Category: Uncategorized

America’s Mood Lifts By 7.8

I have no idea what this means, what the 7.8 expresses or even what the units are but apparently things are looking up:

Americans are feeling slightly more optimistic this month as they come to grips with a struggling economy and an uncertain future, according to a Reuters/Zogby poll released on Wednesday. The Reuters/Zogby Index, which measures the mood of the country, rose sharply to 95.5, up from 87.7 in March, as all 10 measures of public opinion used in the Index climbed. Concerns about personal finances, job security and the direction of the country eased at least slightly, and positive ratings climbed for President George W. Bush, the U.S. Congress and economic and foreign policy.

Apparently 13% believed their squeeky shoes squeeked a little less, too, up from 21.

But why not. It’s spring. Well, spring lasts just until Friday when it will hit 20C which, for a Maritimer, means it’s summer. That’s the thing. What really makes you happy? Warmth. A drink maybe. A little baseball on the radio. Snowdrifts finally disappearing just last week. A collapsing pork market that will allow you to BBQ like a badly conceived cartoon character on Saturday. Spring is short around here. Time to get a low grade sunburn, baby.

Monday Morning Quarterback: I Watch TV A Lot

Not just TV, but I listen to the radio, too. I listened to golf on the radio at about 7 pm yesterday. 620 AM out of Syracuse had the end of the Masters going. Golf on the radio is hard to follow. Apparently there is a tradition and a guy playing lounge piano involved.

  • A guy from South Africa won the Masters. Good for him. He broke his major duck. Sadly, it was all nice-nice. Long gone are the days of Tom Kite blaming all around him for the failings of his game. That always was fun watching his thin veneer fade as things went wonky. No sniping from the crowd either like when Woosey won in 1991.
  • The Sox took 2 of 3 with Wang beating them on a four pitch complete game Friday. Big Papi is having a hard time of it. Pray for Big Papi.
  • Curling is over for another year. Thanks God. Now I can get some work done at the office. Curling this. Curling that.
  • The Morton have not yet made their big move to get out of the relegation zone. Arsenal lost, too, with our correspondent noting both Man U goals coming off cheesy set pieces.
  • I watched twelve minutes of NASCAR and learned of its proud moonshine connections.
  • I didn’t watch much hockey. The correct teams seem to be winning. I want a Montreal v. Rangers series and a Detroit victory over the Rangers in the finals and that seems to be on track. Ottawa is looking like it will be four losses and then summer. Did I pick Calgary in the pool? No I didn’t.

There you have it. MMQB edition #2 is over. The tradition continues.

My Last 24 Hours

I was within a couple hundred yards of highway 400 and highway 7 for around 18 hours not counting the drive to and from Toronto. It was very much like spending 18 hours within a couple hundred yards of highway 400 and highway 7. The oddest thing was getting out of the hotel room to go to where I was speaking to the conference only to learn that the conference was at another hotel. I know the strip malls and industrial parks of the area within more than a couple hundred yards of highway 400 and highway 7 very well now. I am enriched.

Hockey Pool 2008 And The Monday Morning Quarterback

A taunt. All it takes is a taunt. Looking for meaning with a blog that is approaching five years of its troubled existence, a glimmer of hope and purpose shows up in a 27th comment:

Temujin [12:19 AM April 7, 2008]
http://hockey-madness.blogspot.com

How about a special Monday Morning Bullet Points highlighting the Blue Jays sweeping the Red Sox :=)

Did you know the Jays are on pace for a record of 107-55?
Did you know Jeremy Accardo is on pace for 81 saves?
Frank Thomas is on pace for 28 grand slams!

Oh, the joys of being a Jays fan. April is always so much better than September.

It is a sad state of affairs but let’s review how odd this spring is:

OK, that last one is not a big surprise even if it is a disappointment. But that pool. I never even got the final stats done last year. It got too complex. And I didn’t watch one playoff game last year as the natural reaction of a lifelong Leafs fan is actually to reject the game in its entirety.

So, just to keep the continuity, I give you the Gen X at 40 NHL hockey pool 2008:

Pick five scorers, one goon, one goalie, eight teams and a dark horse.

  • A point for a goal by a scorer.
  • A point for an assist by a scorer.
  • A point for a penalty minute by a goon. If your goon is kicked out of the playoffs and thereby the pool, you double the penalty minutes he has achieved to that point. The logic here is that the goon is a nut-bar. The later that he freaks and gets tossed for the balance of the playoffs, the more nut-bar like he is, the more he is the essential goon.
  • A point for each thousandth save percentage over .900 by your goalie
  • 5 points for picking each of the teams in the second, third and fourth rounds.
  • 25 bonus points for picking the dark horse – the team with the lowest regular season points to go the farthest in the playoffs. The dark horse must be seeded in the lower half of their conference.

Get your picks in my, err, Friday at 10:00 am. That’ll even give you a few games. Just hockey, just NHL. Anybody in?

Bullet Points For The Week Of The Idle

It ended up not being that idle. Taxes yesterday. Driver’s license renewal Tuesday. I’m wiped. Must save up energy to pray for Morton tomorrow.

  • Here is the sound of someone singing in 1860. Here is what it means.
  • Funny how people have long memories.Interesting to note that baseball continues to settle – after a couple of years of little ball, now free agency is not as mad as it once was:

    this winter was the 32nd for free agency, and something worth noting occurred. For the first time other than the collusion years of 1985, ’86 and ’87, teams did not race crazily and expensively after free-agent starting pitchers.

    I remember my collusion years.

  • I feel like I have seen too much basketball for some reason. Do you really need that link?
  • The real reason I did not do it.
  • El Tigre has posited (or at least frets) that McCain will pick Romney. I find this highly improbably but in this US election campaign – the boring cannibalistic Democratic contest, the more interesting Republican one that ended too soon – anything can happen now. Apparently Fred Thompson knows he is not in the running for VP.

I have to admit, I have been on the internet less this week than most – could it be that there is a connection between the desk and surfing?

Useful Things To Know In The Coming Depression

While I am dutiful most times, I missed this over at Unkabugs unt Auntie F’s:

It will be important to know, in the coming tight times after twenty years of lavishing ourselves on credit, how to entertain. Music hall matinées will make a comeback, not needing the electricity that other spectacles require. So as you tune up your home mashing and tunning skills, perhaps give a thought to the stringed instrument inventory. Here’s a start.

Outcome? More Stalemate

Last night’s by-elections are enough of a win for both the Grits and Tories that nothing really changes:

Desnethé-Missinippi-Churchill River in Northern Saskatchewan was expected to be a close race. But it turned heavily toward the Conservatives after early results and Rob Clarke, an aboriginal who is a 17-year veteran of the RCMP, surged ahead of Joan Beatty, the former provincial New Democrat who was hand-picked by Mr. Dion. Bob Rae, meanwhile, sailed to an easy victory in the Liberal stronghold of Toronto Centre. (The NDP candidate finished second, but only three votes ahead of the Green candidate.) And Martha Hall Findlay thumped her rivals in the Toronto riding of Willowdale – a seat that went to the Progressive Conservatives during the Brian Mulroney years.

The Liberal grip on Vancouver-Quadra, a party stronghold for a quarter-century, loosened last night. Former B.C. environment minister Joyce Murray won the seat, but was only about 5 per cent ahead of Deborah Meredith, running for the Conservatives. It was a massive shift from the last federal election in 2006 when Stephen Owen had a 21-per-cent lead over his Tory rival.

The Liberals get at least two new strong voices on its side in the House of Commons but has shown weakness in the west, though the Saskatchewan riding was no one’s to win. It was however, Dion’s to lose and by dropping in his own candidate he may have snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.

The interesting thing will now be to watch Bob Rae. A gifted debater but he carries the curse of a man of two parties. Yet he faces a man of four across the aisle in the person of the Prime Minister – any history of the recent centre-left in Canada is only really remarkable for its parallel to the less recent history of the centre-right. It still be interesting to see if he is able to shore up some sort of solidity in the shadow cabinet or whether he will add to the factors pointing out the glaring – as in deer in the headlights – inappropriateness of Mr. Dion’s unofficial interim role.

Verdict: no spring election.

Friday Bullets For The Last Weekend Of Winter

Another Friday. They flow by like the days of the week. A week or so from spring and still there’s feet of snow. That’s not exactly helping. Morton’s teetering and the Orange are gone. At least things are going better for me than they are for Eliot Spitzer. WFAN had an interview with his lady-friend’s grade five teacher. This is a weird world sometimes.

  • Update: Well said and RIP, hairy one:

    Mr. Ponticelli, who described war as “idiotic”, had initially refused an offer of a state funeral made by former President Jacques Chirac, considering it would be an insult to the men who had died without commemoration. He relented after Mr. Cazenave’s death, saying he would accept a simple ceremony “in homage to my comrades”. President Nicolas Sarkozy paid tribute to Mr. Ponticelli and said a national commemoration of all of France’s participants in the war would be held in the coming days.

    I had no idea that more than twice as many French soldiers were killed in WWI as there were total Canadian solders.

  • Update: Bob Costas thinks you are a loser…or maybe it’s just me that he thinks is a loser.
  • Why can’t we have a sense of humour? Why couldn’t it be called Sinistre?
  • What did the dolphin say? “Hey stupid whales! You don’t see dolphins dead on the sand. Loser whales. I am out of here. Stay if you want.”
  • Further to the question of who exactly in what capacity is suing whom, please note this:

    Prime Minister Stephen Harper is following through on his threat to sue the federal Liberals because of accusations, posted on the Liberal party’s website, that he knew of “Conservative bribery.”
    The lawsuit — a statement of claim for $2.5 million was filed today in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice — is a response to the “defamatory” statements made by the Liberals, Harper spokesperson Sandra Buckler said. “He’s doing what any other person with integrity would do to defend himself and his family,” she said.

    While the claim itself carries some errors that are a bit embarrassing for anyone who got better than a “D” at law school – pleading evidence, are we? – it is what it is. But does the spokesperson for the Office of the Prime Minister represent him in all things? Is this a political court case or a personal one? I’d be a little more comfortable if someone not on the public payroll was his spokesperson on this one.

    Update: I may be speaking out of my digestive tract about pleading evidence and the “D” thing as a read of Ontario’s Libel and Slander Act points out this dense bit of text:

    In an action for libel or slander, the plaintiff may aver that the words complained of were used in a defamatory sense, specifying the defamatory sense without any prefatory averment to show how the words were used in that sense, and the averment shall be put in issue by the denial of the alleged libel or slander, and, where the words set forth, with or without the alleged meaning, show a cause of action, the statement of claim is sufficient.

    I have not a clue but this may be the basis for an exception to the pleading evidence rule. See 1839’s Boydell v. Jones on “prefatory averment”.

  • Craig inquires into the delicate question of ladies of the night on PEI.
  • I have had the rewarding experience of being in a meeting with Senators Segle and was impressed by his dedication to local constituency work, something more in the nature of what you might expect from a senator under the US system. So I will not trot out my usual snark about monarchists on this point:

    Hugh Segal has introduced a motion in the Senate that would invoke the notwithstanding clause of the Constitution to prevent references to the Queen being dropped from the country’s oath of citizenship. The Kingston senator’s motion comes in response to a class-action lawsuit filed by Charles Roach, a Toronto lawyer born in Trinidad who never took a Canadian citizenship because he objects to the monarchy’s connection to slavery and refuses to take the oath.

    Yet it is note worthy to record for posterity that I have never quite voiced certain words in certain oaths for reasons of the history of the clan:

    The clan supported Charles I in the Civil War, and some of them fought for Charles II at the Battle of Worcester (1651). After the Restoration in 1660, the MacLeods felt a major grievance that Charles II had not been sufficiently grateful for their exertions on his behalf, and they never supported the Stewart kings again. The MacLeods took no part in Claverhouse’s campaign of 1688-89, nor in the first Jacobite rising of 1715.

    My feeling on the point is that if we are going to honour historical legacy, we ought to acknowledge the specific one.

That’s enough for this week. When we next meet over bullet points, it will be spring.