Unpredictable. Unfocused. Just like life.

Let's see what this says:

Opposition MPs accused the minority Conservative government of anti-democratic practices Thursday as they foiled a sudden government bid for Commons committee passage of a bill subjecting the Indian Act to the federal human rights code.

Waita minute. The Canadian federal government is being anti-democratic because they want to give human rights to aboriginals.

The best line:

"Human rights rammed down a community's throats are not human rights," Anita Neville, Liberal aboriginal affairs critic, said during the hearing. "I think it is imperative that we get it right."

I thought human rights were sacrosanct.What is there to get right?

Tip of the hat to Fighting for Taxpayers.

Whenever I am driving down the street or walking through a mall and see someone chatting on their mobile phone I wonder how we ever survived before they existed.

I seem people talking constantly on their mobile phones. Is it possible that people have that much more to say to each other that we did all those years ago?

For years now nobody has called either of my sons on our home phone. It is always their cell phones, their lifelines to the world. And more frequently they are texting back and forth, lives lived and plans made in 170 character chunks. Who could have foreseen this?

Back when I was a kid we didn't even have voice mail or call display. You had to run to the ringing phone, and you probably only had one in the house. If you missed it you didn't have any idea who had called or what they wanted. If they really wanted to talk to you they called back.

Of course you couldn't screen your calls. But there really wasn't that much telemarketing either.

Now if I see a number on my call display that I don't recognize, I just don't answer. I let it go to voice mail, which is no problem really, because telemarketers don't leave messages. They just call back incessantly, but of course I don't answer, so it becomes a cycle of them wasting their time for nothing.

Textually.org notes that SMS will fall by the wayside as people get email access on their mobile phones:

"... Today there are less than 20 million wireless email users worldwide, but this will grow to 350 million, or 20 per cent of all email accounts, by 2010, Monica Blasso, the firm's research vice-president said.

"Once email becomes available more or less free of charge by default on your mobile handset, people will gravitate to that rather than just continuing to use SMS," Robin Simpson, mobile and wireless research director at Gartner Australasia said."

Great. Then I can be constantly bombarded by spam on my phone too.

Most people go from place to place every day, concentrating on what is in front of them. They don't see anything else but that.

I go for walk for about 45 minutes every evening. I spend a lot of time looking around, and especially up. No matter how monotonous my route might be, the sky is different every day.

From time to time change is good. Look around. Look up.

Do something different every day.

Altruism is defined as the principle or practice of unselfish concern for or devotion to the welfare of others.

In discussing this with a friend the other day I argued that true altruism doesn't exist. I should mention here that I am a fan of Ayn Rand and she would argue that humans operate basically out of selfishness (which she describes as a positive trait).

The other day I did something nice for someone. I did it anonymously. But the truth is that it made me feel really good. And that was my point; since I felt good, then it couldn't be "unselfish concern or devotion".

I think that people care about each other, but they do so because it makes them feel good to do so. That isn't altruism.

I've seen posts from Steve Pavlina before, but I finally subscribed to him. His thoughts are incredibly insightful and consistently well written that they are a joy to read. Things like this:

Several years ago, I’d have viewed such purchases as extravagant, wasteful, or imprudent. But I started asking questions that led me to some new insights. How could anyone possibly justify spending $10,000 a night for a hotel room? What kind of person would pay $100,000 for a car? Who’d be crazy enough to spend $200 on a dinner? Are such people completely nuts, throwing away good money just to show off? Don’t they realize that if they bought a cheaper but still adequate car they could use the rest to put a few kids through college? And what kind of person eats $200 in a single meal?

I eventually saw that these questions were a function of scarcity thinking. I call it the “outrage script.” Have you ever run the outrage script?

[...]

You won’t often see abundance-minded people running the outrage script. Instead you’re more likely to see them running the gratitude script. That script looks something like this: Isn’t it wonderful that certain people are generating so much value — and so efficiently — that they can easily afford to pay $10,000 for a hotel room, thereby helping to create new jobs and keep money flowing through the hard-working service industry? Isn’t it great that people can afford a $100,000 car in order to fund new innovations that could benefit us all? Is it outstanding that people can buy a $200 dinner, encouraging the best chefs to create new culinary delights and to help the wait staff support their families? While it would be unusual for someone to phrase their questions like this, the common element is that they recognize that spending money is itself an act of contribution because spending is giving.

Years ago I learned that it makes sense to buy the best that you can afford, even if it means scrimping a little in other areas. As Steve notes, these things tend to last longer, saving you time in the long run. But the $200 you spend on dinner lets the restaurant owner pay his or her employees well, which lets them contribute to the local economy. The owner may also support things like local youth sports teams, which contributes to the community.

The money you speng flows back to you in so many different ways, often improving not only your life, but also the lives of others in your community.And that is after you already got your money's worth from your purchase.

Joost has revealed that it has one million users signed up. That's impressive, but I wonder how many people are actually using the service.

I've been one of those users for some time now. It is neat to play with for a while, but the choice of shows is so limited that it gets old pretty fast. The technology is very slick and works very well, but a lot more content is needed to make me want to use it more.

Josh Bernoff doesn't like the term "user":

Nobody talks about users of dishwashers, or users of retail stores, or users of telephones. So why are we talking about "users" of computers, browsers, and software?

Try, just for a day, to stop using this word. You'll be amazed at how differently you think about the world.

I agree. But I must point out that the term "user" is also used to describe someone who is addicted to something. If you can't live without the web, email, or your BlackBerry, perhaps "user" is indeed the correct term.

According to surveys, kids don't think about technology - they just use it - as they would a telephone or anything else:

While young people embrace the Web with real or virtual friends and their cell phone is never far away, relatively few like technology and those that do tend to be in Brazil, India and China, according to a survey.

Only a handful think of technology as a concept, and just 16 percent use terms like "social networking," said two combined surveys covering 8- to 24-year-olds published on Tuesday by Microsoft and Viacom units MTV Networks and Nickelodeon.

"Young people don't see "tech" as a separate entity - it's an organic part of their lives," said Andrew Davidson, vice president of MTV's VBS International Insight unit.

I'm an adult. I use Facebook, but I would never call it social networking either. But nobody surveyed me.

My kids grew up on the internet, so they use technologies like instant messaging just as I would have used a phone twenty years ago, but that just makes sense. As it becomes a part of their lives they don't name it; they just use it.

We've gone from VHS tapes, to DVDs, to shows on TiVo, to video stored on a network server. Yet I have always just asked the kids if they want to watch a movie. The underlying technology is inconsequential. The same goes for music. Regardless of the storage mechanism we still listen to songs, rather than CDs, or iPods, or last.fm.

Analysts and marketersfeel the need to name things. As do Microsoft and Viacom, the survey sponsors. The average person just uses the technology to do what they want to do.

Nobody buys digital audio storage and playback devices. They buy iPods - 1000 songs in their pocket.

It's sad when spam and phishing is so common that the perpetrators don't even make much of an effort anymore. I've seen emails purportedly from Paypal that look so real that I actually have to look twice. Then I receive something like this:

Once you have updated your account records, your PayPal session will not be interrupted and will continue as normal.

To update your PayPal records click on the following link:
http://0xc33ae465/icons/LOGIN/update/online/

Seriously folks, at least take the time to throw a logo on the page and to make the URL at least look plausible.Otherwise you're just wasting bandwidth unnecessarily. Nobody is going to click on that.

Ever have the feeling you've met someone before? ("Have we not met before?" - see movie Top Secret!)

Perhaps it is just the future leaking into the present:

You can tell a lot about a subject by who its muses and mascots are. Neuroscience has philosophers who wax profound about the mind, geology has intrepid explorers and subatomic physics has ... Alice in Wonderland. "Curiouser and curiouser," as Alice said, also describes the subatomic, or quantum, world. With age, this centenarian (quantum physics is 107 years old) has gotten more bizarre. "The surprises keep coming," says physicist David Albert of Columbia University. None is greater than finding loopholes in the hallowed uncertainty principle—and, even more outlandishly, seeing hints that the future may leak into the present.

Lately the city in which I live, along with others, have considered the issue of having city vehicles display "Support Our Troops" stickers. Locally they are ok with it.

Several people though have suggested that "Support Our Troops" actually means "Support The War":

Recent history suggests then, that "Support Our Troops" means support the war effort.

Another question raised by the use of this slogan is, what are the implications of its use regarding public policy?

Again, one needs only to look at recent uses of the slogan, by governments, as a tool for propaganda. In the U.S., the slogan has been a rallying cry for the support-the-war-movement and has stifled any opposition to the policy of aggression. People who might stand up and question the rationality of a military solution are easily silenced by being labelled "undemocratic" or "unpatriotic" for not getting behind the banner.

Does anyone other than defence contractors actually support war? I believe that any rational person would rather have peace than war, though there may be instances in which war is the only way to accomplish a stated goal such as fighting terrorism.

Canada fought in World War I and World War II because they thought it was the right thing to do. That seems also to be the case with the NATO-led war in Afghanistan. I'm sure that everybody would like to reach the fastest and safest possible conclusion to that war.

When I hear "Support Our Troops" I think of supporting the work and the safe return of troops from that war. I certainly don't think of "supporting the war". As I'm sure most people do.

An 11-year old boy was killed in the crossfire of gang violence in Toronto, Canada, this past weekend. Predictably, this has led to yet more calls for a handgun ban:

Ontario announced Monday it's increasing the number of prosecutors and police officers devoted to gun crimes and gang violence.

Attorney General Michael Bryant, who made the announcement, also called on Ottawa to do their part to prevent gun crime by banning handguns, or at least taking action to close loopholes in gun regulations.

"There's a lot we can do on gun crime, but make no mistake about it -- if there's no gun, then there is no funeral," Bryant told CTV Newsnet.

An effective handgun ban depends on people obeying it. Unfortunately, as the Canadian Taxpayers Federation notes, criminals have a nasty habit of ignoring the law, given that they are criminals and all:

We could ban hand guns, all blunt objects, and anything that could be used as a weapon and guess what? The only guns that would be left would be the ones "owned" by criminals...

Violence like this is horrible, but there is no point in pretending that a law banning handguns will be any more effective than the existing laws banning using them, or any other weapon, to kill each other.

Mark Evans asks, among other things, why remote controls have become so painfully complex:

Since the first remote control probably appeared in the 1950s, they have become increasingly more complicated as opposed to easier to use. These days, you need an engineering degree just to figure out how to power up the TV, let alone control the DVD, digital box, Slingbox, etc.

The funny thing is the remote control industry believes the solution is simply adding more technology! The way they see it, it’s a matter of giving you a remote control that, in theory, can automatically connect with all your devices (assuming they aren’t a decade old). Of course, you then have to read through the entire manual to figure out how to control your devices once the remote control does its set-up thing. Sometimes, I yearn for the days when the remote control was just a box with about 20 buttons on it and a shifter that gave you ability to browse through 60 channels in no time at all.

I bought one of the very first remote control devices, a Sony receiver, in 1984. Twenty four years later there are absolutely no standards for remote controls. Every device and manufacturer uses a different set of codes, meaning that universal remote controls must know all of the possible combinations, and the user is forced to tell it what specific devices they are using it with.

Why is there no standard signal for functions like Play or Stop, or any of the other functions? There aren't that many choices really. Why must every manufacturer use a different set?

When I want to play a DVD I have to turn on my TV, home theater receiver, and DVD player. They I need to set the TV and the receiver to the correct input. Then I have to press Play on the DVD player. Of course my TiVo remote does not talk to my receiver and DVD player. And my Panasonic home theater is not supported by most universal remotes. So it currently required three separate remote controls to accomplish this task. It is honestly faster to walk tup to the TV and do it, given that I am there inserting the DVD anyway.

A standardized set of codes would let me work with any device. How long can it possibly take to standardize this sort of thing?

I can't imagine that different codes provide any kind of competitive benefit for the manufacturers of these devices. So why not make life easier for the customer?

Not that it really needs defending, but Om Malik notes that even if the iPhone sales didn't meet analyst projections for June, it is still pretty impressive:

Not be Apple’s defense team, which product (not particularly a great one) that carries a $2000 price tag (over two years) sold 146,000 units in 1.25 days (mind you Friday sales started at 6 pm) bringing in a total of around$292 million. Over a period of 30 hours (including night time) equates to 4867 iPhone activations per hour or 82 activations per second.

And Steve Ballmer said it wouldn't sell:

Steve Ballmer says, "There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance."

Perhaps he meant to say Zune.

I'm sitting on my front porch as I compose this. Summer, my favorite time of the year, is as usual speeding by. But it is peaceful tonight. Just the sound of an air conditioner running, the odd dog barking, and some kids riding by on their bikes. If only it could always be this pleasant.

For some time now I've been trying to figure out what to do with my life. I've been writing some software, but I've also just been writing. I just can't figure out what it is that I enjoy the most. And they say that you should do what you love, don't they?

When you're a kid the world seems so full of promise. Then time goes by and it seems that there are so few options. I have never felt that way though. There I so many things that I could do, and would enjoy doing. I'm just trying to decide which would be the most fun.

But for tonight I'm just going to enjoy the onset of evening on such a still night.

I have a friend I've know for a while. She lives around the corner from me and I see her occasionally at the coffee shop I frequent in the morning. A couple of months ago I met her husband when they were sitting down the bar from me at a nearby restaurant.

Since then I see these people everywhere. If my wife and I go out to breakfast or dinner, they're there. I go to the liquor store and there they are. We bump into them frequently. Is this just some strange coincidence?

Now she tells me that her daughters see me all the time, even though I don't notice them.

I've long knownabout the reticular activating system that limits what you are conscious of so that you aren't overwhelmed. For example, once you buy a Toyota, you might start to notice more Toyotas on the road because you are now aware of them.

I wonder if that works for people too. Perhaps I've been bumping into these people all the time and just didn't notice, but now that I know them I am aware of it.

Now I wonder what else I've been missing.

The use of Microsoft Vista is apparently growing, while Mac OS X is staying flat:

Windows Vista's share of online users has increased every month this year, while rival Mac OS X -- to which Vista has often been compared -- has shown little, if any, growth, a metrics company reports.

According to Net Applications, in June Windows Vista accounted for 4.52% of all systems that browsed the Web, up from January's 0.18%. Vista has grown its usage share each month since its release to consumers Jan. 30, hitting 0.93% in February, 2.04% in March, 3.02% in April and 3.74% in May. Apple Inc.'s Mac OS X, meanwhile, accounted for 6.22% in January and hit its high point of 6.46% in May, but it slipped back to 6% in June.

Now who couldn't see that one coming?

About 95% of all computers are Windows-based, and about 5% are Mac-based. So for every Mac sold there are about 19 PCs sold. And if you are buying a Windows-based computer your have no choice but to buy Vista. So if you are buying a new PC you will get Vista whether you like it or not. In fact, you might even buy Vista to run on your Intel-based Mac.

So Vista has nowhere to go but up.

Perfect timing doesn't exist. Stop waiting for it:

Most often, they’re just making excuses — creating obstacles that aren’t actually there, placing the blame on some outside force they can’t control, and choosing to let day after day of inaction turn into many years of waiting for their cosmos to align.

In other words, they stay where they’re comfortable until it’s the perfect time to move on.

Read the whole thing.

I just tried to download a Microsoft Word template from Microsoft's web site. Using both Camino and Firefox on my Macbook I was told that I would have to enable cookies. They are, but that didn't seem to matter. When I tried to go ahead I received this warning:

To automatically download templates, you need to upgrade your operating system:

Run Microsoft Windows® 2000 (Service Pack 3) or any later version of Microsoft Windows. Please note that Microsoft Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows ME do not meet the requirements for downloading Office Online templates.

And at the bottom of the page I saw this:

Warning: The Templates Web site and its contents have been tested with Microsoft Windows operating systems, specifically with Microsoft Windows 2000 and Microsoft Windows XP. If you are using another operating system, you may get unexpected results.

Now there is a suggestion below for Mac users, but what about that other Microsoft OS? Vista, remember? Or don't they support that?

Daimnation quoted this Ottawa Citizen article regarding the daily food allowance for residents of long term care facilities in Ontario:

Never let it be said that Ontario's Liberal government doesn't care about the elderly. Earlier this month, the province increased the daily food allowance for people in long-term care by 11 cents. That's right, a dime and a penny. That means the nursing home your mother is in now has $5.57 cents a day to feed her.

How could anyone provide three nutritious meals for so little, you might ask. Not surprisingly, the long-term care homes can't. The daily amount should actually be $7, the Dietitians of Canada say. The dietitians told the provincial government that last year, but it didn't act.

Even at $7 a day, the province's nursing homes would be stretching to provide three main meals, three snacks and drinks.

Now I'm no happier with the Ontario Liberal government, but until recently my wife was the cook at a daycare and she pointed out that numbers like that were not all that far off. At first glance $5.57 looks like an embarassing number, but in fact, $5.57 is 80% of the recommended $7.

My wife spent about $350 per week on food, or about $70 per day to feed a hot meal, two snacks, and drinks to about 75 children.That's about 93 cents a day. She suggested that seniors wouldn't eat that much more than active children so the numbers would be similar. Providing three full mails, three snacks and drinks should still be possible for around $5. And the food she bought was all health-conscious with a menu approved by a nutritionist so she wasn't cutting corners. Meals included chicken, beef, turkey, liver, and fish, all bought fresh every week.

The article itself suggests how small the numbers are after it paints the scary picture:

The extra money would let the nursing homes feed their 75,000 residents such things as one scrambled egg and one sausage link for breakfast (34 cents) or a banana at lunch (29 cents). At dinner, a baked potato and sour cream (27 cents) would be possible and a tuna sandwich would be affordable for an evening snack (34 cents). We're not talking filet mignon and lobster here.

It is difficult for the average person to understand what the numbers really mean when articles like this are all they have to go by.

I'm halfway through reading Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand so this post by Kathy Shaidle was unusually timely:

"People seem to believe that, if you've been successful and made a lot of money, you're somehow obliged to give back by making donations to this or that cause, program or people. Giving back is not only a nonsensical idea but a dangerous one, as well. It reflects ignorance about the sources of income and at the same time provides fuel for demagogues and charlatans (...)

"In our society, there are people who should give back. These are the thieves and social parasites who live forcibly at the expense of others. They prey on their fellow man. Some do it privately through theft, fraud and robbery. Others use the political mechanism whereby Congress enriches them at the expense of others. If giving back means anything, it should apply to thieves and social parasites, not those who became wealthy by serving us."

She even quotes Adam Smith, author of The Wealth of Nations:

"It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest."

As Kathy suggests, the idea of "fair prices" is meaningless. The only fair thing is to trade value for value.

David Miller's quote is especially interesting:

...despite being a successful and savvy businessman, his motives were always about more than the bottom line. His philosophy was to keep prices reasonable so everyone could afford to shop at his store.

Ensuring that everyone can shop at your store is all about the bottom line. The more people shop there the more money you make.

What I want to know is, if Ed Mirvish's fair prices make him a hero, then why do Wal-Mart's low prices, and the fact that it forces the competition to lower their prices make it evil?

I was sitting this morning having a cup of tea thinking about what I wanted. So I asked Google, and of course it had an answer for me. It just goes to show that Google knows everything, even if you don't.

Perhaps Google actually knows better than we do.

I've read the book The Secret by Rhonda Byrne. And I just finished reading The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale, written about half a century ago.

Out at dinner with a few friend and happened to mention that, and one friend looked at me and said that The Secret was really just The Power of Positive Thinking rewritten.

Sure enough, if you subtract the religion, and add some quotes from current popular folks like Jack Canfield, that pretty much accurate. And there is no shortage of books or people saying pretty much the same think, from people like Napoleon Hill on to Ralph Waldo Emerson.

It just goes to show that you can repackage a good idea and it will sell, but that doesn't necessarily mean that is is a new idea.

I decided to wash my ceramic floor at midnight last night. So what surprises you more - that I was doing it at midnight, or that I washed the floor myself?

There was a brand new sponge mop in the closet so I decided to use it, remembering my mom using a similar mop years ago. I had probably done about 10-15% of the floor when the sponge actually started to separate from the base - on its first use! And I noticed that the wringer handle was just cheap plastic that would flex and break if I pushed too hard.

I did manage to finish the job with the sponge mop, but it's probably destined for the trash. Sadly, I can recall a time when products were built to last. When folks talk about saving the environment they rarely mention the whole aspect of products that are built to be used and thrown away, which must be a huge contributor to the damage we do to the environment.

I'm going back to my string mop. Nothing to break or replace, and it just works perfectly every time.

Yes it is the seventh day of the seventh month of 2007. For some reason I can also clearly remember 7/7/77 - the seventh day of the seventh month of 1977.

I'm sure there is some cosmic significance to such dates, though it escapes me right now. But I guess it's a good a day as any to buy a lottery ticket.

From Wizbang:

Rock group Arctic Monkeys have become the latest music industry stars to question whether the performers taking part in Live Earth on Saturday are suitable climate change activists.

"It's a bit patronising for us 21 year olds to try to start to change the world," said Arctic Monkeys drummer Matt Helders, explaining why the group is not on the bill at any of Al Gore's charity concerts.

"Especially when we're using enough power for 10 houses just for (stage) lighting. It'd be a bit hypocritical," he told AFP in an interview before a concert in Paris.

Bass player Nick O'Malley chimes in: "And we're always jetting off on aeroplanes!"

Large parts of the band's hometown of Sheffield were flooded at the end of last month after a deluge of mid-summer rain that some blamed on global warming. Two people were killed.

But the band wonder why anyone would be interested in the opinion of rock stars on a complex scientific issue like climate change.

"Someone asked us to give a quote about what was happening in Sheffield and it's like 'who cares what we think about what's happening'?" added Helders.

"There's more important people who can have an opinion. Why does it make us have an opinion because we're in a band?"

Marc Andreessen explains in a nutshell how to retain great people, and perhaps why you company can't:

Companies that are winning -- even really big, old ones -- never have a retention problem. Everyone wants to stay, and when someone does leave, it's really easy to get someone great to take her place.

Companies that have a retention problem usually have a winning problem. Or rather, a "not winning" problem.

[...]

All the raises, perks, and HR-sponsored "company values" drafting sessions in the world won't help you retain great people if you're not winning -- not even the $6,000 heated Japanese toilets in all the restrooms, the $30,000 Olympic lap pool out back, and the free $4 bottles of organic orange juice in all the snack rooms.

He also addresses my absolute favorite company solution to the "not winning" problem - creating a group focused on innovation:

Don't create a new group or organization within your company whose job is "innovation". This takes various forms, but it happens reasonably often when a big company gets into product trouble, and it's hugely damaging.

Here's why:

First, you send the terrible message to the rest of the organization that they're not supposed to innovate.

Second, you send the terrible message to the rest of the organization that you think they're the B team.

That's a one-two punch that will seriously screw things up.

And then of course there are the companies who aren't winningand really don't care about retaining staff, because it's the staff's fault they aren't winning, right? Those are the companies you should run from, as fast as you can.

I commented yesterday that even with a few problems, the iPhone activation situation was still pretty successful. It now appears that AT&T has activated over a million iPhones since the launch last Friday, June 29th:

According to reports leaked to waitingforiphone.com, ATT Mobility has fulfilled over 1 million iPhone activations since the device was launched in the US on June 29th. This news comes from a full-time staffer in ATT Mobilty’s Commerce Group who chose to remain anonymous. Wall Street analysists have placed initial iPhone sales between 500,000 - 750,000 units. First week sales of over 1 million would cement the iPhone as Apple’s fastest selling new product, and one of the hottest new technology gadgets in history.

Regardless of the problems, the launch of over a million devices - hardware than didn't even exist a week ago- is pretty impressive.

Productmarketing highlights the downside of this weekend's iPhone activation onslaught:

The consumer tech world went crazy this week with the introduction of Apple's iPhone. Alas, AT&T dropped the ball on activation... as most cynics anticipated. It seems everyone including CNN reported on AT&T's problems. Thousands blogged on it including Declan McCullagh who complained:

I spent innumerable hours on hold over the weekend trying to get AT&T to actually activate the iPhone I bought on Friday evening. They finally did on Sunday, after 39 hours elapsed.

AT&T's iPhone activations certainly had some issues, but most of the reports I saw noted activation times of 5-8 minutes. Given that this is probably the biggest single activation event any mobile carrier has ever had to deal with, I would probably be pretty pleased as well.

Productmarketing's suggestion that a market-driven vendor would understand and acknowledge the problem and speak to a solution is excellent in theory, but in this practical situation a solution was not likely to pop up within that 40 hour window, so there was probably little more they could do in some cases other than wait out the problem.

In any situation, problems will occur. I would like to think that AT&T was at least gracious to customers experiencing these kind of difficulties. But even though this demand was anticipated, a worst case turnaround of 40 hours on a weekend for an extreme case isn't all that bad.

In commenting on Canadian cultural policy, Michael Geist makes this curious statement (emphasis mine):

Given our easy access to Hollywood movies and U.S. television programming, it is unsurprising that Canadians have long placed great emphasis on cultural policies. To avoid marginalizing homegrown talent, Canada has set Canadian content as a key objective in the Broadcasting Act, established foreign ownership restrictions within the cultural industries, and safeguarded cultural policies in its international trade agreements.

Now I'm willing to bet that the average Canadian neither supports nor even has a clue about Canadian cultural policy. In fact, Hockey Night in Canada is probably one of the highlights of Canadian culture on television. While there is some excellent Canadian programming - Corner Gas comes to mind - much Canadian funding goes to producing shows like Zoe Busiek, a mediocre television drama, or movies that few watch but regularly show up in the mornings on The Movie Network on cable.

Canada's cultural policy is not the work or even the concern of average Canadians but seems instead intended to subvert market forces by forcing stations to play a certain amount of Canadian content. Popular bands like Rush, Sarah McLachlan, or Avril Lavigne would likely have become just as popular without such content mandates.

In many ways these cultural policies seem a way to support content that simply wouldn't be produced otherwise, because nobody would be interested and it wouldn't sell. No average Canadian wants this. And few average Canadians are aware of what is supported by television funding and would probably be astounded at the waste if they were.

It's a simple as this: What Canadian really wants to watch the Super Bowl with recycled Canadian advertising substituted for possibly the most innovative commercials of the year?

And why is it that it is illegal to subscribe to an American service like DirecTV? If Canadians didn't want American television, then it certainly wouldn't be necessary to pass a law to make it a crime for them to subscribe to an American service.

Canadian cultural policy is simply a way for the government to protect the business models of Canadian artists and broadcasters. It does nothing for, and has nothing to do with the average Canadian.

Seth Godin got a lot of feedback regarding a post he wrote about how to better organize the retail environment to increase profit:

The most fascinating takeaway for me is this: many retailers believe that they still have the power to inconvenience shoppers as a way of increasing revenue. "Too many stores in that mall," in my opinion, for me to stay with you if it's easier and more fun to go over there instead.

In Canada there are two - yes just two - supermarket chains. These stores frequently drop items from their inventory and reorganize products into different locations. I've seen this happen as frequently as twice in one week. Clearly they are doing this to push customers toward other product areas that they may not normally see. And they can do this with impunity because they have so little competition.

However this leads me, and probably many other customers, to bother staff to ask where the items have moved to. And the staff are clearly bothered by this shifting as well, and have no problem telling me so.

So in the end, I buy nothing I wouldn't otherwise be buying, I waste staff time, and both they and I are inconvenienced. So nobody wins, and I walk away having had a poor experience. The stores certainly have the power to inconvenience me, but I sure as heck am not going to help them increase their revenue. In fact, I just shop frequently enough so that I can limit my purchases to sale items only, decreasing their revenue even further.

All I want is to be able to find a product in the same place I found it yesterday.

I'm in Canada and it is raining, but my flag is still proudly waving outside my office window.

Happy 4th of July!

Kent Newsome, perhaps speaking from all too familiar experience, elegantly describes the five stages of blogging:

If you believe, as I do, that the blogosphere ought to be about conversation and sharing information, as opposed to merely a new manner of media distribution and/or prospecting for gold, then you should be concerned about the high attrition rate in the blogosphere. If you want to have conversation, then there must be others to converse with. Encouraging new bloggers and promoting blogging as a means of communication is in the best interest of all legitimate bloggers, from the top of the A-List to the very bottom of blogger's hill.

I'm not sure where I am, but I suppose many bloggers would fall into Stage 3: Frustration. That's the point at which you may begin to believe that your blog is really just you talking to yourself. Which is fine by me because I really started blogging as a way of bookmarking and remembering things that interested me.

Realistically though, very few bloggers will make it to the A-list, and for all the talk, those bloggers guard links fairly jealously. True discussion doesn't really happen probably because blogs don't lend themselves well to it.

Blogging only remains enjoyable if it is something you do for yourself.Like any task, if you get into it just for the money and fame then you will probably be disappointed.