More Crawford

Courtesy of the Globe and Mail:

'...she led almost from start to finish, qualifying eighth in the time trial, and then winning her heat, semi-final and the final by comfortable margins, humbling a field that included the best women's cross country skiers in the world..."I laughed for most of the medal ceremony until O Canada started," she said. "And then I did some really nice singing."...'


Courtesy of the Toronto Star:

"Crawford was funny, irreverent and charming, laughing the whole time she was on the podium, except when "O Canada" was played and she belted it out with all her heart. She drew an ovation from the assembled journalists at the end of her news conference for her fresh enthusiasm and witty responses, her father Glen recording the proceedings on a video camera."

Favourite Olympic Moment

I wasn't expecting to watch the Olympics alot, particularly with my thesis looming; but the Olympics always finds a way to suck me in.

Today was in general a good day for Canada. Cindy Klassen and Kristina Groves won gold and silver in the 1500m long-track speed skating and a team of short-track speed skaters won silver in the 3000m relay. Unfortunately, Team Canada was disappointingly eliminated from Men's Hockey with a poor performance.

Now, Canada won an additional medal today (or yesterday, the 22nd) to bring it up to a best of 18 medals for the country.

Chandra Crawford raced in the 1.1 km cross-country skiing sprint competition. Now, this was her first Olympic games, so there was no medal expectation from her. But, she had a game plan that she wanted to execute in each of her races. She'd take the early lead, let someone lead the downhill portion so she could draught off them, then pull away on the uphill into the final lanes in front of the stands. This got her into the finals with fellow Canadian Beckie Scott, a medal contender.

What no one expected was that this plan would work brilliantly in the finals, so much so that she had a full second lead over her competition to take gold!

Now, participating in your first Olympics must be exciting enough. A top-10 finish would probably be a highlight in your life...but to win the gold medal! Needless to say, she was bursting with happiness and joy.

Now this is my favourite 2006 olympic moment: The announcer is going through the script in announcing the medal winner, "Coming in first, winning the gold medal, representing Canada..." and so forth, and you just see Chandra Crawford just itching to pounce on that podium. When they finally announce her name, she's on it, hands raised, full of exuberance, biggest smile in the world and dancing around like she's at her friend's house. It's that naked joy, unrestrained and uninhibited, that I could watch all day long. Congratulations Chandra!

Courtesy CBC

Rapid-fire links

1) Student finds toilet water cleaner than ice at fast food restaurants
(It's another reason why I ask for 'no ice' at any fast-food joint...)

2) Nissan Terranaut: for the richest scientist or the biggest Trekkie fanboy out there...two VERY small niche markets...

3) Global Warming might impact Mackenzie Pipeline: Sierra Club
(Winner of tonight's "Most ironic headline" award, having already been nominated for the "Most ironic project" award)

No place for indecision

I completely cost my intramural volleyball team the game by second-guessing my own judgment and being indecisive. This fence-sitting has to stop.

Wonder no more.

Why must humanity always disappoint me like this? It's with much sadness that I announce that This Is Wonderland is coming to an end after March 15, after two wondeful seasons and into a strong third. The CBC cancelled it, citing the usual "low-ratings" as executioner.

This coming on the heels of the demise of Arrested Development, diminishes the bright spots of the TV landscape further so that we're left with such fine programming as THIS and THIS.

This is Wonderland, the story of public defender Alice Douray and the characters of the Canadian court system, was not only good because of its characterizations of the lawyers and clients, but also because the cases rarely involved high profile murder, extortion, kidnapping, etc. Instead, you're treated to an overburdened justice system dealing with elderly junkies, the mentally ill, a homeless preacher, school bullying, etc. In essence, as real-life cases as you're going to get.

While I can only hope that Season 2 and 3 will be out on DVD (following Season 1) at some point in the future, I don't envision a Family Guy-esque comeback for this show. Like Arrested Development, it was smart, funny, engaging, and killed WAY before its peak. I have no idea what CBC will replace it with. I mean, it's not like there's a plethora of good Canadian drama waiting in the wings.

Who needs to develop our own Canadian drama scene when we can just have more Ron McLean, "Movie Night in Canada," or "Hockeyville," yet another reality TV show. Because, we're all about original programming over at Front St.

More Science

Eden and Evolution: the Intelligent Design debate continues, for reasons beyond my sanity. (The whole class discussion part seems staged to me...)

The Deutsch Factor: Why is ANYTHING that NASA is involved in being considered a religious issue?

No way home

For the first time this week, I felt that Kingston wasn't my home anymore.

I've talked about this previously before, in that seeing friends graduate and depart for local and global destinations made feel a bit nostalgic about good times past and a sense of place and dynamics shifting from what I know.

This week, however, I've definitely sensed as if I've overstayed my welcome, like the times when you're with your friends at the bar and instead of asking you to leave because it's past Last Call, they just start putting up the chairs around you instead.

Everything is a little duller. The buildings are a little bit more faded, the people a faceless sea of collared shirts and cellphones. I can't even bring myself to care about the AMS or Queen's Rector elections anymore. Even Golden Words, a staple of sunshine on Queen's Campus, is less humourous than years past. Kingston and Queen's just seems like a pastiche of what life should be like, but instead, is unimpressive and not amusing.

The last 2.5 years has not gone the way I had expected to go, and perhaps that's been a part of it. It's funny how life throws curveballs at you, and you know it, but you still swing at it and miss. Guess these are signs that it's time to be traded to a new place and try it again (cripes, I've been reduced to baseball metaphors...). The question then is, whether this is it. A cyclical montage of good times and bad, without context or script, until one runs the complete gamut and it starts over again.

Nothing gold can stay, Robert Frost said. I guess neither can I.

God Talk

For various reasons, the topic of God has been prevalent (especially when I was approached by two people today representing Campus Crusade for Christ, unsolicited) and Matt posed a question to me that I had never thought of before...

If God does exist, why does God have to be a benevolent god?

This provoked a series of questions in my head, of which the summary is thus:

If God has a side of benevolence, why not malevolence? If God is infinite, shouldn't God have an infinite array of emotions? Isn't it allowed that God be kind one day, sarcastic the next, bitter and resentful toward's God's creation the day after, etc., etc.?

If God is instead above such...base human emotions, then shouldn't God be above all emotions? If that's the case, then why would God even care what one insigificant creature thinks or acts at any given time on one of billions upon billions of planets? Wouldn't God just be an absentee diety that chooses to intervene if God felt like it?

Not that it matters to me anyways, since I don't believe that God exists. But a God with many emotions, particularly one with a sense of humour, would probably be infinitely more fun.

"Inside an Epic Battle"

This is the title of Paul Well's 35 page, 24 000 word piece for Maclean's about recounting the ups and downs of the Harper and Martin campaign (it's only the beginning few paragraphs) during this recent election. I actually read the whole thing at an Indigo's tonight because I know him to be a good writer and while reading his blog, I wanted to read what he had found while covering their respective campaigns

While I don't think there are any spectacular revelations in store, it certainly portrays an interesting picture of the hard work Stephen Harper had to put in to moderate his views and the views of his party, compose a comprehensive policy platform and effectively deliver this to the Canadian public. On the other hand, the Liberals seem to have coasted through much of the campaign in the expectation that they can scare voters into handing them a victory.

Two particular parts stood out. At one point midway through the campaign, some Liberals remarked that they needed their polling numbers to further sink behind the Conservatives than they had been in the hopes that it'll scare voters back. Wells likened it to satellites or other objects in space skimming dangerously close to the planet's atmosphere before it skips back out into space, aka 'the slingshot effect.' Wells remarked how dangerously dumb this strategy was, and any logical person would agree. This just seems to be a sign that the Liberals had nothing substantive to convince voters why the Liberals should be voted in. It smacks of laziness.

The second point is much more inconsequential. At one point, Wells discusses (I think) Klander's inappropriate remark about comparing Olivia Chow to a chow chow dog. He remarks offhand how this story spread through the blogosphere, particularly through Inkless Wells. If you don't know by now, Inkless Wells is his own blog.

Either way, it was a good read and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the behind-the-scenes shenanigans of an election. I still maintain my guarded optimism about Harper's tenure as PM. A lot of people, including me, will be watching closely.

Here's a different opinion on the piece by Declan. What's more interesting are the comments, particularly Paul Wells' response to Declan's criticisms...

Ummm...I'll be Liberal Party Leader.

So...Frank McKenna, John Manley and Brian Tobin, Liberal heavyweights all, have said that they will not be running for the Liberal leadership. Obviously, that's generated buzz in various circles, a good one being from Paul Wells.

Since no one really wants to be Liberal Leader, I'm more than willing to consider the position. I only have a Master's thesis to work on, I'm sure I can run the party in my spare time when I'm not studying or marking. How about it, Matt, want to throw your hat in or be my Campaign Manager?

On a more serious note, Canadian pundit heavyweights (another bunch of 'em), Wells, Potter, Coyne and Cosh, have started a campaign to convince Stephane Dion to run. This definitely needs some serious consideration by all.