Go Look Under Your Bed.

You never know what you might find.  Looking under mine this morning I found 2 bucks.  It's funny that I didn't notice I'd lost it in the first place.

Shirt And Shoes Wouldn't Help.

This afternoon I was walking past the Granma Lee's at the corner of 3rd Avenue and 25th Street.  There was a magpie looking for stuff on the sidewalk.  At one point he walked up to the doors of the restaurant and sqawked.  I'm not sure if he saw his reflection and thought it was another magpie, or if he thought they'd let him in for something to eat.  Unfortunately for him magpies are known not to carry money on them, so they wouldn't have much incentive to open the doors.

Population: 1

Just how wacky can Republican candidates get?  Newt Gingrich has called for a huge ramping up of US space exploration, including a permanent Moon settlement by the end of his second term as President.  I suppose that's possible if the American people get so pissed off at him they load him into a rocket for a one way trip to the Moon.  Or his second term as President is 50 years after the first.  This also brings to mind the old saw about amateurs and logistics.

Not Gas In Saskatoon.

Riding the bus down 8th Street this afternoon I noticed that the sign for the '7/11 at 8th and Clarence had the price of gas at 179.9 cents a litre.  My joking thought was that someone had declared WW3 without me finding out.  If the price of gas jumped 65 cents a litre at one go it would surely be a sign that we are all seriously screwed.

Regular readers will note that I missed posting the last increase in Saskatoon gas prices.  Missing one had to happen sometime.

Friends Do It Too.

It's been a while, but another espionage case has hit the public eye in Canada.  Royal Canadian Navy Sub-Lieutenant  Jeffrey Paul Delisle has been arrested on two charges of violating the Security of Information Act.  Hearing this on Global's supper hour news cast I was a bit annoyed at their use of the term "foreign eneny" in discussing the case.  At the moment who Delisle is believed to have spied for has not been revealed, so it's a  bit premature to claim he was spying for a supposed enemy of Canada.  Allies spy on each other as well.  It has even been alleged that Canada has used its intelligence gathering capabilities  to spy on our friends.  And even those foregin powers that aren't our allies don't automatically fall into the category of enemies either.  Of course if Delisle was spying for say the United States or France you'd think the case wouldn't have gone to trial, thus avoiding embarrassing a foreign ally and causing a diplomatic incident. 

Should Delisle be convicted it will be a long time before he can enjoy his ill gotten gains.  The charges he faces carry a sentence of life in prison, with parole eligibility presumably at the discretion of the judge.

The Good Run Ends.

It had to happen sooner or later.  The unusually balmy weather we've had here in Saskatoon has ended.  Today is apparently the nice day of the week, and it's cold and windy.  The high on Tuesday is predicted to only be -28, and Wednesay will be even colder with a high of -31.  I hope you enjoyed the warmth.

No Need For Hording.

Some snack food fans may be a bit on edge today, as American junk food kings Hostess, makers of the Twinkie and other goodies, have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the US.  Hostess says their plants will remain open for the moment. But it seems Canadian Twinkie fans have even less to worry about.  The Hostess name, and the plants that make their products, in Canada is controlled by Saputo.  So there's no chance of production being disrupted here.  Even if the US parent can't restructure itself and goes out of business I would guess there's someone who would buy up the iconic Twinkie.  And in the worst case scenario maybe the Hostess brand name would continue to be active in Canada if it vanished from the US.

Godly Gigabytes.

Christianity generates a lot of business activity, especially in the US.  You can fnd all sorts of Christian oriented products, ranging from the expected, like numerous Bible printings, to the surprising, like Christian sex toys.   So when I noticed an ad over on a couple of the Freethought Blogs blogs today for the Puritan Hard Drive my curiosity was piqued.  Was it someone's clumsy attempt at selling computer parts to a captive audience?  Clicking on the ad revealed that the Puritan Hard Drive is actually a hard drive filled will all sorts of religious material.  The producers did go to rather more effort than simply rebranding a standard hard drive and selling it at a markup.

I do wonder about a couple of things.  Firstly, what would the actual Puritans think of computers?  Assuming you could convince them they weren't some form of magic would they think them an appropriate tool for the faithful?  Even their usefulness for Biblical scholarship might not be enough to convince them.  A more imporant question may be whether any of the material on the Puritan Hard Drive is under copyright, and did they get permission to use such material?  Some people may feel they deserve to be properly paid for their hard work, no matter what the intent of the creators of this product might be. 

As for why ads like that pop up on the atheist oriented Freethought Blogs it's simply a result of the keyword algorithm used by the ad service that provides their ads.  Certain words and combinations of words will result in certain ads appearing, even if said ads seem at odds with the editorial stance of the site's conttributors.    In the end it still benefits the site, and non-believers clicking on the ads doens't help sell the product.

2X4

More poker fun tonight.  I'm playing a 10 cent sit and go on Pokerstars, and I've had two sets of quads.  The first was quad 7s, then a while later I had quad queens.  We're nearing the end, and at minimum I'll make 43 cents off it.  Can't complain about that.

Rambling Nostalgia.

Instead of some profound statement, or an attempt at one, for the first post of the year, here's some fun.

First of all, we have Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians doing "Auld Lang Syne."  Poor Guy, he did all sorts of other things, but he's best remembered for this, which used to be a staple of New Year's Eve parties and programs.  But not so much anymore, so for some of you younger folk this may be the first time you've heard it.

And since the song, and New Years, are often about nostalgia, I thought I'd bring back something I haven't done in a long time.  Admittted  it was inspired by this post by PZ Myers.  In any case, we have Kim Kardashian, Paula Deen, cooking show.  Yep, long time readers, it's time for some shamless hit mongering after a long absense.

Not that it ever seems to work.