Proof: assume there is a finite number of primes, p₁, p₂, p₃, …, p_n, with p_n being the largest. Consider (p₁ x p₂ x p₃ x … x p_n) + 1, this number has no prime divisors and is greater than p_n, making it the exception that proves the rule. QED.

One of the easiest ways to tell which is the house I’m living in now is that on the upper front balcony someone has put up a giant yellow “ribbon” which says “Support our Troops” on it.  This phrase has always bugged me, and not just coming from a Mennonite background.  The real reason it bugs me can be summarized up in a single question, “what does that even mean?”

I’ve always found it weird how someone can say that they oppose the government’s decisions, and how they think it’s wrong for the armed forces to be doing whatever it is they’re doing, but to then immediately say they support the troops.  Thinking about it now (as I write this I have no idea what I’m going to say, I’m just making it up as I go along) I guess it kind of reminds me of the unconditional love a parent has for their children, that or the girl who keeps going back to her abusive boyfriend.  The idea that no matter what they do wrong it doesn’t matter, they’re still loved.

The justification these people who blindly want to support our troops use is that “they’re fighting for our freedoms.”  Even when you disagree with the fighting they’re doing, even if the battles being fought seem to only be about international posturing, or resources or interests of the rich and powerful.  Somehow, they’re still fighting for our freedoms.  Now, you may say that their intentions for signing up in the first place were there, and that it was the government’s fault for using the forces for wrong, but I ask you this.  Canada has had troops in Afghanistan since 2001, as has the US, who also had troops in Iraq from 2003 until earlier this year.  In that time, anyone signing up has known that they could be asked to go and participate in these conflicts.  What that says to me, is that anyone who’s signed up since these wars started is most definitely not fighting for our freedoms, and they knew that going into it too.

Why sign up then?  I would suspect that in most cases it’s because finding jobs can be hard, or stressful, especially if you were the type who couldn’t even get through highschool.  This however is an easy to get job, where there always seems to be positions open.  Maybe they’re just poor and want a free post-secondary education.  Perhaps some are out of touch with current events enough to think that what they are doing will be to protect us.  The only catch to all of these is that you need to be willing to go out and kill people (and I bet there have been some people who have joined for that reason too, but I wouldn’t think very many), and to accept that fact that you could be killed too.

If you want to “support our troops” I suppose that means you’re for these things, the decent paying jobs and the free education.  The question I have is this, why is it that our society doesn’t think these are things that should be given to people, unless they agree to go kill other people (unless you’re name is Karla Homolka, at which point society doesn’t think you should get free education for killing people).  why not support the troops before they become troops, or support them so they don’t need to become troops.

Right now, if you’re still reading this, and enraged that so far I’ve compared members of the armed forces to abusive boyfriends, psychopaths, and people without a proper grip on reality, then you’re probably doubly outraged that I’ve chosen to do so on the 11th of November.  I’ve seen plenty of comments on the internet regarding this, the one day of the year for veterans, that it’s supposed to not be about politics and instead about remembering the people who sacrificed themselves in the name of their country (presumably for future generations).  The thing about that is that this is wrong.  Who remembers hearing the phrases “never again” and “war is hell” especially at this time of year.  That’s what we need to be remembering.  The goal isn’t to idolize people who died during the wars, otherwise, we’re going to have a new generation who thinks it’s noble to go off and do it again so they can then be remembered the same way.  That actually sounds to me to be kind of familiar to conditions that led up to the first world war.  Does anyone else think it’s kinda funny that something called “the war to end all wars” is only helping to make war more acceptable (not to mention being a part of a chain of events that led to the conditions allowing Hitler to rise to power)?  No, of course it’s not funny, it’s war, millions of people died, and they did so for no real purpose, there’s nothing funny about it, just despicable and regrettable.

In case you want more examples of these men you call heroes make pretty bad role models here’s some other things to consider:

During the lead-up to the second world war, many Jews tried to leave Germany because of the persecution.  However, before 1945 antisemitism was perfectly reasonable to western society, and the attempted refuges weren’t allowed entry into other countries and they were then forced to go back to Germany, possibly to their deaths.

If you look at old propaganda posters from the time frame you’ll note that they don’t cover the treatment of Jews, there’s really two reasons for that.  First like I mentioned above, nobody really cared, and second nobody knew what was happening.  The men signing up weren’t doing it to save the Jews, they were doing it because they were told to, please stop assigning this extra level of fighting for the oppressed in the way you remember them, they weren’t.  As far as anyone here knew European Jews were being treated the same as North American people of Japanese decent.  If for some reason you don’t want to believe this, then that means the countries (including this one) I mentioned above who turned away immigrants knowingly sent them to their deaths.

It’s about time to wrap this up, but really here’s what I want to say.  If you’re taking the time today, or any day to remember the soldiers who died in really any way, ask yourself this, what was the difference between them and the men they were killing.  Both had families who cared for them (unless those families were blown apart like the massive number of other civilian deaths brought on by war).  Both were following orders, and both were hating the other for no real reason other than someone else told them to.  Remember those civilian deaths on either side, and just remember that everything about it was wrong.  Use this as a chance to remember what a senseless waste it is, and that our goal really should be “Never Again.”

It’s also a time of year where people are talking about elections.  Municipal elections were recently held in Toronto and having just moved here I seem to every day read a new article about people who still can’t understand how Ford could win the mayoral election.  Similarly it’s been less than a week since the US had an election, and for years now Canada seems to be on the brink of a new federal election just as soon as Harper thinks he can win a Majority by breaking his own election law that prevents the Prime Minister from being allowed to ask for an election for the sole reason of a power grab.  The idea of the opposition being able to force an election is long past since Mr. Harper was able to convince the former Governor General that since parliament was not functional and that the government was not able to pass any legislation (whereas the opposition could) it didn’t mean that the government didn’t have the confidence of parliament (and thus there should be an election, or an offer for the opposition to form a coalition) it was time to just put a hold on the sitting of parliament (so that the opposition couldn’t pass their legislation and he could go and (somehow) convince Canadians that it was undemocratic for a majority of parliament to oppose a government that fewer than 20% of Canadians (taking into account voter turnout) voted for.  I only hope that the current Governor General acts differently, although knowing that the position is appointed at the suggestion of the Prime Minister, I’m fairly certain Mr. Johnston was asked in his “job interview” what he would do if it came up, and I’m even more certain Mr. Harper wouldn’t offer the job to anyone who gave any hint of not doing his bidding.

All that said, I’m not here to complain about politics.  I’m here to fix politics, as the solutions all seem so simple (except for one).  To fix problems, we first need to know what they are (even if that isn’t normally what you do in politics).  My solutions cover voter ignorance, apathy (specifically youth) and vote splitting.

I’m going to start with what I think is the easy one, and that is apathy of the youth.  Combined with my other solutions which will help people believe that the system isn’t broken and that they can affect things I suggest one simple thing.  Unless they’ve changed the curriculum since I was in highschool in grade 10 you are required to take a 1/2 course on civics.  This civics course at least for me focused mostly on the Charter of Rights and Freedoms that is in the constitution.  One of these rights being repeated over and over to you by the teacher, and that you’re forced to regurgitate on tests is that EVERY Canadian citizen has the right to vote.  Anybody who hasn’t skipped a grade or failed a grade (and started at the normal age) will be somewhere between ages 14 and 16 when they take this class depending on when in the year they take it, and when in the year their birthday is.  Remember, the constitution says every single Canadian has the right to vote, it doesn’t say every Canadian over the age of 18, it says, every Canadian, and you’re telling this to a bunch of 14-16 year-olds.  Do you know what this taught 15 year old me?  The system is inherently broken.  The most basic law of the land, the one that governs all other laws is misleading you, and that doesn’t give me any faith.  I just realized this is a lot of text just for me to say “lower the voting age so people who are learning about how government works don’t feel disenfranchised.”  Even though that doesn’t actually solve the apparent logical fallacy, most people are so self centered that it won’t even occur to them that it’s still lying because it’s not lying about them.  You may respond to this by saying “but I know what people that age are like, they’re stupid, and care more about their hair, and whether so-and-so is going out with whosit or not, I don’t want to give them the power to affect tax rates or foreign policy no matter how little affect they actually get” and don’t worry I’m far ahead of you.

Voter ignorance is I think perhaps the biggest problem facing every level of politics today, and in every region I can think of.  Politicians are able to convince people to vote against their best interests, because people can’t be bothered to care about what’s actually happening.  The answer is simple, even if the implementation is hard.  Let’s test them.  I say, to be allowed to vote, you should first have to pass a “voters test.”  You may say that that’s an easy thing to corrupt, and the person making said test could rig it so that it only passed people they liked and I agree that that’s a problem.  However, if we only had it test facts, and we made it multiple choice (so that unreadable writing and misspellings or alternate correct answers can’t be rejected)  I’m talking questions like “for what position is the person you’re voting for running?” if someone picks “mayor” when the answer is “member of (federal) parliament” then their vote is discounted, because honestly, I don’t think any reasonable person could have a problem with that.  No trick questions, no hard ones, just facts that anyone with any understanding of the system has, something that you have to be purposefully ignorant to get wrong.  An even better testing system would be to make ballots be multiple choice tests, asking questions about the issues, and depending on how you answer the questions, your vote is cast for a specific candidate (the candidates of course would need to be involved in the creation of this test, this of course is not practical in any way, but would be great if it could be done).  Any language could be made available on request in this age of the internet.

As for my vote splitting, the solution here is simple, in fact it’s so simple I think all the major parties in Canada use it at their leadership conventions.  Vote, if there’s someone with >50% they win, otherwise, eliminate the person with fewest votes, and then loop until someone wins.  Now, you may say that that’s too many elections and one is expensive enough, well then in that case just rank the candidates all at once.  If your first choice is eliminated then go to the second choice on the ballot (unless they’re already eliminated, then move onto third, etc.)  How many people in Canada vote Liberal not because they want to, but because they don’t want the Conservatives to win?  This way, they can vote for their first choice first, but then if that smaller party doesn’t win then at least your voice is heard for the other party you’d prefer.  It’s too bad this system is too complicated for so many people, as when I was voting in the municipal election, the person in front of me at the polling station was having a hard time understanding how the ballot worked when it was something like this:

█   █ John Jackson

█   █ Jack Johnson

and you had to draw a line connecting the blocks between the name of the person you wanted like this:

█—█ John Jackson

you were also explicitly told not to put an x like:

█ x █ Jack Johnson

There were even diagrams showing what a proper ballot looked like.  If you can’t understand that then how are you supposed to be able to understand how to rank your choices?  Then again, maybe you’d be weeded out by my voter competency test so it doesn’t even matter

So there you have it, 3 kinda simple changes to make, that would greatly benefit our political process, at least if we want to keep a representative “democracy” like we currently have.  Anyway, I think there’s a chance this could be my longest post yet, I have a few more coming very soon, so check back in a week or so, one kinda has a relevance time limit of next Thursday so I promise it by then.

Swearing just isn’t something I do. I find it’s a good way to tell the world that you have a limited vocabulary, and aren’t able to control yourself. I find there’s also a link between the intelligence of what the person is saying (not necessarily the person themselves, just the point they’re trying to get across) and the amount of swearing in said point (this is definitely a one way link too, as you don’t need to look very far to see someone sounding stupid without swearing at all). This is all personal views though, but I bet it would be a really interesting study to see if there was a way to put it together.

That said, this isn’t really what I want to talk about though, I don’t actually care if you swear or not, I’m just going to reserve the right to not respect your views if you need to resort to using some words ironically. What I want to discuss is the people who actually get offended at the use of these words or somehow think that certain sounds or combinations of letters can be bad.

My wife recently watched all of the new Battlestar Galactica series (and has actually watched some of the old one on our netflix free trial) and since then I’ve noticed her using the word they made up for that show in order to have the characters “swear” without getting in trouble with the censor. I find it silly to do this though, as why are you even saying that word? Why do some people say “sugar” or “fudge” or any number of other euphemisms when they’re upset?

The thing is, everyone knows what it is you’re meaning to say. What are words if not just a way of conveying ideas and emotions and information from one person to another. In that case aren’t all these euphemisms the same as the words you’re trying not to say in the first place? The intent and the idea is the same, and yet somehow people think they’re different words when they’re really not.

I suppose the exception here is if you think words can actually take on some level of power more than just conveying an idea, like a really superstitious person, or someone who believes in magic, or a writer for Doctor Who. If you think that “curse” words can actually lay a curse, then I guess that explains why you might want to avoid using some words but if that’s the case then your points sound less intelligent than the people I was talking about above, the ones who have more swear words in their sentences than other words.

So here’s the question I pose to you readers of this site, and in fact to everyone else, feel free to pass it on to them for me. What is it about certain words, certain combinations of either syllables or letters that make them any worse than other words? I want to hear your answers. The said, if your answer is “they’re bad because they were bad before and therefore they still are now” then please answer part two of the question, which is simply “Why?” If your answer involves saying “body parts and functions are bad” then I have a couple things to say to you. First: “why?” and second: “arm!”

_{All this said, it’s easy to change themes, so this post may not stand the test of time very well.}

Let’s just get right to the big one that seems to be involved in most of these arguments.  Evolution, and the age of the earth/universe.  The Bible says that God created the universe in 6 days.  The first thing I want to ask you is what is a day and how long is it?  You may say that that’s simple, a day is a rotation of the Earth around its axis and it’s 24 hours long.  Well what if I told you that using highly accurate tools, people have measured that the Earth’s rotation is actually slowing down.  Each day is longer than the one before it.  The point I want to make here is that the length of a day isn’t a constant at all, it’s changing and so in the creation story when it says “day” it probably didn’t mean exactly twenty-four hours.

Important Interlude 1.  Language:  Whenever you read the Bible you also need to remember you’re not reading it in its original form.  It was written in Hebrew or Greek and then translated into Latin, and maybe even a couple other steps along the way.  Sometimes the best word to use in a translation doesn’t mean exactly the same thing as the other word, and sometimes meanings of words within a language can change over time.  Using “day” as an example, I bet people who didn’t know the Earth rotated at all didn’t think day meant a rotation around an axis, and yet that’s now what it means.  The counter argument to that then is the whole “God’s at work during translations making sure the translators get it right.”  In 1631 some people printing an edition of the King James Bible and they made a mistake, they left out a single word.  The word “not.”  It was supposed to be in between the words “thou shalt” and “commit adultery” which leads to some interesting repercussions if God actually makes sure people don’t make mistakes when printing the Bible.

Anyway back to evolution.  God created all the animals, first in the ocean, then on land then man.  It doesn’t say how he did this does it?  Imagine you’re a sculptor, you start out with a block of stone, or a lot of clay or something, and then you start working.  Your work doesn’t suddenly go from that block into the sculpture, it takes time, and as it goes through the process it becomes more and more like what it’s eventually going to be.  My argument here, is then quite simple.  Creating the universe also means creating all the laws of nature, and the way things work and interact with each other.  When asked why you never see direct acts of divine intervention a fundamentalist will tell you God acts subtly, yet the ideas for evolution here say that it could simply be a subtle tool used to create things.

I have another way of looking at these things too, but first I have another question for you regarding the whole creation in 6 days story.  The Bible does a good job talking about the different prophets and what God told them.  It has pretty much everything that Moses was apparently told written down in the Torah, and so I ask you, who was it that God told this story of creation to and why aren’t they an important figure?  It’s not like man was around to see these things happen in the first place, and this is slowly easing us into my next observation.

If a young child without a very good grasp of the world asks you “where did I come from?”  How likely are you to tell them the whole truth?  Have you ever asked them to guess how old you are?  or how much money a car costs?  I bet the answer you get isn’t very accurate, they haven’t learned these concepts well enough yet.  Now imagine asking questions about the way the universe works to a group of people who only recently learned how to farm, and who don’t have a method of communicating with each other without being in close physical proximity to each other.  Try explaining how stars work with fusion to people who wouldn’t figure out what hydrogen is (the most common element in the universe) for another five thousand years.  In all the history of mankind, it was only just over 300 years ago that someone noticed that if something is moving, it’s going to keep moving unless something happens to it.  We’ve been too immature as a species to be able to comprehend the truths of the universe.  Just like how when a small child asks you a question you don’t answer it perfectly, but come up with an answer that sort of works.

Anyway I think that’s going on long enough about this for now, I guess the important thing that I wanted to get across  here was this:  The Bible (at least the Old Testament part) was written thousands of years ago, aimed mostly at Jews who were living thousands of years ago.  That’s not to say there’s not important messages in it, but it was written in a way that they could understand it.  They had no idea what we were going to become and what we would know now.

You see, Rogers, our ISP, has this policy of not actually giving you the service that you thought you were buying.  Sure I could blame Infinity Ward, the developers of Modern Warfare 2, but they’re not the only ones who do this sort of thing.  If you play games on consoles you’ll see most, if not all the online multiplayer for things like the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 (maybe Wii too, but I don’t know as much about that, but who plays with the Wii’s horrible online functionality anyway?) works in a similar way to how MW2 is trying to run on my PC.  One computer (or console) is chosen as a “host” for the game to be played, then all the other computers connect to that one, and the game is sort of played on the host machine.

This is where Rogers comes in.  They detect that you have outgoing connections to multiple people.  Once this happens, they have some special routing software kick in, and start losing the information you’re trying to send to the other players.  Looking around the internet the claim they make in their defense seems simple enough.  You basically share your connection with your neighbors, and if one person is using all of it, then that means the others get problems and don’t get the speeds they expect.  The problem I see here is this.  With the play I have with Rogers right now, they say I can get 1Mbps upload.  The thing is, games don’t come anywhere close to using that, otherwise you’d be over your bandwidth cap extremely quickly by playing a game.  Rogers claims that sending 10 people a small amount of information clogs up their network more than sending 1 person a very large amount of information (even when the total amount of information per second going to the 1 person is higher).  I won’t claim to be an expert in this field, but I do know a thing or two about it, and I think it would be fair to say, any network where the previous statement is actually true is very poorly designed (at least if it’s a big general purpose network, like say you would expect an ISP to have).

When they start preventing your game from working properly, it can make other players unable to join, and for those lucky enough to be able to join, their information will be so out of date the game becomes completely unplayable.  See when I said above, games don’t send much information, I didn’t mention that they want the information delivered quickly.  Let’s Ted Stevens this post up and imagine the internet like some tubes.  Let’s say you need to get some liquid from one place to another, and there’s 2 pipes that can get it there.  One of these pipes can let ten litres per second go through it, but it will take one minute from when something gets put in until it comes out the other side.  The other pipe can only handle 1 litre per second, but only takes one second for something to pass through entirely.  Now, let’s say you have a 10000 litres of water you want to send to the other place.  Which pipe do you pick?  obviously it should be the larger one, sure it might take longer for the first drop to reach the other side, but on the whole it’ll be faster.  Now imagine you have 2 litres of something live-saving.  You should send it through the smaller one so it can get to the other end faster and save a life.

Rogers can kind of treat your internet connection like this.  Not only that, but they try to make it so you don’t even know which pipe you’re sending something down, they’ll send it down the one that’s best for everyone, or at least that’s what they say.  While doing some research for this post, I found the following quote:

“Rogers is committed to ensuring the best possible online experience for all our valued customers… Rogers Hi-Speed Internet (delivered over cable) and Portable Internet from Rogers also manage peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing traffic on the upstream. This management ensures a high level of service for time-sensitive tasks such as sending email, requesting web pages, video conferencing and voice services.”

I agree that video conferencing and voice services are a high priority.  But sending email and requesting web pages?  Games need a higher priority than those things, and yet with the games I’m talking about like Modern Warfare, and numerous things on xbox live they get treated like low priority file transfers.  Most email clients only check with the server every 5-10 minutes to see if you have new email, it doesn’t matter if it took .1 seconds or .3 seconds to get it to the server.  Same thing with webpages, how much are you going to notice the difference if a page takes .1s longer to load, sure it would be nice if it were faster but it doesn’t make your web browsing unbearably long to wait for.  The thing is, in my games, that .1 second can make a huge difference in the outcome, yet instead they’re making the difference to be in full seconds, if the data ever gets there at all.

On their website, Rogers makes much mention of games being able to be played on their internet service, even saying “virtually all online games and gaming services are compatible with the Rogers Hi-Speed Internet service” without mentioning that they actively sabotage your gaming experience should you ever try and host a game yourself.  I’m not 100% sure if my site is being indexed by google, and I’m too lazy to figure it out, but for all you like 4 people who actually read these posts, and anyone who might see this if I am indexed I just feel a need to say: Rogers is a horrible choice for your ISP if you’re interested in most forms of modern online gaming.  They do not provide you with the service you are paying for, and despite the fact they most definitely know of the problem due to many complaints from gamers trying to use their service, seem to have no intention of fixing the problem.

While looking at something on Fark yesterday they had a headline, and comments to go with it comparing The IT Crowd with The Big Bang Theory.  There was some heated debate as people defended their favourite as being better, some asked “why can’t you like both” and others who’d never heard of one and after hearing the praise decided they should give it a try.  I am here to set things right, and by the end of this post I will have crowned a “best geek humour” TV show.

As someone who’s only seen bits and parts of one of those shows, and who gave up on the other about halfway through its second season/series (I’m trying to be ambiguous as to whether I’m talking about the British or the American show here for those of you who don’t already know which is which) I think I’m obviously the right person to make the calls I’m about to make.

So let’s get on to comparing these shows.  The first is a show about some “nerdy” guys and a leading “normal” woman who is totally out of place when around these guys.  There’s two kind of jokes that get told in this show, the “nerdy” ones which are often explained to the audience why they’re funny since the show is directed at “normal” people.  To someone with even a bit of background in the area though you’ll find the jokes to only require knowledge that maybe you picked up around the time you were in highschool or at the latest early years of university, otherwise the joke would take too long to explain.  It’s too bad too because you can tell that the writers want to tell more of these jokes, but can’t.  The details in the background also reveal this, there truly is some geekery at work in the background, but they won’t let it take over from the other parts of the show.

The other kind of joke told in the show is akin to one of the main characters looking straight into the camera and saying “Look at me, I’m being a nerd” followed by the laugh track playing so the viewers know that it’s supposed to be funny.  The show also teaches you the lesson that sure, being smart means you can know things, and tell jokes that people won’t understand without you explaining it, but also that you have to be socially maladjusted who would easily be diagnosed with many mental health disorders if only they’d go see a doctor.

Interlude: I suppose up at the top I said I was going to be comparing shows and said I would start by describing one of them.  I think with my general term use here it’s pretty obvious that I am in fact describing both of them I could have a better way of saying that, but I’m sure you’ve already figured it out, and want to focus more on things, so just pretend I did a funny or clever way of tying it together while I keep going.

This humour, which is why I can’t bring myself to watch the show isn’t furthering the cause of geekdom, or making it more mainstream, it’s still just making fun of it but unlike in the past, it’s doing it in a way that geeks don’t realize (partly because of some problems with social intricacies) and so they latch on and think it’s for them, not about them.  It shows the way the media treats people like me and my friends.  Sure, I bet if you found any group and asked “is the portrayal of <people in your group> in the media accurate?” the answer is no.  How often though do they make shows about a group that call themselves comedies where most of the jokes are based off of reinforcing negative stereotypes about that group?

So I said I was going to crown a “best geek humour” show up above, and now it’s time to do that.  Will it be physics grad students?  Will it be the tech department of some giant corporation.  Well the winner is…

Good news everyone, neither of those shows won.  Also, if you’re at all familiar with the show that wins then the three words at the start of this already gave it away.  Whereas those other two shows could be most kindly put as shows written by nerds for everyone, Futurama is a show by nerds, for themselves, and people like them.  No matter how smart you are there will always be jokes in Futurama that you have no hope in catching because they put them everywhere, even the plot.  After telling a joke, they don’t pause the entire show in order to play a sound of people laughing so that you know it was a joke, they treat you as smart enough to know whether something is funny or not.  They also don’t tell you why the joke is funny, if you don’t get it too bad, someone else did, plus they use that time to instead set up another joke, hopefully one that you will get, especially since as soon as you try to explain a joke it stops being funny.  Futurama treats its viewers like they’re intelligent, and that’s what makes it the best.  It also doesn’t try to say geeks are weird and different, and although they’re smarter than you, you’re still a better person than them.  Instead Futurama says “here’s some jokes that us geeky writers find funny, and think you might like too.”

I suppose one of the most talked about things this year seems to have been the absence of video replay, especially since we’re at a point where the technology could have a conclusive decision faster than the way it is now with the players mobbing and arguing with a ref, as any player trying to argue a replay call would most definitely find themselves with a card pretty much immediately.

The argument FIFA has against this is that it would slow the game down, and the counter argument is “no it wouldn’t.”  I think the truth is that they’re both right.  If the feed going out to the world can show that England did indeed score on Germany while the players are still arguing that means the refs could have looked at it and seen the result and had complete certainty.  The problem becomes what do you put replay on because I also don’t think you can argue that holding up a game to check whether there really was contact or if the guy was diving wouldn’t slow things down, and what if the ref’s original call was “no contact, keep playing” but he looks back and finds out it’s wrong?  Do you turn the clock back and discount stuff that’s happened?  You just can’t go to the video replay for every offside and foul in a game, as that really would slow the game down.

The best answer to this problem seems to be to be to look at the NHL.  I may say that partially because I’m Canadian, and a much bigger fan of hockey than pretty much any other professional sport.  There could also be other leagues with rules like this, but I don’t know them so this is what I have.  It’s simply that video replay is only used to determine whether a goal is good or not.  Penalties are not watched on replay, but the league can punish you after the game with things like suspensions so even if you get away with it in game, that doesn’t mean you get away with it completely, and that is also a system I would support in Soccer, if replay after the game finds him diving, then do something like start him off with a yellow card in his next game (or give him a 1 game suspension or something, but then again practically these two things would probably be the same, why would the coach start you in a game with a card when he can put someone else in without a substitution).  So if we only allow replay to be used (real time) on goals, problem solved right?  I’d say not quite.

What if the player got the ball, and shot immediately, but was offside?  Well replay is used for determining if the ball went in via legal means (ie. no handball) and while play was still going (by the way, even in the NHL where they do use video replay, that goal the US got screwed out of still wouldn’t have counted, the whistle went before the ball was in, and whether it goes in or not after the whistle it doesn’t matter, play’s over, video replay wouldn’t have fixed that problem) not whether a player is offside or not.  However, it seems really obvious that you shouldn’t count a goal if the player was offside.  What if he was offside in the middle of the field and ran in on a break away, I’d say that’s different than if it happened very quickly inside the 18 yard box.  What if the shooter was onside, but it got passed to him by someone offside?  You’d have to draw a line somewhere, but then every time something happened that was near that line we’d have pretty much the same controversy we have now without that line.

The other thing about cameras, especially high-speed cameras is that they’re not cheap.  The 2010 world cup was also a lot more than a month long tournament in South Africa, it’s been going on since 2008, and been played all over the world, the tournament we just saw was merely the last stage (that’s why you can use the term “world cup finals” to describe all that happened in South Africa, not just Spain vs. Holland), and when we put it into that perspective cost of cameras could be an issue.  I think it would be hard to deny that one of the main reasons soccer has become so popular is that all you need to play are the people, a ball and a place to play, and no matter where in the world you are, and no matter how poor that’s something you can manage.

Sure at the higher level, the place you play needs to be measured out better and more exact, and there’s also travel costs, but imagine you are one of FIFA’s smaller members, only barely able to put a team together and afford to send them to play, I’m sure it happens.  Well now we’re asking them to potentially add thousands or tens of thousands of dollars of equipment (plus ways to prevent it from being damaged or stolen) to a field that an island with 100 000 people on it want to play their games.  I agree that for most nations these cameras won’t be prohibitively expensive, but for some they could be, and I’d say that that is bad for the game.  I guess you could say then that the cameras only need to be used during the finals themselves and save others some money, however, then I would know you’re not from Ireland (by the way look up France vs. Ireland if you don’t know what I’m talking about).

The fact is that no matter what happens there will always be bad calls somehow and when your team is on the wrong side of things it’s going to be upsetting to you.  I’m not saying we shouldn’t try to improve the system, but, the overall benefit compared to the cost (and I don’t just mean money here) however seems to not really be in favour of cameras right now.  Personally I think if something is done to the game, some level of rework to some rules to make the game more interesting should be considered.

This could again be a hockey fan saying what he really wants to watch is hockey so other sports should become more like it, but I’d still say this is worth thinking about.  Back before the lockout the NHL was running into a little bit of a problem with games not being very interesting.  Some teams would play super-defensively and only go for things like a 1-0 win, and that worked well, so if you were to put the best teams together to play each other instead of getting a high paced game full of exciting moments you would see a lot of control, a lot of passing, and almost no offensive pushing at all.  That’s not to say they weren’t highly skilled, and it could be interesting to watch, but gets boring after a while because all the games have the same slow pace.

The NHL said “hey this is no good” and have changed rules in order to up the pace of the game and make it more exciting.  I’m not trying to say more goals is necessarily better, there’s few sports I can think of that would be more boring than basket ball, however when scoring is easier it means one goal isn’t enough, you need to know that they could score so you better go for another.  The other way to see it is that the team that plays worse, but gets a fluke goal is less likely to win.  Sure if you’re the better team you can still lose, and even if it’s still a one goal difference it’s hard to say that a team that wins a game 3-2 doesn’t at least somehow deserve the win more than a team that wins 1-0, as although one fluke goal is possible when you’re being out-played, something like 3 is just not going to happen.  As for where they could start with soccer rules changes, I’d say do something about making it easier to get past the defenders without being offside, and also maybe something more (possibly even unlimited substitutions) to keep the player energy levels on the field high.  They could even have an official who part of his job is to make sure no one goes on the field without someone coming off, but allow it anytime not during a play stoppage.  You could even solve both of these problems by making defenders switch off back near their own goal, so if you get caught on a bad change then the offense has plenty of space without being offside.