Early Observations About The Leafs 2011-2012 Season

After 5 games, the Leafs have amassed an impressive 9 of possible 10 points, not having lost in regulation yet.  While most people still say it's early, and it is, I'll take 9/10 points anytime.  When the regular season gets down to the wire and teams are vying for 2-6 points to squeeze in the top 8 of each Conference, hey, these trivial points will matter a whole lot.  

Pros: Kessel is on fire.  He has support from Lupul and Phaneuf is playing great.  Gardiner is also looking like a solid young talent.  MacArthur is turning out to be a reliable forward - not too much pizzazz, but makes smart plays.

Cons:  Other than the top 1-2 lines, the rest of the lineup hasn't shown itself to be major contributors to the Leafs' success.  If they don't step up, an injury here and there could de-rail the Leafs' success.  Kessel is also a streaky player, so should he start running cold, we're in for some "boo choirs".  Last year Kessel had a similar strong start in his first five games, only to go cold scoring 3 goals in his next 20 games.  Schenn and Komisarek have also not performed with much poise yet.  Colby Armstrong is out indefinitely with an ankle sprain...if it's not too bad, hopefully it'll be a couple weeks before he's back.  In his place Nazem Kadri has been recalled up and hopefully he can be a solid 3rd-4th liner.

Iffy's:  Connolly is still injured and when he returns, team and line chemistry will have to be re-evaluated.  The Leafs play their first road game in their 6th game of the season, against the defending Stanley Cup champions, although Boston seems to be getting off to a rough start.  In any case, the Leafs' record on the road will also help to determine if they should make the playoffs this year and their road record is unknown right now.

I predict that the Leafs will end up 6th or 7th in the East at the end of the regular season...but maybe that's just me hoping...and praying...

GO LEAFS GO!!

Laboratory Truths

This is something by Adam Ruben from ScienceCareers.com (http://ow.ly/5utCx) that I found quite amusing:

Universal Rules of the Laboratory by which we all abide:

1. No matter how rigorously obtained, results will be mistrusted if they are more than 5 years old, and the experiments will be repeated. This is doubly true if the results came from someone else's lab.
2. A co-worker who routinely shows pristine data must be disparaged and suspected of misconduct. A co-worker who routinely shows lousy data must be disparaged and suspected of incompetence.
3. If a piece of equipment sits idle on a lab bench for weeks at a time and then you and a co-worker both want to use it at 3:00 p.m. on Thursday, a case will be made for purchasing another one.
4. Unlabeled bottles of reagents have a longer shelf life than labeled bottles. ("Let's not throw this away," reasons the grad student charged with cleaning out the fridge. "It could contain something important." Typically, "something important" means "rampant fungus.")
5. Random decisions pertaining to lab protocols will become entrenched and will persist unquestioned for years. You can test this one out: If your protocol requires doing something for, say, 30 minutes, change it to 32 minutes and then visit the lab in 10 years. The person who has taken over your role in the lab will still perform that step for 32 minutes without knowing why. Unless, in the interim, someone has decided to test out the random decisions behind lab protocols.
6. Bringing stellar results to the lab meeting will make you almost as popular as bringing cookies to the lab meeting.
7. Grad students will think that the principal investigator (PI) never does any work. The PI will think that the grad students never do any work. The postdoctoral fellows will have children and stop doing any work. The undergraduates will use lab space to do work for other classes. Paid lab techs will do honest work, but no one will give their results any credence because they're just paid lab techs. Every person will believe he or she does the most work.
8. Safety protocols must be adhered to, rigidly, by everyone else. Not by you, because you're awesome.
9. There are nerds even within nerd-dom: Even though you all love science, you still think, "at least I'm cooler than my co-worker who won't shut up about Settlers of Catan."
10. The expensive computer purchased to run the isothermal titration microcalorimeter will also, mysteriously, run Angry Birds.
11. If you work in industry, much of your time will be spent filling out forms that don't matter. If you work in academia, nothing you do will matter.
12. If you interfere with someone else's experiment, you are Satan. Even if it wasn't your fault. Even if you apologize. Even if the experiment was about to burn down the building.

In a Nutshell: Reality Talent Competitions Shows

If you ever want to make it big at a reality talent competition show, here's what you have to have going for you in the preliminary rounds of auditions.  You need to get at least 50% in terms of a score in order to sway the third judge's vote (i.e. at 50%, one judge will vote 'yes', one will vote 'no' and the third judge will be on the fence that you have to sway in your favour). Let's take America's Got Talent as an example TV show.


If you have a great story of struggle in your past, whether that be monetary in nature, a family situation, a physical ailment, etc., that give you at least 25% of your vote - half way there!
If you have family support at the auditions, +5%...unless they are obsessive or weird, in which case, -10%.  If your act involves humour and gets the judges to laugh, +10%...unless they're laughing AT you, in which case, -15%.  If you are a female, are good-looking, +10%. If you act in a sexually provocative way that is aired on TV (i.e. not TOO taboo), then +15%.  If you're unpleasing to the eye, -15%.  For whatever reason, if you can get the crowd to like you, whether you're so crazy they find you entertaining, or you have a genuine talent, +10-20%.  If this talent has never been seen before, +7%.  If you can get >75%, you have a chance of being featured in the show's good highlights.  If you're <0%, you have a chance of being featured on the shows worst of the worst highlights.  If you're between 0-25%, you aren't likely to be featured in the show's highlights, you just get booted, do not pass GO, do not collect $200.  If however, you get >90% of vote score, you have a chance of getting to the finales and/or having a career after the show.

So some examples. a) you have a great story and have a genuine talent at singing and came by yourself to the auditions and the crowd likes you: 25+20+(15 for crowd support) = 60%.  Therefore, you are likely to make it to the next round. b) you don't have a great story, but you can do magic alright, but like no one has done before and the crowd loves it...and you're a sultry female seductress: 10+15+27 = 52%.  Because usually it's a 2-male-1-female judging panel, this favours female contestants.  Girl gets through. c) You are a really bad singer who came with his mother who is a bit crazy and thinks her son is a gift from God.  -10 (creepy parents) -15 (judges laughs at him) + 7 (talent never seen before...cause it's so bad) = -18%. This act has no hopes of finishing his audition before he gets cut off and booted from the stage.

Good luck.

Cookie-Cutter Bachelorrete / Bachelor Shows

My take on 2-hour Bachelorette/Bachelor shows in a nutshell:

T=0-60min: Girl is having the time of her life with guys. Show a crazy competition and new locale - act as tourist promotion. Everything is hunky dorey. T=60-90min: Emotional issue pops up. Life seems like its going to end. There is controversy, some arguing goes on amongst guys and girl finds a reason to cry.

T=90min: don't allow girl to talk to guys more, that would solve too many problems. Girl can only confide in show host, who acts as a counselor, who moves his mouth but doesn't say much we don't already know. This justifies his role in the show and makes him look cool. T=105min: girl tries patch stuff up with guys, only partially successful.

T=115min: Rose ceremony. Camera pans to girl, then guys, then rose, then girl. Pause. Girl acts like decision hasn't been made. Rose given. Repeat. Camera pans to guys not chosen as 3rd last guy receives rose. Host tells girl only 1 rose remains (because the girl can't do math; justifies host as necessary). Girl gives final rose.

T=118min: Preview more problems in future episodes to get viewers hooked, but don't show everything.

Repeat next week.