Pat Quinn named governor of Illinois

Governor Blagojevich was finally removed from office. After attempting to sell former Senator Obama's seat to the highest bidder the Illinois Legislature voted unanimously to impeach. Blagojevich, trying to put things into perspective, went on a media tour, compared himself to Mandela and won the affection of Geraldo Rivera. What an idiot. How is being imprisoned for inciting a revolution against a racist legal system similar to selling a seat in the American Senate?
Regardless, Pat Quinn was a surprise choice to be the new Governor. Although he had some success in his early coaching career with the Kings and Canucks, and a notable career as both a player and coach in the minor leagues, he was never able to get the Leafs their much desired Stanley Cup. He has worked as a coach, manager and president of multiple sports clubs but this will be the highest position he has held with any organization. As the Governor of Illinois he will effectively be the highest ranked member of the Blackhawks' franchise.
(Did you see what I did there? Two people, one name. Very funny. I give myself two thumbs up)

Ted Haggard

Oh Ted Haggard you are a son of a bitch. There is very little that I dislike more than malicious hypocrisy. Being hypocritical is part of being human. I am hypocritical on a regular basis, but the difference is that, for one I do it in obscurity and, two its effects are generally esoteric in nature. I refuse to eat at McDonald's but I have no issue with the Japanese counterparts like Mos Burger. It is essentially the same (though I think there is a quality difference in the food they serve) so I suppose my vocal snub of one and admitted love of the other is quite hypocritical. Who does it affect? Me really. Who even knows? I suppose readers of this, a few friends in Japan, perhaps some in Canada but not so many that I would say I am a voice of the movement.
Ted Haggard on the other hand, does not live in obscurity. He is an extremely well known person. Add to that the malicious nature of his hypocrisy and I think it becomes very easy to find him repulsive. For those of you who do not know, Ted Haggard was the head of a very large evangelical church. He was also the head of the national evangelical congress of some 30 million people. As the head of this congregation he spewed his anti-gay hate speech on a weekly basis. Meanwhile he was carrying on a sex and meth for money relationship with a male prostitute.
He is now back in the news because of a documentary scheduled to be released on TV about his life. His fall from grace as it were. At least Haggard admits that he is a loser who deserves this.

Iceland is way too competitive.

When America let Lehman Brothers go bankrupt Iceland, not wanting to be outdone let their whole country go bankrupt. When America bailed out their financial sector Iceland let the World Bank bail them out. But this competitiveness took a left turn. Iceland's government, which recently collapsed, is now being rebuilt with a new person taking the reigns as Prime Minister. Once again Icelander's competitive spirits have got the best of them. With America electing a Black President and Iceland wanting to be even more progressive have named Johanna Sigurdardottir. She is an openly gay politician. Well played Iceland. We'll see how long it take America to catch up to this one.

Boosting rainy day sales at convenience stores

Umbrella theft in Japan is ubiquitous. Fortunately there always tends to be an umbrella in the stand to replace the own you had. Umbrellas have a wide price margin from 100 yen for a small clear plastic umbrella to several thousand for a retractable. The ones typically found in a convenience store range from about 300 yen (large clear plastic) to 1000 yen (vinyl with an automatic opening button).
When someone is caught in the rain without an umbrella they will typically do one of three things. The first being suffer the rain (though Japanese people tend to be far less willing to to this than Canadians), take an umbrella from a nearby stand or buy a new umbrella (likely the cheapest one available since most people already have more umbrellas than any individual ever needs. Since Japanese society tends to frown on all crime, petty or otherwise, taking an umbrella must be done in the least visible way possible. Although I have seen people walk by and outright grab an umbrella or place a broken umbrella in a stand and grab one in pristine condition this is not the usual ritual. One must enter the convenience store and make a purchase, then leave and grab an unsuspecting umbrella so it appears that they are merely taking the umbrella they placed in the stand moments before.
Now how could a shopkeeper with no scruples take advantage of the above information to increase sales?
What if the shop keeper had one of the employees steal umbrellas later in the rain storm when someone may be inclined to just buy a new one. If there is heavy rain and the person does not want to get wet they may buy a new umbrella upon exiting to find their umbrella stolen. That would mean the customer would effectively make two purchases and assume some random person snagged the umbrella.
Then when the rain is just lightly falling the stock person could put the umbrellas back in the stand. A light drizzle is unfortunate but someone may not feel inclined to spend a few hundred yen over a light rain. They may however want an umbrella enough to take one for free if possible. Therefore having a full umbrella stand at the beginning of a storm may drive the sales of everything else.
Since I often see very full umbrella stands at empty stores, I imagine this is one of the reasons.

Stupid CTV

Looking for somewhere to watch some streamed TV I stumbled upon The CTV. If possible I prefer to stream legally because the video quality tends to be a higher quality, the video tends to load quicker and legal websites are far more reliable. Unfortunately you can only view videos on CTV from a computer terminal in Canada. As annoying as that is, it is not enough to really upset me with CTV. What upsets me is they made me watch the initial commercial before the notice popped up that I cannot watch the video. I understand that these websites are subject to federal laws as well as copyright legislation and therefore are bound to only show video in the area they are expressly allowed to but should the warning not pop up before I have to sit through some shampoo commercial?

Obama!

Obama has been sworn in as the President of The United States of America!
In hindsight, I have to say Bush wasn't as bad as everybody thought he was (Ahh using the past tense about him FINALLY). I mean he was divisive and incompetent but he wasn't evil. That role was filled by the person I am equally happy is out of office; Dick Cheney. I welcome Joe the Vice President into office as well. I think that he is a decent person whose presidential hopes were marred by his uncanny ability to put his foot in his mouth at every opportunity. Thankfully the Vice President has less chances to do just that and so I believe he will be effective in the traditional role as VP; that is to say Biden will roll back the changed portfolio of VP that the power-mongering Dick in office before him created.
The inaugural speech was very articulate. I daresay that Obama touched on everything that I hoped he would. From the social justice side, he discussed the reform of the education and health sectors. This is just one instance where it looks like he is willing to go forward with all of the sweeping changes he argued for from the beginning despite the current financial crisis. Others include the entitlement programs needing to be revamped. I really hope that he can fix these programs soon since the unpaid portion of liabilities in these programs are rising very quickly.
When dealing with these topics and others he was very much different than Bush in his attempt at being bipartisan; discussing that we should not worry about big government or small government but good government.
He discussed his plans for proper, peaceful, diplomacy; that he will open up to any nation who attempts to bridge the gap and show an end to their militant ways. This reaffirming of the need for so called soft power is a welcome change and will hopefully raise America's status in the world. He also discussed that terrorists are destined to fail if Americans refuse to let terrorist actions affect their lives.
On that note he echoed the sentiment of people like Locke and Paine in saying that America must not deal in its liberties to help keep the nation safe. To me it sounded like freedoms in America may be increased during the Obama years and perhaps Guantanamo will be closed very early during his presidency.
On the economic situation he argued that there will be some difficult times in the near future but people must let go of the paranoia the markets have inflicted upon them to return consumer expectations to where it should be.
Finally Obama discussed the need of developed nations to aide the development of the South. That we cannot sit back while other countries starve. That we can no longer ignore science with respect to things like climate change and that it is the developed world's responsibility to curve greenhouse gases. He foretold of a world where we harness the sun, wind and land to power our homes and drive our cars. It looks like Aide to disadvantaged nations and helping the environment will be two pillars of the Obama foreign policy plan.
Of course it is a little early to draw so many far reaching conclusions about the next 4-8 years of American governing but with the Democrats in serious control of the house and Obama being so very different than Bush one cannot help but get swept away in the moment.

Sex Offender wins Rape Victim Lottery

Alaska hosted a charity lottery to support women support groups. Alaska has some of the highest rape rates in America, which makes the results of the lottery both more predictable and more alarming. The Winner? according to CNN the winner of this lottery is a former sex crimes convict.
I am sorry Alaska (personified), but this joke is just not funny. I get the whole Sarah Palin joke; it was a satire on the religious right. It was really a masterpiece.
The drill, baby, drill in the Alaskan wildlife preserve is not my cup of tea but I can see the audience you are playing to with that one. Ted Stevens was maybe my favourite joke. It was Norm Macdonald-esque humour done to perfection. Starting off with the stereotypically grizzly old Luddite who, ironically, chairs one of the most technologically advanced Senate committees was gold. Moving from there into an indictment on suspicions of accepting bribes was great. But the best part? That one of the bribes was an ugly statue of a fish! I love someone who can poke fun at themselves. The interconnection of all the jokes is well done - going from Stevens being corruptible to trying to remove barriers to drill to a bridge to nowhere was so seamless that I, for one, was begging for more. But, alas your humour took a turn I cannot support so, the important thing is not to overstay your welcome. You had a couple of hit jokes, your 10 minutes of fame if you will, but now it is time to lumber back home and stay quiet.

Why is Polygamy such a taboo?

Those crazy West Coast hippies did it again. British Columbia had been refusing to prosecute known polygamists for awhile now. Shockingly the culprits are not new age commune dwellers, likely because they do not believe in the institute of marriage at all, but Muslims being sheltered by Imams in the community of Bountiful.
Arguments in favour of prosecution say that BC cannot refuse to prosecute crimes because they believe that the federal law is unconstitutional; they do not have the authority to do such a thing. Conversely, there is a lot to say about the law being unconstitutional. Though the law is often said to be 'protecting' women and children it was originally created to keep the Mormons from moving to Canada. Since the purpose of a law is nontransferable there could be some weight behind the argument.
Is polygamy really that bad? Like most relatively harmless personal social decisions, polygamy would probably be better if it was legalized. The closed Mormon and Muslim communities in North America are a direct result of such prohibitions. They shy away from mainstream society because their lifestyle is considered unacceptable. The cloistered communities then become a breeding ground for sexual misconduct. Small communities with an excess of husbands relative to wives drives down the age with which women are considered marriageable. Add this to the privacy that such couplings require to stay out of the public eye and organizations that check up on suspected abusers in two-person marriages are either unaware of what is occurring or not able to get into the community to stop it.
Though polygamy is not for everyone, would it not be better to have it monitored than to have it done in secrecy where the only candidate for your third wife is your second daughter?

Mars rovers mark fifth anniversary

Spirit and Opportunity, two robotic Mars rovers, are celebrating five years on the red planet. This is quite the feat considering they were originally designed for a 90 day mission. This either makes them the most reliable American made vehicles ever or the elaborate ending to some interesting game theory. Given the way the American auto industry is faring, I choose to believe it is the latter.
It is no secret that government organizations around the world rely on the central bureaucracy's budget for support. Some programs, such as primary education or health care, are quite visible whereas the benefits of science funding is not as easy to see. It can help lead to a more educated work force by promoting tertiary education or attracting highly skilled foreign labour which increases domestic production but since there tends to be a delay in satisfaction laypeople often do not see the benefits to taxpayer funded research.
This makes the funding of government departments focused on research more volatile. NASA may suffer the most from this volatility. They tend to focus on fewer, more expensive projects. Even the current mantra of 'faster, better, cheaper' may mean their average mission is smaller than a decade ago but still much larger than the research programs at government sponsored university labs. NASA also has a history of major failures to overcome. One such incident in 1999, saw a major Martian mission destroyed because the American scientists were dealing in imperial measurements while their European counterparts worked in metric. Then there are the more visible disasters involving space shuttles:

So how would an organization whose financial allocations are unstable try to expand their budget? Perhaps by making spectacular successes as well? Manned missions tend to get more attention by the general populous so sending people to the International Space Station may help garner a greater budget even though the scientific merits may be dubious. The photos of earth rising from the lunar surface taken by Apollo astronauts are still popular postcards that can be bought anywhere in the world. I am sure if NASA managed to return Man to the Moon they would likely see the huge budget required to step foot on Mars.
Alas NASA cannot run a pure publicity campaign. So convincing scientists is also an important step. Once science funding is increased they still need to compete with the likes of the National Science Foundation, its associated medical arm (taking money from cancer research requires one to be seriously cunning) and myriad others. So perhaps they could show that, although there are regular failures, an equal number of missions exceed their targets by extraordinary amounts. Or, perhaps, it is simply damage control. If the rovers lasted a mere six weeks and the targets were five years that would be a disaster but if the mission parameters stated 90 days then six weeks is, at least, 50 percent. Not bad.
Either way I like NASA and I am pretty sure their primary goal is to satisfy me which they have.