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The Daily Dose/February 26, 2010
By Gaylon Kent
The Writer's Shack
Notes from around the Human Experience...
CAN-A-DA! CAN-A-DA! The Canadian women, surprising virtually no one, won the hockey gold medal at the Vancouver Games, beating the Americans 2-0.
Women's Olympic ice hockey is actually a one-team event now. The USA won the inaugural gold medal at the 1998 Nagano Games, and is usually good for making the Canucks break a sweat before winning, but Canada has won the remaining Olympic gold medals. Sweden, in 2006, is the only team other than Canada or the US to win the silver medal.
You Can Blame Title IX For This: The reason for this disparity is simple: despite the immense popularity of men's hoceky, women simply do not play hockey elsewhere in the world to the extent they play it here in North America. With good reason, too, because who the hell wants a country with lots of toothless women?
The rest of the world is so far behind that International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge said this week that women's hockey has either one or two more Olympiads to even things out.
OH YEAH, BTW: The men's semifinals are today with Team USA taking on Finland while Canada will play Slovakia. Defending runner-up Finland is the only medalists from Turin to make the semifinals in Vancouver.
Dry, Technical Matter: Canada's 7-3 quarterfinal pasting of the Russians was their first victory over the Russians/Soviets in Olympic hockey since an 8-5 victory in the medal round at Squaw Valley in 1960.
Please Pass The Dry, Technical Matter: This will be 12th time the US and Finland have met in the Olympics. The US leads the series 6-3-2. Their first meeting was a 8-2 US victory in Oslo in 1952. Last time out, the Finns beat the Americans 4-3 in the quarterfinals of the 2006 Turin Games.
Some Outfits Have Interns For This: Canada and Slovakia are meeting for the second time in the Olympics. In Lillehammer in 1994 Slovakia beat the Canadians 3-1 in pool play. Slovakia is playing the semifinals for the first time.
Honey, Don't Forget To Set The Alarm: The Slovakians first ever Olympic semifinal game will start at 3:30am Slovakia time.
Get Your Official Writer's Shack Predictions Right Here: You've got to be kidding. We don't do predictions, you know that. We only jump on bandwagons and make fun of losers. Although we will say if the world is to be spared a Canada/US gold medal match Finland is going to have to take better advantage of the power play than they did in the quarterfinals against the Czechs and Slovakia is going to need their own Miracle On Ice to defeat a high-flying Canadian team.
COME SAIL AWAY: Former French Emperor Napoleon escapes from Elba, an island off the coast of Tuscany, Italy, on this date in 1815. He would land on the French mainland two days later, and would return to Paris, leading Louis XVIII's army, on March 20, causing Louis VXIII to flee. By June Louis would be back in the throne as various forces sent to remove Napoleon defeated him at the Battle of Waterloo on June 18.
In July Napoleon would demand asylum from the British, who instead exiled him to an island in the south Atlantic about a third of the way between Africa and South American, where he would die in 1821.
USA! USA! Saddam Hussein, defeated by the evil United States and her henchmen, announces on this date in 1991 that Iraqi troops will leave Kuwait, which it had invaded the previous August. The war actually ends two days later.
Who The Hell's Running This Show? Sgt. Bilko? Of the 294 Americans who died in the war, only 114 were killed by the enemy. The rest either died in accidents or were shot by our own troops. Iraqi losses were estimated between 20 and 35 thousand.
Bombs Away: In their first starring role on American soil, the terrorist network known as Al-Qaeda makes their first attack of The World Trade Center in New York City on this date in 1993 when a van loaded with explosives is detonated in a parking garage below the North Tower. Six people are killed and over a thousand are injured.
Dry, Technical Matter III: The attackers had planned to damage the North Tower to the extent that it would collapse into the South Tower. Six people were ultimately convicted in the attack, which one conspirator reported was originally scheduled for the United Nations building.
Uh-Oh: The venerable British merchant banker Barings Bank is declared insolvent on this date in 1995. The end came bloody quickly for a company that was founded in 1762, 14 years before the colonies rebelled. Only three days before had company auditors discovered the fraud committed by a bloke named Nick Leeson, who had been Barings' floor manager in charge of trading on the Singapore International Monetary Exchange.
Big Picture Me Here, Please: Barings' collapse was preventable. It's somewhat more complicated than this, but Leeson was supposed to be buying futures contracts in one market while simultaneously selling them in another market, known as arbitraging.
Leeson, however, wasn't doing that. He was simply buying futures contracts without simultaneously selling then at a profit. Nobody, however, was in position to tell him to stop because Leeson also headed the department charged with his oversight. This allowed him to not only buy futures contracts and taking the chance they'll increase in value, but also to lie to the home office by reporting his losses were actually profits.
FunFact: Barings and another company, Hope and Co., actually financed a good portion of the Louisiana Purchase. What with our knowledge of finance limited to throwing loose change in a mason jar and the leaving of a good tip, we won't get into too many details, but America put up $3 million in gold and would pay for the rest with bonds. France didn't want to wait for the bonds to mature, so they sold them to Barings, and a Dutch outfit called Hope and Co., at 87.5 cents on the dollar.
Never Let A War Get In The Way Of A Decent Profit: Since France and Britain were - as they have been from time to time throughout history - at war, Barings actually funded Napoleon's war against their own country.
This Is Poetic Justice For Someone, We're Not Sure Whom Though: Leeson is not the CEO of a professional soccer team in Ireland.
Thought For The Day: The tragedy of life is not that man loses, but that he almost wins. - Heywood Braun
Answer To The Last Trivia Question: Canada did not send hockey teams to the 1972 and 1976 Winter Olympics, having withdrawn from the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) in 1970 in a dispute over the use of professional players. They would rejoin the IIHF in 1977.
Today's Stumper: Where is Napoleon buried? - Answer next time!
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