News 2015

Jan 25/15
"Research shows MOC Saves Lives!"
More precisely it is good for your mental health. And what is good for the mind is good for the body. You don't have to tell an MOCer that male bonding is good for your mental health, but others apparently needed convincing. How? Two words. Research. Of course sometimes we need a few eggheads to tell us something we already know. Researchers at the University of Gottingen studied groups of Barbary macaque apes and found that if males were put under stress of low temperature and they were accompanied by only male apes (no, I am not making this up), their stress levels went down. But when the same apes were with females or mixed male-female groups stress levels rose. Wait. Did they just compares us to a bunch of damn dirty apes?! Read news coverage of the study here.

Thank-you sir, may I have another! What we also know is having a drink with your broheme reduces stress. In fact, one Oxford University researcher has suggested that men benefit most if they meet up at the pub with their buddies twice a week! That he was funded by Guinness certainly underscores the point. If we do a bit of MOC math on this: that is 104 "male therapy" sessions we are potentially missing every year! Now let's assume that these get-togethers last about 2.5 hours each - the length of an NHL hockey game - that's 260 hours of bonding time/year. Even if you attend MOC for the full 3 days, we fall short by 188hrs or about 8 day's worth of bro-time! Even adding in the Fall "Work/Music" (WOMU) weekend, we are still in the life-stress "red" by about 6 days. The silver lining is that neither of these studies measured bonding intensity. If we assume our intensity is roughly equal to pi (i.e. we are a circle of friends) multiplying 3.14 intensity x 72hrs = 226, just shy of the 260hr optimum. Non quantum sed quale my friend.Read news coverage of the study here.

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Jan 24/15
"Status: Busy - I am on 'Crack"
Smartphones are conversation killers. Remember the first time you saw an MOCer bring a Blackberry to his ear in the middle of a Euchre game and you just had to slap him? Times change. Cheeks heal. We adapt. Though we will rue the day when Dana figures out how to post images online, until then we can find ways to embrace these electronic doohickeys.
With the recent MOC revelation that these "smart"phones have things called "apps", not to mention they can surf the interweb(see the '02 newsletter to learn more about the interweb); let us further embrace this technology. Since MOC is about bonding, the IT(indigent technodweebs) team at MOC has cobbled together a few apps that may give us one less reason to despise these devices.
Lodge is WiFi - enabled: but bandwidth is $$ so do your downloading at home...to avoid a trip to Tim Hortons or the Minden Library.
Download Now!: don't have an unlimited "data" plan on your phone/ipad? Download these apps prior to MOC. Click on each image to go to the app website. Another game a few of us should download is Heads Up for Apple or Heads Up for Android Only one phone used at a time.
Post others?: If you know of a good group smartphone game, suggest it in the comments. How about Chaos Trivia, or Triviala

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Jan 21/15
Another theft at MOC Lodge!

As if a deer stealing Mark's watch wasn't enough (see news 2014), there has been another recent break-in at the lodge - but of a far more sinister nature. They have struck at the heart of the "je ne sais quoi" of the building: They stole our panelling!. To add to the heinous crime, the culprits also pulled all of the wiring from the electrical box, and rewired several circuits so that they are now fully grounded. Are there no depths too low for these despicable fiends?

The good news is that our dial-up webcam caught the thieves in the act - see photo. Please study the photos carefully and report what you know to the authorities immediately before more cottages fall victim! Click on the photo to see more images of the crime in action and aftermath. MOC will not rest until these miscreants are apprehended!

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