Gas In Saskatoon, August 30, 2013.

It's the last long weekend of Summer, and instead of going up the price of gas has gone down.  Gas in Saskatoon is now 121.4 cents a litre at most locations.  Given the rising tensions over Syria I wouldn't be surprised if we see the price begin to creep up.

Another Tough One.

A good while back I posted about the children of US pro boxer Chazz Witherspoon, who have been given names they might have trouble living up to.   I came across another example of this today.  It was a little boy named Chieftain.  Most kids won't grow up to reach the level of that name.  And young Chieftain has certainly not done that yet, as his mom refused to buy him some ice cream.  Then again maybe I'm mistaken, and this is his namesake. 

6teen In Africa?

This morning I got a hit on an ancient blog post that mentioned 6teen.  It was from Cameroon.  Was the person looking for something else, or does 6teen air in Cameroon?  Has it aired anyplace in Africa?  The Wikipedia article for the series gives no sign it has.  Cameroon certainly doesn't look at first glance like the most likely place for the show to air, but you never know.  

Wrong Market.

YouTube's ad algorithm can be amusing.  It just gave me an ad for Japan Airlines.  In Japanese.  Yeah, I listen to some Japanese music on YouTube, but I'm not actually located there, as my various Google settings indicate.  I kind of doubt JAL does much Japanese language advertising to North America.

It's A Fact.

It's hard to write something when you're asleep.  Unfortunately the big long nap I took after supper probably means I'll wake up at 3 in the morning.

Not My Choice.

It's been announced that Ben Affleck will play Batman in the upcoming sequel to the recent Superman film.  I don't know who I'd get to play Batman, but Affleck wouldn't be my choice.  He just doesn't strike me as the right guy to play Bruce Wayne.

Apparently the folks behind the franchise aren't superstitious.  After all Affleck played Daredevil in the 2003 big screen film, which failed to spawn an ongoing franchise.  I suppose some might argue that was just as much the fault of the failure of Jennifer Gardner's solo outing as Elektra.  And in this case neither Affleck, nor Batman, will be carrying the film alone.  But he'll still have to deal with Christian Bale's brooding portrayal of the Dark Knight in the successful trilogy.

Secularism, You're Doing It Wrong.

Quebec is sometimes perceived as being more progressive than the rest of Canada.  But then you have things like this, the Parti Quebecois government announcing legislation to restrict religious symbols.   The "Charter of Quebec Values" will include a ban on public employees, in places like hospitals and schools, wearing religious headwear and "highly visible" crucifixes.

I'm no fan of religion.  I think the world would be a bit better place if one of the major sources of friction between people, belief in magical beings for whom no substantial evidence exists, fading away.  But I'm also a believer in people having the freedom to believe in such things as long as they don't harm others with that belief.  Wearing a hijab or a Sikh turban doesn't fall into the category of harming others.  Banning public employees from wearing such things is discrimination.  A devout male Sikh for example must wear a turban in public, so this ban will effectively prevent him from retaining, or applying for, a government job. 

The concept may have a lot of support in Quebec, if polls are to be believed.  Many Quebeckers supposedly see such religious garb as a cultural threat.  If so they have an amazingly low confidence in their own culture, thinking the mere wearing of a head covering could endanger it.  And if they want to encourage a secular culture this is exactly the wrong way of doing it.  All such restrictions will do is discourage the devout from participating in the secular culture around them, especially women who already face sexism from their co-religionists.  

The "highly visible" crucifix provision also sounds suspiciously like a copout intended to appease  certain segments of the Christian community.   Besides the question of what will determine what counts as "highly visible" is the fact that most Christian sects do not consider wearing a cross to be an inviolate requirement of showing one's devoutness.  The Christians who might be effected by this bill, such as Catholic nuns whose orders still require some sort of habit to be worn in public, likely don't work for secular hospitals and schools.

Gas In Saskatoon, August 16, 2013.

The price of gas pingponged this week.  Early in the week it dropped to the 119.4 cents a litre range.  But late yesterday it began to go up.  Gas in Saskatoon is now 124.9 cents a litre at most locations.  It will be interesting to see if we reach the 130 or more cents mark by the end of September.

Enjoy The Cute.

My latest upload to Youtube.  This little guy is a degu, a rodent native to Chile.  He lives in an enclosure in the Biology Building on the University of Saskatchewan.

Gas In Saskatoon, August 9, 2013.

We've had a couple of small price drops this week.  The result is that the price of gas in Saskatoon is 121.9 cents a litre at most locations.  I wouldn't be surprised if the price gets below 120.9 cents soon.

When I did the first "Gas In Saskatoon" post way back in September of 2008 the price of gas was 145.9 cents a litre.  It has yet to reach that price again, but sooner or later it will. 

When I Rule The World 17.

The name of Manitoba will be changed to Peopleatoba.  Why?  Just because.  It's not as if you'll be able to challenge my decisions when I'm El Supremo.

In The Good Old Days.

Even if you don't follow Major League Baseball you've probably heard about the latest performance enhancing drug use suspensions, including Alex Rodriguez of the New York Yankees.  People think that the achievements of plays like Rodriguez, and the previous generation of players associated with PEDs, like Sammy Sosa and Mark McGuire, are tainted by comparison to the greats, who supposedly played clean.  But once again I wonder how clean some of those guys were.  Drug testing didn't exist in the days of Ruth and Gehirg, Mays and Aaron.  What stuff might those guys have tried?  Unlike the modern cocktails it's likely any of the crude methods they tired had little if any effectiveness.  Or for that matter the drugs they may have used that aren't normally associated with performance enhancement, like speed.

Not that this is an excuse for today's behaviour.  Rodriquez and the others broke the current rules, knowing very well what might happen.

HRH Antichrist!

The latest issue of the Globe tabloid had me rolling my eyes with its cover story that Queen Elizabeth has made Prince William King.  In case you didn't know, that isn't going to happen.  The line of succession is quite clear, Charles will be the next King, unless he dies before the Queen.  The Queen just can't arbitrarily make someone King.

So I was sitting here tonight, snooping around to see how many people actually believe this kind of thing.  But as I did I found an interesting example of kookery.  Some folks believe Prince William is the Antichrist. I shouldn't have been particularly surprised, since there's a few people who believe King Juan Carlos of Spain is the Antichrist.  So why not the much better known William?  I suppose there's even  someone who has a theory that Crown Prince Naruhito, heir to the Japanese throne, is the Antichrist.

Specifically I stumbled across this page, but of course there are others out there.  I find it amusing that it talks about Princess Diana's supposed  "prediction" that the succession would skip a generation, and that William will be the next monarch.  Personally I wouldn't call that a prediction, I'd call that wishful thinking.

Fair warning, Help Free the Earth seems to be run by people who'll believe just about every conspiracy theory they've run across.  That includes that persistent piece of scumbaggery, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.  They try the old "We don't hate Jews, only Zionists." dodge, but you can bet your bottom dollar they've never heard of a Jew they don't think is an evil Zionist who wants to take over the world.   On the other hand I find it amusing that they think Alex Jones is actually a tool of the New World Order. You'd think more conspiracy theorists would consider the possibility that other conspiracy theorists are trying to manipulate them for the bad guys.  Of course it's probably as much about being jealous that Jones has a significant public profile, and they don't, as any belief Jones works for the enemy.

Gas In Saskatoon, August 2, 2013.

Prices dropped once more this week.  Gas in Saskatoon is now 125.9 cents a litre at most locations.

As far as price changes to it should be noted that they can occur on most days of the week.  However I'm pretty sure we haven't seen one on Sunday.