GA Russell

Here's an article from the CP today that says that Printers has been with Kansas City this camp, and was cut yesterday. http://www.globesports.com/servlet/story/R...tsFootball/home ***** Week 10 previews: http://sports.canada.com/default.asp?c=can.../AJN4099761.htm ***** Friday result: British Columbia Lions 46....Montreal Alouettes 14 http://sports.canada.com/default.asp?c=can.../AJN4099943.htm

I remember The Beer Hunter TV show. Can't say that I remember him fondly, but he contributed to his own niche in the world, and so we are the less for his passing.

I know what to say. I've been saying it for years: The secret to happiness is to never expect anything from the Boston Red Sox.

This is from Ars Technica. You can see the charts here: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070...s-possibly.html By Nate Anderson | Published: August 30, 2007 - 07:20AM CT Gaming sometimes seems like a "niche," and the mainstream media certainly treats it that way. However, a comparison of the gaming market with that of movies and music shows that gaming is much larger than many people think. Hence our ears perked up when Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot said last week that the video game market was poised for massive growth—a 50 percent increase over the next four years. Assuming that Guillemot isn't simply blowing fumée about his industry's growth potential (always a possibility at these kind of events), video games will soon run eclipse both box office revenues and recorded music revenues. That a lot of copies of Halo to move; is gaming really ready to get this big? Let's run the numbers. The US market We'll start with the US market, then take a look at the worldwide picture. We have collected revenue statistics from the the last five years for the music, movies, and gaming sectors; you can see them helpfully overlaid on the chart below. What you're looking at is industry revenues, expressed in billions of dollars. Gaming had some major growth, but much of it was in the past, when the industry surged from $2.6 billion in sales to $7 billion between 1996 and 2000. Over the last five years, though, none of the three categories has shown much evidence of explosive growth. Music (which includes CD sales, digital sales, music video sales, and mobile song downloads), in fact, has dropped from a peak of $14.58 billion in 1999 to only $11.5 billion in 2006, and it is expected to fall even further by 2010. The idea that games have been hurtling upward and stand ready to eclipse more traditional entertainment forms looks a bit dubious based on past data. To be sure, games showed remarkable growth in the 1990s, but they appear to have leveled out recently at a rate below that of music and movies. Note also that "movies" here includes only the US box office take from theaters; throw in DVD sales and everything else the industry does to earn money, and the total movie industry is worth much more. If we look at "media consumption per person" data, we find that the average number of hours spent with video games has also remained quite flat over the same time period. The peak, in fact, was in 2004, when gamers spent 78 hours a year before the glow of a monitor or television. But what about the future? Now, in Guillemot's defense, there are a few factors that could give gaming a boost over the next few years (requests to Ubisoft for the data used by Guillemot were not returned by press time). First, of course, the worldwide situation could be dramatically different than it is in the US. Music and movies are widespread across the globe and the equipment to play them back is cheap and easy to get. Video games are a different matter, since hardware remains pricey and is required in order to play even illicit copies of video games. Huge new markets could be coming online in other parts of the globe as incomes go up, opening the door to big new groups of gamers (see below). The flattening of game sales in 2005 in particular may have had something to do with the US consumers settling into a holding pattern until the next-gen consoles appeared. Making this idea problematic, though, is the fact that the PS2 continues to sell like hotcakes even today and was doing big business in 2005 as it was cheap to acquire and great games were plentiful. But Guillemot appears to believe in the power of devices like the Wii to bring in whole new generations of gamers, including those who have never touched a console controller in their lives. This group could provide a big revenue boost even in countries like the US. The Wii has certainly been selling well, but it's still a bit early to start writing the "How the Wii Changed the Face of Gaming" feature, as the Wii hasn't been for sale long enough to show up on these kinds of charts. Guillemot's prediction relies on "crystal balling" the future, and in that sense it is something of a dodgy game. We contacted The NPD Group, which collects the industry-standard gaming sales figures (even the ESA uses them), and were told that NPD isn't in the business of forecasting precisely because of its inaccuracy. "Forecasting is comparable to throwing darts in the dark," NPD tells Ars. "Analysts rarely get it right. We don't want to be lumped in that category because the nature of our business is to provide accurate sales and consumer data, and only accurate data. Forecasting can hurt us if we're not careful." But other analysts are willing to make projections. PriceWaterhouseCoopers, for instance, produces a major "Global Entertainment and Media Outlook" report each year, and this year's version projects sales data up until 2011. Its numbers for total US video game sales are a bit higher than NPD's for the period 2002-2006, but the important point here isn't the actual figures; it's the percentage increase. As you can see in the chart above, gaming sales are in fact predicted to jump substantially. Between 2006 and 2011, they should grow by 38 percent. Strong growth, but not really up to Guillemot's prediction. When we look at the rest of the world, though, it turns out that Asian, European, and Latin American gamers are all ready to start spending. Guillemot might still be stretching la vérité a bit, but at least he's on the right pitch. Around the world If we look at worldwide numbers, we see that the video gaming market (not including hardware) is projected to grow by more than 100 percent in the ten years from 2002-2011. In fact, it turns out that every other region of the world is expected to experience more growth than the US over the next five years, which probably represents the relative maturity of the US market more than any American lack of time, resources, or interest in decapitating aliens with head shots. Looking specifically at Guillemot's prediction, we find that gaming is in fact expected to surge by 50 percent between 2006 and 2011 (from $31.6 billion to $48.9 billion), though this is certainly a longer timeframe than Guillemot's "four years." Now, if these numbers hold up, they compare quite favorably with projections for the worldwide recorded business in 2011. As we've previously reported, music sales are estimated to slip into the $25 billion neighborhood (not exactly a low-rent area, but down from much higher numbers earlier in the decade) by 2011. If that's true, music will be crushed by video games—nearly doubled, actually—in just a few short years. Imagine a gaming organization with twice the heft of the RIAA. The ESA has been active politically but in many ways still seems to be learning the game. Its members should have the cash to buy plenty of clout, though, and perhaps they will soon have better luck in stopping misguided video game legislation before it passes and can stop defeating the states in court. This kind of market power could also be a boon to the industry in other ways; it might finally silence those who carp about games being "just for kids" or about just "blowing up aliens." According to the ESA, two-thirds of US heads of households already play games, and the average age for a gamer is 33 years old, but reality has still not quieted the dismissive sounds of some critics. Perhaps $49 billion in global revenues will.

The Argos cut Bashir Levingston today. I imagine that he had a pretty good salary, and the article says that they didn't really need him anymore because of Dominique Dorsey's success. http://www.globesports.com/servlet/story/R...tsFootball/home

TTK, the Fantasy album which has received the best press over the years has been Monterey Concert, which was a double album now on one CD. One day I'll buy it. ***** Tuesday I saw on YouTube a video from 1975 of Cal with Clare Fischer playing Soul Sauce. I was surprised at how hard Cal struck the vibes with his mallets. He makes it sound easy, but he didn't make it look easy.

After thinking about it for a day, I'm really sorry that I didn't vote for Jim, Joe and Randy for their respective instruments too. The guys I voted for are worthy but they don't need my votes. It would be great to see the names of the group and its three members in the mag, knowing that all the world will see them and wonder, "Who are these guys?"

I'm not in the market for a new radio, but I was at the shopping center of my local Super Target, so I dropped in to see if they had any of the two Tivoli items you guys are talking about. They didn't. They did have a Tivoli Model One radio for $119.

BClug, I assume you are saying that Buck Pierce has been put on the injured list too, is that right? Maybe his hand and rib injuries weren't getting any better while he played, and Wally figured that it would be better to give him a rest to recover while the team played an Eastern team. ***** I mentioned some weeks ago that during a game I listened to between the Eskimos and the Stamps, AJ Gass was thrown out for flinging a Stamps helmet down the field during a melee. Gass appealed his one-game suspension to an arbitrator, and today he won! I can't believe it. It looks to me like the arbitrator decided to play Commissioner-for-a-day and second guess the league's decision. If any league can't suspend a player for a game because of his involvement in a fight, all the games will be up for grabs. http://slam.canoe.ca/Slam/Football/CFL/New...4455906-cp.html ***** When Damon Allen hurt his toe right after Michael Bishop broke his wrist, I read an article about the Argos' QB woes. It mentioned their efforts to find a new QB during the off-season, and said that Casey Printers had been considered but received a better offer from an NFL team. It didn't mention the team. Does anyone know who Casey Printers is with now?

Break a leg! I hope your stage is near the porta-johns. When I went to the 1990 New Orleans Jazzfest, an unknown blues singer/guitarist named Kenny Neal was performing on a very small stage next to the johns. He had a small audience, plus everyone in the long lines waiting to use the johns (including me). Over the course of the set, his audience kept growing until it became quite sizeable. Everyone (including me) who had been waiting in line stuck around for the remainder of the set. The next year he was featured on a bigger stage. He has gone on to have a good career. And I think it all started with his captive audience!

This is just a reminder that the Downbeat Readers Poll ends August 31. You can vote online this year here: http://www.downbeat.com/ I voted yesterday. I keep all of the CDs I have opened up in the past twelve months on the top shelf, so I reviewed them all and came to these conclusions: Art Pepper - The Last Concert - historical album Stefano Bollani - Piano Solo - new album Sonny Rollins - group Tomasz Stanko - trumpet John Surman - baritone sax Nels Cline - guitar (really for 2006) John Vance - male vocalist Janice Friedman - female vocalist Cryptogramophone (again, really for 2006) Last year I didn't vote, but if I had I would have voted for either Joey DeFrancesco or Paul Motian as Jazzman of the Year. This year I couldn't think of anyone who stood out, so I voted for Joey D. Too bad the readers don't get to vote for Talent Deserving of Wider Recognition. Organissimo would get a lot of votes for best group! If I could take my vote back I would, and vote for the band. If you haven't already voted, let's stuff the ballot box, and get the band's name in the Readers Poll issue, which as I recall is the December one. edit to add subtitle

I went to the library today and used their computer with its DSL hookup. I went to the CFL YouTube site and didn't notice anything about subscriptions. What I saw was highlights of every game played so far. Most of them were scoring drives. Highly recommended!

Glad it was good, deus 62!

Happy Birthday kh!

Ike Quebec 45s, disc 1

I'm already on record as guessing that they will have it in January. We should start a pool!

Yes, I read in the paper this morning that the Yanks are second in the race for the wild card spot. Dan, your ERA stats of the Red Sox pitchers make me wonder if the pitchers throughout the league have higher ERAs in Fenway than in the other parks.

Has this never happened in Oriental societies untouched by the Bible? I have to think that it is a universal trait of mankind, not just the Europeans and the intellectual descendants of Zoroaster.

There are a number of things in my queue that I would like to have, but nothing has me on pins and needles waiting for it. I guess the last ones that I really wanted right now were Donald Fagen's Morph the Cat and Miles' Cellar Door box. And in both cases I can't say they were better than what I normally get. Of course, I haven't heard all of the Miles yet, so I shouldn't judge prematurely.

I've just finished Slouching Toward Gomorah by Robert Bork. It examines the moral decline of America in our lifetime. It was written in 1995, but is just as applicable today. He feels that the sixties accelerated the decline, but that the decline was already on its way even if the sixties had not happened as they did. He puts particular blame on two elements of the cultural elite - the Supreme Court (and of course all courts in general, including trial courts which are increasingly unable to convict and punish criminals) and the universities, which he says have rejected logic and reason for the goal of equal results.

I saw Hot Ptah's "Buckle Up" just last week! What! You mean shopping for more crap isn't all there is to life?

Here's a link to an article in today's Detroit Free Press (too long to post): http://freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID.../708260570/1039

I didn't realize until reading the paper this morning that at age 41 Wakefield is leading the majors (tied with Beckett) in wins. I think it said that he has won 11 of his last 14 starts. ***** Dan, nowadays who cares who finishes in first place? The Yanks look good to make the playoffs, and in recent years wild card teams have made the World Series lots of times.

Now Paul Desmond, disc 4. The past few days I've been pulling out CDs to play that I haven't listened to in over a year.

The Stampeders cut Marc Boerigter today. My guess is that his knee injury has ended his career. http://slam.canoe.ca/Slam/Football/CFL/Cal...4448260-cp.html