Jill and I wanted to have the Superbowl on in the background today. The companies involved refused to show it to us, with region restrictions that wouldn’t let us listen to TSN Toronto in East TO, and no video stream.

Okay, whatever. No ads for you. I don’t want a truck or fucking Budweiser anyway. I guess that’s why they’re fucking me off. Anyway, Chomsky:

It’s a way of building up irrational attitudes of submission to authority, and group cohesion behind leadership elements — in fact, it’s training in irrational jingoism.

Al Jazeera just described Canada’s World Cup Cricket team as “an easy, morale-boosting, warm-up match”.

PlayOn! is a street hockey tournament sponsored by Hockey Night In Canada. The final is tomorrow at six, but I snapped some of the prelim round games down by parliament today.

Sports photography relies on zoom, flash, and fast shutter speeds to get close to the action and freeze it. That’s what I was experimenting with here, but then I mixed in some longer exposures to capture the motion of the game.

The sky was overcast, which helped the lighting by softening the daylight until it was essentially ambient. The flash then helped fill shadows to highlight the subject.

The last shot in the series was the game-winning shootout goal.

Sounds like KRS-ONE (ft. Kobe and LeBron) and references Criminal Minded‘s “The Bridge is Over” (one of the original hip hop diss tracks):

Muppets bring the ruckus. Apparently there’s a whole series of Puppet LeBron commercials.

The Leafs were sold yesterday, and Football started! Sports are hotting up after the Summer cool-down.

Balsillie’s scheme to gain control of the Coyotes is coming down to the wire. The NHL’s position is that their $100 million lower offer is better because they voted near-unanimously against letting him join as an owner.

We should win because our board of owners voted that we should win.

Yeah, okay. Whatever. Democracy in action, just like Saddam’s 100% election victory before the invasion. Equally lovable.

The judge asked Balsillie for an extension on the deal’s September 21st deadline — he needs time to write his decision. Depending on how flexible that deadline is (or how fictional it is) I’d seriously consider giving the judge another week, or until the end of the month.

It seems as though Baum’s indicating a Hamilton win, so why not? Why would he ask for an extension if the decision was against our fellow Canadian? Plus, it never hurts to curry favor.

England and Australia contest the final match of the Ashes this weekend at The Oval. Today is day two, and earlier on England took enough wickets to hold the Aussies to 160 runs and maintain a lead of 172 after the first innings.

The performance put the English in a position to strike at the win, a lead of ~350 runs being comfortable, but in the first few bowls of Australia’s second innings they’ve taken 3 wickets and allowed under 50 runs!

With the sides trading disasters the victor of the test is still unclear with three days left of play. Australia only needs a tie to defend the Ashes, whilst England will successfully capture with a win.

Balsillie’s “Make it Seven” movement — the populist front for his Coyotes relocation bid — has been very active in the last few weeks.

Today they’re asking people who want an NHL team in Hamilton to spam Bettman with a prepared message.

Click through for some good rhetoric. From line one the letter forces Bettman onto his back foot.

Self-serving populism: Delicious.

One of the hardest of hardball negotiation tactics is to crank up the pressure on your opposition.

For example, I read a real estate investment case study where the buyer became aware that the seller badly needed money*. He offered $200k for the $250k property. When the seller hemmed and hawed waiting for an offer closer to market the buyer reduced his offer to $180k. The seller delayed again and finally ended up accepting $150k for the property.

Similarly, Balsillie has cranked up the heat in the Coyotes situation. He put a June 30 deadline on his offer while also applying to the NHL to move the team, presumably to give Judge Baum a plausible reason to order the move and to make it politically difficult for the NHL to turn the application down.

Forcing counterparties to act faster than they would normally is a giant power play.

I’ve been a fan of Getting to YES negotiation since university, but poker (which I started playing before I read the book) taught me the power of adding stress to positional bargains.

This negotiation is a really neat hybrid. It’s essentially a peek into the strategy playbook of a billionaire Chartered Accountant — better than business school! I hope it all works out for PSE Sports.

* c.f. TCC rule number uno: Never let no one know how much dough you hold.

I can only think of two sports fans who read us, so chances are this is still news to you.

Forget the unforgiving minute, here’s LeBron’s unforgiving second in Game 2 versus the Magic.

The Magic tie it up with a three, get up two with a jumper leaving 1 second on the clock, and LeBron drains a three FTW.

The NBA: Where Amazing Happens.

The National Post liveblogged Tuesday’s bankruptcy court appearance.

5:56 p.m. Seems to be agreed among Canadian reporters in the back row that Judge Baum sounds an awful lot like Jimmy Stewart. An awful lot.

Long story short: The judge ordered the Coyotes and NHL into meditation to determine WTF all their conflicting paperwork actually means. He didn’t issue a ruling, just scheduled some future dates.