Vida Seth Diary

I’m at the O’Reilly conference of Emerging Technology and it’s giving me just the right setting (and time away from the day job of leading Rubicon) to capture an idea I’ve been brewing for some time.

Because the work I do is about helping companies to win markets, I pay a lot of attention to changes big and small in the terrain of the market because we all know that consumer expectations or new competitive entry or even a new disruptive technology offer can radically shift market power. For some time, I’ve been watching what is dubbed “web 2.0 business models, knowing some things inherently would cause disruption”. And the more I looked at it, the more I have come away with a wide aperture view of what is going on.

So before you read on, you’ve gotta know this is by far my longest post. I’m sorry for that. I’m at a conference, with bright people, wi-fi, and time.

And before you jump to any conclusions, I’m not saying this is “it”. I’ll call it “alpha” with the hopes that both online and offline my colleagues who read this will help me advance/ edit / distill / delete that which needs to be done.

Why be timid. Let’s start out with my premise.

PORTER’s MODEL IS DEAD!
There was a time when control, and scale drove market power.

But those times are not now.

Today, we have a different set of things that drives market momentum, and create market power.

The last “market expert” who captured what defined market power was a guy named Michael Porter. He created a framework since dubbed the “five forces” framework. His model was the very definition of mass production or mass markets. If you think about a “poster child” of the Porter model, it was Michael Dell of Dell Computers. Dell did close integration with suppliers reducing individual unit costs, and created a centralized, controlled ability to set direction to make a specific thing, and with the help of multiple suppliers drove cost out of the equation. The more Dell grew in scale, the larger the price for any other company wanting to serve that market. And so the large got larger and had more control.

Let’s take a tour back in history. Think Dell, Apple or Intel during the heyday of the 1980s and early 1990s. Value was created in a relatively linear fashion. First, a product was designed, then parts purchased, then manufactured, then marketed, sold and delivered. The one who could own the full show - design to delivery - could generate the most customer value. The goal in optimization back then was to look at how to get good customer insights early in the process, because you needed a long ramp to get to market. At one time there were even Dell stores. Remember that? They had a particular sequence of steps and relationships that they owned, and that, taken in aggregate, created superior value.

To the degree these companies “outsourced,” they were still in control, telling others exactly what to produce and holding on to as much of the intellectual property as possible. The relationship was very much that of a prime contractor and a subcontractor. A single organization drove operations through from start to finish. Maybe that made sense. Maybe it was about the integration of all operational parts to create market power. There was only enough room at the top for a few companies, and these companies could, and did, create barriers of entry as protection against new entrants. The game was all about locking up enough supplier relationships to be able to lower manufacturing costs to the point where they could drive additional demand and feed the cycle again. The market was won by the companies that created so much scale at the beginning that alternatives and new entrants were frozen out of the market.

WEB 1.0 PUT A DENT IN THE MODEL:
I think that model is defunct. Because the Internet fundamentally changes mass markets with dominant players to a series of smaller, micro, differentiated markets. Instead of deep vertical integration with suppliers and 18-month product life cycles, the new era is a quick, response, targeted sub-markets where many can “come to market” and many can partake. One particular thing in the Porter model was always that the users had as little power as possible to alternatives or to price shopping. And, that’s probably the single force to me that changed with the first Internet revolution. Internet 1.0 brought the ease of distribution of products so many can sell to many. Think Ebay or Amazon. It created the ability for users to know more, and thus reduced the control any company had on what it could offer. It also opened up markets in new ways.

BUT WEB 2.0 TOOK IT ALL THE WAY
The 2nd Internet revolution (what O’Reilly named web 2.0) brought 4 more efficiencies in into the market value chain.

1. MANUFACTURING COSTS REDUCED .
Open source and a worldwide talent pool brought in software efficiencies. You no longer needed a team of software developers + QA team to produce. Monolithic applications required a certain amount of engineering resources to code, QA resources to test, etc. Now, with lots of little developers each tackling a piece of an overall solution, development—and especially innovation—can occur much more rapidly. No one has to live near you, work near you, heck even know you in order to join together to create something.

And, in the hardware domain, even injection molding is now readily available to the “common man” and concepts can be built quickly and contract manufacturers can deploy things with Chinese-based production. This lowers the cost of entry and created many alternatives.

2. INVESTMENT COSTS REDUCED
Production. With the AJAX architecture and then the ability to “mash-up” technologies online through sites like programmable web.com, the web has changed the fundamental production model from “make it all” to “make some piece” of the highest value. This has meant that very small teams of 5 people can enter a new market and make money from their specific vertical application or knowledge.

This allows not only more creativity to enter the production system, but also a different way to create a “product”.

Layer on top of that the SaaS model, and any company can enter a market without needing to invest upfront dollars to buy applications, storage, etc. This lowered the cost of entry to any market and created many alternatives / substitutes.

3. MARKETING IS DECENTRALIZED
It is now possible to have user-to-user enthusiasts and guides create a market demand. It is no longer necessary to have multi-million dollar marketing budgets.

It used to be a person (influencers, early adopters, mavens) who was influential might talk to a few friends, some communities groups such as his or her church, and if they traveled a bit, social circles in some other areas.

Today, with the use of blogging and wikis, the ability to go from one person’s opinion to knowing the opinions held by thousands of people isn’t limited by personal reach. It’s limited by the power of the idea and the personal credibility of the person. On the web, authority is dependent on the quality, consistency and integrity of the content. The mainstream media is being “shown up” more and more often because its power is based on Porter’s Five Forces while bloggers and other parts of the new media are required to establish credibility based on content, not market power.

4. MANY new REVENUE MODELS ENABLED
Probably the most difficult model to discuss.
Direct exchange to Ecosystem Economics. Value creation used to be driven by the core “thing” we produced. Dell made a computer, Intel made a chip. Then along came ebay and they enabled an exchange. The sellers (not the buyers) paid the price of the exchange because it was more cost efficient that duplicating what Ebay had built. Along the way, Ebay has studied that the more users come to the site as consumers, the more the sellers are willing to pay to get access.

+Anchillary value. Used to be that we paid for photo touch-up software. But now, at sites like Shutterfly, we use that as a service along with hosted pictures all for free. Shutterfly makes money in an indirect way that in the case where we want printed pictures, we’ll use their services. But Shutterfly gives away at least 2 products that have tremendous value.

+User-generated value. Tagging technology and the ease of labeling anything is prevalent. With this, users can add value or create meaning themselves. The more users of Digg or De.li.cious tag things, the more value is created over time. Flickr, Facebook and other “social sites” are the beginning of users creating a value for themselves and then sharing it so that, in aggregate for communities of users, the value grows. It grows because natural interests cause ties that bind. And everybody does a little bit. If all of us enable that little bit, the platform creates more stickiness while it also gets stronger.

+Advertising-based Revenues. Allows the monetization of “eyeballs” via the democratization of advertising online.

(We’re not done yet in this arena, I’d bet … )

OKAY, so WAaaaayY BIG CHANGES.

I BELIEVE OLD MODEL IS DONE. NOW, What’s the NEW MODEL?
I’ve been thinking there is a new model on the horizon and it involves being the very opposite of what Porter defined in the 80’s. Instead of Centralized Control, the new source of power comes from something I’ve named in my head: “Permeable Corporation”.

Essentially, the pillars of markets, those things that hold up the supply chain of distribution manufacturing and marketing are all fundamentally different in this era. Those aren’t even the right categories or names per se. Because the term manufacturing is really not the question. I’m going to propose the new categories are ‘Creation”, “Customization”, and “Communication”.

My thesis is this. Market Power is derived from being more “permeable”. In a Permeable Corporation, success depends on how well you play with others in delivering customer value. In this model, power comes from ….

SOURCE OF POWER #1: CREATION.
We no longer play in individual sand boxes. We share ideas and focus on building on each others’ ideas so that creation is not about building the coolest widget, but building different pieces together to solve a particular need.

Measures of Permeability: How well you enable integration with other technology solutions as well as how open you can be to build collaboratively is the question. Measures would be the level and support around developer engagement. Do you have open APIs, do you enable platforms such as Adobe’s Apollo, Ebay’s Ecommerce solution, and do you release content into open source or provide component enablement (programmable web.com) so that others can co-create with you?

Implied in this model is that you can develop faster, and innovate faster. But it would also mean that you are creating something based on a particular user set’s needs. And you could layer other work on top of (or sit on top of) the platforms to make the solution complete.

SOURCE OF POWER #2: CUSTOMIZATION.
Each of us is a singular person — unique and appealing to market to. But what is done today is market towards big targets without really paying attention to the individual. What is enabled in this web 2.0 era is that users can be a markets of one. The more firms focus on the big targets, the more we focus on the mainstream. But everyone’s taste departs from the mainstream somewhere, and the more we find new options, new alternatives, the more we find things we like. Or rather, we LOVE. Our choices are expanded and by having more choices, when we make a selection, we have the ability to connect to that choice deeply. What is considered ‘fringe” to one, is of extreme value to others. Getting outside normal marketing vehicles and language means the communication can be better. It is one effect of the market force Chris Anderson described so well in his book on the “Long Tail” notion.

So that’s what is an opportunity. To solving unique customer needs. Maybe this is too utopian to gain wide-spread acceptance but I believe that customer value will become really about what someone needs based on their use, their content and their self-identification (this implies a micro segmentation based on user input). The flavors are not set by any one vendor but really a marketplace where customization can take place. It is what threadless.com is all about. Many ideas get developed and each represents interests, desires, needs and in the end some portion of those get made into product. You want to bet that business is successful? Of course it is. It has the customization and flavors built into it’s very DNA.

This is the key source of power – getting to the point where we listen when the customer tells us who they are, what features they want, what products they need, and how we can best be of service. Doesn’t meant they get it all. It means you can serve more of them with different flavors.

Think about that. Think about the amount of insights that could form. And instead of me pushing out a lot of “mass” market advertising, PR, and trial software, I might instead sponsor passionate advocate-driven websites, or encourage user debate on topics relevant to them on my site, or “pull” the kinds of content and ideas they seeks from me via tags of data rather than a highly structured web site.

SOURCE OF POWER #3: COMMUNICATIONS.
In times of great change like we are facing today, people will turn to one another. And in doing, they don’t turn to a mass. They turn to a guide, a trusted friend. Who will lead these people? Will it be the traditional sources of people, ala journalists or a company like your own? Likely not.

We used to ask friends and family about where to stay on vacation, what BBQ to buy, what car model to consider. Now, we not only reference information based on who we know, but also on who is a noted authority on travel or backyard cooking equipment or cars. At times that information is linked to purchase decisions but many times it’s on Epinions, Amazon.com, or Technorati searches.

I believe we will have a new class of leaders, people who are natural leaders who do research and investigation so they tell the good from the bad, defining by their words and actions the benefits of using something. And whatever they are called: citizen marketers, consumer advocates, key influentials, user enthusiasts or something of the like. The name is not the point. (but I’m sure someone will come up with the perfect term)

There will be many of these consumer advocates as leaders. For any category or product. It could be yogurt, it could be cars, it could be blogging services. And whether they choose WordPress or VOX as the winning offer will define which product is more successful. And in doing so, these individuals, these people will shape the market view of what your company or product stands for. If you don’t already know your key user influencers, isn’t it time to do so? If you’re not in dialogue with them already, what do you think is at risk?

This information is wholly different from company collateral in that it is not controlled by the company—it is not even stored in one place. It is distributed content created by users and others. In a very real sense, each of these, and dozens of others like them, is information communities that have lives of their own.

Engaging in at least a two-way dialogue with Enthusiasts and Guides creates a path to learn, to discern, to champion.

——-
FINALLY:
Market Momentum then comes when you create the linkage of

Creation.
Customization.
Communication.

[I’m going to work on a visual next. Circles, arrows, etc must be involved. ;-)]

It’s time
We are currently in the midst of a “Triple Witching Hour” of change: societal changes, technology changes, and wide availability of broadband access enabling a worldwide community of consumers and developers. Don’t think it is just technology that is driving this new direction. Culture is rapidly changing as well. We are experiencing a new way of creating, collaborating, and communicating that does not adhere to the world of the Five Forces.

If the Five Forces of Porter’s model could be described as a castle surrounded by high walls and a moat, the emerging model looks more like the aerial view of Los Angeles: a city center that is not really the center, surrounded by smaller centers and seemingly limitless suburbs in all directions. There are bigger and smaller concentrations of activity, but little unifying power or authority.

PERMEABLE CORPORATIONS: THE NEW MODEL?!
The Five Forces are not dead as an idea because there are still some markets where it works well, such as heavy manufacturing. However, the Five Forces are about information being limited, power being withheld from suppliers and partners, and keeping users from learning about alternatives.

Web 2.0 is a fundamentally different Meta framework. Knowledge is prevalent, easily accessible and no particular idea stands all on its own. Today it is all about co-creation, and it makes things much more interesting. Where you withhold information in the Five Forces, in Web 2.0 you gain advantage by sharing. You want to become Permeable. It’s a source of strategic advantage.

Technorati Tags:
Emerging Software Trend, Permeable Markets, Porter, Dell, O’Reilly

Lincoln Allison returns to Georgia and finds that the hopes for the future he found on his first visit fifteen years ago still very much alive. The trouble is that little has happened in the intervening years to turn these hopes into reality.

Arriving at night, the impression of change is dramatic and immediate. A brand new airport building, swish and spacious: I remember Tbilisi airport when there was shit on the floor and burned out military aircraft alongside the runways. A broad, smooth new road into the city, called after George W. Bush, the only American president ever to visit Georgia. Where once there was post-Soviet gloom and after that the sinister darkness of collapse, now there are the bright lights of garages, advertisements, fountains and random ornamental structures which twinkle.

But when I get up in the morning it is to a more familiar and less cheerful scene. The snow swirls down unseasonally, melting as it lands and filling the pot-holed streets with water. Buildings which have been spruced up on the outside are still cracked and dilapidated on the inside. When the conversations begin there is constant disillusion with the government of President Mikheil Saakashvili and his United National Movement who came to power in 2004 with 86% of the vote. “A government only good at window-dressing” is a common theme. (Better than a government good at nothing, I think.) “Increasingly authoritarian” they say, but every government Georgia has ever had has become increasingly authoritarian and perhaps there are reasons for that.

Apart from the bright lights the window-dressing includes applications to join NATO and the European Union and to host the Winter Olympics. Unfortunately, none of these have been successful; a visit by the President of the USA and admission into the Eurovision Song Contest are the best of it so far. The President himself is a symbolic figure in the country’s supposed new identity: still under forty, seven languages, two American degrees, a Dutch wife. If symbolism could make you democratic, capitalist and “Western” Georgia would have made it by now.
To say that Georgia’s progress has been patchy would be polite indeed. The country once had over 5 million people and now there are only about four million. The GDP per capita is around $3,500 compared with $4,600 in 1985. A meaningless figure, perhaps, but most people over forty will tell you that they were much better off in the Soviet period with its cheap housing, fuel, wine and transport. And having said that they will go on to tell you how much they detest the Russians and despise the Soviet legacy. Last year the president opened a “Museum of the Soviet Occupation”. Vladimir Putin reacted with predictable scorn. Who ran the Soviet Union at its brutal worst? The likes of Sergo Orzhonikidze and Laventi Beria, not to mention a certain Josef Djugashvili - Georgians all. It is a bit like Scots complaining of British imperialism.

There are increasing criticisms from NGOs and monitoring bodies of the government’s record on “human rights”. Deaths in custody, violence against demonstrators, torture and the crushing of judicial independence are all serious issues. There have even been comparisons with Belarus, the least westernised of former Soviet republics. The Georgian prison population is three times per capita that of the UK, which is the worst in the EU. There is only one bed for every three prisoners, which doesn’t deter Georgian judges from sending more prisoners down as it would in Britain.

However, it is difficult to imagine this land of violence and “amoral familism” being ruled by Scandinavian methods. And some of the most corrupt features of Georgia in the nineties have been turned around completely. The police used to be sullen, useless and intent only on parting motorists from their money. A new, young police force is now in place and is considered fair, to the surprise of most of the population. University admissions, a process which was utterly corrupt in the past now consists of objective tests monitored from the Netherlands.

Schools are operating fairly well, perhaps best at the primary level though there are huge natural constraints on progress such as a lack of resources in general and a lack of competent English teachers in particular. The school principal whom I interviewed spoke highly of government policy, but he has been in post since the days of Andropov so he has probably spoken highly of more regimes than the Vicar of Bray. This summer he will have to re-apply for his own job as the police and others have done.

Progress in the state universities, the focus of my fist visit, in 1992 has stalled almost completely, however. In fact, in the two areas I know most about, sport and higher education, the post-Soviet collapse has never been reversed and the most obvious symptom is that anyone with any ability aspires to go abroad.

There are plenty of areas of business in which the shoots of revival are vigorous. Restaurants are thriving, at least in Tbilisi. The ancient Georgian wine varieties, many of which virtually disappeared in the 1990s, are almost all back and in much more glamorous packaging. Garages are thriving and selling proper petrol, unlike the engine-busting stuff you had to buy from Soviet army tankers in the nineties. You can get any car mended on the main roads out of Tbilisi. There is a massive modern supermarket called Goodwill just west of Tbilisi and proper banks which people trust.

On the other hand all these signs of recovery are confined to Tbilisi and the modernised road leading west to the Black Sea. Get out of the city and away from that corridor and you are back into clapped out corners of the USSR: half-deserted villages, ancient Ladas, a population which is massively and sullenly unemployed. It doesn’t make much sense to talk of an unemployment rate because you have to register as unemployed and there is no point. But it is realistically 80% in some areas and official figures show 52% below the national poverty line.

So what is the Georgian problem? Given that this is a country with a long history and many assets and was one of the three richest in the USSR how come it is in many respects the most disastrous of the post-Soviet republics? The most spectacular dimension of this is the official figure of an 83% decline in the standard of living between Soviet times and the nadir of the mid-nineties, a world record in its way. But the half dozen separate nasty little wars which the country has experienced are also some kind of record. The answer, I think, is a compound of three elements: culture, economy and geo-politics which have all served to exacerbate each other.

When I consider Georgian culture the heart and the head go in opposite directions. I first went there to “reform” the state university in 1992, but I had shown some affinity for the place years earlier when as an undergraduate I had spent two successive evenings at the Oxford Playhouse watching the Georgian State Dance Troupe. Obviously these moustachioed and booted Caucasians with long knives had something to offer which Oxford did not. And it is not a disappointment in living up to its image: if you are looking for a place where even a shared snack requires wine and toasts and probably oaths of undying loyalty to friends, this is it.

Or a place, you suddenly realise you hadn’t realised, is the fiercely proud origin of everything significant - like alphabets, wine, wheat, the “white” race, European Christianity, St. George, etc. We recognise this status only in our bizarre classification of ourselves as “Caucasians”. But all this fierce-proud stuff constitutes a fairly significant barrier to rationality and modernisation. The most famous of Georgians, dear old Uncle Joe Djugashvili, was in some ways a representative figure. He was a loving husband and father, a warm and emotional friend, a witty and jovial drinking companion - and he killed tens of millions of people. And then cracked a rather good joke about his achievements: “To kill one man is murder; to kill a million is statistics.”

Georgia’s only experience of modern economic activity is Soviet. Georgian production was locked firmly into the Soviet system: the tractor factory in Kutaisi required Russian parts and produced for a Russian market. Without Russian cooperation you might as well raise it to the ground and start again. And there is no non-gangster tradition of enterprise - which means that enterprise has a bad name and people have no notion of what they might do between strategies for family survival and the fortuitous assistance of a vast authoritative institution such as the state or a transnational organisation. Thus the completeness of the economic collapse and the difficulty of making any progress by democratic means.

And the third part - the only real problem if you listen to some Georgians - is geopolitical. The Georgian mental map sees the country as a small island between a Muslim desert and a Russian ocean. For most of history the Russians were the inevitable protectors because they were co-religionists. But the protection turned into a suffocating bear-hug. And the Russians will not let go: surveys show that Georgia and Ukraine are the only former Soviet republics about which Russians feel any sense of loss and that Saakashvili is the third most hated man in Russia. Russian attitudes to Georgia have been compared to the loss to a middle-aged man of his lively, dusky, bright-eyed bride. Georgia was where Russia’s favourite wine and food came from and was its favourite holiday destination.

And Russia now effectively controls Abkhazia, which is one of those “special” provinces to Georgians as Kosovo is to Serbians and Kashmir to Indians. The saddest conversation I had on my recent visit was with a man who had lost his home, his brother, his sister and his son to the Abkhazian conflict and finally accepted he was never going to go back. The news on the other “autonomous regions” in Soviet parlance is not so bad: Saakasvili’s greatest achievement is the reincorporation of Adjara back into Georgia, which required ridding it of its one time party boss, Aslan Abashidze, who had just crossed out the word party from his job description. There is even hope in South Ossetia. But the Georgian fantasy that the Americans might ride to their rescue is occasionally punctured by the recognition that the Americans may need Russian cooperation more than they need oaths of loyalty from Georgians.

Thus those central theoretical questions of the post-Communist period - What is the relationship between capitalism and democracy? and Which should come first? - are peculiarly acute and unanswered in Georgia. People often make a little speech along the lines of, “We were so naive! We thought all we had to do was to get rid of the Communists, hold an election and we would be just like the West.” They are not so naive now , though they often act as if they were and political stability must still be in doubt.

They elected the extreme nationalist Zviad Gamsakhurdia with over 80% of the vote (in 1991) and the former Communist Eduard Shevardnadze with a similar majority the following year and they dismissed both with forms of revolution. So it is no guarantee of anything that Saakashvili was elected with an overwhelming majority. Nor should we be much impressed by his “western” credentials. Gamsakhurdia was a mystical and fanatical nationalist with little understanding of the modern world: his The Spiritual Mission of Georgia (1990) is one of the weirdest books I have ever read. But he was also a former lecturer in American literature at London University.

Most Georgians would now tell you that they would have preferred what they see as the Chinese route to capitalism: order, infrastructure and capitalism before democracy becomes either safe or useful. And I agree with them. I’m still hoping that this time, slowly, patiently, substantial progress will happen. Fifteen years ago I sat with my new-found Georgian friend and fantasised over a bottle of Kindzmarauli about the bright, global future of Georgian wine and tourism and universities. The trouble is we are still fantasising, but our hopes are not yet dead.

Lincoln Allison retired from an academic career in 2004 to become a freelance writer and broadcaster. He remains Emeritus Reader in Politics at the University of Warwick and Visiting Professor in sport and leisure at the University of Brighton.

Back in February, the AdWords Retail team launched the Retail Knowledge Center to provide retail advertisers with up-to-date industry and product information. Our Tech B2B (that’s Technology Business to Business) team is happy to announce a similar resource for advertisers offering business technology solutions. Megan Unyi is here to tell us more:

We’d like to invite advertisers to visit the new Tech B2B Knowledge Center, which features tips for success with AdWords, advertiser case studies, links to recent articles and research, and news of other Google products that may help your business. This site will be updated on a regular basis to keep you abreast of new trends and tools.

If you’re looking for even more of the latest industry information and pointers, we hope that you’ll check out the latest Technology Business to Business Newsletter. In this issue, we examine the importance of search in the buying cycle, best practices for optimizing landing pages, and the growing significance of blogs and other social media for business technology marketers. We also take an in-depth look at DataMirror, a provider of real-time data integration solutions that used the Google Content Network to increase sales, extend its reach, and boost brand recognition.

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This summer, for the first time, Columbia Square Adult Learning Center is adding an evening session to our popular daytime English upgrading course. Both day and evening classes assist second-language English speakers to improve their reading, writing, listening and speaking skills in order to achieve academic success. Tuition is free for students who are working towards a B.C. adult graduation certificate (Dogwood Diploma). For students who prefer to study at home, we will also continue to offer virtual courses in a wide range of subject areas. All courses are B.C. accredited and taught by B.C. certified teachers.

For more information about registration, call 604-517 6191 or visit our website at Columbia Square Adult Learning Centre

I’m not one to speak up for violent video games, nor do I play them myself. I don’t consider myself addicted to any game, have a reasonable social life, and have other interests outside of gaming. I’m not what most people would consider a typical gamer. However, the stupidity of this senator’s proposal is something I feel is worth commenting on, both from the perspective as a gamer and as a future parent.

For starters, I’ll quickly review the point of the article. The ESRB (Entertainment Software Rating Board) is an American rating board that assigns ratings to video games before they go on sale in the US, and, by proxy, Canada (since most game companies have a general North American release, some going as far as to make a Canadian release that also has French localization, but they still use the same packaging; I’ve never seen a game on sale here without an ESRB rating clearly visible on the packaging). The ESRB rating system is similar to the movie rating system. However, the rating process is a bit different. Taken from the ESRB website, the process is for video game companies to send a detailed description of the game, along with a significant amount of footage showing the most extreme content and an accurate overall representation, to the ESRB. A panel of three trained people independently review the game. If they agree, the rating stands; if not, they will often request more footage and more opinions before rating the game.

Senator Brownback’s proposed bill is focused on the fact that the games are not actually played, and that disreputable game companies could sneak in hidden content, particularly in the form of easter eggs (hidden content that is unlocked when the player performs certain actions while playing). While well-meaning, this has significant drawbacks.

Firstly, in most cases, it is not feasible to play a game in its entirety. Some games require a lot of hours to be completed, even for the most skilled player, and require significantly more time if the player has minimal video game skill. How does one achieve a high level of skill, and have the time to play a game in its entirety? Most likely by being a “hardcore” gamer. Sure, the ESRB could hire a small number of skilled gamers as reviewers, paying them to play full-time. This too has drawbacks: the gamers may, at times, become involved in the game and forget what they’re reviewing, or may miss or forget details that could affect the rating. In addition, their own personal biases, being gamers, are more relevant; the average hardcore gamer may not be the best choice of person to make an informed, unbiased decision on the rating of a game as they know how the rating will affect potential buyers.

All this assumes that it is possible for one person to play a game entirely. AI often makes that impossible. For example, the computer-controlled characters in the world in Oblivion do things like go eat when they’re hungry, occasionally travel to different towns to visit friends or family, and the like. Since some events only occur at certain AI-controlled times and some things can never occur depending on the time and place the player is in (for example, you’re not likely to see computer players try to steal food from the inn during the day, but if you never enter an inn at night, you can still have played the entire game and never see a computer-instigated theft happen), it quickly becomes impossible to rate. The game is also expansive and is focused on exploration, having hundreds of small caves to discover (not all of which are necessary to enter, or even useful to enter), and so the raters would have to enter all of these.

Online and multiplayer games are another issue. When playing against human opponents, gameplay changes (and this is notified on the packages of any games featuring online play). Should a game receive a mature or adult-only rating because some gamers say explicit or adult-oriented things in public channels? Or how about World of Warcraft, where much of the content isn’t accessible unless you have a raid party of 40 people? This quickly gets expensive and difficult to rate.

Ratings are also assigned before the game is shipped to stores, and game companies historically have had problems with leaked information about the game. If they chose to reveal all their easter eggs to the reviewing board, the risk of that information being leaked to the internet, spoiling the easter egg before the game even ships, is high.

Also, what about bug/content patches? Should they be rated too? Developers can add new content in patches if they like; much of the dungeons and raids in World of Warcraft were added this way.

I’ve said enough about why the bill has its faults. So what could be done instead? I have a few ideas. First off, the government (both in Canada and the US) should have the power to pull games from shelves if they can be proven to have been intentionally misrated, and should be able to change the rating if necessary. No developer wants their game to be pulled because they put in an x-rated easter egg in an otherwise teen game, but made the game out to be worth of only a teen rating. The financial loss alone would be enough to ruin the company, not to mention the ruined reputations of those being involved. There would be no reason for someone to intentionally misrepresent their game.

How would the government find out about the misrepresentation? Simple, some kind of a tipline and/or polling the Internet. Any popular game that comes out often has many fansites dedicated to it before the game even launches. There are numerous gamer-related information sites, and it doesn’t take long from a game’s release date for people to post information, screenshots, walkthroughs, and strategies. When some kind of explicit content is discovered in a game, you can *count* on it being all over the Internet within a day or two of its discovery, and with the right legislation, the discovery could cause a forced removal from shelves of the game.

Another thing which is necessary and, as far as I know, not implemented yet, is the fact that there is nothing legally preventing game stores from selling mature or adult only games to *anyone* who comes in the store. If it was legally required that stores only sell to those old enough, with proof of ID, that would prevent, for the most part, mature and adult only games getting into the hands of minors. Of course, there’s nothing stopping someone buying an M-rated game for their child, but that’s outside the government’s responsibility and power.

What’s my take on this as a future parent? Obviously, it’s something I’ve thought about. There’s no reason that a parent should be shocked to discover that their 12-year-old has been playing an M-rated game besides poor parenting. Whether you use video games as a babysitter or just let your kid play a moderate amount for entertainment, you should know at least a bit about what they’re playing. Not to mention that games typically aren’t going to be 90% all ages and 10% adult only, so even walking casually by the TV or computer and watching for a minute or two should give you an idea of what they’re playing. A disinterest in gaming and lack of parental involvement doesn’t count as an excuse for not being informed. You should know if your child comes home with an M-rated game, and if you’re concerned, you shouldn’t be buying one yourself for your child. The ratings are there for you to use; it’s not enough to complain about the (assumed) lack of quality of the ratings but then go out and blindly buy whatever game your kid thinks is popular. Furthermore, the parents who are shocked to see their kids playing games with full nudity are likely the ones who generally show a disinterest and lack of proper parenting.

Any rating system, no matter how accurate, will fail if parents do not do their part. Both are necessary to make sure that children play only what’s appropriate to them. And even in the “lack” of a good rating system now, parents still have opportunities to find out more about the games their kids play. They could *gasp* ask to play a bit and find out first-hand, or they could *shock* look on the Internet and find out about the game. Laziness is no excuse for ignorance.

First off, I’m a Conservative — value-wise, opinions, beliefs, personal habits and behaviors — with a liberal sense of humor (”liberal” as in, generously applied).

That means, I still laugh at kindergarten-age jokes even when I realize intellectually they may be utterly stoopid.

And it also means, I enjoy laughing at stoopid jokes (and other media) but I don’t enjoy laughing at the stoopids themselves.

About that last part, I accredit and refer here to my character as a Conservative because I don’t regard the humiliation of people to be entertainment or consider it amusing when or if stoopids are or may be humiliated. I encounter that efforting-to-humiliate behavior by Liberals very often, if not nearly consistently: they (Liberals as in the socio-political sense of “progressives” and socialists) ridicule us, they ridicule what is Conservative and is enjoyed or associated with Conservatives.

But about stoopids, except when they’re cruel stoopids — returning to the point here, which is Roger Friedman — then ridicule is sometimes appropriate from wherever on the socio-political scale you may be.

And about cruel stoopids, my response is usually intellectual displeasure if not anger and I take steps appropriately, but I never consider cruelty in and of itself to be entertaining and I accredit that to my own values: to withhold cruelty in-kind is noble but to withhold denigration of cruelty is to be reckless.

About cruelty as a singular issue, ridicule of cruelty or a cruel person is not out-of-line with what I consider to be reasonable punishment. Then you disassociate from cruelty and the cruel after they’ve been clearly identified as such.

Mere stoopidity is yet another thing: it is someone doing what is in their nature to do when they aren’t operating with the same information some of the rest of us are. Like being naive and unaffected and sometimes stoopid, or the basic chicken joke. Or maybe thinking it’s funny to be slimed with green goo — which would be cruel if someone was slimed with green goo when they were all dressed up for a Prom or their wedding (or any wedding) or otherwise taken unawares and caused pain and suffering by someone’s thoughtlessness, even when it was “merely” stoopid.

And, the stoopid tag, I realize, goes ’round-and-’round, depending on one’s information. I may be regarded as stoopid from a man’s perspective because I devote a lot of time in considering which piece of cloth to purchase (or anything else, most of us women tend to “harvest” by careful and time-consuming perusal as a manifestation of our very being — we devote time to look at everything and then to decide and we rely on these time-intensive decisions inorder to put ourselves and our environs together), and, I may be regarded as stoopid to value the unborn and reject the act of murder upon an unborn child by someone irreverant enough to not value the life of the unborn.

Like I said, it’s a case of information and what one is functioning with as to beliefs or lack of them. What’s stoopid isn’t always what is not intelligent or wise, what’s stoopid is often just what is seen done by others that they themselves will not do (wisdom, reservations brought about by values and beliefs, or learned experience having instructed otherwise).

And, it’s only funny or entertaining when the stoopid act is familiar, as in, what someone’s learned not to do or rejected as ever doing and thus, when seen in others, it can be amusing because of that. As long as there is absence of cruetly — even so much as a hint of the cruel — the arrogant, the unkind are not necessarily cruel, but are certainly stoopid.

But ridicule as general behavior is just bad. When it bears no corrective message, it is the perspective of the crude and creepy, the untrustworthy who think a value other than theirs is not respectable. When something or someone is stoopid, by comparison, they’re just bumbling. When one is not respectable, they’re often cruel and they are not often — if ever — funny.

So, again, identify the cruel and their acts and then disassociate from them: my rule of behavior.

Here’s the latest stoopid who is cruel and unusually not funny. As in, not to be respected. Someone I’d not throw a cabbage at if ever he were on stage because I wouldn’t waste the produce — it deserves a prized bit of corned beef on a Sunday table instead and should not be wasted on the likes of this guy, who lends weight to the very notion of “stoopid” and advances the offense of “cruel” to a place somewhere beneath muck:

Roger Friedman.

Why FOX News employs this fool (appropriate term for Friedman) is beyond me — as in, what in the world is or has ever been the appeal of this cruel and cruelly stoopid, reckless and very often inane person to those who pay the expenses at FOX?

It can’t be ratings because after looking over the internet, I can’t find one person or site who respects Friedman, and, in fact, many appear to loathe and reject him outright — the appropriate response to cruelty, as I have explained here, to me and apparently to many others.

And many of those rejecting Friedman (appropriately) are not Conservatives but Liberals — who dislike FOX News accordingly (which I do not) and it can easily be assumed they’d be rejecting of Friedman because of his FOX News affiliation and not because of his cruelty (and many other negatives, withheld for now as to discussion because the key issue’s been identified, his cruelty) — but it appears after reading through a lot of sites that Friedman is often rejected by people throughout the spectrum of the political because Friedman is not respectable (in the cruelty-sense of the word) but because he’s generally and obviously a cad, an insensitive and reckless creep.

His latest column has Friedman squirting out green goo whether a reader would like to be goo’ed or not: his recurring, ongoing hear-me-roar-as-a-Jewish-man-who-sees-anti-semetics-everywhere-especially-if-they’re-a -Christian-in-entertainment.

Roger Friedman has many problems but his weird and fearfully weird projections onto the unfortunate or perhaps even the unbusy or preoccupied or retiring as being “rejected by Hollywood” or some blood-vengeance by his tribe upon anyone who may dare to act outside their tribal boundaries is cruel. It is also craziness. It is also an indication of bad taste, lack of maturity, imbalanced psyche, spiritual corruptness, immaturity, meanness, spitefulness, irrationality, selfishness, envy or worse, lust, call it all of that, but call it what it is and that is Roger Friedman’s irresponsible use of space among humanity.

This is what he wails as scribble from out from the depths of his misery, blood-lust and jealousy:

Mel Gibson is not losing his religion. He keeps investing his “Passion of the Christ” money into the church he built in Agoura Hills, Calif.

Last year, Gibson parked another $8.2 million in his AP Reilly Foundation, the tax-free entity that takes care of his Holy Family Catholic Church.

Gibson’s church is not recognized by the Roman Catholic Church because it does not acknowledge the authority of the pope or the Vatican or the doctrine known as Vatican II. Gibson and many of his fellow congregants are Holocaust deniers, as is Gibson’s father, who has been known to contribute to neo-Nazi publications.

Gibson, nevertheless, perseveres. According to a federal tax filing obtained exclusively by this column, the foundation now has $30 million in its coffers, up from $22 million last year.

The church sits on about 11 acres of land owned by the Foundation and worth around $3 million, according to public documents.

Let’s put this into perspective. Los Angeles Catholic Big Brothers and Big Sisters only has $1.6 million in its till. The Malibu Roman Catholic Church, which is recognized by the archdiocese, supports 600 families. It has a fraction of Holy Family’s budget. But Holy Family is said to accommodate about 70 families altogether. That’s quite a difference.

Thanks to “The Passion of the Christ” and his anti-Semitic rant last year when he was arrested in Malibu, Gibson is no longer a significant Hollywood player. But he obviously has money, and he is using it as he sees fit.

What makes his activities interesting for Hollywood is whether he will continue to play a part as client of Ed Limato, the ICM agent who recently lost his job.

Why does FOX even employ this creep? Why give him room to publish his garbage? And that rotten yuck above from Friedman is not the least of his depravity: he’s previously (on multiple occasions, in multiple columns) cast about his scalping rubrics wherein he rails about the “anti-semetic” and “neo-Nazi” just as he does again in this current throw-up.

To Friedman, one is “neo-Nazi” and “holocaust denier” when one isn’t Jewish — because I think that’s the extent of Friedman’s insights into others who aren’t practicing his “I’m Jewish, I don’t believe in anything other than my own ego and the denigration of others not like me” crud: to call others — who aren’t as “self involved” as is Friedman, for people such as himself to then paper-hang others with these hideous pejoratives even if they are irrevlevant and meaningless as to any specifics involved — is both cruel and stoopid. It’s not even approaching being entertainment; unless, of course, the target audience is also equally stoopidly cruel or Friedman assumes them to be (his “vision” limitations).

And since I consider myself a member of the FOX News audience — I tune in reguarly to various programs, I read their site for general and current news — the fact that Friedman’s stoopid cruelty is a part of that network upsets and offends me rigourously.

Does Friedman even have manners? Did he grow up in a pool of black ooze among subterranean biting monsters such that he has no ability to read a person’s character beyond what he insists upon them? What, exactly, did Roger Friedman grow up without that he is now able to wage his worst-best upon others without reprimand or even penalty?

What does Roger Friedman think about Jesus Christ? About Christians and Christianity? These are rhetorical questions I pose here because, obviously, these are problematic issues for him and because of that, he’s exuding psychological (and emotional) illness — and warped mentality if not spirituality — as to the beliefs of others, especially as to Christians. But why should any network give him (and his illness) so much as one dime or space to spill this rubbish all over the rest of us? It’s one thing to hold beliefs of one’s own, it’s another thing to apply dreadful overtones and outright lies upon others because you may despise what you wrongly assume they believe, as Friedman does about so many in his columns but he certainly has targered actor and producer (and Christian) Mel Gibson for his worst wrath, if not insanity.

Oh, but he’s Jewish! Did you know that? That Roger Friedman is Jewish?! He hasn’t reminded us of that for, probably, seven paragraphs in any of his columns.

I note how his slime continues:

Uncle Junior Sings

And everyone listens. Last night at Elaine’s, Dominic Chianese, aka Uncle Junior from “The Sopranos,” serenaded the restaurant not once but twice a cappella with an Italian song and an Irish one. (What, someone asked, no Yiddish?)

Dominic Chianese AND the character he played on THE SOPRANOS, as also that Series itself, are not about Jews, being Jewish nor about Yiddish otherwise. So what’s the blurb there supposed to mean except — oh, I get it, Friedman is Jewish. Friedman hasn’t heard himself being mentioned or referred to by strangers singing in a restaurant so Friedman found it necesssary to get that blurb in there about…himself (”someone asked,” he writes). What’s his point if it isn’t as I’ve described here? Or anyone’s? Context is irreverant, apparently.

I congratulate Rupert Murdoch on achieving his goal of purchasing control of the Wall Street Journal (pending but nearly completed by this date), but Murdoch might now turn his eye, ear, intellect and soul to the likes of this maligner using his FOX News site to plaster his screed and toss Roger Friedman on the dungheap he so merits.

Politics aside — but it’s a very safe guess at this stage of events to conclude that Friedman is a Liberal and a Democrat — his behavior (in print and otherwise, from what I’ve read) is deplorable and deplorably craven, as if he’s maintained in a dark mental and spiritual place by keepers of the doom and sent forth to do certain targeted bidding, like cutting-up a master work or spray painting the windows of the Louvre or hacking away with a sledge hammer upon THE PIETA.

Friedman is one person who has sunk to or never risen from some pit and pitiful place that is so substandard as to be not worthy of being taken seriously. He’s worthy of being ridiculed. Because he’s stoopidly cruel — and he’s cruel. Stoopid is too high a praise for him.

The actual “anti-semite” in Roger Friedman’s world is Roger Friedman. Because he gives his ethnicity — I don’t see any religious references anywhere so I gather Friedman’s references are as to his ethnicity — he gives his ethnicity a bad name, singing “Yiddish” or otherwise.

Can someone identify this plant for me? At first I thought it was a Swamp Maple tree sapling, but then I noticed the flowers. The plant is growing at the edge of some woods, in ground that was bulldozed a few years ago. It’s about 3′ tall and it looks like a young tree. It’s flowering now….zone 4 in the Adirondacks, upstate NY.

There’s a new riot of sound coming straight out of East London. It’s beautifully noisy and breaks rules, both musically and culturally. Call it the new ‘alternative’ — in the original sense when the word actually referred to music bristling with ideas, rebellion and youth-powered energy rather than the conveyor belt of insipid indie kids playing over-familiar tunes and chords
One thing that might surprise you then is it’s being made by jazz musicians. It’s true that the bands, currently making inroads into young audiences and scenes outside the usual confines of the straight jazz ghetto, have been labelled as jazz-punk, skronk, or post-jazz even. In common, they use band names that evoke the zeal of punk and thrash: Fraud and Led Bib are the pair at the head of the pack of this fresh musical explosion. Both are releasing new albums for the Babel Label, which we are proud to think of as a standard bearer for London independent jazz, releasing the likes of the 2005 Mercury nominated Polar Bear CD Held on the Tips of Fingers, Acoustic Ladyland’s popular Last Chance Disco and the agit-entertainment oeuvre of the iconoclastic Billy Jenkins. “We don’t want people to sit in the audience and scratch their beards,” says Mark Holub, drummer with Led Bib. “We want them to enjoy it.”

The new gangs on the mean streets of Hackney you’ll find are jazz musicians.

These are musicians who play the music that they have grown up with: electronic, indie thrash, punk, new wave and post rock are a major part of their aesthetic. Even though they are happy to be branded as “jazz”, don’t be surprised to see a version of Bowie’s ‘Heroes’ on Led Bib’s album Sizewell Tea or tunes entitled ‘Iggy’ and ‘Nico’ recorded by Acoustic Ladyland . The Babel Label is a record label that has organically evolved out of the scene, interacting with musicians as they themselves have been developing. Over the past ten years it has evolved enduring relationships with Billy Jenkins, pianist Huw Warren and vocalist Christine Tobin for example. Following on from Polar Bear and Acoustic Ladyland, the ‘live’ factor is fundamental to the impact these bands are having. Fraud’s incendiary live performances have won many plaudits. Meanwhile Led Bib made no. 16 in the “acts not to be missed this Summer” in the recent Observer Music Monthly , ahead of stellar names such as the Arctic Monkeys and Björk, and in the same paper was hailed as a new force in contemporary indie music — regardless of genre — by influential journalist Paul Morley.

The emergence of a new jazz generation in more rundown areas of places such as Hackney and Bethnal Green continues unabated over recent years and is part of a larger migration of young people (affecting students and cash strapped musicians alike) to East London following on from the squeeze on rented accommodation by developers keen to gentrify, in their eyes, the ‘trendier’ parts of London. The jazz musicians have moved into these areas. The new gangs on the mean streets of Hackney you’ll find are jazz musicians.

The Vortex has taken the mantle and is encouraging a diverse audience unfettered by chart and pop fashionistas and obsessions with celebrity. Lily Allen and Damon Albarn have been left behind in Camden.

Every new movement needs a physical as well as spiritual home. The Vortex jazz club is at the centre of the action. The Vortex is now based in Dalston, having been forced out of its original home in Stoke Newington. It’s playing a vital role in giving a platform to the bands, at the same time capturing the vitality of the area. Dalston is a transient melting pot of cultures, an environment in which the most innovative and earthy jazz is thriving. Situated in Gillett Square in which you’ll find a Nigerian hairdresser next to a Somalian qat seller, while up the road you can eat your meze with Gilbert and George or see the latest art house film at the Rio.

The Vortex has taken the mantle and is encouraging a diverse audience unfettered by chart and pop fashionistas and obsessions with celebrity. Lily Allen and Damon Albarn have been left behind in Camden. The vibe inside the Vortex is boho, energetic and as far removed from the “niiiice” Jazz Club of The Fast Show as possible. It’s also a laboratory that allows musicians the opportunity to lead the way and meet the challenges of their culture and environment through their music without having to conform to audience trends. Other venues around the area are following in its footsteps such as the nearby Passing Clouds, but there are inevitably casualties of the success in the East, victims to the soul-destroying interests of developers, one recently being the Spitz which has a closure notice nailed to its door.

It’s also of course because you can survive here with less money, an essential for jazz musicians with a streetwise attitude ready for an open exchange with elements of the non-jazz scene.

The Vortex had set up originally in the late 1980s in nearby Stoke Newington when the area was also home to the site of the original Jazz Café (before it lost something of the risk-taking energy when it moved to its present plusher premises in Camden). The arrival of a jazz community based around the old Vortex in Stoke Newington meant an influx of a younger generation infused with the spirit of risk taking, the fundamental revolutionary aspect of jazz running from Jelly Roll Morton to John Coltrane. Django Bates, Christine Tobin, Phil Robson and Tom Arthurs joined the likes of improvised music god Derek Bailey already established in the area.

The move to Dalston was a natural evolution. It’s also of course because you can survive here with less money, an essential for jazz musicians with a streetwise attitude ready for an open exchange with elements of the non-jazz scene. All owe much to the New York downtown scene and electric experiments of Miles Davis, but jazz isn’t the only influence on Babel’s artists. Finn Peters’ Su-Ling is named after a gamelan flute, laptop wizard Leafcutter John is an integral part of Polar Bear, Fraud marry thrash metal riffs to menacingly abstract post-rock electronica and free improv, and Tom Arthurs’ albums include reworkings of Messaien and Brahms, while Christine Tobin even has a MySpace tribute page to Leonard Cohen. Welsh hymns, John Dowland, Youssou N’Dour, the Carpenters: the list goes on and absolutely nothing is off limits.

—Oliver Weindling is founder and director of the Babel Label, and a director of the Vortex.—
—Selwyn Harris is online editor for Babel and a regular major contributor to Jazzwise magazine—

Photo is of Led Bib

Good grief, these announcements are coming fast and furious. Here’s the initial list of songs for Guitar Hero III (thanks Gamespot):
Original Recordings:
“Cult of Personality” by Living Color
“Paint It Black” by the Rolling Stones
“Cherub Rock” by Smashing Pumpkins
“Sabotage” by Beastie Boys
“The Metal” by Tenacious D
“My Name Is Jonas” by Weezer
“Knights of Cydonia” by Muse

Cover Songs:
“Rock And Roll All Nite” as made famous by Kiss
“School’s Out” as made famous by Alice Cooper
“Slow Ride” as made famous by Foghat
“Barracuda” as made famous by Heart

That’s an excellent list, with a few songs (”Paint It Black” and “Barracuda” are the ones that leap out at me) that should be fantastic.

That’s the good stuff. Reading the official press release, though, raises at least two questions. Here are two excerpts that seem a bit worrisome:
…players will experience an incredible number of newly added features and explosive content including a new multiplayer action-inspired battle mode, grueling boss battles, a bevy of exclusive unlockable content and authentic rock venues. Expanded online multiplayer game modes will also allow axe-shredders worldwide to compete head-to-head for true legendary rock status.

“Grueling boss battles?” Boy, I hope they can somehow make that not suck, and in case it does, let us turn them off, please.

The exclusive Gibson guitars will include innovative features such as removable faceplates that will allow fans to later personalize their guitars and make it their own, and a new button color design that will be integrated for an even greater authentic feel and rock experience.

Uh-oh. “New button color design?” I hope this isn’t the “change the controller so you really have to buy a new one” feature, because that’s what it sounds like. We’ll see.

Here’s the full press release.

Jasper here folks. Howdy!

I’ve been kinda bored to the point of wonderment here now that the Stanley Cup Finals are over. For those of you that are debilitated to the point of being only spectators now, suck it up. The withdrawls are tough but remember you’ve only got about five months until the season starts up again. Hang in there with me and we’ll make it through this slow time.

Well, I sure wanted to see Buffalo versus Detroit in the finals. Those of you that follow my shit know that already. I admire the play of Chris Chelios and the determination of Chris Drury. Both of those boys will be walking with wood until the day they die I figure. Ehh, ya agree with me? But ya got to hand it to the Ducks and Senators. They eliminated all comers to get to the final. Each team is very well qualified with great goal tending, great management, great forwards, great fans, great owners and great defense.

Here then is my complement to the Ducks as they now can hoist the cherished cup – HURRAH, HURRAH, HURRAH !!!!

Way to go Teemu! You come into the league and score seventy-six goals as a rookie in 1992/1993– leading all and now you finally get to have your Finnish name engraved on Lord Stanley’s gift to the world of hockey. Put that baby in the passenger seat of your Ferrari, ehh!

My fellow puckheads, what do you think that this is going to do to California hockey?

When Gretsky came to the Kings, the state or more specifically Southern California saw a major increase in the interest of hockey. New rinks were built and those that couldn’t get on the ice started playing roller hockey. How many of you guys out there got your first hockey stick for Christmas during Gretsky’s time with the Kings? I mean Cali boys and girls.

So what’s this going to do now with the Stanley Cup being won by a Cali team? Sure the Ducks came close a couple of seasons ago and the Kings went to the finals with Montreal in the early ‘90’s and the Sharks have been real contenders the last few years, but this is the absolute best.

Just a bit of hypocrisy from me now.

Come on guys this is the Stanley Cup. The most revered trophy in all of sports! Get a little excited! Ain’t happening, ehh?

I just saw a news report on the Ducks web site that said 15,000 fans showed up to celebrate the team’s accomplishment. Shit guys, my old Outlaws could draw that many to a beer bust. Sad, sad, sad …..

If the Redwings or Sabres had won, you could bet that an easy 60,000 would show up to celebrate.

This is weak and it’s sure going to make my following supposition look flawed. But what the hell – this is supposed to be hockey humor, right? Yup! I’m going to get at it and publish this BS ‘fore the sun goes down. I’ve got to do some fishing and shit tomorrow so I want to get this off my chest so as not to waste a good day tomorrow.

There are about sixty-eight major or minor league professional sports teams in California. Besides the three NHL franchises there are five Major League Baseball teams, three NFL teams (missing from LA – very, very strange), four NBA teams, some soccer teams, indoor football, baseball farm teams and four ECHL franchises.

The Ducks, Kings and Sharks in the NHL and the Fresno Falcons, Bakersfield Condors, Stockton Thunder and Long Beach Ice Dogs make up the hockey entry in this group of professional sports teams. The Ice Dogs might not make it through the summer. We’ll have to wait and see.

That’s seven or maybe only six pro hockey teams for over 36 million residents. Spread that out that’s a little over 5 million residents per team. Minnesota’s got one NHL team for a little over 5 million total residents so that sounds about right, ehh? Sure but Minnesota’s got college hockey and high school hockey too.

As a low level comparison let’s look at my home state of South Dakota. Its got a whopping population of 782,000 folks. No NHL team. The Sioux Falls Stampede tier I junior hockey team playing in the USHL suits up for home games at the Sioux Falls Arena. Shit the whole state only has about thirteen ice rinks. That averages out to about one rink for every 60,150 residents.

And the state of South Dakota has around 184 or so high schools. This is an average of one high school for every 4250 residents or looking at high schools to rinks you’ll note about 0.07 rinks per high school.

Gee whiz kids, lets compare that to California. There are over 1500 high schools in California. That’s over 24,000 residents for every high school. California unfortunately only has around ninety rinks. This means that there are only about 0.06 rinks per high school. Or looking at it compared to the overall population of the state there is one ice rink for every 414,290 residents.

You’d think that California with three NHL teams would fare better then South Dakota that has none; but no that’s just not the case. California has worse representation all the way around.

Now let’s go back and look at Minnesota again. Minnesota has over 460 high schools. They have approximately one high school for every 11,160 residents. Now your thinking, “OK Jasper how many rinks does Minnesota have?” Yup, they’ve got a bunch. Over 500 rinks in this fine state. It works out to about 1.1 rink per high school. Shit howdy, that’s impressive!

I’m telling you guys my brain is just sizzling thinking about all of this. Sure hope the numbers don’t confuse none of ya. But it just brings up some other points for discussion.

Lets turn California into a hockey state. Think about it. Thirty-six million residents with over fifteen hundred high schools to develop into hockey hot beds. In the future when the NHL breaks down where the players hail from it will be California, USA (less Cali), Canada, and Europe. Hell folks, California’s got three million people more then all of Canada. We sure the shit could turn out some hockey stars if we could get this thing rolling.

OK, lets say we don’t need a rink at every high school but lets say that every school district had a rink. Or at least every city with a population of over 50,000 had a rink. If this was the case California would more then double the number of rinks it has. But some of these cities are much larger then 50,000. Seventeen are greater then 200,000 with San Diego having over a million and LA with over three million. These of course would require more. Think about it folks – full blown hockey programs at your local high school. Sure you’d still have your youth club programs, but at high school you’d have a choice of staying in it or joining the school program.

Those of you adults that are out there playing now could become coaches, officials, team boosters, and most of all fans. And guess what? Ehh? These teams would become feeders to junior hockey, college hockey and maybe even NHL drafts.

Sure ice rinks aren’t cheap. Depending on the negotiated contract and amenities a rink would cost between $3 million and $7.5 million in California. Because Minnesota gets a little cooler (requiring different refrigeration equipment for winter operation only) then most of California and that labor rates are lower there you’d expect them to be paying around $2.3 million to maybe $6.4 million for the equivalent rink. But they’ve spent it on five hundred some rinks, right? Why can’t California manage the same shit on say only about half that many rinks? Ehh?

So again I’m playing the numbers here. California builds another 160 rinks or so for somewhere in the $500 million to $1.2 billion range. Samueli the Ducks owner is worth what $2 billion or something? Ehh? That’s a lot a fucking money! Doesn’t he give a lot to charities or something? Well this would be just as good a deal. He’d be investing in the Ducks future. Maybe we could get the Anshutz and Roski Kings team to kick in some bucks too. Why not Compton of the Sharks while we’re at it. Hell why not all the owners of the California high tech companies to kick in some big bucks. I mean come on guys – what’s more important – being able to program a computer or winning the Stanley Cup?

So like I said my poor little pea brain is sizzling. Why stop here? Ehh? Lets put a rink in every kid’s backyard. I had a patch of ice to skate on in South Dakota when I was little squirt (well it was in the next door neighbor’s back yard) and had a neighborhood pond to skate on while in junior and senior high that was only two houses away, even though both schools had two outdoor rinks each.

All of you puckheads are now thinking “Jasper you’re really nuts. That just won’t work in California.” Well, yup I agree. Natural ice would never happen in Cali. But who’s to say that small refrigeration units couldn’t be developed that froze over all those damn swimming pools that they have in California. They aren’t even using these in the winter when the honeys go under cover. Those high tech guys that Samueli knows could come up with an economical design – you know make an insulated skin cover with expansion pads around the perimeter then freeze three or four inches over the top. Provide a insulation blanket to reduce melting when not in use. Power the damn thing with solar cells or something creating a dang fangled “green product”. Too small for the big guys I’m thinking except on those Hollywood sized pools but this shit would be perfect for the little tikes to practice on. Crap, make it convertible, if ya don’t have a pool then just lay this pup out on top of the yard. Oh yeah, and don’t forget that you could resurface this ice with the Zamboomba I talked about in an earlier blog.

Maybe I’ve got my fool head up in the clouds. I don’t know. Could we see a doubling of rinks in California because of the Ducks winning the cup? Could we see California developing high school hockey programs because of the 2006/2007 Ducks? Could portable backyard ice surfaces hit the home improvement market because the owner of the Stanley Cup winning team is a tech geek? I don’t know.

What do all you guys think?

The Ducks are for sure walking with wood! Samueli’s sporting some too. Southern California, especially, and California as whole – ya better be ready for some growth in your residents’ interest in hockey. How ya gonna handle it, ehh?

Jasper here – signing out. Skate hard guys! Do a little fishing now and try to stay away from the golf courses – they’re filled with losers.