February 2008 Archives

I gave MarsEdit a bit of a rough ride earlier, but since 2.1 came out, I grabbed that for a fresh trial. It has support for a couple of features I was missing, notably MT tags and storing drafts on the server.

It's still not perfect, but just now, thinking about something else, my first instinct was to fire it up to write a bit about it.

Between that and the author's kind responses to my criticisms in that first post, I guess that means I should be looking for my credit card pretty soon. Hopefully Scrivener and MarsEdit will give me the tools to turn my thoughts into writing for a long time to come.

I've not written for long enough that I'm out of practise, so just a couple of quickies. First is, if you have any interest in mental health as it relates to the justice system (and if you vote, you should), but haven't done a lot of research in those areas, you should take an hour and listen to a recent CBC podcast, "The Enright Files - Mental Health Maladies". They touch on a lot of issues that I discussed in a paper I did for class last term, which I hope to eventually discuss further here. The popular theories of justice, the opinions of the courts regarding justice, and the ideas of mental health professionals are all at odds with one another, and all of this is coloured by societal attitudes towards mental illness. Enright also talks to an English prof who has a great deal of interest in things like social dysfunction disorders and the DSM. The show originally aired on Ideas, I caught it on the podcast of The Best of Ideas on 4 February 2008.

The other thing I wanted to point to is something I wish I'd known about while I was writing that paper. It is a Chronicle of Higher Education article on redirected aggression. I was reminded of it this morning watching my cats; my cat was stalking my wife's, but my wife's cat can't really take him on, so instead, she went over and hit my stepdaughter's cat. Barash writes:

We might also want to reconsider "justice" and ask what is really going on when victims demand punishment, nearly always claiming, of course, that they are not out for revenge. But, in fact, aren't they insisting — although not in so many words — that their pain be offloaded onto someone else?

Something to think about. This post brought to you by the letter R, and the words retributionism and redirected aggression.

Get used to this sight.

If there was any doubt before (I had some), there's none now.  The Oilers won't be in the playoffs, and will be lucky if Brian Burke isn't calling out "from the Guelph Storm, Drew Doughty" or "from the Sarnia Sting, Steve Stamkos" come June.  Robin Brownlee's article was as upbeat as possible, quoting MacT as saying "I don't get any sense that there's a loss of confidence," but that can only be true if the Oilers already felt they were longshots or if they're all saints.  With Torres and Horcoff done for the season, Roloson mortal, and having been missing Pisani and Moreau for close to half the season each, that's most of their experience on the IR.  Tarnstrom for Glencross ain't gonna stem the bleeding.  Schremp supporters should be happy though, it means their boy might finally get a good look with guys like Hemsky.  If MacT will put Reasoner or Gagner in Horc's spot, he'll try anybody.

Tyler already has a post on the subject, but I'd like to expand a bit on it.

Probably like Tyler, the first thing I did was run off to behindthenet to look up Glencross's numbers. At first blush they're not too bad, although if he's playing against mostly nobodies, then the Oilers are already full of forwards who can only be used against the other team's fourth line.

This also likely puts paid to the idea of a callup for Pouliot or Schremp; Reasoner did well enough with Hemsky and Penner last night that he'll likely get another shot at it, and Gagner in that spot on the PP couldn't have been any worse than MP or Schremp are likely to be.

Does this signal that Lowe's calling it quits for the season? It's hard to say. On the one hand, moving a vet for a prospect is usually a signal of throwing in the towel. Glencross's numbers look pretty nice, but he's a 25 year old rookie. Call him this decade's Pisani.

On the other hand, as Tyler says, Tarnstrom wasn't really relevant to the team this year. He had a stretch where he was one of the best guys on the back end - not that the bar was very high - but ultimately, he's paid too much to be a bottom-pairing second unit PP guy. Getting any sort of return for him is good, and Lowe now has that much more cap room if he needs to take on some salary.

How's the return overall? As a commenter said in Tyler's post, it's unlikely that this deal bites Edmonton in the ass on down the line. Sure, they're sort of competing - it's an intra-conference trade, after all, and CBS is hardly going to be so far ahead of the pack in the next couple of years that they won't be duking it out with the Oilers for one of the bottom four playoff spots. However, Tarnstrom's Swedish and six feet, or thereabouts, not from Dryden and six foot five with a huge mop of blond hair and a gap tooth grin.

It's a case of Edmonton shedding a spare part and getting a prospect back, and Columbus getting somebody to help out on their power play and give them some experience. Even if he was in and out of the lineup, Tarnstrom saw the elephant good in 2006, and that can never hurt.

I have to wonder, do I *want* Lowe to pull up? I've become a firm believer that the team that won the trade is the one that got the best player. The real winner in the Smyth trade was neither of New York or Edmonton, it was Colorado. Even if Smytty got hurt, he's still going to have scored more this year than both of Nilsson and O'Marra put together, and chances are neither of those guys are going to outscore him in their careers either.

So, I don't think I'd be very happy about seeing somebody like Steve Staios go for picks and prospects. Roloson I'm less attached to after this season, but still. Does Edmonton even *have* anybody that anybody else would want? (Get real, Hemsky and Horcoff are going nowhere, nor should Pitkanen.)