Can Being Too Nice Be Dangerous?

It might be counter-intuitive, but recently I came across another example where being too nice might not be such a good thing on the road.  It's ironic, because I'm always annoyed when drivers display a lack of respect or safety for others by failing to signal and such.

There was a car speeding on the curb lane that failed to beat the traffic before reaching some parked cars, and hence came to a stop and turned on his/her signals to merge.  The car directly in front of me, who was leading a line of five vehicles, came to a rapid stop to let the person merge.  I had room to stop, but my first response after hitting the brakes was to glance in my rear-view to see whether the big honking SUV behind me -- with a bumper worryingly much higher than mine -- was paying attention and would stop in time, and the vehicles further down the line.

Anywhoo, everyone stopped in time, but I couldn't help but wonder whether the driver ahead of me, who was just trying to be nice, was perhaps being too nice in this situation.

Thinking Too Much

The other day I was in the kitchenwares section looking at silicone funnels, trying to remember how well silicone stood up to organic solvents, and mildly annoyed at the absence of any glass funnels.  It must have been at least thirty seconds or so before I remembered I don't have organic solvents in my kitchen.

I need a vacation.

The Avengers

I went to see The Avengers today.  I stuck with regular old 2D instead of watching it in 3D.  I'm not a big fan of movies in 3D -- truthfully, if local cinemas only offered The Avengers in 3D I would have waited to watch it on BD.

When I first heard they were producing The Avengers I wasn't too keen on the idea.  Why?  Because it's been my experience that as the number of heroes/protagonists and villains increase the quality of the film decreases.  See Spiderman 3, Iron Man 2, Batman Returns....  I have no idea why sequels feel compelled to increase the number of villains.

Anywhoo, I was relieved to find The Avengers maintained a pretty good balance between all the characters.  There was no point in the film where I was thinking, "why are they wasting so much screen time on this character?"

I've only watched Iron Man and Iron Man 2, none of the Hulk movies, Captain America, or Thor, but several times I found myself thinking, instead, "huh, I wouldn't mind learning more about this character."  I'm not saying I'm going to rush out to rent them (problematic ever since Blockbuster went kaput), but I'm definitely more open to the idea of doing so.

I give The Avengers 4 out of 5 stars.  This is a film I'm definitely purchasing on BD.

Aside.  The trailer for the new Spiderman film actually looked interesting.  At least, it made me question my decision to not see it in the cinema.

Tim Hortons Roll up the Rim to Win

The official odds for this year's Tim Hortons Roll Up The Rim contest was one in six.  Despite a slow start, where I was 0 for 9, by the end it worked out fairly close, at 4 out of 25.  Four wins that included two free doughnuts, one free coffee, and a Tim's card.

Speaking of the Tim's card, it was kind of a hassle.  First of all, naively I thought that I could go down to any Tim Hortons location and claim it immediately since, you know, they offer Tim's cards everywhere and $100 must be a mere drop in the bucket given how busy they always are.

It wasn't quite that easy.  I needed to fill out a claim form (which the Tim Hortons location provided me), mail it to some P.O. Box, and wait for up to 6-8 weeks.  Unfortunately, it didn't even turn out to be that easy.  Six or so weeks later I received a letter stating they had received my claim and requesting I send in another prize claim form. 

Why is that?  Why, it's because the prize claim form provided to me by the Tim Hortons location turned out to be for the 2011 contest, not 2012.  I don't even know why that Tim Hortons location still had year old claim forms laying around.  I wonder how many other unsuspecting prize claimants they foisted those on.

Anywhoo, this time I downloaded the 2012 prize claim form and mailed that off.  Another 6-8 weeks later I finally received the Tim's card.   I guess I'm just relieved they didn't disqualify my claim completely, but even more importantly, despite being out of pocket $20 for sending two registered letters, I still came out ahead by $80.

Star Trek Humour

Earlier this week I read a pretty funny Star Trek joke.  I don't know how long it's been around, but it was the first time I'd heard it.  It was in an article in Car & Driver or Motortrend, can't remember which.  It went something like this:

"[...] as sure as Captain Kirk has three ears, the left ear, the right ear, and the final front ear."

Lazy Language

I decided to take the time to describe two more examples of what I consider to be very lazy and misguided use of language. A couple years ago I uploaded a post of a similar vein regarding a cbc.ca story I'd read. This time around, the examples happen to relate to NHL and NHL playoff reporting/commentary.

In what I can only attribute to a misguided and inane attempt to be (tragically) "hip", I've noticed several NHL commentators in both television and radio refer to the city of Vancouver as "Van", as in "the Kings next take on the Canucks in Van". Is it simply a matter of too many syllables, is three too much? Do they then refer to Winnipeg as "Win", Buffalo as "Buff", Montreal as "Mon", Ottawa as "Ott", Toronto as "Tor", Washington DC as "Wash", Winnipeg as "Win", Edmonton as "Ed", Anaheim as "An", and Los Angeles as "Los"? If that's the case then I wonder how they would bastardize Philadelphia with five syllables (apologies if I've left any surfeit-syllable cities out).

I don't want to single anyone out (though I will) because I've heard several reporters (both from Vancouver and not) abbreviate Vancouver in this fashion, but the most recent reporter (and the one that finally tipped the bucket, so to speak, and provided the motivation for this post) was James Duthie on TSN, on a live national broadcast of the NHL playoffs.  Say it ain't so!

The last example for this post is regarding a link on CNN.com, titled "Brodeur blanks Cats, sets record", linking to this story.  Now, abbreviating team names ('Nucks', 'Wings', 'Sens', "Hawks' for example) is nothing new, but this is just going too far.  Brodeur plays for the New Jersey Devils, who are currently in a series versus the Florida Panthers, not the Florida Cats.

Update (25APR2012):  Ugh. Now cbcsports is calling the Florida Panthers, "Cats".

The (Totally) Phantom Menace

:o)



Found on "One Cool Thing a Day".