Several Updates

First, I was just looking through some of my past posts and noticed a couple of changes. Blackberry is here to stay they have solved their suit with NTP (such as it was) for 612 million dollars (give or take a couple hundred thousand). That is just a side note compared to what I have today however. This story also comes from Canada (Blackberry is owned by Research in Motion a Canadian company for those who don't know).
A Canadian senator, which is not elected but appointed for life (till age 75 at least) by the prime minister has shot back a rather rude article to a family in Minnesota. According to the article from CBC.ca a family living in Minnesota wrote to all the Canadian senators decrying the Atlantic Seal hunt (for more info on the Seal hunt from CBC click here. Senator Céline Hervieux-Payette, who claims to be the only senator to respond says (quoting from the article) in her letter back to the family, that they have no right as Americans to decry the seal hunt when there is "the daily massacre of innocent people in Iraq, the execution of prisoners – mainly blacks – in American prisons, the massive sale of handguns to Americans, the destabilization of the entire world by the American government's aggressive foreign policy, etc."
This brings up two points. One, what the hell is a senator doing saying things she obviously knows nothing about. I live in the United States but I was born and raised in Canada. I've been here long enough to know that there aren't any massacres of innocent people in Iraq (I'm not saying the war is right, I'm just saying that many of the deaths are not civilian but military). I know that the death penalty is applied to whites as well as blacks (the good Senator might want to look a prison stats and find out what percentage of the prison population is black and compare those numbers instead). I know that there are a lot of gun sales in the US but come on Senator, it's written in the constitution. The United States doesn't go around telling Canada that it should allow certain things it bans. And what the hell is she saying about destabilization of the entire world. Ummm...excuse me but if there is any destabilization it is in the middle east. I think, while the US government isn't perfect, that it has actually kept the world together, with things like taking the war out of the west and keeping where it belongs with the people who started this whole thing. You want someone to blame Senator, blame the exteremist muslims who think that it's their way or no way. Blame the extremeists who are raising a fuss over a cartoon because it shows their "holy" prophet (that's another subject for another time, someone remind me to write on that). Destabilization of the world, I don't think it has anything to do with American foreign policy but hey, that's just my opinion. Thanks.

Payola Strikes Again

ABC News is reporting that the United States Federal Communications Commision (FCC) is investigating "100's of radio stations" for something called payola. As defined by the ABC website payola is "pay for play". This means that every time a station plays a song they get paid for it, it's an incentive for stations to give more playes to a particular artist than others. This may or may not be serious, however, the FCC seems to be taking it very seriously. The FCC rules say that payola puts station licenses in jeoprady. You can read more at ABCNews.com. This could get interesting.

Follow Up to Superbowl XL

Wow, someone actually read my blog and posted a comment, I'm amazed. Ok, so I want to just clear the air about a few things. Jim (my one reader and commenter) raised some points that I won't dispute but I'm not in entire agreement with. I have a question as a referee, do you believe it is possible to see the football cross the plane of the goal line by 1/4 of an inch? Heck, you think you can tell from a full inch? This is why we have goal reveiw, and again I agree with the call after the review, I just don't think the ref on the field should have made the touchdown call at all. With regards to the offensive pass interferece, my thanks to Jim for explaining the rule more clearly to me. I still do not believe that the Steelers performance was impeded upon however, I don't have a DVR or TiVo so I can't go back and look at the play for the 25th time. I won't go into the holding again because I already have said that Al Michaels and John Madden said there was no hold, I think I'll differ to their call. In my opinion every call that could have been made against Seattle was made, the Steelers did not play a perfect game, in fact they played terrible, they got lucky, with the help of the officials and one interecption, check out Sports Illustrated's report card on the game if you don't believe me. You can't tell me there wasn't a time when the Steelers had a penatly and they didn't get called for it. The offensive pass interference play could have easily been forward pass interference as the defender was grabbing at the reciever the whole entire time (ok, granted this is part of the game but if your going to make stupid calls please make them all stupid). Ok, that's it, I've said my piece two times now, and Jim, I do thank you very much for posting a comment to the blog and I hope that even though you and I do not agree on this particular thing that you continue to vist my blog and post about issues that you find relavent. To the rest of you, ttfn.

Seahawks Lose Superbowl

Ok, I know my blog is like the 4 millionth time you've read about Superbowl XL. I have two words to say and then I will justify them. BAD OFFICIATING! Now, in the interest of fairness, I am, for the purposes of this article, a Seahawks fan (normally, I cheer for Green Bay but I live in the Northwest so I cheer for the Hawks if they do better). I can name 3 major calls that either stole potential points from the Seahawks or were just bad calls. I'll start with the biggest.
Rothinsberger touchdown - I agree with the call that the referee made upon reviewing the tape. However, I don't believe he should have had to review a call at all. The call on the field was incorrect. Steeler gain of 7 points (Seattle loss of 7).
Seattle Offensive Pass Interference - What interference? Oh, I'm turning away from you, I need to turn and your the convient way to do it, but I'm going to get a penalty. Oh, and did I mention that the Steeler player campaigned for the call. I'm sorry, you don't ever, I MEAN EVER do something because a player asks, you're the ref not the players. I've been a ref before (in soccer, but it's the same deal) no matter how many players badger you stick to your guns (Loss of 7 points no matter how you look at it).
Seattle Holding after making it to the 2 yd line - Again, What hold? Heck, even John Madden didn't think there was a hold on that play. (Net loss of 7 potential yards).
Some more minor calls like the Hasselback block after his interception throw (not a penalty). I'm sorry, maybe it's because I'm a fan but this was the absolute worst officiating I have ever seen in the NFL, heck in any sport (ok, maybe not any sport, figure skating and some soccer). But I'm not bitter, ask me in about 3 weeks after the Olympics, I might be bitter then, it will depend on how many medals Team Canada can pull off. Later.

Warned and Data

I warned you I would be busy. Anyways, I was just sitting here at work, thinking about the fact that I haven't posted in forever. For those of you who have been waiting for the past couple months to find out just how much stuff there was in the back of my brothers pick-up, well it was about 2000 lbs. of coffee materials (everything from syrup to beans and even some machines I think). You can see the original post here. There now you can quit worrying about it. Congradulations to the Edmonton Eskimos for winning the Canadian Football League Grey Cup last weekend in a nail-biter over Montreal 38-35. Later

No more Blackberry?

No more Blackberry? No, not the fruit the phone. I may not have one but I want one. Apparently there is the possiblity of legal action against the Canadian company that makes the Blackberry. You can read more about it here. Later

Sorry and Story

Ok, I know I'm terrible at updating this thing right now. I hope to find some time to update again over US Thanksgiving break. Really that's when I'll have time to post again after I finish my 4 papers in 4 weeks (two of which are research and aproximately 20 pages of written work on my part). But that's neither here nor there. I will still continue to post stories when I can, but they may have to speak for themselves. The CBC is reporting that Canadians have joined the Iraq insurgency. As if the United States needed more problems. Know that these Canadians are acting outside of the government. These are not Canadian soldiers, as I first thought when I read the headline. For the story click here.

NHL update

Ok, so I've been very bad. I know over a week ago I promised a story on marijuana and an NHL update. I thought I was going to have more time. Well, school got the better of me and I'm not going to get to the marijuana article for a while. I will let you know when I'm going to get there.

So, let's talk Hockey! Last night was the official start of the NHL season. All 30 NHL teams played. The big ones for me of course were the Canadian games. Toronto and Ottawa tangled and had the distinct honor of having the first regular season shoot-out. Ottawa tied the game late in the 3rd period and won the game in the shootout by having Dominic Hasek stop Toronto's attempts to score. Final score 3-2. Calgary and Minnesota played and because I'm sitting in class and don't really care whether Calgary wins or loses when it comes to Hockey, but they lost 6-3. Vancouver and Pheonix played, Wayne Gretzky made his coaching debut. Unfortunately for him, his team didn't do so well. Vancouver over Pheonix 3-2. Now for the game I really care about. Edmonton Oilers and Colorado Avalance, playing in Edmonton and the puck dropped at 8:30 Mountain time. Hockey was finally back in Edmonton and all the fans were pumped and ready. They left happy. Four goals in the first eight minutes had many thinking that it would be a scoring mess. But after the first eight minutes the goals stopped for a little while. With a whole new slew of enforcement rules and a much larger (4 ft wider than 2 years ago) penalties weren't exactly rampent but there were a lot of new rules calls. For more information on the new rules and more info on daily happenings of the NHL you can check out either TSN.ca or NHL.com (powered by MSN). Hockey is finally back! Yes, I know I left out Montreal, they beat Boston 2-1.

P.S. Really I promise I'll tell you how much stuff is in the back of my brothers truck. I forgot so I have to ask him, I'll try to remember tonight.

Really, I promise

Ok, so I didn't get done what I said I would get done. School has been a little busy, with mid-terms and all, I hope to find some time this weekend to get caught up on some posting. Keep on stopping by, I will post real soon, maybe I'll work on it class tonight and post it yet this evening. Later.

Coming this week!

I'm working on a couple of stories for this week. One will be on marijuana. Another will be my NHL calls as the season finally approaches. And we'll see what else comes up.