Brett Lawrie Loses His Cool

Brett Lawrie, 2011. Image: Keith Allison

SPORTS COLUMN

Earlier this week, we ran a TKN article about a soccer player whose emotions got away from him and helped cost his team the game (Poor Sportsmanship Leaves Door Open For Man City Soccer Victory).

On Tuesday, Brett Lawrie — a baseball player for the Toronto Blue Jays — also lost control of his emotions.

Lawrie was batting, and the umpire made a couple of calls that Lawrie disagreed with.

In Major League Baseball (MLB), there are four umpires including the home-plate umpire. He is the one who decides if a pitch was a “ball” or a “strike.”  The pitcher pitches and when the ball crosses home plate the umpire makes a quick decision as to whether it was a good pitch (called a strike) or a bad pitch (called a ball).

If a batter gets three strikes against him he strikes out. If a batter gets four balls against him he gets a ‘walk’ and is allowed to go to first base.

Lawrie has a reputation for being a fiery guy. He felt that the home-plate umpire robbed him – twice.  The first time, the count was 3-1 (Lawrie had three balls and one strike against him). The next pitch that came in was wide of the strike zone. Lawrie thought the umpire would definitely call it a ‘ball.’ In fact, he was already on his way to first base when he heard the umpire yell “strike!”. Understandably frustrated, Lawrie slowly made his way back to the batter’s box for the next pitch.

(An interesting note here is that a batter should never ‘assume’ a call and take off the way Lawrie did — it’s poor baseball etiquette (against the game’s unwritten rules) because it’s viewed as showing up the umpire. Umpires do not like that.)

On the next pitch, which was high and outside of the strike zone, Lawrie felt really robbed when he heard the strike call. The result was Lawrie being called out on strikes–he had struck out.

Lawrie couldn’t believe what had happened. He began yelling at the umpire. The umpire than ejected him from the game.

Lawrie took off his helmet and threw it down onto the ground. It bounced up and hit the umpire, Bill Miller. For that action MLB handed Lawrie a four-game suspension.

Lawrie is appealing the suspension. Until the suspension is reviewed he is still able to play.

There’s no question that Lawrie had a reason to get upset. He deserves a suspension for exploding on the baseball field. But his reaction was understandable; both pitches were very questionable strike calls.

As a young player, though, and one with tremendous potential, Lawrie is beginning to learn how emotions can influence performance at the major-league level.

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University Students Protest Tuition Hikes in Quebec

Protesters in Quebec in April, 2012. Image: Jeangagnon

University students in Quebec have been protesting.

They have been told that the government is going to raise their tuition fees. In this case, “tuition fees” are the fees people pay to attend university.

Traditionally, Quebec has some of the lowest tuition fees in Canada. Only students in two provinces: Newfound and Labrador and Manitoba, pay less to attend university.

However, the increase will be the largest in the province’s history. The government intends to raise tuition by $1,625 by 2017. Students will pay $325 more each year for the next five years.

Student groups say the increase doesn’t go towards improving the quality of the teaching, and the hikes will force some students who can’t pay the extra money to drop out of school or take a second job. They worry that students who come from low-income families won’t be able to afford higher education.

As a result, students have been demonstrating on campuses in Quebec. The protests started about 14 weeks ago.

This week, some protests became violent.

In Sainte-Therese, Que. a group of students, teachers and parents was protesting at College Lionel-Groulx. Protesters were told to leave, but when they didn’t, police were called in. They used tear gas to get the crowd to disperse.

There have been other protests in the province. In Montreal, the Jacques Cartier bridge was blocked; and about 200 protesters tried to break in to a meeting at the Intercontinental Hotel in downtown Montreal. And on Wednesday (yesterday), more than 100 protesters shut down classes at the University of Quebec in Montreal by taking over the school’s downtown campus.

Many of the protesters wear a red square as a symbol of their protests.

Some other students, who are against the protests and who aren’t as worried about the tuition increases, are wearing green squares in opposition to the protesters.

About  a third of university and college students are boycotting their classes in protest of the tuition increases.

Some people say the protests are becoming symbolic, and are about more than just the tuition fees; they say the protests are against “authority” in general and have to do with general unrest.

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Two men rescued in Labrador

RCMP Logo

Some RCMP officers seemed to be in the right place at the right time in Labrador on Tuesday.

While on route from Makkovik to Hopedale the RCMP Air Service spotted a man on sea ice waiving for help. He was about 19-kilometres from Makkovik.

The RCMP plane signaled to the man that he’d been seen and continued to its destination. After landing the police contacted a Canadian Coast Guard helicopter that was already in the community. One of the officers hopped on board the chopper and flew back to pick up the man.

The chopper picked up the stranded hunter from the ice. Apparently his snowmobile had broken down.

He had no survival gear with him besides his hunting rifle. He was taken back to Makkovik.

Coincidentally, in an unrelated incident, another man also had to be rescued from the shoreline about 40-kilometres south west of Hopedale.

His snowmobile also broke down on the ice but he managed to make it to shore. When he got to land he activated a GPS device that broadcasted a signal for help.

Again the coast guard chopper was sent out. The man was recovered without injury or further 

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Poor Sportsmanship Leaves Door Open For Man City Soccer Victory

England loves soccer. English soccer teams play in the Premier League (PL).

Two of the biggest soccer teams in the PL are two of the bitterest rivals: Manchester City, known as “Man City” and Manchester United, known as “Man United.”

Last weekend, one of the most exciting games in the PL took place… and it came down to the final moments. It was a game that would decide who took home the cup.

If Man City won its game against the Queens Park Rangers, Man City would end up with more points than its rival, Man United. In that case, Man City would win its first PL championship in 44 years.

However, a win wouldn’t come easy.

At the end of “regulation play,” Man City was losing 2-1 to the Rangers.

If the game had stopped after regulation play, Man City would have lost. But, thanks in part to some unsportsmanlike conduct by one of the Rangers players, extra time was added on to the game; it was enough time for Man City to pull off a dramatic win.

Here’s what happened. After 90 minutes of “regulation time,” soccer games usually go into “stoppage time.” Stoppage time is time that’s added to a soccer game, to make up for lost time. Lost time is time that has been wasted during the game for things like substitutions, goal celebrations, injuries, fan horseplay or players fighting. The referees decide if, and how much, stoppage time will be added to a game.

In this case, Joey Barton (who used to play for Man City but now plays for the Rangers), elbowed an opponent and was thrown out of the game. He wasn’t happy about that, and took longer than normal to leave the field.

Because of that, the referees added five minutes to the game.

Thanks to Barton, Man City not only ended up playing a Rangers team with only 10 players instead of the usual 11, but they had five extra minutes to try to pull off a win.

And Man City made the most of those five minutes. Edin Dzeko and Sergio Aguero wrote themselves into club history with one goal each, to cement an exhilarating 3-2 come-from-behind victory over the Rangers.

In one of the most exciting finishes ever, Man City snatched its first title in 44 years.

The soccer-mad city of Manchester can boast its greatness by having two excellent soccer teams. On Sunday, though, it was the Man City players and fans who were the loudest and proudest of all.

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Girls Rule

Queen Elizabeth II at a visit to NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, 2007. Image: NASA/Bill Ingalls

Queen Elizabeth II is the queen of 54 Commonwealth countries. 16 of these countries are called Commonwealth Realm countries and Canada is one of them.

When Elizabeth steps down or dies, her son, Prince Charles will become King. Ifhe steps down or dies, his first-born son, Prince William will become King–even though Princess Anne is the Queen’s only daughter and is next in age to Prince Charles.

In other words, because she is female, the crown wouldn’t go to Princess Anne.

Since the beginning of the British monarchy, men have been chosen first to become the next ruler.

A woman can only be chosen when there are no men in the monarch’s direct line, (like a brother or a brother’s sons).

That is how Elizabeth became queen. Her father, King George VI, had two daughters and no sons.

Last October, Commonwealth countries agreed that this centuries-old tradition was old-fashioned and should change.

Last week, at the opening of British Parliament in London, the Queen proposed a law to allow women to become Queen if that woman is next in line.

The Queen proposed other changes, as well.

She proposed that monarchs in Britain should be able to marry Roman Catholics.

This has been forbidden since the time of Henry VIII, who wanted to get a divorce (which was not allowed by the Catholic Church).

Henry VIII split the church into two parts — the Church of England (Anglican) and the Roman Catholic church. Since then no King or Queen of England has been allowed to marry a Catholic.

Stephen Harper has said Canada’s government approves of these changes but doesn’t consider them a priority for Canada.

He said he doesn’t believe there should be much time in Parliament spent debating them when there are other issues that are more important.

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UK Insurance Company Has An Email Accident

Computer. Image: Everaldo Coelho and YellowIcon

Lots of companies use email to communicate with their employees.

Most companies create email “distribution lists.” A distribution list is a group email, that lets a company send a message to many employees at once, with just one email.

Aviva is an insurance company in the United Kingdom.

Recently, someone in the company sent an email to one of Aviva’s employees who was being let go, or fired. The email gave instructions to the employee about what they needed to do, now that he’d been fired.

However, the email was accidentally sent to everyone in the company.

Aviva has 1,300 employees around the world.

That means that 1,300 people who work at Aviva were all sent an email that implied they had been fired.

Everyone.

But it wasn’t true.

Human resources (or HR, for short) is the department in a company that hires and fires employees.

Aviva’s human resources department sent out the email.

When employees are fired, they are usually told in person and then sent a follow-up email with more detailed information. In this case, the HR department should have only sent that follow-up email to one person.

Most people who received the emails knew it was a clerical error—in other words, a mistake. Most people didn’t think they had actually been fired.

Aviva’s HR department sent another email about half an hour later letting everyone know of the error, and apologizing for the mistake.

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Japan’s 2011 Tsunami Sends Balls 8,000 Kilometres To Alaska

An aerial view of the 2011 tsunami damage in Sendai, Japan. Image: U.S. Navy, Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Dylan McCord

In March 2011, Japan was hit by the largest earthquake ever recorded.

It caused a tsunami–a huge wave that started out in the ocean. The tsunami swept onto the north-east coast of Japan and back into the sea, carrying away everything in its path.

Now, after travelling across the Pacific Ocean for more than a year, a soccer ball and a volleyball have washed up onto Middleton Island, off the coast of Alaska.

The man who found them plans to send them back to the two Japanese teenagers who lost them during the tsunami.

The balls were found two weeks apart and both balls had names on them. The soccer ball also had a school name and several messages.

David Baxter found them when he was beachcombing–in this case, a beachcomber is someone who enjoys walking along the beach looking for shells and other things. Baxter and his wife, Yumi, who is Japanese, tracked down 16-year-old Misaki Murakami, whose name was on the soccer ball. Japanese public broadcaster, NHK, helped them find Murakami.

The boy was very happy to get a phone call saying that his prized soccer ball had been found. The messages on the ball were from classmates at his old school as a good-bye gift to him when he transferred to a new school. Most of Murakami’s belongings had been taken by the tsunami, which makes him especially grateful to have his ball back.

The volleyball also had a name on it, and again Baxter and his wife found the owner with the help of NHK.

Shiori Sato was amazed when she was told that her ball had been found. She told NHK, “I think it’s a miracle.”

Items thought to be from areas of Japan hit by the tsunami are now starting to wash up on Canada’s west coast as well as Alaska.

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Europeans Say No To Spending Cuts

France and Greece both recently held important elections. Image: El Spartan/El Greco

Two countries in Europe had important elections last weekend – France and Greece. Both elections went against the conservative parties in power.

Experts are saying this could be a sign that more countries in Europe will protest against spending cuts by voting out current governments.

In France a new party and a new president were elected.

Francois Hollande is the head of the Socialist Party, and he was elected president, over incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy. (Incumbent means “currently in power.”)

The Socialists, or “leftist” party has not been in power for more than 20 years. Hollande said he believes the way to succeed is to create jobs and trade with other countries.

Greece did not get a new government, but the people did take votes away from the conservative parties.

Last year those parties agreed to borrow money to pay Greece’s debts. But in exchange, they promised to start up an austerity program—a very harsh, cost-cutting plan that slashes the country’s spending. (Usually what gets cut are health and welfare benefits and government jobs.)

People in Greece have been protesting in the streets against the cuts.

In a northern state of Germany, the conservative party was also recently kicked out because its plan for cutting expenses was rejected by the people.

In the last year, at least eight of 17 Euro-zone leaders have been forced out of office because the people were unhappy with their proposed austerity plans.

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Nutella Is Not A Healthy Food

Nutella. Image: A. Kniesel

The company that makesNutella, a spread made from chocolate and hazelnuts, has agreed to give refunds to people who bought the product because they thought it was good for them.

Four women in the United States sued the company, Ferrero U.S.A., Inc., because they said it made misleading claims about the product. Television commercials for Nutella describe it as part of a balanced breakfast, along with toast, milk and fruit.

The women said they bought Nutella because they believed it was a healthy food to give their families. Then they found out that the spread contains large amounts of sugar and fat. Eating too much fat and sugar can contribute to obesity – being overweight — which is not good for your health.

According to the nutritional information on the label, two tablespoons of Nutella (about 37 grams) contains 11 grams of fat and 21 grams of sugar, and only three grams of protein. That’s about the same amount as a chocolate bar. (For instance, an Aero bar has 11 grams of fat, 24 grams of sugar and three grams of protein.)

Ferrero has agreed to refund the money of anyone in the U.S. who bought Nutella between January 2008 and February 2012. They will pay $4 per jar, up to a total of $20.00 per person. It will probably cost the company about $3-million to provide refunds to everyone who asks for one.

Ferrero has also agreed to change the way it labels and advertises Nutella.

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If You Lose Your Cell Phone The Finder Will Probably Snoop Through It

Smartphones, like these, were intentionally lost as part of an experiment to find out what people would do when they found them. Image: FinnsDeal

Some people at a software company wanted to find out what happens when people find a cell phone.

Do they keep it, or return it? What do they do with it?

They found out that half of the people people who find a cell phone returned it. However, in nearly every case, the “finder” first looked through the information on the phone, checking out the owner’s photos, emails and apps.

In his experiment, Scott Wright, who works for Security Perspectives Inc., left 50 cell phones in various places in five cities in Canada and the United States. He left them out so they would look like they had been accidentally lost.

The five cities were Los Angeles, New York, Ottawa, San Francisco and Washington, D.C.

Wright left phones in restaurants, elevators, phone booths, on newspaper boxes and in public washrooms.

Twenty-five of the people who found a phone tried to return it to its owner.

Ninety-six per cent—48 people—snooped through the phone.

Each phone had software in it so that Wright could tell what the finders were doing with it. Wright watched remotely as people looked in files that had names like banking, email and “private pix.” In other words, the names of the files clearly indicated that they contained private information that should be off-limits to strangers. But people snooped anyway. In fact, many people tried more than once to get into the files.

More phones were returned in Ottawa than in any other city: seven out of 10. That compares with New York City, where just three phones were returned.

Some of the “finders” used the phone for an extended period of time, checking out personal information and making calls. One person in Ottawa spent several days checking out the phone’s banking information and photos.

Wright said he was surprised and disappointed that so many people snooped into the phones’ private information.

Information in this article was abridged from an article in The Globe and Mail and Canadian Press, by Michael Oliveira. You can read that article here.

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