^{The Toronto Fire of 1904}

NFL News: it’s quiet in advance of some minicamps opening Tuesday

• Cam Newton has been cleared to start throwing at the Panthers minicamp which begins Tuesday.
  • Newton said in February that the shoulder was so sore before the Panthers shut him down the final two games that he couldn’t throw more than 30 yards.

• Mike Sherman’s spiralling pattern of failure continues apace with news he has been relieved of his Montreal Alouette coaching duties.
  • With Johnny Manziel gone, there didn’t seem to be a need to retain a 5-13 head coach.
  • Long time CFL mainstay Khari Jones has been named interim coach.

• On the subject of failures, Johnny Fucking Football seems interested in playing for the Houston XFL franchise.
  • Because it’ll be close to home, and will allow him to play with former enabler coach June Jones.

Personal aside:

Begging your pardon for my sudden absence last week. Some family matters came up. They are currently stable, and hopefully the person in question is back to normal soon. Thanks to everyone for their kind thoughts.

On another front, one of my dear friends lost his uncle a couple of weeks back and they had the Canadian memorial for him over the weekend. His name was Thierry Freyvogel, and he was without a doubt a badass in his field.

A noted herpetologist, Thierry worked for the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute & the World Health Organization, specializing in antivenin research and non-infectious disease transmission. He traveled & worked in Africa, primarily Tanzania from 1955-58, trying to develop research on environmental health and on the epidemiology of non-infectious diseases, genetic epidemiology and gender, and establishing a WHO research field laboratory. This (silent) video of him working with a village to acquire & milk snakes is typical of his work in the field.

He also worked with leading doctors in the country and at the WHO to help develop cheaply accessible serums to counter toxic snake, mosquito & tick bites. In fact, he co-wrote a chapter in the leading study on poisonous bites

and pioneered identifying the many & varied things smaller than a lion that could bite & kill you in East Africa.

Back in Switzerland, he was head of the University of Basel’s Biology department from 1966-85. I first met him there in 1987, and one of my favourite, confirmed stories he told us was about the time he got bit in the lab by a Black Mamba. He told us how he got bit on the forearm, and – knowing he had only 15 minutes to get upstairs to the antivenin – calmly grabbed the snake by the head while in his arm and proceeded to walk to the elevator. He got onto a crowded elevator, asked someone to push for a particular floor, and calmly made his way to the medical facility to receive his dose. When we asked why he didn’t simply kill it & run upstairs, he said to panic would have caused the venom to spread quicker, and he needed the snake alive because they had no other specimens.

Dude was hard core. Au revoir, oncle Thierry.

Tonight’s sports:

• NBA:
  • Warriors at Raptors – 9:00PM | ABC / CTV (US broadcast) / Sportsnet (Canadian broadcast)
    • Kevin Durant is scheduled to start for the Warriors.
    • If the Raptors win, that city is going to burn.
      • Cabbagetown is going to become The Big Smoke once again.
• NCAA Baseball Tournament:
  • Game 3: Stanford at Mississippi State – 7:00PM | ESPN2
  • Game 3: Florida State at LSU – 8:30PM | ESPN
• WWE:
  • Monday Night Raw – 8:00PM | USA / Sportsnet360
    • a followup to the Saudi debacle from last Friday

Enjoy the evening. It’s good to be back.