Archive - 2003

Not great, but definitely not a bad year...

Here's to 2004

Not great, but definitely not a bad year...

Here's to 2004

Well, it would appear that Maple Leaf Gardens won't becoming a supermarket any time soon. Personllay, I always found the idea of being able to pick up bacon in the same place that Gretzky highsticked Gilmour, or eggs in the same place Potvin made a wicked save, to be a little distressing. So, I'm happy.

Okay, four on four hockey is one of my largest pet peeves. I hear people praise four on four in NHL overtime all the time. "It's so much faster, so much better, the players have more room to use their offensive skills". Bullshit.

Wow, I'm actually somewhat stunned at how this caught me off guard, and how I find it somewhat disappointing. Greg Marshall, formerly (as of today) headcoach of the 4 time straight Yates Cup winning McMaster Marauders, is off to coach the Hamilton Ti-Cats.

Now, let's get it straight from the beginning... every country employs protectionist practises.... we in Canada are no angels. Things like our marketing boards for dairy products and eggs are prime examples. However, almost all countries subidize their agricultural industries to at least some extent, and this is what a marketing board and quotas essentially do. We are however increasingly opening markets and reducing government subsidies.

However, my rant here is about American protectionist practices (putting aside that we subsidize and protect industries too), primarily in forest products.

I was stumbling through the (oh I hate this term) "blogosphere" today and came across a blog entry on "Smug Canadian" (I linked thru to there from Scoble) about Spam... anyway, that got me to thinking that while I've recently installed the MT-Blacklist ,by Jay Allen, plug-in to help prevent people using me to help them farm links (and therefor increase their Google PageRank, I hadn't done anything about people visiting my site to create entries in my refer log.

Read this article on woman who was trampled at Wal-Mart last Friday in an effort to buy a $29 (US) DVD player. My god... trampled?? At Wal-Mart?!?!

Anyway, the people trampling her contributed to Wal-mart making over $1.5 billion dollars in revenue in the US alone.... on Friday. Yes, that's right, one day. Scary.

This article I just read in the Globe and Mail has got me thinking back to a post I made a while back about cities suffering diminishing returns. The article starts off:
Canada's cities and towns want incoming Liberal Leader Paul Martin to give them billions of dollars more in funds and appoint a senior cabinet minister to champion municipal causes once he becomes Prime Minister

Out of all Canadian actors, I think I like Mike Myers the most. Not necessarily because he's the best actor, but rather I think, because he is the best Canadian. (Not only that, but he's a Leaf fan... ;)

I saw him just now on David Letterman and he was discussing the difference in date between the American Thanksgiving and the Canadian one. He certainly is the most proud and loudspoken Canadian down in Sunny LA.

Anyway... I guess I was bored and looking for something to blog about... (and deciding that hydro rates, insurance rates and other political issues could just sit on the back burner for a while longer.)

Now, I don't think that Mike had the right historical facts about the dates - he said Canada and the US used to have the same date but that the Americans decided to move theirs.... The little surfing i did (1,2,3) seemed to indicate that we Canadians have moved our hoilday around just as much. Ours it would seem is celebrated earlier because we have an early harvest (and had no Pilgrims...). Ours is the second Monday of October, Americas is the fourth Thursday of November.