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• The longest drives on Google Maps :: Unalaska, AK, USA to Southern Newfoundland, Canada
• A bad night for Labour in the U.K. :: Gordon Brown today acknowledged a "bad night" for Labour after the party's national share of the vote plummeted to 24% - its lowest level since the 1960s – in his first electoral test as prime minister.
• Of course it is also bad when Gordon Brown when you are being compared to Mr. Bean.
• Minnesota has an annual mullet competition. 
• Wal-Mart has some global competition that is giving the big Dub some headaches
• How to really annoy junk mailers
• Dooce has a new book coming out
• It's apparently okay to call Putin a facist now :: It is no longer controversial to note that Putin "has led Russia into a harsh brand of authoritarianism with some fascist features," as French scholar Pierre Hassner said in a speech last fall. But it's worth recalling the methodical and patient way he crept toward dictatorship, because recent events raise fears that he is now creeping in the same way toward stifling the independence that Russia's neighboring states have enjoyed since the Soviet Union fractured in 1991.
• Dale Earnhardt Jr. got robbed last night by Kyle Busch

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• I don't know how I missed this but apparently some Quebecois cheated during the 1995 election campaign :: It's the scandal most people in Quebec seem eager to forget - politicians, the so-called watchdogs of democracy in the media, even the courts.  This week, a Superior Court judge gave chief electoral officer Marcel Blanchet permission to destroy the evidence that would show the true extent of sovereignist cheating in the 1995 referendum.
• Your tax dollars well spent :: Canada Post is spending $500 million over three years to see if rural mailboxes are safe.
• After Jim Lee's turtle was hurt in an auto accident, she never regained the use of her hind legs. Instead of letting her die, Lee affixed hind wheels to her shell to help her get around.
• A list of 21 ways to shoot better photographs
• Lessons from Pixar's Brad Bird on fostering innovation in the workplace :: In my experience, the thing that has the most significant impact on a movie's budget -- but never shows up in a budget -- is morale. If you have low morale, for every $1 you spend, you get about 25 cents of value. If you have high morale, for every $1 you spend, you get about $3 of value. Companies should pay much more attention to morale.
• Over the last six decades, the real incomes of middle-class families grew twice as fast under Democratic presidents as they did under Republican presidents. The real incomes of working-poor families grew six times as fast under Democratic presidents.
• OPEC members will take in nearly $1 trillion in income because of record crude oil prices.
• SUV sales are down and with them, their prices. The rising cost of gas is to blame. Many dealers won't even accept SUVs as trade-ins.

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• The skyscrapers of Dubai :: Take a look at the number of skyscrapers completed or under construction (over 600) and compare that to New York (+5000).  While Dubai is booming and gets a lot of media attention, it has a ways to go to catch up to the world financial cities in terms of building.
• YouTube - Norman Foster: Building on the green agenda
• Simple Living Manifesto: 72 Ideas to Simplify Your Life
• Unclutterer " Archive " Creating a minimalist workspace :: So the first step is for you to consider your requirements for working, and what’s essential to your workflow. If possible, streamline and simplify that workflow and those requirements. Then, once you’ve got that down to a minimum, see what the minimum setup would be for those essentials and your workflow. Eliminate everything unnecessary.
• Your Future Will Be Filled with Promiscuous Friends :: Reality television and Facebook is altering how we view friends and relationships
• Google Public Policy Blog: How Google determines the names for bodies of water in Google Earth :: Like any cartographic publisher, our policies have come under scrutiny from many groups, particularly when multiple countries disagree about the correct name for a shared body of water. While most bodies of water have a common name (think "Pacific Ocean"), others are called different names by different countries and cultures. Some variations in placenames are attributable to language-based variations (think "Germany" in English, "l'Allemagne" in French, "Deutschland" in German, etc.). Other differences, however, reflect broader political, historical, or cultural disputes. For example, the body of water between the Japanese archipelago and the Korean peninsula is known as the "Sea of Japan" in Japan, but as the "East Sea" in South Korea.
• Lifehacker Top 10: Top 10 Email Productivity Boosters
• The sustainability of improving living standards :: We use energy in nearly everything we do, and it is, therefore, widely assumed that a modern economy is dependent on cheap energy. Yet mainstream economists, even those most critical of Kyoto, are unanimous in the view that we could greatly reduce emissions of carbon dioxide while continuing to improve living standards at much the same rate as in the past.
• Why We Love the Knuckleball :: Everything about the knuckleball is unusual and unpredictable. When it works, the erratic flutter of the ball makes it virtually unhittable. But when it doesn’t, it’s a 65 mph duck, waiting to be smacked out of the ballpark. The pitchers have no control over the direction or degree of the movement, and they don’t know whether the ball is breaking well on a given day until they see the hitters swing.  Few pitchers are able to throw the knuckler, giving those who can a cult-like status. It generally requires very large fingers. As Hall of Famer Willie Stargell explained it, “Throwing a knuckleball for a strike is like throwing a butterfly with hiccups across the street into your neighbor’s mailbox”.
• Former Premier of Alberta, Peter Lougheed tells Premier Brad Wall to manage to the "boom" Saskatchewan is experiencing carefully.

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• Salvaging the Cougar Ace :: Salvage work has long been viewed as a form of legal piracy. The insurers of a disabled ship with valuable cargo will offer from 10 to 70 percent of the value of the ship and its cargo to anyone who can save it. If the salvage effort fails, they don't pay a dime. It's a risky business: As ships have gotten bigger and cargo more valuable, the expertise and resources required to mount a salvage effort have steadily increased. When a job went bad in 2004, Titan ended up with little more than the ship's bell as a souvenir. Around the company's headquarters in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, it's known as the $11.6 million bell. via
• The Cookie Monster does some soul searching :: Me know there something wrong with me, but who in Sesame Street doesn't suffer from mental disease or psychological disorder? They don't call the vampire with math fetish monster, and me pretty sure he undead and drinks blood. No one calls Grover monster, despite frequent delusional episodes and obsessive-compulsive tendencies. And the obnoxious red Grover—oh, what his name?—Elmo! Yes, Elmo live all day in imaginary world and no one call him monster. No, they think he cute. And Big Bird! Don't get me started on Big Bird! He unnaturally gigantic talking canary! How is that not monster? Snuffleupagus not supposed to exist—woolly mammoths extinct. His very existence monstrous. Me least like monster. Me maybe have unhealthy obsession, but me no monster. via
• Howard Dean wants the Democratic Primary to end "now" :: “We cannot give up two or three months of active campaigning and healing time,” the Democratic National Committee Chairman told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. “We’ve got to know who our nominee is.”
• 110 books to the perfect library via
• The best story about John McCain that you have probably forgotten via

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• I am not sure what the appeal being trapped in a giant hotel adrift at sea is but as these things get bigger, why not just stay at home?   While I love the sea, these aren't ocean liners, they are floating amusement parks that dump a lot of pollution and garbage into the ocean.  Not only that but Canada has even laxer rules than other countries.
• The New York Yankees' value increased to US$1.306 billion over the past year, according to the annual estimates by Forbes magazine, a rise of nine per cent over the past year. The New York Mets were second at $824 million and the Boston Red Sox third at $816 million, the magazine said Wednesday. After that, there was a big gap to the Los Angeles Dodgers ($694 million) and the Chicago Cubs ($642 million). The Toronto Blue Jays came in 22nd at $352 million, with $160 million in revenue.
• What's a couple trillion dollars between friends?  It appears the Pentagon has some accounting issues.  Of course they have only been trying to fix things since 1958.  The hope is by 2016 things will be auditable.
• This just about sums up tonights debate: Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the health care and mortgage crises, the overall state of the economy and dozens of other pressing issues had to wait for their few moments in the sun as Obama was pressed to explain his recent "bitter" gaffe and relationship with Rev. Wright (seemingly a dead issue) and not wearing a flag pin while Clinton had to answer again for her Bosnia trip exaggerations.

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• Offices in London made from some underground tube carriages
• Climate change will bring new diseases
• Blogging until you die
• An architects office converted from a gas station
• A hedge fund manager talks about what happened to Bear Stearns
• Ben Saunders' quest for the North Pole fails after eight days due to equipment failure

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• How Hillary is helping Obama win :: One of the most valuable lessons the gritty Hillary can teach the languid Obama — and the timid Democrats — is that the whole point of a presidential race is to win.  It’s not to share power, or force the squabbling couple into an arranged marriage. The winner wins, even if it’s only by a fraction of a percentage point or one Supreme Court justice. Winning has no margin of error, as the Democrats should have learned by now. And the winner gets to decide his or her running mate.  But the ultimate favor Hillary can do for the Illinois freshman is to fight him full-out until the finale and then gracefully release him so he can find happiness with another.
• Knicks to hire Walsh :: Which should mean Isaiah Thomas will be fired which kind of saddens me.  Not only does playing the Knicks mean a guaranteed victory for the Raptors, it also gave me hope that someone would turn over a NFL franchise to me someday.

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• Interesting comment on Metafilter on day labour conditions in parts of the United States
• For McCain the key is policies, not biography
• Was Hillary's "Sniper-Fire" lie a watershed event for her campaign?  You can see the trip on YouTube.  Not a lot of sniper fire from what I can see.

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• Down and out at Heathrow Airport
• Sask government cuts most Social Workers in Saskatoon: The goal is to deliver social services via a call centre.  That sound you hear is a lot of Saskatchewan's best social workers being recruited in Alberta and Manitoba.  UPDATE:  Apparently the Minister didn't make that decision and there will not be serious job cuts.  Good to here, there are some really dedicated and professional civil servants who do a good job serving Saskatchewan's most vulnerable.   That has stopped the turmoil to be felt throughout the department according to the SP.
• Sask government cuts funding to Station 20 West, an important affordable housing development in Saskatoon. Station 20 West is envisioned as a community service centre, joining a multi-unit affordable housing development with a co-operative grocery store, a dental clinic staffed by U of S college of dentistry faculty and senior students, a medical clinic, a public library branch and other services - all at one site :: The government's reason is that it isn't in the mall development business.
• Hillary Clinton's former pastor defends Obama's former pastor Wright

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• Legal Rights of Photographers
• Perfecting your Picasa to Flickr workflow
• How the Democratic Party is being split by Hillary and Obama :: The battle for the Democratic Party is so bitter because it is a battle over culture. Mrs Clinton's supporters look at Mr Obama's and see latte-drinking elitists. Mr Obama's supporters look at Mrs Clinton's and smell all sorts of ancestral sins, not least racism. The two groups neither like nor respect each other.
• What is Co-Housing?
• A series of photos of the core neighborhoods in Saskatoon
• Hells Angels in Saskatoon actually has a website.  So much for keeping a low profile.  Does anyone really believe that the Hells Angels are just a "motor cycle" gang?
• Housing affordability is the lowest since 1990 in Canada
• Lake Superior is the "canary in the coal mine" and an early indicator of climate change
• Peak Oil in Seven Years? :: World demand for oil and gas will outstrip supply within seven years, according to Royal Dutch Shell.  The oil multinational is predicting that conventional supplies will not keep pace with soaring population growth and the rapid pace of economic development.  Jeroen van der Veer, Shell’s chief executive, said in an e-mail to the company’s staff this week that output of conventional oil and gas was close to peaking. He wrote: “Shell estimates that after 2015 supplies of easy-to-access oil and gas will no longer keep up with demand.”  The boss of the world’s second-largest oil company forecast that, regardless of government policy initiatives and investment in renewables, the world would need more nuclear power and unconventional fossil fuels, such as oil sands.
• Tent City outside of Los Angeles
• 100s of vintage 70s logos
• Wendy is bragging about Mark today
• Seth Godin wonders why one even needs a resume
• I was watching a show called Urban Explorers tonight and it featured two great buildings to explore in Buffalo, New York, the Buffalo Central Terminal and the Church of the Transfiguration.  Oh to live in an older eastern city.

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• How Canada is killing hockey :: "For most provinces, the last big push to create facilities was the Centennial year, 1967," said former Olympic runner Bruce Kidd, now dean of the U of T's phys-ed department. "That's why they're 40 years old and crumbling."
• Bear Stearns teeters on the edge :: Bear Stearns & Co., a U.S. banking giant forged in the aftermath of the First World War, which survived the Great Depression and once bailed out New York City, was forced into the arms of one of its rivals yesterday, a move that panicked the markets and battered financial stocks into a deepening downward spiral.   It does show that the credit crisis is deepening.  Now economists are saying this recession could be worse then the others.
• A good story on how hard fought the Obama/Clinton fight has become

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• Dion still has a large debt from the Liberal leadership campaign :: There is a persistent rumour that Mr. Dion has done little since taking over as leader to reduce his debt and now he is putting off defeating the government until he pays up in full. The view is that if he lost the election and was forced out as leader, he would have considerably more trouble paying his debts.
• A cartridge programmer looks back at his years at Atari 21 years ago :: My very first day at work I arrived at my office after orientation and found an Atari 800 computer in a boxes. I spent a little while setting the machine up, got it working, and went to get coffee.  When I returned, a staffer appeared in my door. “Oh,” she exclaimed, “You knew how to set up your computer! I was going to do that.”  “Well, thanks, but…” Didn’t everybody know how? Setting up an Atari computer wasn’t amazingly simple and obvious, but it wasn’t all that hard, either.  It was a portent of things to come. My first office mate didn’t know how to set up his computer. He didn’t know anything, it appeared. He’d been hired to work on Dig Dug, and he was completely at sea. I had to teach him a lot, including how to program in assembly, how the Atari hardware worked, how to download stuff, how to debug. It was pretty bad. That would be a general theme throughout my tenure at Atari. Newly hired people didn’t necessarily know how to do their jobs, and I spent a lot of time helping them figure stuff out that they should have known in order to land a job in the first place. Atari’s hiring practices were not very careful.
• Saskatoon is #2! :: Regina has been ranked the "most dangerous" city in Canada, with Saskatoon a close second, by the national news magazine, Maclean's. Using 2006 data from the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, Maclean's based its ranking on tabulated results for six crimes — murder, sexual assault, aggravated assault, robbery, auto theft, and breaking and entering.

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• A photo essay of an enormous coal mine in China
• The World's 50 Greatest Works of Art (and how to see them)
• "I fell in love with a female assassin" :: "When I killed the first person, I was afraid, I was scared. I killed the first person just to see if I could. But there is an obligation to kill. If you don't, they kill you. That's why the first was very hard, because the person I killed was kneeling down begging, crying and saying, 'Don't kill me. I have children.' That's why it was difficult and sad. But if you don't kill that person, someone else from the AUC will kill you. After the killing, you keep trembling. You can't eat or talk to anyone. I was at home, but I kept imagining the person begging not to be killed. I shut myself inside, but with time I forgot everything. The superiors always say, 'Don't worry, that was just the first time. When you kill the second one, it will all be OK.' But you keep trembling.
• Canadians aren't fond of energy efficient bulbs :: We use them at home but I agree.  I don't like the light.  I don't like the fact that it takes them a couple of minutes to fully illuminate when it is cold outside.  I am not sure what I am going to do with the outside lights other than see if Home Depot has some outside sockets that do a better job with them.
• Oil tops 1980 inflation adjusted price ::
• I don't know how I missed this but it was Samantha Power (one of my favorite authors) who called Hillary Clinton a monster.  Power wrote, A Problem from Hell: America in an Age of Genocide.  Excellent book.
• Bookmark this link because when the Second War of the Falkland Islands start, you will know what started it all.
• Canadian David Olive actually thinks a Obama/Clinton ticket could happen.  I think with Clinton going negative on Obama, that chance is gone.
• The War on YouTube has been joined by the Air Force: Sadly someone forgot to tell YouTube that US government material is not copyrighted and even the Air Force website said that it can be redistributed.
• U.S. military has been sending classified e-mails to English tourism site for years ::  Almost immediately after launching his tourism site, Sinnott says he began receiving e-mails sent by military personnel that were clearly intended for the .af.mil domain name but were mistakenly sent to his .com domain instead. Sinnott says at first he received mostly jokes and videos that servicemen and women were sending to each other. At one point he was receiving thousands of messages a week. He contacted the Air Force base but he says that officials there told him not to worry about it.  Then he started receiving sensitive e-mails with information that he thinks should be classified. One e-mail discussing military tactics came with a notice that said "Destroy by any means to prevent capture."
• How to save money in a start up (or any small organization) ::  Fred Smith and Jason Calacanis have some wonderful ideas.

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• According to Warren Buffett, the United States is already in a recession. It's largest trading partner isn't doing so hot either.
  
• The $800 gaming PC
• How to recruit great candidates
• Why Vista had so little hardware/software support when it was released (and now)
• The San Francisco 49ers are becoming the New York Knicks of football with yet another over priced free agent signing.
• The 60s are back (at least in this home) via

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• It's funny how many times I have heard (or used) the phrase, Nogoalov in the last couple of weeks.
• Michael Silver on the rather odd ritual called the NFL Scouting Combine
• Larry Lessig to run for Congress?
• Thoughts on choosing board members
• Pernell Goodyear is blogging again
• Darryl Dash's thoughts on his theology pub in T.O.

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• The Glengarry Building is being sold and with it, the Bassment is going to have to move.  The move was accelerated after it was flooded out.
• Someone is drugging the water in Saskatoon :: That can be the only explanation for an idea to build a 32,000 seat stadium in Saskatoon to get a CFL expansion franchise.  The Winnipeg Blue Bombers are talking $150 million for a bare-bones facility that will be used 10 times a year and possibly bankrupt the Saskatchewan Roughriders.  Here is the CBC version of the story
• A friend of mine is blogging the restoration of his 89 Lebaron convertible.
• A guy started with $25 and within a year had started his way back on the American dream:  It isn't impossible but the problem with homelessness and poverty are deeper than money (or lack of it). 
• One of Parliament Hill's great mysteries solved!
• The Ten Worst NFL Teams of All Time
• Worst QB Ever?  I'll give you a hint, it rhymes with Rich Meirer.  Here is a list of the worst Heisman winners ever.
• 100 Worst Draft Picks of All Time

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• I have the face for radio :: Wendy posted this photo of me being interviewed last week on Global TV about the cold snap and the impact on shelters. In case you are wondering, people stop hitchhiking when it is this cold and people tend to hunker down. In some ways it is actually a little calmer because people tend to work together.
• Starbucks is switching from T-Mobile to AT&T for wifi and the consumer actually seems to win here.
• Saskatoon housing is the inflation leader for Canada :: No wonder why we look so miserable after we pay at Home Depot.
• Credit Union Centre is 20 years old this week and I was there at the beginning for the first hockey game and concert.
• Warren Kinsella's readers are as disgusted by a Holocaust "joke" as he is.
• Matt Haughey reminds us that all weblog apps are terrible.
• Kester Brewin has some thoughts on the Archbishop and Sharia Law and why people are attacking him so viciously.  Jonny Baker links to a piece on the controversy on the CMS website as well.  Both are worth reading.
• Las Vegas could be out of water by 2021 :: Wikipedia has a great photo showing Lake Mead's "bathtub rings" that have developed since the mid 80s
• It looks like Canada will avoid an election of the Afghanistan mission
• A great story on the University of North Carolina's junior varsity basketball team :: "You're coaching because you love to coach and they're playing because they love to play. I think maybe that's really what college athletics should be all about."

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• Larry Lessig posted a video on why he supports Barack Obama
• Notre Dame lands one of the nations best recruiting classes :: This is a couple of great recruiting classes in a row.  Speaking of national signing day , a small town in Nevada got excited that one of its stars would go to a big time college program.  Finally on the day town notables and media gathered for a ceremony where, Kevin Hart, made his choice known. Then it all unraveled, he was never recruited at all (although he may have been scammed... no wait, he confessed: He made it all up) In case you were wondering, here is how your team did.
• Bill and Hillary loan her campaign $5 million to continue on ::  It worked out okay for John Kerry.
• Blackstrap to remain closed for the season :: The government was going to have to pay a $75 subsidy per skier. 
• The most popular recipe on Wendy's cooking blog :: Who knew that there is such a demand for seven layer dip.  While I am mentioning recipes, Wendy's favorite recipe blog has a version just for the iPhone or the iPod Touch.
• Shawn Marion for Shaq?  I am not sure I would make that deal.  Marty Burns at Sports Illustrated doesn't understand the deal either.
• Women loses Jesus
• Alberta is going to the polls which is quite a shock because after 30 years of one party rule, I assumed that the Tories were named benign dictators back in the time of Peter Lougheed.  Calgary Grit has a fun election breakdown that even if you don't care who wins in Alberta, is worth reading.

More randomness

• 16 hour shift yesterday. Beyond tired today.
• Started day with flat tire.
• It's minus only -41 out today. After the last two days, it is like a heat wave. If it climbs into the -20s I may start wearing the Magnum P.I. shorts.
  
• An interesting profile on Warren Buffet from 2004
• Why is your plane late? A long but interesting article on how and why your plane is late.
• Photos of Bejings air quality. How is this not a big deal to the IOC?
  

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• A New York Times graphical critique of campaign logos :: The 'Kerry Edwards' logo of a few years ago comes in for particular ridicule
• The Future of Ideas has been re-released under a Creative Commons license.
• So what went wrong with the Rove Presidency?  Also Larry Lessig wonders what happens if the Rove virus crosses in to the Democratic Party? :: We've heard this about the Clintons from the start: they would do anything. But watching her utter words she knows are false, or words which even if technically true, create a plainly false impression, was, again, disgusting. Just how small is this person now apparently leading the Democrats? Just how small have we become?
• Death's Army :: Harvard's president writes on the 620,000 American deaths in the Civil War :: Americans had never endured anything like the losses they suffered between 1861 and 1865 and have experienced nothing like them since. Two percent of the United States population died in uniform — 620,000 men, North and South, roughly the same number as those lost in all of America’s other wars from the Revolution through Korea combined. The equivalent toll today would be six million.
• Ebay needs to be an Apple and get a Steve Jobs :: The amazing thing, is that Ebay has some obvious and profound visionary potential: 1. Ebay is all about Green, the biggest angle any company can have, currently, and yet it has ignored this. As the largest marketplace for second hand goods, it is the worlds largest recycler. 2. Ebay contains a collective memory of the worlds stuff. How we interact with the world is largely through this stuff, yet Ebay throws away this memory by deleting its archives from the web. If you don't think this is of profound importannce, William Gibson says it much better, here.
• The Tragedy of Tony Blair :: This comes from 2004 but with the The Atlantic unlocking their archives, I thought I would finally link to it.
• How the United States will contain China and if that doesn't work, how would the United States fight a war with China.
• Fast Company's Most Innovative People of 2007
• Inside the B-2 Bomber :: A B-2 Spirit costs roughly as much as a fast-attack nuclear submarine or a guided-missile destroyer. But whereas a Los Angeles–class submarine requires a crew of 130 and an Arleigh Burke–class destroyer a crew of 320, the B-2 has a crew of just two: a pilot and a mission commander. There are only 21 B-2s in the Air Force. Nobody else in the U.S. military is entrusted with as much responsibility, in terms of sheer dollars, as these bomber pilots are. If a single B-2 were to go down, even in training, it would be a banner-headline story.
• A-Z Guide to the Missional Conversation :: Part 1 and Part 2
• How does on get an Atomic bomb? It wouldn’t be easy. But it wouldn’t be impossible. A reporter travels the world to find the weaknesses a terrorist could exploit
• 100 people that made America
• The MacBook Air's performance issues cured my case of technolust pretty quickly

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• This says it so much better than I can.
• Fred Thompson drops out of GOP race which confounds the commentators who thought he dropped out months ago
• Saskatoon celebrates the opening of the new Persephone Theatre :: Wendy and I got some tickets for Christmas and will be taking in a show on April 2.  "Just to know that something we did as youngsters with a lot of passion is still going and is now opening an $11-million theatre or more … it's pretty moving," said actress Janet Wright, one of the founders of the theatre in 1974. Wright, best known as one of the stars of the TV show Corner Gas, is the honorary chair of the campaign to raise money for the theatre.
• While the rest of us lost our retirement funds today, Goldman Sachs has been making money hand over fist during the subprime meltdown.  So how did they do it while the rest of the world is losing all sorts of money?  Michael Lewis tells us Goldman went against the flow in shorting sub-prime mortgages by assuming that the entire rest of the industry, including their own expert and extremely well-paid traders, were as Lewis puts it, "a bunch of idiots".
• You are what you read and here is Adolf Hiter's forgotten library.  Brought to you by The Atlantic Monthly's now open archives
• What to try Ubuntu but don't want to dedicate a computer for it? Try Wubi which installs Ubuntu as a Windows application.
• 1960's Braun design ideas inspiration for Apple products?
• Manley's Report puts pressure on both the Conservatives and Liberals as well as invoked the spirit of Lester B. Pearson.
• So how do they fix the Leafs?  James Mirtle answers on his own blog and exposes how incredibly dysfunctional MLSE really is.  They are the Britney Spears of the National Hockey League.  Elliotte Friedman also offers this up on the messed up ownership structure of MLSE.

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• The Reclamation of Skid Row ::The people who would most benefit from observing this complex web of formal authority and personal connectedness are L.A.’s liberal judges, who demonstrate complete ignorance about how the police operate in a community like Skid Row. Officers’ rapport with addicts and the mentally ill has no counterpart in the anti-cop bar and its supporters. Only the police are out there every day, trying to nudge people who have fallen out of normal society back into it, and putting themselves (and their families) at risk of infectious disease in doing so. The cops know the rhythms of the sidewalk: that people lying there in 110-degree heat are selling dope, or crashing from a cocaine binge, or drinking, not enduring the unjust conditions of poverty. Officer Joseph passed out hundreds of flyers for work at a Long Beach plant. A mere four people sought jobs there; the rest preferred to stay on welfare. Still, he’s currently negotiating with the owners of a massive downtown development project, L.A. Live, for additional job offers. Joseph spends hours away from his family writing police reports to educate judges and district attorneys about the connections between street disorder and crime. “I put in everything I know, and then in several minutes they plead it out,” he says wearily. via
  
• Another L.A. Times editor has lost his job for refusing to cut jobs in the newsroom ::The top editor of The Los Angeles Times has been forced out for resisting newsroom budget cuts, executives at the paper said Sunday, marking the fourth time in less than three years that the highest-ranking editor or the publisher has left for that reason. The removal of the editor, James E. O’Shea, by the publisher, David D. Hiller, mirrors the odd spectacle of a little more than a year ago, when the previous publisher, Jeffrey M. Johnson, was fired for refusing to eliminate newsroom jobs as directed by the paper’s owner, the Tribune Company. In each case, a longtime Tribune executive was expected to rein in costs at the paper, but instead sided with the newsroom and lost his job for it.
• Signs are emerging that the bloodletting in Kenya was premeditated ::“It wasn’t like people just woke up and started fighting each other,” said Dan Juma, the acting deputy director of the Kenya Human Rights Commission. “It was organized.” What is not clear is if there was a systematic plan to start a nationwide ethnic war, and whether high-level political leaders played a role beyond possibly inciting violence through hate speech.

• Did Stephane Dion propose to invade Pakistan :: Calgary Grit offers up a different point of view on the statement.
• A fascinating profile on Bobby Fischer when he was 14 in the New Yorker from 1957 :: via
• Rudy Guiliani vs. Ron Paul. It isn't looking good for America's Mayor.
• What would the impact on Jr's revival be on NASCAR? :: “Nobody sells more tickets and nobody drives television ratings more than Dale Earnhardt Jr.,” Eddie Gossage, the president of Texas Motor Speedway and a longtime race promoter, said in a recent telephone interview. “And as a sport, we need him to do well. If he’s doing well, it’s the Tiger Woods effect. “If he’s in contention going into the final round, look at the Sunday TV ratings, and that golf tournament is up, up, up. So if Junior’s doing good, that’s going to have a positive effect on the gate and a positive effect on the television ratings. Very important.”
• What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. At least that is what John Edwards is hoping but I think his campaign is for all intents and purposes over. The New York Times has more :: But some political strategists say Mr. Edwards also has another compelling reason to stay in, at least in South Carolina. He could end up sharing the white vote with Mrs. Clinton, thus helping Mr. Obama, whom Mr. Edwards has signaled he favors.
• What is the impact of the Bush presidency on the GOP candidates?
• I took Wendy and Mark to the PAC to watch the Huskies beat the Simon Fraser Clan. Photos can be found here while Wendy's blog chronicles the game here.

Contextless Links

• Former MLB player Doug Glanville explains in the NY Times why baseball players use steriods :: Human nature wants to put the brakes on that rate of change. While your clock is ticking, faster, stronger and younger players are setting up their lockers next to yours. They usually have better sound bites and lower salaries, too. In 1998, I was the new kid in Philadelphia, battling Lenny Dysktra for the center field job. Five years later, I was mentoring another new kid, Marlon Byrd, so he could replace me. Faced with that rate of career atrophy, players are capable of rash, self-serving and often irresponsible decisions. Enter steroids. There is a tipping point in a player’s career where he goes from chasing the dream to running from a nightmare. At that point, ambition is replaced with anxiety, passion is replaced with survival. It is a downhill run and it spares no one.  :: Here is some of the reaction to his op-ed.
• 50 Things I Learned in 50 Years :: via
• Chuck Smith Sr. says that the emerging church is a sign of the end times :: I was going to offer up some thoughts but Tony Jones says what I was going to say in the first comment.
• Randall Friesen has a great post on being a pastor for a long period of time.  As someone who spent 11 years in one church, I think he may have it right.
• This is the iPod Touch that I have been looking for.
• Jason Evans has an article in Relevant on punk rock

Contextless Links

• Congrats to Scoble for getting the Fast Company.tv job
• Postcards from you future city :: Packard Jennings and Steve Lambert asked architects, city planners, and transportation engineers, “what would you do if you didn’t have to worry about budgets, bureaucracy, politics, or physics?” Ideas from these conversations were then merged, developed, and perhaps mildly exaggerated by Steve and Packard to create a series of 6 posters for the San Francisco Arts Commission’s Art on Market Street Program.
• Considering this is a terrible picture, it gets a lot of attention on Flickr
• Some excellent iPhone Wallpaper
• What a great t-shirt.
• Bad slip of a tongue by pastor made worse by a horrible recovery
• Five unbelievably cool research facilities
• How do you teach the uber rich kids the value of a dollar?
• The best peanut butter in the world :: I had no idea this was now a fact.
• Do fonts affect grades?  It appears they do.
• Seaton House :: Toronto's Largest homeless shelter and noted wet shelter.  What's a wet shelter you ask?  Under the new "managed alcohol" policy clients enrolled in the program are served one drink every hour until it is determined that an individual is too inebriated at which point he is denied another shot :: My first response was to crack a joke about it, my second response was that it makes a lot of sense.
• I don't feel like linking to any of the stories about it but I think it is obvious that O.J. Simpson has a brain injury.  How many hits did he take while playing the game with poor quality helmets.  Instead of reading about O.J. here is a far more interesting article on brain injuries and football players in ESPN which profiles Mike Webster.

Contextless Links

Vote in the jordoncooper.com primary!

• Sesame Street video player :: Maybe they could have gotten a more tech savvy Muppet to explain it than Grover.
• Why oil may drop in price to $30 per barrel :: But the experts who are predicting the worst, based on geology and geopolitics, are missing the crucial role that economic incentives play in determining the price of crude. The tripling of oil prices since the summer of 2003 has unleashed forces that within the next two or three years will bring oil prices tumbling back down to below $50 a barrel. Looking even further ahead, prices could easily fall to $30 a barrel or even lower. So before you trade in your Cadillac Escalade for a Toyota Prius, think twice: $1.50-a-gallon gas might not be gone forever.
• Former John McCain staffers discuss the current McCain campaign.  You know, the campaign they either quit or were fired from in 2007.
• What happened to the XO computer?  Well according to the founder, it's Intel's fault.
• McDonald's takes aim at Starbucks but analysts see Dunkin' Donuts being the company with the most to lose.
• The life of campaign staffers on presidential campaigns :: So far, the 2008 presidential campaigns have employed more than 3,000 paid workers and countless volunteers, who will next year be joined by thousands of others working on congressional campaigns -- a legion of operatives living on four hours' sleep, Triple Whoppers and a hefty supply of Red Bull.
• Selected Boeing 767s will get anti-missile lasers of course the real threat according to the FAA is hackers taking over 787s :: The computer network in the Dreamliner's passenger compartment, designed to give passengers in-flight internet access, is connected to the plane's control, navigation and communication systems, an FAA report reveals.
• Inhaling 9/11
• Sustainable architecture
• Priest assaults parishioner
• Jason Cole has a good column on who the Redskins should and should not hire for their next head coach :: Bottom line, here is a fact that few people understand about the NFL: Through the 80-plus year history of the league, only one man has guided two different franchises to a championship. That was Weeb Ewbank, who did it with Baltimore and the New York Jets. A few have gotten two different teams to a Super Bowl: Dick Vermeil, Bill Parcells, Dan Reeves and Mike Holmgren. But even Holmgren, who's as good a planner and coach as you'll find, took six seasons of trial and error to get back to the title game with Seattle. Truth is that chasing coaches with Super Bowl pedigrees guarantees nothing. The longer you do it, the more expensive, and dangerous, it gets.

Contextless Links

• Not sure I buy Sen. McGovern's reasoning for impeaching George W. Bush :: Can one be impeached for being a really bad president?
  
• Help Rebuild New Orlean's Ninth Ward
• Rough landing :: I have had some rough landings (mostly when flying into O'Hare) but nothing like this. I have never seen a tail hit the runway before.
• The Economist takes the OLPC to task :: Ultimately the OLPC initiative will be remembered less for what it produced than the products it spawned. The initiative is like running the four-minute mile: no one could do it, until someone actually did it. Then many people did. Likewise, an inexpensive laptop seemed impossible until Mr Negroponte and the OLPC group placed a stake in the ground to build a $100 laptop—which in turn spurred the industry’s biggest players to create low-cost PCs. Mr Negroponte’s vision for a $100 laptop was not the right computer, only the right price. Like many pioneers, he laid a path for others to follow.
• A loyal Cleveland Browns fan remembers The Drive.

My Favorite Contextless Links of 2007

Another year down which means there was a lot of contextless links to post.  I went back over the last year and re-read them all and posted some of my favorite links here. Enjoy

• 1 out of 400 Americans is homeless :: In January 2005, an estimated 744,313 people experienced homelessness.
  56 percent of homeless people counted were living in shelters and transitional housing and, shockingly, 44 percent were unsheltered. 59 percent of homeless people counted were single adults and 41 percent were persons living in families.   23 percent of homeless people were reported as chronically homeless, which, according to HUD’s definition, means that they are homeless for long periods or repeatedly and have a disability.
• My starship is bigger than your starship
• Star Wars: Episode IV as seen through Episodes I-III :: Much of Obi-Wan's behaviour in this film, and Yoda's in the next, can best be understood if they are frankly scared to death of what Luke might become.
• How budget sneaker makers have the full court press on Nike
• How to pick out a good red wine :: Even a superficial inspection of wine bottles can help you narrow your selection. For example, make it a policy to avoid wine with any of the following on its label: Typos, particularly in the spelling of “wine”.  Any cartoon likeness of a shark, monkey, Dracula wearing Ray-Ban sunglasses, or a drunk Frenchman urinating into a wooden barrel.  Endorsements like “From the creators of Robocop”.  Scratch-and-sniff technology.  Instructions to “Shake Well” or “Keep Away From Eyes, Skin, and Magnets”. Claims such as “No Trans Fats” or “Contains 30% Real Wine”. A vintage date that is a year in the future.
• Roman Catholic diocese closes parishes after they dwindle to 400 people :: In Canada we call "small churches" like that, megachurches.
• Dan Wetzel on how Gary Bettman is the worst commissioner in professional sports and has ruined the game of hockey
• Seth Godin on how you can STOP making the horrible PowerPoint presentations that you are all known for

• Steve Taylor addresses the issue of alt.worship and the poor

• You think your favorite team is messed up?  Outside of the Oakland Raiders and the L.A. Clippers, is there a worse run franchise in pro sports than the New York Knicks.  Sports Illustrated goes deep into the mind of Knickerbocker's owner, Jim Dolan and it isn't pretty.
• The Disseminary has some wonderful early church theologian trading cards online
• An innovative way to keep homeless people away from your megachurch/private members club.
• Wendy is writing about sex in the snow and no she isn't referring to the book
• Winner of the 2007 World Press Photo contest of a badly wounded Iraq war vet returning home to marry his sweetheart:: Their story is here.  More photos of the couple here. via
• Beware of wolves eating guys with GIANT hands
• Burlington is famous for more than the Coat Factory.  It is also home to the famous Windows XP autum theme
• California pastor stole the entire church
• 16 million Americans live in "severe poverty" :: Under $5,080 a year. via
• The world likes Canadians :: The survey for the British Broadcasting Corp.'s World Service asked more than 28,000 people to rate 12 countries - Britain, Canada, China, France, India, Iran, Israel, Japan, North Korea, Russia, the United States and Venezuela - as having a positive or negative influence on the world.  Israel was viewed negatively by 56 percent of respondents and positively by 17 percent; for Iran, the figures were 54 percent and 18 percent. The United States had the third-highest negative ranking, with 51 percent citing it as a bad influence and 30 percent as a good one. Next was North Korea, which was viewed negatively by 48 percent and positively by 19 percent.  Canada had the most positive rating in the survey, with 54 percent viewing it positively and 14 percent negatively. It was followed by Japan and France.
• George W. Bush's ranch in Crawford is off the grid.
• Why does home ownership cause unemployment? :: Wherever people seem particularly keen to own their own homes—as in the United Kingdom, Spain, and some U.S. states—employment suffers as a result. English economist Andrew Oswald has shown that across European countries, and across U.S. states, high levels of home ownership are correlated with high levels of unemployment. More conventional factors such as generous welfare benefits or high levels of unionization don't explain unemployment nearly as well as the tendency to own houses. Renting your home and staying flexible do wonders for your chances of always finding an interesting job to do.
• How Southwest (and others) out innovated their competitors :: Southwest pioneered the change from the hub-and-spoke model, which made sense in a highly regulated environment, to a point-to-point model which highly utilizes the expensive aircraft. Its not that the incumbents didn't understand how Southwest was doing it, its just that for a number of reasons, from their inflexible labor policies to their addiction to long-haul revenue, they couldn't match the Southwest model. As a result, Southwest has been able to generate more profits over the last 30 years than all of its incumbent competitors combined.
• Chuck Norris Action Jeans :: They are pants specifically designed to be worn while you are kicking people in the face. And they retail for less than twenty dollars.
• Governor of Oregon to live on food stamps for a week :: Gov. Theodore R. Kulongoski and his wife, Mary Oberst, are used to eating the best their state has to offer: salmon, huckleberries and mushrooms foraged from the Cascade mountains. The coming week will be different. They will spend just $3 a day each on their meals, $42 in all, to match the amount spent by the average food stamp recipient in Oregon. Mr. Kulongoski, a Democrat, and Ms. Oberst are the most prominent people yet to take part in a “food stamp challenge,” a trend sponsored by religious groups, community activists and food pantries across the country. Those who have done the challenge say shopping on such a tight budget requires plenty of planning, a reliance on inexpensive staples like legumes, beans, rice and peanut butter and a lack of more expensive protein and fresh fruits and vegetables.
• Vatican City goes green
• Imagine earth without people :: "The sad truth is, once the humans get out of the picture, the outlook starts to get a lot better," says John Orrock, a conservation biologist at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis in Santa Barbara, California. But would the footprint of humanity ever fade away completely, or have we so altered the Earth that even a million years from now a visitor would know that an industrial society once ruled the planet?
• George W. Bush reflects on his failed presidency: "The reality has been daunting by any account. No modern president has experienced such a sustained rejection by the American public."  What a sad, sad article.
• Life in a glass house
• How ESPN is killing hockey
• An interesting post on the Fast Company blog: What happens when people have great ideas but have no one to tell? Corel is trying to fix that.
• Seth Godin has some legit complaints about business card design
• Why Do Democrats Lose So Often? They appeal to the rational part of the brain. You can imagine how this was reviewed in the New York Times.
• How luxury has lost it's luster :: Paradoxically, as craftsmanship has waned, consumer appetite has grown — and not just among luxury’s original, elite clientele. The vast reach of contemporary advertising, distribution and product-placement efforts has effectively democratized luxury, making once exclusive brands available, if only in the form of logo-covered sneakers or sunglasses, to middle-market customers the world over. “Luxury-brand logos convey wealth, status and chic,” Thomas explains, “even if the bearer of the logo-ed product is a middle-market suburban housewife who bought it on credit.”
• Facebook for old people
• J. Edgar Hoover had plans in 1950 of arresting 12,000 Americans he suspected of disloyalty :: Hoover wanted President Harry S. Truman to proclaim the mass arrests necessary to “protect the country against treason, espionage and sabotage.” The F.B.I would “apprehend all individuals potentially dangerous” to national security, Hoover’s proposal said. The arrests would be carried out under “a master warrant attached to a list of names” provided by the bureau.

Contextless Links

• What happened to the Denver Broncos this year?  Injuries, injuries, injuries :: "Oh, it's the hardest season I've had since I've been coaching, there's no question about that," Shanahan said Wednesday as the Broncos began preparing for their season finale against Minnesota.  What makes this harder than eight years ago, when the two-time defending Super Bowl champs went 6-10 in Shanahan's only other losing season during his 13-year tenure?  "Because we're a better football team this year than we were in '99," Shanahan said.
• Is waterboarding torture?  One man decided to try it himself :: I have never been more panicked in my whole life. Once your lungs are empty and collapsed and they start to draw fluid it is simply all over. You know you are dead and it's too late. Involuntary and total panic. There is absolutely nothing you can do about it. It would be like telling you not to blink while I stuck a hot needle in your eye. At the time my lungs emptied and I began to draw water, I would have sold my children to escape. There was no choice, or chance, and willpower was not involved. I never felt anything like it, and this was self-inflicted with a watering can, where I was in total control and never in any danger. And I understood. ::  I know the current American administration disagrees but I would say it is in violation of the Geneva conventions.
• AKMA did talk about this years ago but Dave Winer brings up the issue of what happens to our digital world when we pass away.
• Fed up with the airlines?  Employees are as well. :: Airline employees are fed up, too — with pay cuts, increased workloads and management’s miserly ways, which leave workers to explain to often-enraged passengers why flying has become such a miserable experience.  A rich record of the employee discontent emerges from regular question-and-answer sessions held at US Airways, which is both the worst-performing big airline in the country and a company that encourages its 36,000 workers to direct tough questions at its chief executive, W. Douglas Parker.  “Doug, I watched you on CNBC today,” said one e-mail message from a worker, sent on Oct. 25. “And I hate to tell you but the interiors of our plans [sic] smell bad and they are filthy. As an employee I am embarrassed to admit working for US Airways. When are you going to quit talking and do something about it?”
• As India modernizes, the profession of the "letter writer" slowly fades
• The best science and idea books of 2007
• Buildings made from business cards
• Emerging Church.info is down.  Anyone know what is up with the site?
• My experiences with Vista were similar to Adam's.   I need a new computer but am not sure if I want to get a Mac but let's be honest, Vista is a big step backwards from XP
• Willowcreek disagrees with me about Christmas pageants :: "In today's world, the church must compete with movies and even restaurants for audiences. Everybody wants to be entertained," said Susan DeLay, who handles public relations for Willow Creek. "People who might not go to church might