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"A Drinking Team with a Hockey Problem"      Visit the Beak's Web Page:  http://www.lopatka.net

The Anvil was Hot!

Romeoville, IL 01/04/2008
Attendance 29

3 Full Lines!

The Whites even had 5 defensemen!  The mature Duffers like 3 lines, but the youngsters like a little more ice time.  The pace of the game was much better than last Friday when we only had 20 guys get off of the couch.  The Reds got off to an early lead while The Anvil was shutting out the high flying Whites with some spectacular saves, including 2 break a way shots by the Piggy BankBack Hand Johnny was the first to beat the Brain, then Fruit Cake scored 

The Maestro gives some scoring advice to the Bookie!

to give the Reds a 2 goal lead.  (4 goals with the Bobka Factor*)  Kramer's Bookie had 2 for the Reds before Stump called him a puck hog.  The Anvil had a 4-0 shut out going into the final period.  The Flea spoiled the shut out 7 minutes into the 3rd period, then Brinks made it 4-2 with a meaningful goal that found the 5 hole on the ice.  Geno answered that goal to give the Reds a 2-1 Meaningful lead and a 5-2 Meaningless score.  Tweedy made it 6-2 when he poked in a 1 footer.  Beak was credited with the assist when his "blast" disabled the Brain. (Just kidding about the blast, not the assist) TZ put the game away to make the final score; Reds 7, Whites 2.   Key to the game: In the pre game head count, Reds had 2 more players, so Harvey was sent over to the Whites, to even the sides, but The Flea got his shin guards and gave the Whites 14 players, so Harvey became the 5th defenseman.                

* See the Bobka Factor formula on page 2
Tom O'Connor
made his return after 9 months on the disabled list.  You may recall his leg was broken by "Friendly Fire" last Spring.  He said his leg felt pretty good, but he never made it to the bar, (Wild Wings on Weber and Taylor) although the Flea didn't make it either.  I guess he had to go straight home, since he had his wife drive across town to deliver his shin guards at game time. 
Phoenix Uncle Bob has set us up for 3 games in 4 days.  (I hope we have 3 lines!) Some golfers are planning to shoot a few rounds and Baseball fans are looking at the spring training schedules.  "Basketball Jones" got permission from his wife to join us on March 6th.  Rumor has it that TZ is close to a deal too.  Rich Storm is working on tickets 

to see a Coyote -Senator Hockey game on Saturday night. That is going to be one busy week end, I'm glad I don't have to work on Monday.

BBTW tells the Flea that he should have held on to his Canadian  money.

 

 

 
 
Page 2

The Bobka Factor

***************************************************************************************
The following is a reprint from a 1982 Duffer Newsletter:
Dear Duffer advisor:
I am a new member and I am confused about the scoring system used by the Duffers. Last week, the team that I was on won by a score of 12-4 but all of my teammates had their heads down after the game mumbling while our opponents were slapping hands and boasting about their victory using the Bobka Factor. Please explain.

Confused Duffer

Dear Confused,
The Mathematical formula for the Bobka Factor is simple:

LG = Legitimate goals by Bobka's Opponents. (Goals scored while Bobka was off the ice)
TG = Tainted Goals by Bobka's opponents. (Goals scored while Bobka was on Defense)

Lg = Legitimate goals by Bobka's team (Goals scored while Bobka was off the ice)
bg = Bonus Goals by Bobka's team. (Goals scored while Bobka was on Defense)

BOS = Bobka's opponent score
BTS = Bobka's team score

Now let's use the game you spoke of as an example. Digital Dan's data shows 10 of your goals were tainted (Goals scored while Bobka was on Defense) therefore, you only have 2 Legitimate goals. Plug this information into the formula, and you get the following:
2=LG 10+TG The Square root of 10 is 3.1622776 + 2= 5.1622776 is the BOS

Bobka's team had 2 Bonus goals because they scored with Fred on the ice. Their score is figured as follows:
2 BG = 4 + 2Lg = 6 (Bobka's team score)
Sorry, you lost a heartbreaker by .8377224 of a goal. Now you can see why your team was a bunch of dejected, disgusted Duffers? You lost a heart breaker to Bobka* by the score of 6 to 5.1622776

In the unlikely event that Bobka should score, the score is squared!


*Bobka is the Polish word for fruit bread or Fruitcake.

Global Warming on page 3

 

 

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Congratulations to one of our all time favorite Duffers, Chris "Berserk" Mazurk and his wife Wendy.  Their son, McAllister, was born on January 4th.  Maybe he can go to Phoenix with us.

Here is an article by a talented writer, who played college football at Northwestern, where they make their players read and write to be on the team.  He makes a good point, when he says "don't kill the messenger."  Some people are still mad at Al Gore for getting more votes than George Bush and they will not accept anything that he says, even though it is so obvious.  He didn't invent the Internet and never said that he did (Although he helped millions use it, with teacher workshops etc. You can thank Al Gore for giving me the skills to start a web page) He didn't invent Global Warning, but he helped millions become aware of it.    

Time to warm up to reality
It makes no difference if it's a cold day in January or a sizzler in July; we'd better start paying attention to how we're destroying our planet

January 4, 2008
BY RICK TELANDER Sun-Times and Sports Illustrated Columnist
Let me start this column on global warming by saying I'm a guy who believes in cleaning up after his dog.

So when I walked my little fur-ball on the sidewalk across the street from my house late Wednesday night, I vowed to return and pick up the, uh, stuff when it was daylight. Thursday morning, I'm walking the dog again and I reach with a plastic baggie --the bag this very newspaper comes in each day, to be honest -- and attempt to pick up the object. It won't budge. I use a stick. Nothing. What we have here is a carbon-steel dog turd welded to sheet ice. 
So why talk about global warming on a day such as this, with snow drifts everywhere in Chicago and a wind chill of minus-4?

Because it's happening, folks, and individual cold or hot days have almost nothing to do with the overall warming of our planet. I know there are two things some of you are going to say: Why bring up a political issue when you, toy-department columnist, don't know a caucus from a cuticle?

And what in the hell does this have to do with sports? First of all, global warming is no more political than a raindrop.

You may dislike Al Gore, think his Nobel Peace Prize was given in error, but you no longer can shoot the messenger to ignore the news he bore.

Our globe is a closed system that has been likened to a single complex superorganism, one that responds to the things we humans do to it the way a domed stadium responds to the games and hot-dog stands within.

We have been digging and building and burning on this planet for quite a while, and simple logic tells one that the continually escalating conversion of old things like oil and coal to new things like heat and exhaust has to change the
environment of a system that is encapsuled by gravity and bounded by outer space.

Scientists from everywhere have declared global warming unequivocal, adding that our human carbon dioxide production must be harnessed and reversed or big trouble awaits -- for Democrats and Republicans alike.

And sports?

Maybe you don't include hunting, fishing, sailing, surfing, swimming, skiing, ice skating and snowball-throwing as sports.

But even a couch slug should understand how a rising sea, retreating snow belt and mass dying off of species will affect everyone from soccer players to snowshoers to scuba divers.

Nothing but the facts 
As a United Nations panel of top scientists reported last fall, our pollution is driving Earth toward ''abrupt or irreversible climate changes and impacts.''

Here are some facts:

• • Glaciers and ice caps are melting at an unprecedented rate.

• • Mosquitoes that carry West Nile and dengue fever, which once could not survive the cold above 3,300 feet, have been found at 5,600 feet.

• • The thawing around the North Pole never has occurred in modern history.

• • Inuit hunters in Greenland are falling through the bizarrely thin ice of their ancient hunting grounds and drowning.

• • The Inuit have no words in their Inuktitut language for the strange southern animals they are now seeing: robins and finches and dolphins.

• • The United States, India and China produce the majority of the greenhouse gases that affect the nearly 200 other countries of the world.

• • The emperor penguin colony so beloved in the 2005 film ''March of the Penguins'' has declined by more than 50 percent because of global warming.

• • Montana trout rivers were closed from 2 p.m. to midnight many days last summer because the water was so hot, it was becoming fatal to the fish.

• • The ice mass in the Arctic might melt completely sometime between 2020 and 2040, causing Greenland to turn, well, green. ''If that happens,'' says Larry J. Schweiger, president and CEO of the National Wildlife Federation, ''sea levels
would eventually rise over 14 feet higher.'' That would flood millions of people across the planet.

• • The sugar maples of the Northeast and upper Midwest, from which we get maple syrup, are dying and relocating, if at all, across the border in Canada as the climate warms. When those forests, which include birch and beech trees,
disappear, so do the animals that frequent them, such as deer, moose and snowshoe hares.

• • Man-made pollution has caused a 2.2 percent increase in global humidity from 1973 to 1999.

• • Rising carbon levels might kill off the world's reefs by 2050.

• • Balmy weather has allowed the emerald ash borer to destroy weakened ash trees, the staple for traditional wooden baseball bats.

• • The number of killer heat-wave days in the Midwest is expected to increase by 70 percent by the end of the 21st century.

Let's address the problem Sure, there's more, but why go on?

The point is to recognize what is happening and address it.

And there are things we can do -- indeed, the economies of the world could advance and profit once we embrace a new way of thinking.

For instance, a startup Seattle company called Imperium Renewables, funded by $145 million in venture capital and private equity funding, is beginning to make biofuel from carbon-dioxide-gobbling algae. That is, slime.

Then there's me and my dog problem.

I finally did get the frozen stuff into my baggie, which I threw into a larger garbage bag and put in the trash can.

It all will be landfilled -- waste inside plastic -- unchanged for decades if not centuries.

A new way of thinking, anyone?

 

That was a good article, even though he fails to mention the biggest threat to the planet.  Methane gas is being released from frozen organic material in Alaska and Greenland as it melts at record rates.  I saw them light a fire over a thawing river that was fueled by methane. (Not to mention the Methane that creeps out of the Duffer Locker room.)

Global warming started after the last ice age, but there is no way to deny that we have accelerated the rate.  Us old guys don't have to worry, we just get lower heating bills that might offset higher cooling bills. Our grand kids and their kids will have to pay for the carbon and methane that is going up now.  Just tell them to stay away from Ocean front property.

 

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Stroh

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Murphy Stout or Red - Irish

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Pete's Wicked Ale & other flavors - if you can find it!

Paulaner - German - many different styles - try the Hefe-Weizen or Oktoberfest

Fischer - French

Affligem - Belgium - many styles - expensive!!! try the Blonde  Dubbel, 

Tripel Noel (Christmas Beer)

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