South Bruce Peninsular - Shifting Health Priorities - Comments

money for nothing chicks for free

mxyzptlk — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 10:41:39 -0400

supporting sports is a good idea but to be fair all sports must be funded on an equal opportunity basis. supporting scouts is a good idea too. the problem is that it is difficult to manage so maybe it's better not to get involved; let users pay. please use my share for something more worthwhile.

incentives for doctors should be easy. there must be some more municipal property like the wiarton school that the town will sell at a loss for an office. tax break could be similar to hospital if they get any.

kltpzyxm

Practice makes perfect

Dan O. — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 23:26:16 -0400

Interesting hypothesis Gary. The only snag is that humans are different. Why does one person become a pro hockey player while another becomes an engineer? How could the Russians and East Germans test children before they were out of public school and know that they would have the potential to be olympic athletes. Not just that but to be able to pick the sports that they would be trained in. What you say about crossword puzzles is true in that they could never be an entire solution. Just one tool in a bag.

My first boss when I started my job was brilliant. He had 5 doctorate degrees. He spent an hour each day during lunch working out mathematical problems on the blackboard. Unfortunately if you asked him to change a light bulb he needed help.

His natural abilities made the development of his brain easy in the directions that he went in his life. People develop their brains in the direction that they find the most natural. The direction that offers them the most self fulfillment from their endeavors.

It's true that practice in any area of study will improve your skills in that area. If a parent enroles their child in music, languages or sports they set them along a path that becomes easier for them as their brains become wired to advance to a higher level of their physical abilities.

My micro skills are limited. You can only make so many ashtrays in art class before they start to catch on. It wasn't that I didn't appreciate what was being taught it was that I had never found the medium in which I could express it. Now I've learned to fufill that need on a macro scale.

Try these links (The last ones are more acredited):

http://dentalplans.com/articles/Fitness%20For%20Our%20Brain/

http://home.earthlink.net/~fitness_habit/6_mental_fitness.htm

http://puzzles.about.com/library/bl021108.htm

http://www.esporta.com/Fitness/Research/Mental+health/Regular+Exercise+Can+Keep+Mind+Sharp,+Ward+Off+Alzheimer's/!+!/CLASS/Page/DBID/1edb4f7653a2084f819aba25f7372c28

http://sln.fi.edu/brain/exercise.htm

http://www.saga.co.uk/health_news/article/C8B33F61-6720-11D6-B899-00508BAEC55C.asp?bhcp=1

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/health/july-dec06/mental_12-20.html

http://longevity.about.com/od/mentalfitness/tp/Mental_fitness.htm

http://www.memory-key.com/Seniors/senior_research_mental_exercise.htm

http://www.swedish.org/17616.cfm

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/19/AR2006121901431.html

http://www.alzheimers.org.uk/Mind_your_head/Common_questions/Lifestyle/lifestyle_choices/mentalexercise.htm

http://www.alzheimersprevention.org/piller_3.htm

http://www.med.nyu.edu/patientcare/library/article.html?ChunkIID=38862

Dan O.

The REAL odds

garym — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 21:06:50 -0400

You need to bone up on your neuroscience: as they always begin "studies have shown" but it is true nonetheless, diligent and well-constructed studies have shown the supposed mass tone-deafness to be a myth, a problem of self-esteem more than with any natural fact. The medical fact of the matter is a mere 4% of humans in our part of the world are truly "tone deaf" even though a whopping 25% will claim to be, a relatively new phenomenon which I attribute to post-war media's constant barrage of exceptional talents intimidating people from their natural birthright to human expression through music. Back at these one in four supposed dysfunctional listeners, when we put them in a lab wired to some test equipment, lo and by jim'ney crickets surprise surprise ... their 'deafness' vanishes!

I hear that if you additionally apply sufficient voltage across those wires, their tonal acuity actually becomes quite good ;)

All of which makes me wonder if visual acquity may in reality similarly be often better perceived than professed, and that the words written actually are read and not just the words expected to be written :)

Not knowing a major third from a minor comes with practice and experience; recognizing a diminished scale in 64ths from a same-speed half-diminished takes diligent practice. The purpose of any education is to learn what you don't know, to be lead by your betters to perceive routinely what before we had ignorantly overlooked.

btw, you wouldn't happen to have a citation for that crossword assertion would you? I tried a journal search for papers and could only find a alledged benefit in an aside advert for a 'Brain Awareness Week', which is hardly a citation, although I did find this interesting lead on the Brainfitness Channel:

"Many people believe that doing crossword puzzles can keep the brain sharp, and even prevent Alzheimer's.
"But it's probably not true. Research suggests that while crosswords can form one part of a brain fitness regimen, they aren't enough by themselves."
[ BFC: The Crossword Myth ]

The article goes on about linking crosswords to word-power and fluidity, but say nothing about the neural-acoustics or the effects on temporal integration, perceptual dexterity or any of the thousands of documented effects of playing music. Could be I'm just not looking in the right places.

garym: ict evangelist - musician - whatever

The odds...

Dan O. — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 19:27:18 -0400

Gary; you sound like a true optomist. It's great for kids to dream about the NHL but the odds are about 1:100,000 world wide and maybe half of that in the great white north. Invest in RESP's when you sign but the next budding Gretzky in minor hockey.

See FSN: NHL Held Together By Family Ties

Dan O.

PS; for those of us with mitts that would make a music teacher cry and tone deafness that makes dog's howl, crossword puzzles have been shown to maintain mental aquity.

But musicianship DOES make you smarter ...

garym — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 18:59:15 -0400

Whereas a modicum of exercise can make you smarter, there is also mounting evidence that a dash of musical ability emphatically does make you smarter, sharper, keener, and helps you stay that way:

"Experience with music appears to help with many other things in life, potentially transferring to activities like reading or picking up nuances in tones of voices or hearing sounds in a noisy classroom better," researcher Nina Kraus, a neuroscientist at Northwestern University... "These new findings highlight the importance of music classes"
[ Playing Music Makes You Smart ]

And as we already know, trimming music programs from our schools makes Elmo very sad, so don't do it, don't even think about it. Did I happen to mention that KeeMay has a sideline business teaching guitar? Drop her a line if you want to sign up your kids (or sign up yourself)

So ... now ... let's review what we know, shall we? It seems potentially plausible that it could well be scientifically inescapable that the world can completely forget all silly notions of eugenics, and what we really need for a new improved humanity is musical hockey players!

ok. maybe not. but it would be nice to hear them sing the anthem in tune.

garym: ict evangelist - musician - whatever

Can Hockey Make You Smarter? Richer?

garym — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 18:35:00 -0400

Point taken, Dan-O, and if you ever needed a reason to justify physical activity not just for the young, but for everyone, this is it: Yet another in a long series of studies that show direct and measurable cognitive performance increases resulting from simple exercise, only today it isn't just a good idea, it's a chemical process we can watch ...

The process starts in the muscles. Every time a bicep or quad contracts and releases, it sends out chemicals, including a protein called IGF-1 that travels through the bloodstream, across the blood-brain barrier and into the brain itself. There, IGF-1 takes on the role of foreman in the body's neurotransmitter factory. It issues orders to ramp up production of several chemicals, including one called brain-derived neurotrophic factor, or BDNF. Ratey, author of the upcoming book "Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain," calls this molecule "Miracle-Gro for the brain."
[ Health: Can Exercise Make You Smarter? ]

So, provided you don't take a puck in the head ...

But all that aside, Dan, what I said about the social networking value of hockey has nothing to do with scholarships and NHL contracts, although my GoogleAlerts do show quite conclusively that the opportunities for those scholarships and NHL contracts are very real, and that does not imply that every kid gets one, only that your chances of turning your tennis, basketball or chess-club practice into a direct career in those industries are empirically insignificant, but kids who beat the down-cycle of regional economic depression through hockey hit my radar every single day. 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year. I'm not explaining that, I'm not speculating that, I am measuring that effect. If you want to take exception, you have to re-explain my observations.

Meanwhile, back on the ice ...

But back to the social networking aspects of regional hockey, here I have no data, only highly questionable personal observations:

At the annual Lions Groundhog-Ball, many of the young men at the party are the hockey players from the Groundhog Weekend games. They are all well dressed, well groomed, and they spend a lot of money at that party. That suggests to me that they are doing alright for themselves, financially.
Everyone I know around here who has no trouble finding work curiously plays hockey, and has played hockey around here since forever. That's probably just because 4 out of every 5 boys plays hockey at some point in their lives, but still, it is an observation that begs research.
I have heard the phrase "I used to play hockey against them" used far more times than any mentions of basketball, squash or any other sport. The only sport that comes close to the frequency of citation as a social networking catalyst is golf. Again, this is only my experience.
Those youths I know who played hockey got jobs when they graduated. Those who didn't, didn't, or they got really fringe jobs. Again, could be co-incidence and clearly I couldn't possibly claim to know every youth in Sauble, let alone across the whole SBP and Cape Croker region.
In my line of work, which has nothing whatsoever to do with physical skills, 4 out of 6 employees play hockey daily, always have, and the fact of their hockey playing was brought up in our post-interview discussions on the hiring of at least three of them, the fourth having securied an important position as our domain knowledge expert because of his vast general sports knowledge (we sell IPTC-standard sports stats) first recognized when he critiqued the then-major supplier of stats on fine points of their hockey stats.
This is probably unimportant data because we are, undeniably, a global sports-based information business, but I can tell you that our ESA soccer data is barely a blip on our annual sales compared to first American Football, then MLB, and then NHL reports.

Nonetheless, the observation remains: there was an implied immediate identification with and trust of the hockey-playing candidates, and immediate respect for the one who had actually played the ice at the Air Canada Centre.

These are just anomalous observations, but what I would dearly like to see is a longitudinal survey of employment and income among the jr. hockey club families vs the non-hockey crowd. My social networking hypothesis predicts a significant spread between the two, with a better-than-chance correlation between more solid employment at higher paying jobs for the kids from OMHA-connected families.

garym: ict evangelist - musician - whatever

Gary; good write-up but.......

Dan O. — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 18:12:23 -0400

You forgot to mention that hockey is for life. The very few ever get scholarships. Even fewer make it to pro, but the majority form bonds and a healthy timetime of straping on the skates when the snow starts to fall.

Dan O.

PS; don't ask about when the arena attendant at our local frozen pond had a few drinks after hours with his girlfriend and decided to "IMPRESS" her by driving home on the Zamboni.

Was The New Zamboni For Joyriding?

Dodge — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 16:56:13 -0400

I know the last Council spent north of $150,000 for a new Zamboni for Wiarton arena even though the previous one was perfectly servicable. Since these devices are widely used between hockey games in busy arenas to justify the expense......

Tell me why we bought this? Appparently hockey can only be played in other municipalities. Very strange.

Recreation Master Plan & Performing Arts

CL1368 — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 12:54:49 -0400

Garym, didn't know your hidden talents. I was also known as Benny Southstreet (Guys and Dolls), Percy Buote (Anne of Green Gables), a "Jet" (West Side Story), a "Jew" (Fiddler), a "Palace Guard" (Swan Lake), a "disciple" (Godspell and JC Superstar), and much more. Mostly with KWMP. Readers will note that I can be a follower of a good director. ;-)

I'll watch and participate along side you regarding performing arts if and when a Recreation Master Plan is budgeted and developed for SBP. I'll never forget the Town turning down an organized group of kids who wanted to put in a basketball court in Wiarton and were denied the approval "until the Master Recreation Plan" was completed. Lets hope they don't revert it to a "Master Sports Plan".

In Defence of Young Hockey

garym — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 11:30:48 -0400

I never thought I'd say this, but it is true: Hockey isn't just a sport around here, it is a lifeline.

I have GoogleAlerts running on the keywords of the placenames around here, so very little can happen online about the south peninsula that will escape my attention, at least not if it gets a mention anywhere online except that Port Elgin newspaper that shall remain unnamed ;) -- what I observe is this: 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year, without fail every single day somebody somewhere out there in the Greater World In Which We Live writes news about Owen Sound, and that news is Hockey News!

What else can a young person do around here with as sure a path to fame and/or fortune as hockey? Basketball? Ever tried to play some pickup in an alley in Wiarton in March? Soccer? See my comment about Basketball. Truth is, while there are notable rare exceptions of truly world calibre, a local child is highly unlikely to get good enough to play in the Big Leagues in any other sport except hockey. And because it is a highly social sport with deep community old-boy connections, face it, your chances of advancing just about any career choice from a foundation in local hockey are actually pretty darn good. Maybe even way better than your chances at a medical degree, and your hockey may even help you get that degree!

When the fans say their sport is really a religion, they mean it. Maybe not a religion in a spiritual sense (though there is an obvious opportunity for a kung-fu sort of mind-body discipline) but certainly, in this country, hockey is effectively a sort of non-denominational church. It is a community gel, a thread that ties a lot of the national landscape. Come to this town as an alto-sax genius, your options are limited. Come to any Canadian town as a star forward, and you are in man, you are in!

People are always quick to jump on politicians for expenditures, but dig: politicians are spending other people's money and as such they must be accountable to the demands of those people. If they don't spend it right, they get quickly replaced by others who will (as we saw quite clearly last round). Now, couple this with the simple fact of the matter that money spent on hockey is, in the perception of the parents of the children born here, the most sure path to paying a nice mortgage and there you have it: the money goes where the Return on Investment is thought to be highest!

Personally, I don't like it any more than others, but I will further the soccer argument because, as a youth, I wasn't the least interested in soccer either. I played a bit of little league baseball, but what I really did with my time was music and writing. Guess the total annual expenditures on either.

If you guessed "zero" you were optimistic. True, my old Winnipeg school funded their annual Gilbert and Sullivan over-production to the hilt, but if you didn't find Pirates of Penzance relevent, like me you went into drama where you got the left-overs from their budget, but got to do more interesting stuff. As for music, forget that. Just, never you mind, you just put that from your mind because it ain't goin' happen 'roun' here boy.

Owen Sound was recently holding public meetings about their planned new rec centre. 'REC' centre? No. They mean Sports Centre, because there will be no public darkroom facilities, no free-access piano practice rooms, no rehearsal spaces at all really, no live-recording theatre, there are no botany labs, and certainly no astronomical observatory on the roof. It is worth a remembering that the original Greek word Gymnasium described the development of both mind and body.

So ... back to local hockey funding, as Wayne has pointed out, this isn't really $75/player so much as it is a piggy back on the facilities of a neighbouring community which, I would think, is vastly cheaper than duplicating those facilities and services here. Since a high percentage of those kids will either make it to the Leagues or make common-bond societal connections that will assist them in their future professional lives whatever that may be, like it or not, the ROI prospectus does seem financially sound.

garym: ict evangelist - musician - whatever

In Defence of Young Doctors

garym — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 11:04:10 -0400

I know of young doctors who are out roaming the rural hinterland looking for these deals, and I just wanted to post here to say that they are not necessarily looking for perks from the local communities.

They are looking for a break.

The truth of the matter is that it is no longer as simple a matter to start up in a new practice as it was when Dr. Leeson came to the Beach. Today's young doctor has spent a small fortune just to graduate and are then required to outfit a modern medical office to Provincial Standards that require all sorts of extraneously non-medical process expenses as well as the considerable cost of the gear ... and lets not forget the software licenses!

The net result, among the young doctors I know personally, is that they are hoping for a break. They are hoping to strike a partnership deal, you help them with the startup costs, they'll help by being your doctor, because without you, they can't get into the profession any time soon.

I mean, hey, communities will give tax breaks to Giant Tiger and Tim Horton's and not flinch an eye. "It means JOBS!" is the usual mantra. They will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to secure funding to provide utility infrastructure to woo International Big City Land Developer Corporations! Ok, I won't go there....

So it only makes sense, if we want someone to help us out, we have to help them out, give them a break. Before you ask, the Drs I know do know about SBP's need, but they didn't pursue our offers because and only because of our location, being out of the way, too far from their families, having limited facilities, stuff like that. All that says to me is that we need to compensate for these issues, or accommodate them somehow so we can compete with the likes of Barrie; that's just a fact of life.

garym: ict evangelist - musician - whatever

clarification

wayne tanner — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 23:55:47 -0400

As a note because of of geographics and OMHA policy I have to take my kid to Shallow Lake for Hockey, as does everyone who lives in a certain area and us in the Sauble area . I think if you look around you can find somewhere on the web the catchment areas for each center with a rink. This is not a convienence or choice issue. If I want to have my kid play hockey he has to go to wherever the map tells him to go. Since we do not live in Georgian Bluffs and pay taxes there then the town has an agreement with who will take us poor Sauble hockey guys under their wing.
If anyone out there has any clearer information on this help me out, but I think this is how it works.

Gary I know when I am wrong

wayne tanner — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 23:25:46 -0400

It just dawned on me and I thank the fellow who initiated this hockey conversation, Gary remember by the campfire when I( after a couple beers) was going on about the inequity in what we get for our tax dollars compared to other communities within our town
I get
2 bags of garbage (no more or pay ) picked up
recycle box looked after
snow plough once a day when it snows, no salt and little sand though (sorry to Mr T. the snow plough operator) I know you are doing your best)
and UUMMM well I guess thats about it.
Now I live 300 yards away from the school, but my kids don't have a sidewalk to walk on so the strategy is if you hear a car truck or snowmobile coming bail into the nearest laneway because the banks are to high to climb
It is in the works to hopefully maybe someday get a few fire hydrants around so that I or someone else doesnt have to chop a hole in the ice at silver lake/pond or hope the resevoirs are full at the school, or have someone try and safely drop a line into the river and be careful not to get swept in.
But Gary I was wrong as I had completely forgot about the $75 that the town puts toward the fact my kid plays hockey at Shallow Lake, I can add that to the list and I am grateful. But it does save the town the cost of having a arena closer.
But I did know all this when I moved here about the lack of services and I was "buyer beware" so I don't complain.. much,
But I do get involved we I hear that one of the things I do benefit from should be cut, leaving me again with my 'no sidewalk/ 2 bags of garbage sob story', but only around the campfire and after a couple. [For those who don't benefit from this hockey subsidy I hear your arguments loud and clear]
but the beach is very close and... oh yeah we don't have that anymore do we, but I am close enough to scoot my kids home because the washrooms are locked or broken.
On a weekend those tired old biuldings and fixtures are expected to handle the equivalant amount of people of a sold out Leafs game with 10 stalls and 6 urinals, and a holding tank or two.
So if you could find it in your heart to leave that one tidbit alone, I know I may never see a sewer or water line go in front of my house but if it does I can finally have the baddest and narlyist back yard rink as I woun't need my septic bed which melts my best efforts in the past to have one.

Doctor Doctor Bidding War

Dodge — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 20:28:56 -0400

Every community that is GP challenged is in some kind of bidding war with all the rest. Clinic space, land, perks and much more are all on the table. The effect is it ends up still being a level playing field just at a higher price for all the communities involved. Playing one against the other is not what I call a doctor search. It is professional hand wringing with a budget.

Federal Tax Break Can Replace Hockey Subsidy

Dodge — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 19:53:58 -0400

When Mayor Gilbert was campaigning she said she wanted to deliver basic services in the Town and she wanted to do it well. Okay. Now I am a consumer of these services and I expect to pay taxes for them. I don't expect that subsidizing hockey for those local families who are not cottagers and who actually have local hockey players is a basic service.

I am a cottager and I pay city fees and travel expense for the family stickman elsewhere. I pay other sports related fees and I am responsible for them not the local taxpayer. No way am I interested in paying fees for some Wiarton kid. This is not the purpose of property taxes. This is Robin Hood hockey.

There is a new federal tax credit for childrens sports activities which can help with hockey expense. This is a good time to drop the local subsidy.

Shifting Health Priorities

CL1368 — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 13:51:30 -0400

I am agast to find out that SBP subsidizes youth hockey to the tune of $75 per player so they can play organized hockey outside of the Town, and doesn't apply a similar subsidy to other sports like soccer or baseball. It's time this $20k a year subsidy be cancelled and the money re-channelled into a Doctor recruitment subsidy. I'm sure there would be more improvement to a lot more people's quality of life here if a new doctor were to be recruited with the money instead of having kids play hockey in Lion's Head or Shallow Lake while the Wiarton arena continues to lose money.

Besides, I am a former soccer coach and do not follow nor have ever played hockey. I do, however, see a doctor occasionally, so I admit that I have a biased opinion. Food for thought.