First saturday of Spring

In the afternoon yesterday I went to the office and office management reception gone as usual. I paid G $5 towards the cable. After work I went to get my book like I mentioned last night. Smackdown had it’s 500th show on. It was a pretty good show as well. Anne came in at her usual time and made us a deli pizza. It was pretty good and after ECW I went straight to bed.

This weekend is the Shrine Circus and every year the circus takes a hit for their treatment of animals. On one hand I don’t have a problem with the Shrine Circus. It was founded in 1872 and the company I work with used to promote the Shrine Circus but for some reason we that is our office lost that contract. Our office has not done this event since the late 1980’s but apparently it’s still involved. Why our office isn’t doing this event, I have no idea. But getting back to the Shrine Circus, I like it because of all the work it does for children. Yes hidden cameras have caught some horrible animal abuse but I don’t think that was the Shrine Circus. Most of these so called hidden cameras are very one sided anyway. On the other hand animal rights activists have a point. I don’t like animals being locked up in cages, whether it be the Zoo or the rodeo or the circus. Yet in some ways these institutions that use animals treat the animals (in most cases) well. In fact many of these animals would suffer more if left out in the wild to poachers the elements etc. Animal rights abuse is all fine and well but I think there needs to be a balance through out all the noise. We need to keep these things on perspective. The Shrine Circus does not do this to earn a profit. The only problem I have with the Shrine Circus is this used to be an event our office had at one time. With all the negative press our office has received recently we lost some great campaigns, including this one. The slap in the face here is that our company is still calling Edmontonians about getting the kids out from Edmonton to the Shrine Circus this weekend. But not our office. Was this the Shriner’s decision, or HO?

The markets were all down on the Friday but had an ok week. Oil is sitting at $52 and is $8 away from the $60 mark. Hopefully that will be at the end of the month. In April it will be (USS) about $70 and stabilized. This is just my guess. But if we could get $70 oil from May-October, then great. That will help our local economy. Then oil can slide back down to $40 in October. While I might not be as smart as some oil executives from Talisman or Shell or even Petro Can but I personally think that the major oil companies went and dropped the ball what with putting a hold on major Upgrader and refinery projects here in Alberta. Now is the time to go ahead with carbon capture and Upgrader projects while there is a slump in oil prices and the markets are soft. Oil companies are missing the boat with this temporary lag in production.

When I got home I found the Oiler’s had won in Chicago, 4-3 in the shoot out. The next game is Sunday in Minneapolis and it’s an afternoon game.

SF Signal has posted a YouTube video featuring physicist Michio Kaku in a 2005 interview about dark matter and the Lisa satellite, which is supposed to go online in 2011. The way he talks about dark matter and it’s shock wave and the multiverse is very interesting stuff. Dark matter could prove the existence of parallel universes. Add to that when Cern’s LHC goes online for real, and with the long awaited launch (finally) of the Kepler observatory, these are exciting times for space science.

That’s about all from me for today. I’ll be busy over the next 8-10 hours, with traveling to and from work and hopefully having a nap after that. I want to get in some piano practice as well tonight. Also, I need to tackle that lodge memory work as well I’ve got about 4 pages of stuff to memorize for May, so I need to get at that.

Anyway, gang that’s all for now.

e. Jim