Enough of this

Well... out with it.

This blog has been very rewarding.  It would have to be to keep at it for almost six years.  This is post number 1650, of which I've done maybe a level thousand, and there's a number of those that I can be proud of.  I think that over the next few weeks I will be searching through and finding the best of those to save... but sadly, I think that's all I've got right now.

Those few of you who dig my hockey stuff can find it at Lighthouse Hockey, an Islanders message board/group blog/clearinghouse of all things puck.  I post there as "mikb" since my blog name was taken when I signed up.

The rest?

I'm sorry.  I'm fried.  I look at this thing, and I fiddle-faddle with the template, and I save links to write posts about, or jot down thoughts, and it never goes anywhere.  It doesn't seem worth the bother anymore.  I have no jump left.

It's a pity.  According to a recent spate of spam comments, my blog is (at turns) captivating, wondrous, remarkable, powerful, striking, irresistable (my blog meter begs to differ), super, great, fine, excellent, exciting, inquisitive, unusual, awesome, charming (??), incredible, energizing (!!), prodigious, astonishing, unique (like the million other blogs the spambots sent the comment too), cool, fascinating, suitable (even the spammers damn with faint praise!), hot, and hype.  The main thing this blog is, though, is "fruitful" - with five faux commenters using that term, beating out "hot" and "fine" who had four each.

It was amusing to watch a thesaurus explode all over my comments section, but not worth the trouble to erase fifty-plus links to fake refinancing companies.  (Although with times the way they are, maybe that's the only way they can afford to advertise now.)

Y'all will see me here and there.  I like visiting everyone and commenting and such.  Probably sooner or later I'll be back writing my own stuff, too.  I hope noboby will mind if I send around an email when that happens.  And you have my email: nightflymail -AT- gmail -DOT- com.  Don't be a stranger.

A couple of things

Hey all.

I'm pleased to welcome three newcomers to Ye Olde Sidebarre: Professor Mondo, the Clue Batting Cage, and Lighthouse Hockey.

The third of these sites may be interesting to future students in Professor Ag²-zuRç-Œz♣ƒo≡♫'s elective on Obscure Blogging in the Terran Early-21st Century, since it's the first time I've been hired by someone else to write stuff.  Pay = zero, but when I die, on my deathbed, I will receive total consciousness.  In the meantime, you all receive blessed freedom from my occasional hockey posts, since they will usually take place over there now.  (You still get to enjoy my split infinitives.)  I'll link those posts here, but the casual visitor will be spared the in-depth demonstration of my niche amusements.

My thanks to Professor M and philmon for their good writing, and for Dominik the Lighthouse Keeper for the opportunity to do more of what I love.  It's a great community of fans over there, the comment threads are friendly and smart, a lot of fun, and it's great to have the chance to be a part of it.  My normal nom de blog was already taken, so you'll find me posting there as "mikb" - you know, because I'm creative like that.

Many a little makes a mickle

I swapped the comments out for a third party system to kill spam.  It worked, but it also really hurt the commenting.  So I suppose it's not too terrible that, after switching back, 17 of my last 19 comments have been spam?

Tinkering leads to difficulty

So... as you can (hopefully) see, I rejiggered the template.  This has also sent the comments wonky.  I apologize, especially to Rob at Crab Apple Lane, because we just seemed to iron out the problem he was having with the third-party commenting system, and now said system has gone bye-bye.  Until I figure out what's going on, I've enabled the old Blogger comments system, with word verification.

In the interim, I already got about a dozen spam I had to delete.  That was the big plus of the third-party system: spam was rigorously smoten.  Here, not so much, probably not even with the word verify.  I don't want to moderate, on the off chance that a conversation threatens to break out around here, so I will just deal with the spam on a slice-by-slice basis, and leave well enough alone otherwise.

Hah! The Internets says I are geeeenyus righter!

I took the first three paragraphs of an actual finished story that I wrote from beginning to end, all by my own lonesome, and I stuck it in a thingy on the Web that computes the skill of the writing that is contained therein.  And these results were mine:

I write like
Vladimir Nabokov

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Dialogue?  Yeah, I gotta try some dialogue.  The results:

I write like
David Foster Wallace

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

You see that? I are teh awsum. Burn thine inferior printed materials and harken unto this blog!

The Nightfly: Algorithm approved since Monday afternoon!

So what if I'm not appreciated? You know who else wasn't appreciated? HERMAN F'K'N MELLVILLE, that's who. And I can do action sequences, too.

I write like
Dan Brown

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

MUA-Hahahahaa...aa....  ...  Awwwwwwwww.

Via Spleenville.

Wasting away again in Blogaritaville

Lately it's so much simpler to just comment everywhere rather than cook up content on my own steam.  I have no steam right now.  I am steamless, sans steam, free of motive power... all I have is my thesaurus and the blahs.

Now, somebody claims that there's someone else to blame, but I know this is my own fault.  The Hive no longer buzzes as it once did.  I did a little research about it... we've had 1600+ posts now in the nearly six years I started.  In my two solo years I stuck up a respectable 433 posts, gained a happy little readership, and met some friends along the way.  Many more of you I haven't met, of course, but I feel like I know you from all the posting and commenting that I've been involved in.  It's wonderfully rewarding.

Naturally, as I've had a co-blogger my own output has declined.*  (Then I went and married, too, and all that real life cuts into your time for important stuff.)  But I was still surprised to see how far into the minority my posting has gone.  Roughly three out of every five posts you see will be the Spider's, and that's held for a good stretch now.  Not that I complain - far the reverse.  If he hadn't been firing off a dozen at a stretch here and there, this place would have dandelions growing out of the cracks in the template.  Nor is this a backhanded plea for him to pick things up.  Again, the reverse - I feel a little guilty that it falls to him so often.

* I found some amusement during the researching... Spider joined on 9/28/2006... and inside of a week (10/4/2006 to be exact) he was posting, "Charlie Crist thinks I'm an idiot."  Heheheheheheh.  He also called Palin as VP ahead of the fact too.

So, what is this emo whinging, anyway?

I'm not focused enough.  I'm blogging about blogging more than I blog... and when I do find myself with something to say, few people seem interested.  That's my own fault, of course.  Write boring stuff and get well-earned yawns; I should rename this place "White Noise and Muzak."  It frustrates me to be substandard after doing this so long.  Not that I blog to say "I get x number of hits a day, I'm so important and brilliant!" but any writer wants to interest readers, and if I don't do that I am a failed writer.  That annoys me. 

I also like being in conversations.  I can go places and find vibrant conversations and chime in, or sit in the virtual corner and listen, and be a part of something better than myself.  But lately I seem incapable of giving others a welcome forum for the same thing.  Something about the Hive has been putting people off and I want to figure it out and fix it.  On occasion, it's nice to yell along with folks, but you should never feel yelled at.

This requires some thought.

Internet giveth, gummint seeks to take away

More Internetty Goodness from the great Iowahawk.

It's the middle of the day on a deserted Washington street. You're on your way to a reelection fund raising brunch. Suddenly a gang of crazed camera-wielding teabaggers jump out from the alley and lunge at you with their razor-sharp switchblade questions!

Would YOU know WHAT TO DO?

Oh, Internet, you treat me so nice.  Let's not ever fight.
 
Uhm, wait - WHAT?

The federal government would have “absolute power” to shut down the Internet under the terms of a new US Senate bill being pushed by Joe Lieberman, legislation which would hand President Obama a figurative “kill switch” to seize control of the world wide web in response to a Homeland Security directive.

Honestly, I don't think that's Lieberman's intent; it's probably similar to the old "Emergency Broadcast System" where a central authority pops onto all TVs everywhere to tell you the Russkies have thrown the button down.  Or at least that's what he is thinking of.

And yet... it's a different world.  The Internet, as corporate as some corners have gotten, is still quite wide-open.  Anyone can grab a little free server space and hang up a cyber-shingle.  Getting even moderately known usually means ads or paying for bandwidth or fancy online publishing, but that comes later, and compared to something like running a radio/TV station or newspaper, it's shockingly cheap.  It's the most democratic medium in the world today, on a reach-per-dollar basis it gives incredible power to the common citizen.

Well, lately some elected sorts are quite down on the idea that common citizens have the Constitutional right to peaceably assemble and redress their governement for wrongs - as Etheridge has demonstrated.  How dare the little people exercise their rights!  How dare video footage of my bad behavior be made public!

And that's the worry here.  Even five years ago the only way for this to be widely-seen would be to submit the footage to the local network affiliate and hope it got picked up.  No more.  Now everyone on the street potentially has a flip-camera or a 5-megapixel cameraphone... I can take something the size of a pack of cards out of my pocket, capture the moment in full-HD and sound, and before the cops have even arrived, the clip is on a public forum where anyone can see it for themselves.  And those people increasingly have the affordable means to see that clip anywhere they are - not stuck in their house on a desk-based PC, but while out for coffee or waiting for a train or eating lunch.  And if they happen not to be online, that's ok, because some of them have set it up so their favorite websites buzz their phones when something new goes up.  They don't have to stumble across it, they get told.  They are their own big-paper editors, with the city desk buzzing in hot scoops they can run with.  Stop the presses! Life is a forties noir cliche.

All the faux grassroots activism the left was talking about when they were centrally-organizing busloads of protestors to hassle the President, get out the vote, agitate for something-or-other.... it was mostly a flop, wasn't it?  This is different, though.  This is a game-changer: not imposed from above or without, but true independent action rising from within, taking shape, and people are using it to rally themselves to the ideas they like, and to reject those they are ordered to believe by their self-appointed betters.

Lieberman may well not realize it, but others do.  They're desperate for a way to stuff the information toothpaste back into pre-approved tubes, rationed out at their pleasure.  They already regard tax-cutting protests, fiscal conservatives, pro-lifers, and small-government movements as more or a terrorist threat than actual blow-you-to-bits terrorists; they say so out loud. It's plain that all that "dissent is patriotic" and "question authority" stuff they love is a lie - they only like it when they're the questioning dissenters.  They have no real interest in advancing the debate, in freedom of speech (which is really freedom of thought), in the marketplace of ideas, or in a free people making their own choices.

They used the RICO statutes against pro-lifers, they use shakedown and blackmail techniques against private enterprise, they cry racism at every attempt to enforce the borders or control entitlement spending programs.  They assume the authority to intrude into ever-more-trivial aspects of our everyday lives.  If something like Lieberman's bill ever passes, they will use it on the rest of us.

Not so fast

Andrea Harris has a favorite stop of mine in blogworld.  (You can see her off to the side there in the Pantheon.)  This post of hers, about tourists having mental meltdowns when their real trip abroad destroys their romantic notions of the destination, brought brought out a comment that is making me scratch my head a bit:

Pity they didn’t bother to read about Paris (especially material not put out by the travel industry) rather than rely on a medium intended and designed to transmit lies.

I object to this, and I will explain why.  (At length - lucky you!)  Movies are not a medium intended and designed to transmit lies, any more than television, or novels, or plays, or art, or video games. All these are media intended and designed to transmit IDEAS or STORIES. Some of those may well be outright lies; some of those are excellently-crafted. There are also truthful stories, and beautiful ideas, and nobility and kindness and grandeur.

Since images and feelings are more immediate, most art aims for those instead of thoughts. No argument on that point. I do think that to simply call the whole thing "lies" by design is to miss the point, however. One of the earliest moving pictures was in fact used to truthfully answer a question: does a horse pick all four feet off the ground at once while galloping? (Turns out that they do.)

Look - I'm a storyteller by nature, if not by profession.  (And there's a long post brewing about that conflict: stay tuned.)  This is my passion.  I would be willing to go on a limb and say that for most creative community, that passion is a primary motivation.  They have turned that passion into a job.

Once you turn a passion into a means of commerce, things change.  As long as I'm just writing, I can just write.  Once I am also selling, then the writing has to meet the demands of those to whom I wish to sell.  It's a dilution - not much of one, since an audience wants a compelling story above all, and storytellers are nothing if not compelled.  Still, they may have no taste for the story struggling to free itself from my mind.  At that point it's the old familiar choice: give 'em what they want or say what I need to say?

Here's the thing, though: that tension exists in EVERY business.  Some people's passion is food.  They become amazing chefs.  They also have to consider: will people pay money to eat this?  How much?  Again, the dilution is slight.  People want great food, chefs want to cook great food.  But people can scarcely afford $100 meals every night, not in great enough numbers to keep the chefs themselves fed.  So ingredients are swapped, flavors change, and viola - Chili's.  Or Wendy's.

I won't pretend that line cooks at a chain restaurant give two shakes of a rat's patoot about Great Food in the abstract, but they care at least about how the particular food they're actually cooking, that it should be done properly and please the customers.  And the people who develop the menus care much more about that abstract, the ideal of flavors.  Even Dave Thomas, the founder of Wendy's, cared a great deal about it, even if it was just burgers and fries.  He may not have been a chef on the par of a Gordon Ramsay or Julia Child, but he cared.  He had to.  Ultimately, if you make too many changes for commerce - too much dilution - then one loses both the passion and the commerce.

You will find the same tension in every walk of life: in education, in politics, in construction, in sports.  There is a perfect ideal, that drives everyone with a passion, and then there is the economic reality.  It would cost too much to make every teacher an Ivy League-quality professor (and not every one of them could be, anyway), though the children would benefit.  It costs money to campaign, money to run a government - too much to run unelectable candidates no matter how great they may be at governing.  Should my house get obliterated by meteorites or something, it would cost twice as much to construct the way it was originally built vs. using modern materials like sheetrock.  And the greatest players in the world command a great deal of money, more than any one franchise could pay (even the Yankees or Red Sox); so they make do with affordable players rather than pursue the perfect ideal of 162-0.

Yet those ideals exist.  Those passions are real.  Every teacher wants to teach as well as possible, every politician hopes to govern, every housebuilder (and homeowner!) wants the home to endure, and every team wants to win every game, or at least their league's chamionship.  Without those ideals, that passion, there would be no point in even starting.

That's why I say again that filmmaking is about ideas and stories, not lies.  Based on some of the loopier things that movie-folk say and do, it's easy to believe that Hollywood is full of narcissists who dictate What is Acceptable to the rest of us, when in fact they are full of crap.  There is some justice in the claim, perhaps, in certain examples.  Certainly Tim Robbins and Sean Penn have done more than their share of loopy lefty proselytizing.  But they didn't become actors to be able to dictate What is Acceptable, they did it because their passion is in the stories they tell.  Those who have lost that passion are usually the worst at their profession, and again, this holds across all walks of life.

Not surprisingly, when singers and athletes and kindergarten teachers also lose that passion, they become fairly useless in their fields as well.  That doesn't mean that music, sports, and knowledge itself is intended and designed only to convey lies, does it?

(Funny how this comes up when I'm working on a story that indirectly touches this idea - that of the storyteller as a professional liar.  Reality keeps anticipating me.  Bad reality!  No cookie!)

Spam in the place where you blog

The latest trick for the spambots is to snag some bits of a legit article from a web page, run it through Google's translator a few times, and then post it with links to the usual suspects.  This one, in Joe Posnanski's comments section (probably gone by the time you click this thread) was a winner:

...in Wednesday night’s game, Blackhawks wachovia center 3-2. “We have read this story,” Chris Pronger defenseman said. . But in this case just support him and make sure he’s feeling good about Chanel Bracelets.

Note that this came out several hours before Game Six.  Philly, go support him!  Make sure he's feeling good about bracelets.

(Cut to 17,500 screaming Philadelphians yelling, "Prong-er's Brace-lets!" *clap clap clap-clap-clap*)

But, yeah - Strasburg.  Fourteen whiffs, no walks, seven innings. Kid's stupid good. Apparently they pulled him after seven innings so he could go to the Gulf and plug the oil leak with a well-placed slider. (His fastball would have just cracked the Earth open and caused a volcano.)

Going down the valley one by one

We keep losing good blogs.

Going through my sidebar and link list, trying to catch up on some folks, I found a few that have given up the gig.  WunderKraut is the latest, joining Dawn Eden, Rachl Lukis (who may return), Still Stacy, the Boy Named Sous (such a great blog name), and WordGirl.*

* it's odd that the blogger of the name has been replaced by quite a fun PBS kid's show of the same name.  I love having family friends with young kids, I get an excuse to enjoy this stuff with them.

It's oddly sad when a regular stop goes quiet.  It's rarely because the blogger in question has passed or is too ill to continue (though sadly, that does happen).  But there's a small grief there anyway.  A beloved voice fades out of the chorus - and out in the internet, that voice is usually all we meet of that real person.  It's just a little little window into a full life, but it shines such a light.

It's not a bad thing - it probably means that WK and family are busier and happier than ever, and he's devoting more time to more fulfilling pursuits than this.  I'm hopeful for him, and selfishly, a little sad for me.

Be well, my brother.  And the rest of you wonderful fake folks who live in the magic box - don't go 'way just yet.

Thanks for chiming in

The poll widget was new, so I decided what the heck, give it a try.  I'm pleased to see that the yeas outweighed the single "nay."  I may run another one sometime, we'll see.  Maybe I'll run a poll asking what poll to run, if I'm in a metatextual mood.

I am loving this blog so hard right now

If you're a fan of a hard-luck sports franchise, you get completely crazy (see: all New York sports teams) or develop a darned good sense of humor.  Lately, the Isles fans are going the wrong way... witness this spectacular nitwittery in the (400+ and counting) comments, most of them ready to toss GM Garth Snow under the Zamboni for getting a low second-round pick for Andy Sutton.

Dudes... the guy is turning 36 next year, makes $3 million, and will probably leave as a free agent after the year.  Did you expect that Sid Crosby was coming back the other way?  I hate that so many of my fellow fans have decided to turn into typical "Louie from the Bronx" WFAN caller types.  Get down off the ledge, guys, woncha?

As an antidote I hang out over at Down Goes Brown.  The draft advertisement post alone is worth your repeated clickage.  ("Customers who viewed this item also viewed: Pylon, Turnstile, Wasted Money..."  HAHAHAHAHAHA)

And BTW, Isles Point Blank is also on the Pantheon, and Chris Botta, who is Lord of the IPB, is very very good.  No beef with him (even if he does spike my comments on occasion!).  It's my fellow combox jockeys who need to get back on their meds.

update and BWAHAHAHAHA - from Greg Wyshynski (Puck Daddy), the Milbury Trade Scale.  Never has mental scarring from epic failure been this amusing!

Now that's puttin' on the foil

First, I'd like to welcome Ken Socrates' hockey blog, Hockey Gone Wild, to the sidebar.  Do go read!

(update - oh, yeah... helps to include the link.  Fixed now.)

Second, I'd like to show off a little.  I've been harping on the pity points in the NHL... it reduces competitiveness at the end of games, doesn't eliminate the "boring" ties (games still are even after 65 minutes), artificially makes teams look better than they are, and makes it harder to catch the teams ahead of you in the standings.

Tiresome?  Well, you'll notice I haven't run the Real Standings for a while.  But check this out from The Hockey News' Edward Fraser.  Essentially, it's a pithier and better-written version of all of my harping over the past few months.

I'd like to take credit, but I've just discovered Mr. Fraser's work, and way back in December 2007, it turns out that he invented the Real Standings, with a twist - he eliminated ties entirely and went to a 2-0 system.  In recognition, the next Real Standings here will be named the Fraser Standings.  (I'm not changing the tag, though.)  And yes, I will actually try to run them sometime over the weekend.  It takes a little while to catch up if I haven't updated it regularly.

A programming note

Haloscan, which has been the commenting service here at the Hive for a few years, is officially going kaput.  In its place, the company js-kit is offering a service they like so much they've renamed themselves after it: Echo.

No, your comments won't be sent to the attic.  It looks like there will be a lot of cross-platform compatibility, so people with existing OpenID or other accounts can just log in, and use whatever avatars, profile pics, and online info they already have.  Whether or not the actual commenting will be worth anything remains to be seen, though js-kit did a good job with Haloscan and I had no complains.  One difference straightaway is that the Echo comments can be threaded.  I'm personally not a fan, because it can be harder to find new comments that way; but I get so little comment traffic in general, it's not likely to make a difference one way or another.

This post is the first to feature the Echo system.  Try it out and let's see what we've got.

Sleepyblog

Awwww.... the Hive is so CUTE when it's just curled up so peacefully, doing nothing!  So innocent and trusting.  I wonder what it dreams about...

(Content soon, folks.  Unless, y'know, there isn't.)

First entry for Line of the Year

From Matthew Archbold of the Creative Minority Report:

Secular progressives won't tolerate any mention of Christianity in public. In short, Jesus is the new smoking. And the fear of secondhand Jesus is even more intense than the pungency of nicotine in a restaurant.

"Fear of secondhand Jesus" is pure win.

Lots going on

The sorta short version is as follows:

A. I've spent a lot of writing time using a pen, on paper.
B. I've spent other time writing on a computer - fiction work.
C. This is, collectively, only a smidge of time.
D. The great part of my time has been spent dealing with a big family issue.

I'm don't want to tell what that issue is, at least not yet. Eventually. The worst is past, I'm glad to say, but there's a way to go. Prayers would be most welcome, if you are inclined to do so; and those of you in the know, you have both of our thanks.

For those of you currently enjoying the Barking Spider Show here at Ye Olde Hive, thanks for your continued and patient reading. I mean it when I say that I'm glad for each and all of you, and it hurts that I've had to neglect you. I hope to be doing better by you soon. Even though I can't promise much, you deserve to know that I'm aware of it, I'm working on it, and you should see a few actual posts soon - even as simple as a list of snippets.

Don't tell Sheila

Much to her chagrin, Hollywood may actually do this someday. The blood across the journal is strangely, shockingly apt - and very wrong.

(Sheila's original post on the book, btw, for reference.)

Clicking does the strangest things

I came across an article online regarding Randy Wolf, the former Phillies pitcher who now works for the Los Angeles Dodgers. The pride of Pepperdine University is a decent middle-of-the-rotation guy at this point, but his most recent start (vs. Arizona) was a thing of beauty. Through seven innings he had allowed only one single, striking out ten, and had gone 2-3 with a home run.

They let him hit for himself in the top of the eighth - why not, it was 7-0 - and he smacked an RBI double, and came around to score, and Joe Torre let him keep going. I mean, again, why not? The guy was cruising. He'd retired 20 consecutive Diamondbacks. He'd struck out the side in the fifth, two more in the seventh, and had a shot at actually hitting for the cycle.

On his second pitch of the eighth, Wolf gave up a dinger, and two singles and a triple later, Torre had to come get him. His final line was 7 2/3 IP, three runs on five hits with ten strikeouts, plus a 3-4, 3 rbi day at the plate.

The article (which I can't find now) posited that Wolf's day was one of the greatest ever enjoyed by a pitcher, and while it's a fine day indeed, I can't help but think that there have been enough truly amazing days to consider this a slight step below.

That's not the Mets fan in me talking, either. To prove it, I will cite as possibly the top of the list a warm June in Cincinnati, where the visiting Phillies send Rick Wise to the mound. He threw a no-hitter that day... and hit two home runs of his own. Not many pitchers can say that they've done that, and to my knowledge no other pitcher can say that he did it TWICE - but Wise can, and what's more, he did it in the same season.

But this is where clicking comes in. Wise can also add some odd-duck trivia. Most famously, he was traded straight-up for Steve Carlton, who went on to win 27 games for the dreadful '72 Phils, with the Cy Young and the Hall of Fame and (for a very little while) the all-time strikeout title.

Wise's first-ever start in 1964 came against the Giants, and he surrendered his first major league home run in the first inning - to Willie Mays. On August 28th, 1971, they became the second team in a single year to give up two homers TO Wise; one was a grand slam to break a tie.

The Phillies lost 7 of Wise's next 8 starts following the June no-hitter... they also lost his next three starts after that August 28th game.

Wise wound up hitting 15 career homers, and one week shy of the two-year anniversary of his first grand slam, he hit another for the Cardinals against the Braves. It would be his last career homer.

But wait! There's more! The Baseball Reference guys ran a list of all the relievers who've hit homers and found two who've hit two in a game themselves. The first guy on that list, Millard "Dixie" Howell, is a very interesting guy: broke in with the Cleveland Indians in 1940, had arm troubles, went to WW2, was made a prisoner of war, but made it briefly back to the bigs at age 29. And when the game seemed to have passed him by, he popped back up at age 35 for the White Sox, presaging Jim Morris by over forty years, and he went 8-3 with a 2.93 ERA. His two-tater game came two years later. Sadly, he died very young, via heart attack at age 40, while working out for an independent league team in spring training.

By the way, be sure when you investigate these things. You have to wind up with the correct Millard "Dixie" Howell, or things could get wierd.

Once again, we set the trend here at the Hive

I won't blame anyone for forgetting this post about hockey and statistics, because, well, it's about hockey and statistics. It could make my eyes glaze over and I love both of those topics. But hey presto, now look at what I spied with my little glazed eyes: Fixing Plus/Minus by Tom Awad at Hockey Prospectus.

He had two simple improvements to suggest: first, adjust the individual's +/- to counter his team's influence over the overall number. Then, factor out the goalie (a person playing in front of Martin Brodeur is better off than one playing in front of Peter Budaj). The remaining number (he calls it RPM, for (i guess) Revised Plus/Minus) is a decent attempt to measure individual contributions to what is inherently a team-oriented activity.

One wishes he'd included more of the actual math, so one could duplicate his results. However, the chart at the bottom of the article is excellent, and at first glance it jives well with "I trust my eyes and guts, dagnabit" impressions of defensive play. The Islanders' Mark Streit, for example, is leading his team in scoring (as a defenseman!) and is still a plus player on a dreadful team. His RPM recognizes this. The list does seem to skew towards forwards, however: 23 of the top 30 instead of 18 of the top 30 (if it was an even distribution).** I don't know if that's a problem or if the forwards have just been a little better than the defenders this year. Perhaps there should be an adjustment for icetime - the average defender plays more, and should thus have a greater share in the numbers. (I'd check it myself but the lack of a formula or shown calculations is a hindrance.)

** EDIT - the 18 of 30 number is based on the ratio of three forwards to two defenders, which is the typical lineup; but an NHL team usually has four forward lines and three defensive pairs. Based on that ratio (2-to-1) a list of 30 would have 20 forwards instead of 18. I may wind up dusting off some of the old math I had been struggling with and try an adjustment based on ice-time, which seems the fairest measurement.