
3) Flip a coin
Seriously, this would be better than the current system. More often than not it comes down to this anyways, so just end it there. Save me the disappointment of having to see a field goal.
It’s time to get realistic about climate change. It’s getting harder to say that humans don’t have some impact on the warming of the globe. The high majority of scientists seem to be on board about the idea that global warming is a man-made phenomenon. If scientists, on an issue of science, are saying that it’s true, then I’m probably going to believe in their opinion over you. Sorry about that.
The fact of the matter is that the earth’s average temperature is rising and that seems to be because of the pollution that we’re creating. Even if you don’t agree with that, it’s even tougher to argue that our pollution isn’t causing less breathable air, less drinkable water and an all around less liveable planet. I’m not saying that we stop everything all together. I’m not advocating that we go back to living like cavemen and stop all pollution in its track cold-turkey. But what I am advocating is change. At the very least in baby steps.
Everyone wants a quick fix. I know I do. I’d love it if we could just build some big machine that could clean up everything and we could keep living the way we have been living. But that isn’t going to happen. The real way that we’re going to change the affects of global climate change is through personal sacrifices and a little hard work. It’s like dieting. The answer to losing weight isn’t in some magic pills; the answer is in eating right and exercise. It’s a lifestyle change that’s needed.
President Obama’s deal in Copenhagen was far from an amazing deal. In fact, it wasn’t really a deal. It was more of a goodwill promise between nations. But at least it’s a start. I wasn’t expecting a clear cut 100% solid agreement signed by all major nations to come out of a one week climate conference. Certainly more needs to be outlined about sustainable ways to cut CO2 emissions and to lower the global temperature. We need to find ways to make sustainable energy and cut our dependence on foreign oil. We need to find ways to make our planet more liveable. I want to make money as much as the next person, but I want a liveable world that I can spend it in. So what if we do really make the world a better place and we find out that global warming was all a scam?
Photo Credit: Pett, Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader, Cartoonists and Writers Syndicate, for USA TODAY
