What the hell is going on in Vancouver?

I don't know if they just got confused and thought they had until 2012 to prepare, but everything about the Vancouver Olympics is so slap-dash and even dangerous, if I were Canadian I'd honestly be ashamed of this.

Every time I turn on the TV somebody's getting hurt. NBC's decision to show that endless loop of Nodar Kumaritashvili flying into the support post at 90 mph was certainly grotesque, but it's amazing to me that it happened in the first place, that after trying to add inches to Canada's penis by having the fastest track ever there was just zero consideration for the possibility of an athlete losing control at the bottom, where the speeds are highest. Part of the fun things about the Olympics is that it gets athletes from smaller countries and smaller sporting programs involved in a global event, but that does mean there will be a wider range of skill and experience amongst the athletes... to be completely unprepared for the possibility of a crash after repeated warnings is just criminal.

Fare thee well, your Eminence

His Eminence Brian Cardinal and his expiring $6.75m contract is expected to officially be traded to the New York Knicks tomorrow morning, bringing the Cardinal era of Minnesota basketball to a close. It's hard to believe I'll never again see his Eminence come in for three minutes to give somebody else a breather, something he did every fifth game or so. Honestly, Cardinal was a nice player for the end of the bench who had a great attitude, came in and worked hard, and had very nice three point range especially for a forward. On the other hand he made $6.75m, and that's just insane. The funny thing is New York is just clearing roster space and shaving a little off their payroll in preparation for another trade, so the Wolves could theoretically take Cardinal right back when the Knicks cut him. This would clearly be worth it, just so they could still keep Cardinal's main contributions to games: the self-consciously creepy "This is ladies night!" promo he used to do on the big screen.

In exchange for Cardinal's expiring contract, the only thing the Wolves get for sure is Darko Milicic's slightly more expensive expiring contract. Darko was insanely drafted #2 overall just behind King James but ahead of Carmelo Anthony, Dwayne Wade, Chris Bosh, and many other people who've had more memorable careers. (That was the year the Wolves drafted Ndudi Ebi and Rick Rickert so I feel your pain, Detroit.) The fact that he was a consensus top three guy with Carmelo Anthony and Carmelo Anthony does speak to his heretofore unrealized potential and 7-foot true centers don't grow on trees, so I'm glad to see the Wolves take a chance on him even if he does plan to go back to Europe at the end of the year. The Wolves desperately need a presence in the paint, and currently their options at center are stick-thin Ryan Hollins and Oleksiy Pecherov who's been buried on the bench for months. If Darko sulks until April and never gives the Wolves a chance we haven't lost anything besides a bit of Glen Taylor's money, but given the lack of progress three years after McHale blew up the team and started over, I would have liked to see a more substantial shake-up before the trade deadline.

Tiger Woods is a Weird Guy

I have to admit, I don't watch a lot of golf and I'm not that familiar with Tiger Woods oeuvre. It also always seemed to me that especially in his younger days Tiger conducted himself with a lot of poise amidst the discomfort a lot of people clearly experienced when he joined the tour, by which I mean the closet racism of people who saw him put on his first green jacket and couldn't quite put their finger on what just didn't seem right to them about that picture. As a public figure I believe Tiger Woods may have done more in the last twenty years to undermine unconscious racial barriers than anyone except President Obama (and maybe Oprah until she shut down her book club because there were no more books worth reading). So for that reason I've never really wanted to speak ill of Tiger but now I've started to explore Tiger's world through his video game, and from that and the glimpse into his personal life we're getting from the furious media storm surrounding his extramarital affairs and intramarital being chased by a blonde with a big stick affairs, I'm starting to think there's just something a bit off about this guy.