The heaviest part of the term, workload-wise, came a little earlier than usual this semester - which, coupled with Dan's gradual disappearance from the Intercloud, means this blog hasn't been updated very much. That might continue for a while - but in the meantime, here's a series of minor thoughts.
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Boy, Sunday sure was something, wasn't it? Next week's Sputnik will have a longer essay on how, unbeknownst to us, February 28th 2010 will become a milestone moment in Canadian identity; suffice it to say that the two most-watched television programs in Canadian history definitely qualify for that honour.
I seem to be in the minority thinking the hockey game wasn't all that exciting until late in the third period - a lot of play in the neutral zone, a lot of tight forechecking, very few scoring chances. Parise tying it up and Crosby's goal in overtime, of course, deserve every bit of hype they have gotten.
The closing ceremony, though, was something else entirely. Yes, the formal portion went on far too long, with John Furlong single-handedly setting Franco-Anglo relations back a few centuries and other acts being determined seemingly by dice roll (on Twitter, Paul Wells suggested that a demonstration of cleaning powders was forthcoming). And yes, the concert portion completely subverted all expectations - when Nickelback came out, we figured it could only get better; the truth was the opposite.
But the rest of it? The tongue-in-cheek Disney On Ice version of Canada? Michael Buble introducing a new generation to a classic song of Canadian patriotism? A mime delivering a hilarious callback to the opening ceremonies? All great.
Ditto for the monologues delivered by William Shatner, Catherine O'Hara, and Michael J. Fox. They were written by Will Ferguson, a very funny Canadian writer with a great understanding of Canada and more than a few jokes I've stolen over the years.
Although the Olympics started off slow, the last few days were an outstanding success - a great display to the world of Canada at its best.
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Sticking with sports, TSN2 is - by far - Canada's most-watched digital television channel.
This may or may not come as a surprise. On the one hand, TSN has an obvious brand recognition, so people would be more likely to know what they're getting with TSN2 than, say, Setanta Sports or Bold. On the other hand, TSN2 only got picked up by Rogers, the country's biggest cable provider, in spring 2009 - not a lot of time to build that audience, compared to channels which have existed for years. Even more impressively, until recently 90% of TSN2's programming was forced by the CRTC to be simply a three-hour delay of TSN's feed - only 10% of what was on TSN2 was enough to beat out 100% of the programs aired on other channels.
There is something much more interesting in that press release linked above, though: "TSN2 to announce key acquisitions of major sports properties in the coming weeks."
My knee-jerk reaction: Huh?
Every major sports property I can think of already has their Canadian rights locked up somewhere. Considering I doubt TSN is going to invest their own resources in producing much of this stuff on their own, what's still out there? Maybe a bit of golf and tennis, but when those are your marquee events, you're in trouble.
Are we going to be seeing a return to the early days of TSN, with spelling bees and sheep-shearing competitions (1:32)? Surrealists like myself would be happy, but I doubt that sort of property is in high demand.
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In my last post I reviewed Douglas Coupland's Generation A. The central premise of the book involves a devastating extinction of honeybees in the near future - something not entirely out of the realm of possibility, as honeybee populations have been in steep decline for a few years.
As it turns out - at least in Ontario - the honeybee deaths can be blamed on tiny mites (are there any other kind? Does Tokyo get menaced by gigantic mites?).
So rest easy, Ontario - you can keep using pesticides and cell phones and everything else speculated as connected to the honeybee disappearance. You might run into some other problems, but you're not killing bees.
At least so say the scientists.
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Finally, I laughed out loud yesterday when I signed in and discovered that somebody had left a comment on a post I made in 2007.
He (or she) is absolutely right, by the way. And I do believe him (or her).
--Ryan
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