If only we had Googled "silver more valuable than gold" before the Olympics!

As Canada celebrates its huge successes in the Winter Olympics, revelling in the transient passion of a gold in men's hockey, leave to Elvis "Why Does He Cry So Much" Thrust to bring you the shocking and scandalous TRUTH about our misplaced belief that we did "well" in "the" "Olympics":

"Silver has heavy demand by industry, while gold has limited demand, other than for jewelry. In terms of its necessity to a modern society, silver has the highest value and the greatest utility...For 60 years more silver has been consumed by industry than produced. That's the most bullish circumstance possible for a commodity. Silver is in much greater demand by industrial users worldwide than is gold. Yet gold sells for fifty times the price of silver.

For the past 60 years silver was dumped onto the market without much regard to price. The U.S. Government sold off inventory of five billion ounces. This silver has been used up by industry and is gone forever. A few years ago the U.S. Mint announced they would have to buy silver on the open market.

That's only part of the story. You may be shocked to learn that there's more gold around than silver. About five times more gold is documented in above-ground supplies than silver. Furthermore, there are less years of silver production remaining underground to be mined than gold. These powerful facts are not currently reflected in the price. However, some day they will be. That's why the opportunity for profit exists in silver like no other opportunity in history. Nothing in the world has the potential to multiply your net worth like silver...Today, world silver inventories are at the lowest point in 200 years."

In short, Dr. Theodore Butler (unclear as to if he is actually a doctor, but it just seems to make sense, what with his smarts and logical points), thinks that silver will be, long-term, more valuable. And with 90% of Olympic athletes prepared to sell their medals at pawn shops (statistic unverified, in fact largely made up), this means that we've got a much less valuable haul staying north of the border.

And yet another trustworthy internet page with nothing but a white background and simple Arial font--perhaps a Geocities page--lists the following statistics:

• According to the World Gold Council (and others) there are between 4-5 billion
  ounces of gold remaining in the world http://www.gold.org/discover/knowledge/faqs/index.html.
  

• According to the Silver Institute and GMS, there are only 671 million ounces left of
  identifiable silver bullion left in the world http://www.silverinstitute.
  org/publications/index.php (World Silver Survey 2004).
  

Firstly, we cannot ignore the urgency of these numbers, as they come from the World Gold Council and the Silver Institute, which are real organizations which likely house a number of supervillains with mutant powers. But while Sidney Crosby prepares himself for national canonization for his overtime gold-medal winning goal past American goaltender Ryan Miller, perhaps truly it would've been far more heroic for him to have to snuck it past his own goaltender.

Factually yours,

Elvis Thrust

The Miracle on Rice

To many Americans, our true north strong and free's obsession with tonight's big honkin' game is worthy of a jape or two.
Why's that? Simply put, the team, the fans, and the entire US Olympic Machine has nothing to lose. They've already won more medals at a single winter olympics than any other country ever, and their hockey team wasn't supposed to be here tonight. Seriously, utterly, literally, they weren't supposed to be here tonight.

Seriously, I don't think I've ever seen another 13-day stretch of better hockey. The tournament has been excellent, and whatever happens tonight, we'll all be thrilled and entertained. Go Canada, but if the US team with their top-of-the-world goalie and youngest-average-age-in-the-tournament wins, that's one hell of a story, too.

Embrace the game, friends. Should be one for the ages.

Current Events, DT Style

I HAVE JUST LEARNED, to my surprise, that Jack Layton, Canadian Prime Ministerial wannabe, is Prime Minister already.

Luckily for Canada, he is Prime Minister of Greece. His name is George Papandreou.

True Patriot Love

Canadian women win Olympic gold; underage players drink booze on former battleground.

"Up In The Air" Was a Total Lie, Or: Bernice, Live from Ft. Lauderdale International!

9:25 AM

After spending the last five days in sunny south Florida, I had a flight to catch to get home. The plan was this: 11:25 flight to Toronto, 4 PM connection to Montreal. This allowed me a buffer zone of 90 minutes to clear customs, re-check my bags, and get on the second plane. Risky, I know, but riskier airplane connections have certainly been made. When I get to the airport, the check-in lineup is four people wide, stretching around the back wall of the terminal building, snaking around corners and staircases. crap. At this point, I should add, my Toronto flight has been delayed 35 minutes until 12:00.

10:00

I get pulled out of line and asked to check in at the automated kiosk, because my flight is soon and I've made virtually zero progress so far. Boarding passes now printed, I go to the special baggage drop-off counter and the woman looks at my boarding passes and laughs at me. I smile, ask what's up, and she says in a jolly Caribbean inflection, "Dere is no way you ah makin' dat connection!". I laugh, I was already resigned to that, so she says she'll try to get me on another flight. Cool. First, though, she makes a joke that I'll first have to pay for my mistake of going to the kiosk, when I should have known that I would miss my connection. I hate when people at airports, restaurants, or school do that because you have absolutely no way to tell when they're kidding. I mean, I don't know the rules for when you express-check in to a connection you're probably going to miss, but they lady tells you to use the express in order to make your first flight that's already delayed. Anyway, she tells me that "I shouldnt be doin' dis, but I can get ya on de flight direct to Montrayal at two fitty-five. But dat means you be doin your waitin' heah instead of in Toronna because all de Montrayal flights in de rush howa ah full". That will get me into Montreal at 6:15, only an hour behind schedule, which has since long been shot anyway. I reply "Hell Yes". My flight boards at 2:15, which means I have four hours to kill in the airport! hello, Liveblog!

11:00

It turns out that there's free wi-fi in the entire airport. Sweet. This makes it way easier to kill all this time. My original, former flight to Toronto is now leaving at 12:30, which means that i would have had to get a connection at 5 the VERY EARLIEST, and every single flight in toronto is delayed. this direct flight might be the only way I get home tonight. The only goal is 9:30, in time to watch the hockey game. I really want a vanilla coke, i've only had one since i've been here.


11:30

I had two novels to buy this trip that I need for school next week. I went to a Barnes and Noble and a Borders, no luck at all. They were BOTH in the airport bookstore. the day is looking up. Toronto flight now at 12:45.

12:20

I checked my baggage at 10:15 AM for a 2:50 PM flight. I'm afraid that they're going to lose it, or they sent it on the 11:30 to montreal. - why? are we that distrustful of airports that we assume that if any thing is remotely out of the ordinary, then they're just going to screw it up?

12:50

So now, all flights in and out of New York are cancelled due to weather. uh-oh. Toronto flight just left.

1:15

Still waiting for my flight, hasn't been cancelled yet. boarding at 2:15, in 60 minutes, but the plane hasn't showed up yet. no worries, it's got time. However, i took a stroll to the duty-free and saw A BOTTLE OF PATRON FOR 35 dollars, and the gold kind for 40! what the hell? that shit is 70 bucks AT LEAST in canada, and 90 for the gold! I wanna feel like a rap star! WHY THE FUCK AM I NOT 21?!?!

2:15

just destroyed a sbarro personal pizza. feel sick. should be boarding right now, ain't for whatever reason. for a while behind me there was a french guy telling what must have been an unbelievably entertaining story, because everyone he was telling it to was screaming and laughing the whole time. he's gone now, and the mood round these parts is definitely less upbeat. hopefully boarding soon.

2:25

the plane just got here everyone is getting off this is getting really intense! people are standing up and stuff as if it'll make the plane take off faster! in other news, i'm sitting in the gate across from someone who must be a charter member of the John Calvert Look-alike club.

2:45

Boarding! Success! Five hours waiting for a flight complete! See y'all soon

Changing and changing back and changing better.

Carlton Cinemas to re-open in June! Hooray!

http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/February2010/18/c2870.html

That's all.

Desserttickets does the olympics!

I've been meaning to write this for a while now - better late than never, I suppose.

UPDATE TUESDAY NIGHT: Maelle Ricker won! yay!
p-chigs , patrick chan, canada's best hope in figger skating, is on right now. Go, P-Chiggity!

Three days into the Five-Ring Circus, our home country (thats Canada for you out there in Cleveland) is settling nicely into its biennial routine of disappointment and racking up those fourth place finishes (Canadian Gold!) one after another (We had 13 in Turin, we already have three in Vancouver so far).

But, fear not, the exciting sports are to begin today.
After this morning's lackluster showing in Alpine, we get the event Sports Illustrated dubbed "Downhill Darwinism", SnowboardCross, the event in the olympics which closest resembles a video game. As i write this, there's four canadians in the final 16 spots, so that's at least a good sign.
UPDATE: we got silver, and fifth. so that's four medals, three fourths, and two fifths.

Anyway, the games look to be pretty exciting, with some skeleton (those crazy bastards) starting in a few days and hockey starting tomorrow.

I'm watching women's luge right now, and somehow, zee chermans are losing. For those who don't know, they're really damn good at it (Zip! Zip! Zip!)

In about ten minutes (8:35 PM Monday), Canadian Greatest-ever-at-his-sport Jeremy Wotherspoon will get his fourth and final chance at winning a gold medal. He's never won in three previous olympics, and at this point a beam from the roof or a bolt from the zamboni will probably fly through the air and knock him down.
UPDATE: He fucked it up again.

The Education Conflation

TRANSACTION. Supplier. Consumer. Product. Price.

It all seems so simple. Someone makes something, someone buys it from them, everyone goes home happy. Sure, market terminology can't cover all human interaction, and shouldn't be asked to--but where there's a money purchase involved, there's bound to be a product. And usually everybody involved knows what the heck it is.

I spent $6,011 last year on a product I can't describe. I don't mean that in a surly, "I'm not learning anything" kind of way (I am) and I don't even mean it in a pontificating, "What is the value to society" kind of way (who cares)--but in a purely descriptive, non-pejorative sense, I have no idea what I'm supposed to be getting for that money.

Let me explain.

There are really two traditional schools of thought as to what a university should offer to society: the "knowledge transmission" version and the "knowledge factory". In other words, a university will supply pedagogy or research, and often it dabbles in both. So far as the undergraduate is concerned--with the exception of the occasional lab assistant and so on--the research is moot, simply because we don't carry it out, profs usually don't tell us about it, and we don't benefit from the growth in human knowledge very much more than the average person outside the university does. What does that leave for us? Pedagogy.

But we all sort of know that that's not the only thing we're getting out here. So what does the university sell to an undergraduate, really? There are two answers, one cynical and one idealistic, perhaps, and both are correct: it sells teaching, and it sells a diploma. We can call these two products education and accreditation, the separate tasks of cause people to know things and to know how to do things on the one hand and collect information about people's skills and provide that information to employers on the other. I think both are important--you couldn't very well have a complex, globalized, knowledge-based, 21st-century-Web-2.0-blah-de-blah-blah-bloo economy if people didn't keep learning after high school--and as much as we may hate the notion, the diploma/GPA/honour roll/whatever acts as a valuable lubricant in the economy by helping employers find the best of the best without having to spent that much time or money trying to evaluate them. It lowers, in other words, the transaction cost of finding the best man (woman) for the job. What's more, it's worthwhile for a bright young student to be able to pay to get "certified" in order to differentiate himself from his dumber/less educated/less talented peers. So both these products are socially valuable, and it may be that to get both at once is a bargain.

But I begin to think they entail fundamentally divergent production processes--in other words, the task of educating and the task of evaluating have different and contradictory requirements--and that they should perhaps be carried out separately. It seems to me they have been conflated mostly in order to solve a problem of motivation, and their conflation obscures that problem and its obvious, though perhaps unpalatable, solution.

Altering Our Appreciation of Space and Time

Okay homies, this is pretty cool.

It looks like throughout today the lineup for Bonnaroo 2010 will be slowly revealed by the artists themselves through their own twitters, facebooks, myspaces, youtubes, what have you.


As Bringers Of The New Internet Age ourselves, we should be excited by this - it's pretty exciting (cause we're all learning the damn lineup), and not hard to view Bonnaroo.com today as a blog that parallels our own. Invited participants announcing their arrivals, in order to form a collective entertainment and community experience.

You may remember the 'Roo from last year when myself the lover and funmom all piled into bubbie's acura and spun wheel over wheel 'till we got to Tennessee.

Maybe we'll go again, we'll see. But, if only Weezer or These Guys

would write here.

Also, Stevie Wonder is heavily rumoured, i wonder how the hell he's going to announce his performance.

Embrace the day, People!

Today's Lesson: Always Keep Navel Oranges Around

Mmm. What a satisfying, high-in-MSG meal you have served me, random Chinese food restaurant whose tables are covered in classically-Chinese white linen (so you can just wash the linen and not the tables--classic Chinese genius!) I am ready to settle up. After all, a meal this satisfying, this complete, must cost something! I refuse on principle for it to be free. Besides, you owe nothing to me anymore--

Oh, what's this?

For me? This plate of sliced oranges? But--why! I couldn't eat another bite!

Oh my, these oranges are light and refreshing on my palette! I didn't even know it--for it was not on the menu upon which I made my prior meal requests--but I think I've wanted these oranges all this time! I will certainly remember this gift the next time I come to your restaurant, dear slanted-eyed sir! May your Buddha statue never tarnish!

End scene.

Applause, bow-2-3, up-2-3, point to the booth, exit stage right.

You know when you need to get something off of your mind so you write it out somewhere and then things automatically feel better? Well, I do.

Here lies a placeholder for what was once a very personal yet somewhat fictionalized piece of experimental writing. The very act of capturing all my thoughts on paper (digital paper) was therapy enough. Thanks for listening and immediately forgetting all about it, DT.

Crisis over!

------------
(For the sake of the archives, I managed to find the original post using google's cache. Here you go guys, glad you enjoyed it.)

"Who's this idiot who looks like me and what did he do last night?"

Kensington. Friday night. Find a fedora and a ukelele because tonight's a costume party birthday and Jason Mraz is an easy costume. Just go with it.
Get to the house with friends, hey how's it going, I haven't seen you in forever, what's up man, happy birthday, I brought rum, I can't believe you set up an open bar in the basement, let's go get some drinks.
I'll have whatever you're having.
Hey how's it going.
I'll have whatever you think I'll like.
Hey how's it going. Yeah, hat and guitar. John Mayer, close enough.
Give me something I've never tried before. Make it up, why not.
You're a worker from Jurassic Park, that's an awesome costume.
Gin and tonic?
I almost wore my black cowboy hat and came as a bad-ass sheriff, we could have been costume soulmates! I like the cowgirl thing you're doing.
Gin and tonic.
Gin and tonic.
It's getting crowded isn't it, that's cool though.
You need to stop shooting that guy in the face with that dart gun. Oh it's fun? Alright, let me try.
Sorry man.
You're right, that was fun.
Someone told me to try a broken down golf cart. All you have is punch. Is that a star fruit? Awesome.
Wolverine! No I knew before I saw the claws, the sideburns and leather jacket did it. Nice.
Gin and tonic. Yeah, it's kind of manly, everything else you guys are making tastes like candy.
Hey.
She wants something that tastes like candy.
No, that's Jack Johnson. I sang "I'm Yours". Yeah, there you go. No it's a not a real ukelele, it's just a prop. The frets don't align properly. Well, you don't even have a costume.
What are you drinking? Why's it blue?

Wake up on my friend's couch. Um.
I don't know what happened, what happened?
She's mad. I don't remember the last part of the night. What happened?
Vague response.
Shit.
"Get up, we have rehearsal in 20 minutes."
We don't talk on the walk there.

Rehearsal.
Dancing.
How are you feeling?
You alright?
You look like shit.
"How are you doing you had a big night." Apparently. "Yeah." Ugh. "It's okay, I've done worse." That's not reassuring. "...Yeah."

"4 of us walked you to her house. It was a challenge"
"She kept calling you an idiot."

"I thought you were going to die! Haha." Haha.

I think you told your best friend you loved her. And hit on her for the rest of the night. And then she had to take care of you instead of talking to the guy she really liked.
Shitshitshitshit.
Do I? I don't. I don't think so.
Thinkthinkthinkthinkthink.
I don't think I think of her that way. I think.
I can't remember any of this.
Shitshitshit.

"I helped you put on your shoes for half an hour, it was hilarious."

We should talk.
Wondering how to go about this.
Wondering if she's mad for interrupting her potential romance or for interrupting with my drunk notion of potential romance or for throwing up outside of her house at 3am.
Wondering if inebriation brings out honesty or bullshit.
Wondering if "I'm not interested in you but only because you're not interested in me" will be good enough.

You know when you drink amply at a bar then go home and eat a lot of cheese then wake up six hours later unable to go back to sleep?

Well, I do.