Maisie House
Just a quick little post. Every year around Christmas time there is a special house in the corner of 144 ave and 97 street. No matter the amount of fog or snow at night, you can see this house a number of blocks away. Here is a youtube video of the house and an article in the Edmonton Sun about it. Read the article as the owner is dedicating this season to his mother, who recently passed away from diabetes. And if you happen to be near the house, know that you can donate to the cause...
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Clarkson Cup
I think I'm going to try and post more opinions about news columns that I read. Of course, it would help if most of the columns I read don't originate from www.espn.com. Uh... crap, this one is going to be a sports one... but hear me out.
During the NHL lockout two years ago, the governor general of Canada suggested a silly thing. Since the NHL is not playing for the Stanley Cup, why not let the best team in women's hockey play for it? Well, because its a league of girls! Jeez... So Adrienne Clarkson decides, hey why not repeat history and create the Clarkson Cup? After all, the lore of the Stanley Cup begins with governor general Lord Stanley in the year 1893. Which leads to the topic of this blog, this story. There is a photo of the trophy here, and though it looks small it actually looks quite similar to the top of the Grey Cup.
This is actually a great idea. After all, you have quite a few storied trophies in the other sports leagues. You always associate something with the other leagues, whether it be the Stanley Cup, Lombardi trophy, Larry O' Brien trophy, and the World Series trophy, and in the CFL the Grey Cup. It only makes sense to start a trophy and start a great new tradition in women's hockey.
Anyways, back to the story. Basically there is a controversy over the trophy that Clarkson purchased. She purchased thinking it was a one and done deal. However, the artists thought otherwise. They felt they would also be entitled to royalties as the trophy would surely be put onto merchandise. After all, the Stanley Cup makes its way onto T-shirts, promotional crests, and so on. The artists felt that they would be entitled to any commercial benefits the trophy recieved. The thing is, Clarkson is donating this trophy to Hockey Canada, which is a non profit organization. As well, considering the whopping popularity of the women's hockey leagues (sarcasm...) its likely most of if not all of the possible revenue generated by the trophy would go right to the supported professional women's hockey.
Then again, if you're a songwriter and you sell a song, you generate royalty revenues. So should the same thing happen here? Or should a chance at being able to create tradition in women's hockey, knowing you created the trophy be enough? Wouldn't being able to say you created the trophy give you greater commercial opportunity anyways?
Personally, I think it should have been a one and done deal. Hockey Canada has a policy of not giving out royalties due to past royalty legal troubles. This was clearly Clarkson's intention, to give the trophy to Hockey Canada. The artists may not have known about Hockey Canada's policy, but personally I think they didn't clearly state that they wanted royalty rights. That, or Clarkson ignored it. Either way, these artists aren't going to get the royalty revenue from Hockey Canada. In the article there are three options, and in the end, Hockey Canada can just get a trophy from someone else... and that someone else can hopefully start a new tradition.
Maybe one day we'll have a girl who wanted to be the next Hayley Wickenheiser grow up to lift the Clarkson Cup.
I think I'm going to try and post more opinions about news columns that I read. Of course, it would help if most of the columns I read don't originate from www.espn.com. Uh... crap, this one is going to be a sports one... but hear me out.
During the NHL lockout two years ago, the governor general of Canada suggested a silly thing. Since the NHL is not playing for the Stanley Cup, why not let the best team in women's hockey play for it? Well, because its a league of girls! Jeez... So Adrienne Clarkson decides, hey why not repeat history and create the Clarkson Cup? After all, the lore of the Stanley Cup begins with governor general Lord Stanley in the year 1893. Which leads to the topic of this blog, this story. There is a photo of the trophy here, and though it looks small it actually looks quite similar to the top of the Grey Cup.
This is actually a great idea. After all, you have quite a few storied trophies in the other sports leagues. You always associate something with the other leagues, whether it be the Stanley Cup, Lombardi trophy, Larry O' Brien trophy, and the World Series trophy, and in the CFL the Grey Cup. It only makes sense to start a trophy and start a great new tradition in women's hockey.
Anyways, back to the story. Basically there is a controversy over the trophy that Clarkson purchased. She purchased thinking it was a one and done deal. However, the artists thought otherwise. They felt they would also be entitled to royalties as the trophy would surely be put onto merchandise. After all, the Stanley Cup makes its way onto T-shirts, promotional crests, and so on. The artists felt that they would be entitled to any commercial benefits the trophy recieved. The thing is, Clarkson is donating this trophy to Hockey Canada, which is a non profit organization. As well, considering the whopping popularity of the women's hockey leagues (sarcasm...) its likely most of if not all of the possible revenue generated by the trophy would go right to the supported professional women's hockey.
Then again, if you're a songwriter and you sell a song, you generate royalty revenues. So should the same thing happen here? Or should a chance at being able to create tradition in women's hockey, knowing you created the trophy be enough? Wouldn't being able to say you created the trophy give you greater commercial opportunity anyways?
Personally, I think it should have been a one and done deal. Hockey Canada has a policy of not giving out royalties due to past royalty legal troubles. This was clearly Clarkson's intention, to give the trophy to Hockey Canada. The artists may not have known about Hockey Canada's policy, but personally I think they didn't clearly state that they wanted royalty rights. That, or Clarkson ignored it. Either way, these artists aren't going to get the royalty revenue from Hockey Canada. In the article there are three options, and in the end, Hockey Canada can just get a trophy from someone else... and that someone else can hopefully start a new tradition.
Maybe one day we'll have a girl who wanted to be the next Hayley Wickenheiser grow up to lift the Clarkson Cup.
Thursday, November 08, 2007
Earth Water (http://www.earthwater.ca/)
In a recent class of mine we had the CEO of a global water bottle company come in to present to us. Now when you think of a CEO, you think of an older, dressed up person who seems to have a large presence. That is completely not who walked in. Instead was a former U of A political science graduate who seems to be about 3-4 years older than this. He was dressed in a scraggly green t-shirt and blue jeans. He wasn't really one of the more impressive speakers as he spoke in a low voice, kinda fidgeted etc... but the content of his presentation was huge. His tag line of the presentation was, if you had the chance to, would you change the world? I can't really remember what his name was... Kori something?
His story starts with how he got inspired. He was backpacking in some mountain range when his group ran into a sherpa also walking up the same trail. It was of interest to them because he was being paid something shitty like 25 cents a day to haul this huge backpack thing. Now, they're curious what could possibly be in this huge thing and take a look; its stacks of cans of Coca-Cola. Apparently he is taking it up to a tourist spot so people can buy pop. Not much to be said here because the message here seems quite clear.
So, Kori decides to do the exact opposite. His goal is to create a corporation that takes social responsibility to the next level. Besides paying his employees a decent wage and retaining earnings to increase growth, 100% of his corporation's profits are donated to the U.N.
Earth Water is a very interesting product because it is the only item to have the U.N. logo on it and endorsing it. The U.N. did this while creating a contract that Earth Water donates 100% of its net profits. I think its amazing to do this and think its definitely worth the time to check out the website.
Its amazing what people can do asKori related the scale of each end of it. When creating the contract for Earth Water with the U.N., the U.N. had a team of 11 lawyers. In Kori's corner? A lawyer working pro bono on hand through cell phone because there wasn't money to fly the lawyer over to the contract negotiations.
There is actually a lot more neat things to bring up, but I'm going to end with a thought on one of their most innovative ideas. Kori spoke of how in certain disaster areas relief teams will fly in and drop loads of water bottles. While this is pretty much the only way to get drinking water in there, it creates a problem by causing gigantic mounds of water bottles. There really isn't anyway to get rid of them. So, right now they are working on creating this Lego-shaped water bottle that could be dropped instead. What is fascinating about this? Once the water has been finished out of the bottle, it can be filled with sand to make "bricks". Than these bricks can be put together to construct a shelter! ...Just wow...
In other news, there is Alex Rodriguez. Yeah.. $350 M? I'm not going to get into the specifics of it because its not really as simple as it looks, but its pretty astounding how we can get the extremes of what people are trying to do in the world...
In a recent class of mine we had the CEO of a global water bottle company come in to present to us. Now when you think of a CEO, you think of an older, dressed up person who seems to have a large presence. That is completely not who walked in. Instead was a former U of A political science graduate who seems to be about 3-4 years older than this. He was dressed in a scraggly green t-shirt and blue jeans. He wasn't really one of the more impressive speakers as he spoke in a low voice, kinda fidgeted etc... but the content of his presentation was huge. His tag line of the presentation was, if you had the chance to, would you change the world? I can't really remember what his name was... Kori something?
His story starts with how he got inspired. He was backpacking in some mountain range when his group ran into a sherpa also walking up the same trail. It was of interest to them because he was being paid something shitty like 25 cents a day to haul this huge backpack thing. Now, they're curious what could possibly be in this huge thing and take a look; its stacks of cans of Coca-Cola. Apparently he is taking it up to a tourist spot so people can buy pop. Not much to be said here because the message here seems quite clear.
So, Kori decides to do the exact opposite. His goal is to create a corporation that takes social responsibility to the next level. Besides paying his employees a decent wage and retaining earnings to increase growth, 100% of his corporation's profits are donated to the U.N.
Earth Water is a very interesting product because it is the only item to have the U.N. logo on it and endorsing it. The U.N. did this while creating a contract that Earth Water donates 100% of its net profits. I think its amazing to do this and think its definitely worth the time to check out the website.
Its amazing what people can do asKori related the scale of each end of it. When creating the contract for Earth Water with the U.N., the U.N. had a team of 11 lawyers. In Kori's corner? A lawyer working pro bono on hand through cell phone because there wasn't money to fly the lawyer over to the contract negotiations.
There is actually a lot more neat things to bring up, but I'm going to end with a thought on one of their most innovative ideas. Kori spoke of how in certain disaster areas relief teams will fly in and drop loads of water bottles. While this is pretty much the only way to get drinking water in there, it creates a problem by causing gigantic mounds of water bottles. There really isn't anyway to get rid of them. So, right now they are working on creating this Lego-shaped water bottle that could be dropped instead. What is fascinating about this? Once the water has been finished out of the bottle, it can be filled with sand to make "bricks". Than these bricks can be put together to construct a shelter! ...Just wow...
In other news, there is Alex Rodriguez. Yeah.. $350 M? I'm not going to get into the specifics of it because its not really as simple as it looks, but its pretty astounding how we can get the extremes of what people are trying to do in the world...
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