Questions of Society: Imagine if the South won...

A lot of American money. Photo from Flickr/Creative Commons

A woman in Georgia found a million-dollar bill and promptly used it to buy $1700 worth of merchandise at a Wal-Mart. Problem is, the US doesn't have a million dollar bill, and the note in question was purchased in a joke shop by the woman's husband. She thought the bill was real, and is now facing charges of forgery.

Here are my Questions of Society...

1. If you just happen to come across a piece of large currency, which is clearly too much for the government to make, why would you immediately think it's real?

2. Could you not read the whole "void, not legal tender, actual cash value: one-fifth of a cent, Mr. Cashier, do not honour" printed in smaller letters than the ONE MILLION DOLLARS?

3. Even if that was a real million-dollar bill, why would you use it to buy stuff at Wal-Mart?

Whoops! Wrong House.

Just to clear something up, first of all, I don't get any TV channels from Detroit on my digital service (that was explained yesterday, I was watching TV on the analogue connection at work). All of my US stations come from either Boston, Minneapolis-St. Paul, or Seattle. In the off-chance I am actually watching the local news on either of those stations, there are some good stories. Just a few days ago on abc Boston, they reported on this story (posted on their official YouTube channel)




Maybe the homeowner called in a favour to the firemen to install a skylight in his attic. I don't know, I wasn't there.

Stuck in Reverse on a Getaway

A typical manual transmission gear-shifter on what appears to be a real nice car. Photo from Flickr, accessed through Creative Commons

I'm getting an early start today, a huge day is ahead for me. A big 10:00-5:30 show on CKSW 570/CJSN 1490, including my historic first anniversary broadcast of the first time I hosted the Trading Post today at 11:30am. Going through the daily computer routines (weathereye, homepage, e-mail, Yahoo! e-mail, and the feeds) I noticed a rather odd story totally suitable for what I have written so far.

Some car thieves in Georgia tried to steal a Honda Accord, but they were eventually caught because they didn't know how to operate the manual transmission.

Now this is why everybody should learn how to drive a stick. Not for criminal applications, I assure you, but because you never know when you're gonna need it. My uncle once told me that use of a standard should be mandatory in the SGI drivers' education course. I can say that I don't disagree with him.

If you go to buy a car, and the most reasonably priced and/or only vehicles available have standard transmissions, what are you going to do if you don't know how to use it properly?

If you get a job, say in some sort of product transportation, and the delivery vehicle has a stick, I doubt the company's going to give up extra man-hours to train that person, and additional money to pay for any at-fault accidents.

The majority of this province is farm land. Most farm vehicles have manual transmissions. What are you going to do if you're stuck in the middle of the pasture in your John Deere tractor that you can't get out of second gear?

And there are other things that I could think of, but I can't get into because of many reasons I can't name (I think some of them even break those Ten Commandments I mentioned earlier).

I am not afraid to say that I am one of those people. I don't know how to drive a stick, and I honestly hope that I am never forced to do so. I am willing to learn sometime, just make sure I'm in an open area with no other innocent cars around. In the meantime I'll just leave the manual driving to the people who know.

Thou Shalt Not Drive Like a Maniac

A parking lot in the Vatican, photo from Flickr, accessed through Creative Commons

The Vatican released the Guidelines for the Pastoral Care of the Road, which includes the Ten Commandments for motorists to live by.

They are...

I. You shall not kill

II. Thy road shall be for you a means of communion between people and not of mortal harm

III. Courtesy, uprightness and prudence will help you deal with unforeseen events

IV. Be charitable and help your neighbour in need, especially victims of accidents

V. Cars shall not be for you an expression of power and domination, and an occasion of sin

VI. Charitably convince the young and not so young not to drive when they are not in a fitting condition to do so

VII. Support the families of accident victims

VIII. Bring guilty motorists and their victims together, at the appropriate time, so that they can undergo the liberating experience of forgiveness

IX. On the road, protect the more vulnerable party

X. Feel responsible toward others

Now, how many have I broken?

£400,000 went into this?

The logo that will be used for the Games of the XXX Olympiad in London, coming up in 2012


Photo from flickr, accessed through Creative Commons

Created by a branding firm at the price of £400,000 (roughly $843,000 Canadian at the time of publishing)

Looks like a kid drew it. He will be one insanely and undersivingly weathly child if that's the case. This logo should be on some household refrigerator and not plastered throughout Great Britain. Almost a million dollars of public money went to make a picture, when the money could have been better used to prepare the city to host the games. I've never been to London, and as a matter of fact, I would like to go there sometime, but they have a lot of work to do the clean up and maintain the municipality in order to host the biggest multi-sport festival in the world.

I don't need to tell you that large corporations, organizations, and even most cities (mine included), pay large amounts of money to properly brand themselves. But I can tell you, without a doubt, they did not get their money's worth.

Remembering a Good Guy: The Pig Spleen Forecaster

Some sad news today. Gus Wickstrom, the farmer from Tompkins who can accurately predict the weather for half a year by gnawing on a pig's spleen, has passed away last night from pneumonia. His public funeral is at the Tompkins Hall tomorrow afternoon.


CTV Regina reports on it


I have said before that it takes raw talent and, I daresay, guts to do something like this, and the Planet has lost a brilliant and creative man.

I can only say now, he is up there with his juicy pig spleens forecasting the weather in Heaven, where it's fair and sunny every single day.

Edited at 7:49am on June 7, 2007: A report on the memorial service and reaction from the community of Tompkins can be found at southwesttvnews.com on the June 6 newscast

Greatest Advertising Campaign Ever...

An actual billboard for the Saskatchewan Pork Council in the city of Regina,SK, as reported by Ron Petrie of the Regina Leader-Post

(click the read more link)

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