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Edmonton notes
The biggest surprise is how many Newfoundland accents I have heard. There truly is backwards time travel -- at least into the 1980s -- and it is called the West Edmonton Mall. The real estate bubble here has yet to pop. It's a better place to live than to visit. There is better dim sum than anywhere near NoVa. I have crossed all the major bridges. During my stay the weather has been warmer and nicer than back home. Many new hardcover books cost $32.99 in a Chapters bookstore. I have a theory that any Thai restaurant attached to a motel is excellent. I had a conversation with Brad Humphreys and Jane Ruseski as to why an activity must have an intrinsically competitive aspect to qualify as a sport, thus ruling out bass fishing. "Minus 40" is about the same in either Centigrade or Fahrenheit. Everyone has treated me very well.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on October 18, 2009 at 04:26 AM in Travels | Permalink
Comments
The same logic rules out golf as a sport. You only "compete" in the sense that you try to get through the course in fewer strokes than other people -- much as one might try to catch more bass than other people. But in neither case is the player strategically engaged against an intelligent adversary. Unless you count the fish.
Posted by: Jacob Wintersmith at Oct 18, 2009 5:06:29 AM
WRT, the thai restaurants attached to motels, this has also been my experience
Posted by: Doc merlin at Oct 18, 2009 5:59:18 AM
A quick google search (thai restaurant attached motel) turns up a disproving link on Yelp:
Thai Dishes
2.5 stars (without a single 5 vote) certainly does not indicate excellence!
Posted by: Googler at Oct 18, 2009 6:49:26 AM
Why do you say that -40 is "about the same" in either scale? It is the same.
Posted by: Alison Cummins at Oct 18, 2009 7:35:09 AM
Ah, yes, the Newfoundlanders. They have been streaming to Alberta's far superior economy for years now. Now all the Saskatchewanians who moved to Calgary are slowly returning to Saskatchewan with the promise of a better economy. We'll see how this holds in the long term.
Posted by: Robert S. Porter at Oct 18, 2009 8:08:54 AM
Here's my definition of a sport. Winning must be objectively measurable. So anything with points for "artistic merit" is out. And you really ought to raise a sweat, which eliminates chess!
As for the Thai restaurant/motel theory, why do you think that is?
Posted by: Dan Hill at Oct 18, 2009 9:06:22 AM
"But in neither case is the player strategically engaged against an intelligent adversary. Unless you count the fish.'
Why wouldn't you count the fish? I once heard someone say that people minimize fishing by pointing out that you are competing against a really dumb animal. He noted that might be true, but you are also trying to fool a few million years of evolution. Fish aren't supposed to eat platic lures. You have to convince them.
I might also suggest that Tyler spend some time researching the FLW Cup. It's a bass tour that offers a $1 million prize, both the the winner on the water and the winner of the annual fantasy league. It's the first sport of any kind to offer a cool million for the fantasy version.
Posted by: Sam M at Oct 18, 2009 9:26:21 AM
Sounds like Beijing Beijing has changed hands and gotten way better since I was there. I had dim sum in Edmonton's Chinatown this summer, and it was a very pale imitation of what you get in Queens.
Glad you enjoyed yourself; it's cool that you get the "better place to live than visit" axiom.
Posted by: bartman at Oct 18, 2009 11:18:06 AM
"The same logic rules out golf as a sport. You only "compete" in the sense that you try to get through the course in fewer strokes than other people." Wrong - that applies only to "stroke play" golf. Real golf - "match play" - is a sport played against one or more opponents.
Posted by: dearieme at Oct 18, 2009 11:24:58 AM
A sport also has to have an objective measure of performance. That would eliminate gynmastics, ice skating (other than the stick attack to the knee), ballroom dancing, snowboarding, and olympic pairs diving. Curling, however, stays.
Posted by: john at Oct 18, 2009 1:44:06 PM
-40 is *exactly* the same in Celsius and Fahrenheit. No "about" about it.
So *why* are Thai restuarants attached to motels excellent?
Posted by: Anthony at Oct 18, 2009 2:02:52 PM
"Peggy: We are with john in the crying room with his coach awaiting the judges scores ... Dick, they're coming in now. First the score for snark, we have a ... 9.7! Dick, that just had to be for the elegant "stick in the knee" routine, no one saw that one coming.
"Now the score for originality - ooh, only a 6.2. Dick, what happened?"
Dick: "Peggy, this really throws john out of any gold medal contention. But you just have to look at that low score from the Albanian judge and wonder."
Posted by: john at Oct 18, 2009 2:06:45 PM
The best time to visit Edmonton during the summer, there’s tons of great festivals, particularly the folk music and theatre festivals. Also, it doesn’t get dark until 11pm. Anyone can tell you that the WEM is interesting only because it is such a throwback. On the complete opposite end of the spectrum, Calgary's malls are, on average, better than American ones. For Thai, you should have eaten at Vaphalay, a Laos & Thai restaurant. It’s located in a crappy strip center in a not-so-good part of town (bars on the windows & ubiquitous "No Public Restrooms" sign on front door). Exactly your kind of place. http://www.viphalay.com/
The Canadian prairies didn’t really become open up to large scale settlement until about 100 years ago. In Calgary, perhaps only 30% of the population is “native”, and of most those are first generation. Edmonton is probably only slightly higher percentages. In Fort McMurray, heart of the oil sands, Newfoundlanders make up 20% of the 100k population. It is like living in a modern boom town, stuff you thought only existed in history books. A shame you didn’t take a quick flight up to Fort McMurray to see the oil sands in person. It’s an impressive sight on a scale that cannot be accurately photographed.
Posted by: Shaun at Oct 18, 2009 5:12:21 PM
The motel-attached Thai restaurant in Ann Arbor is poor.
Posted by: Andy B at Oct 18, 2009 5:20:54 PM
I thought Edmonton weirdly overengineered. It seemed they had taken the oil windfall and built some fine infrastructure, but for a much bigger city.
Re Thai/motels, isn't the rule that hotel restaurant food is generally mediocre because they have a captive audience?
Posted by: Buce at Oct 18, 2009 7:21:35 PM
I'm not sure which one Andy's talking about, but Siam Square (www.siamsquare.us), the Thai restaurant attached to the Victory Inn Hotel (qualifies as a motel?) on Washtenaw Avenue in Ann Arbor is one of the best I've eaten at!
Posted by: Harminder at Oct 18, 2009 11:14:46 PM
"I thought Edmonton weirdly overengineered. It seemed they had taken the oil windfall and built some fine infrastructure, but for a much bigger city."
You must have been driving around at 5:30 am on a Sunday.
Posted by: aaron_m at Oct 19, 2009 3:55:50 AM
"The same logic rules out golf as a sport"
...or sprinting. Great work, geniuses.
Posted by: josh at Oct 19, 2009 8:59:55 AM
Canadian folk singer Stan Roger's song "The Idiot" is about easterners moving to Alberta to work (and also has a strong libertarian beat.
Posted by: Jacob at Oct 19, 2009 11:06:06 AM
"Minus 40" is about the same in either Centigrade or Fahrenheit.
yeah, both are ball freezing
Posted by: eskimo at Oct 19, 2009 12:37:11 PM
As a transplanted American now in Calgary, I was stunned by the book prices, beer + wine prices, and cheese prices. I'm assuming that Edmonton is the same... except, of course, worse in every way ...
Posted by: Mark at Oct 19, 2009 5:19:52 PM
If it can't kill you, it is not a sport. Competition has nothing to do with it.
Downhill skiing, fast motorcycles, and ocean fishing from a kayak are sports.
Bass fishing, bowling, and golf are activities.
Baseball, basketball, and soccer are games.
The only competition that matters is with yourself and the conditions - "Am I good enough to stay alive? Am I good enough to go faster?"
Posted by: Badger at Oct 22, 2009 8:17:47 PM
