He gets it. Good thing his competitors and colleagues are dumber than he is...

How to Sink a Newspaper -- Free news for online customers is a disastrous business plan.

One has to wonder how many of the newspaper industry's current problems are self-inflicted. Take free news. News has become ubiquitous, free, and as a result, a commodity. Anytime you are trying to sell something that becomes a commodity, you have lost much of the value in providing that product or service.

Not many years ago if someone wanted to find out what was in the newspaper they had to buy one. But not anymore. Now you can just go to the newspaper's Web site and get that same information for free.

The newspaper industry wonders why it is losing young readers. Those readers might be young, but many of them are smart, not to mention computer-savvy. Why would they buy a newspaper when they can get the same information online for free?

Heh... Can we do something about BC and Ontario

Lowering the drinking age limit
By George Will :
Thursday, April 19, 2007

Public policy often illustrates the law of unintended consequences. Society's complexity -- multiple variables with myriad connections -- often causes the consequences of a policy to be contrary to, and larger than, the intended ones. So, when assessing government actions, one should be receptive to counterintuitive ideas. One such is John McCardell's theory that a way to lower the incidence of illness, mayhem and death from alcohol abuse by young people is to lower the drinking age.

McCardell, 57, president emeritus of Middlebury College in Vermont and professor of history there, says alcohol is and always will be ``a reality in the lives of 18-, 19- and 20-year-olds.'' Studies indicate that the number of college students who drink is slightly smaller than it was 10 years ago, largely because of increased interest in healthy living. But in the majority who choose to drink, there have been increases of ``binge drinking'' and other excesses. Hospitalizations of 18- to 20-year-olds for alcohol poisoning have risen in those 10 years.

Let us never forget.

Canada's Gun Registry: Memo showing Anne McLellan knew about the cost overruns

I am wiritng to advise you of a significant matter that may impact on the Canada Firearms Centre's (CAFC) ability to operate within its 2003-2004 funding allocation.

[T]here have been dramatic increases in the anticipated cost of the development and ongoing operation of the system. Solution development has increased from $32M to $70M while the estimated 15 year cost of operating the IT and enabling technology has increased from $96M to $213M.

As recent as November 2003, Treasury Board approved interim funding for continued development of the new solution for the remainder of the year. With the spending authority approved by Treasury Board, we were unable to advance work on the project. This led to the realization of deficiencies in the functional capacity of the system. Therefore, at the beginning of January, we undertook a risk analysis of the new solution, which identified a need for signficant additional work, and associated expenditure.

What she did was unacceptable and her reputatio will forever we tarnished by it.

Voters have spoken. Norris is out.

So get ready for a post about why I'm supportin Morton.

Why I am supporting this guy for Premier.

I've spent the last few months doing some work for Mark Norris:

A bunch of my friends have been wondering why. Anyone who watched Wednesday's debate knows why. Mark Norris had the friendliest, sharpest and most down to earth performance of the lot.

I was approached by several of the camps in the spring, I chose Mark because I think he is the best salesman in the race, the best "everyman," the best listener, and the best executer.

Those of you who know me well, will know that I am very blue conservative, ideologically I am closer to Ted Morton, but ideology is not the only thing in a leader.

I'm with Mark for three key reasons:

Mark will get things done
One of the things that has most impressed me about Mark's campaign is how many people are supporters because they dealt with Mark when he was the Minister of Tourism and Economic Development. They tell me that, they would meet with Mark present their concerns and requests and Mark would say Yes or No. No meant no but the yes was the real surprise. When Mark said yes, things happened. Immediately!

These people were used to "yes" meaning "yeah someday maybe" not progress within a few weeks.

Mark gets things done. He pushes, he doesn't tolerate bureaucratic inertia, and he builds coalitions and teams to get support and action.

Mark can keep the party together
Mark can bridge the red and blue wings of the party. Already the red red Torys are spreading doom gloom and terror should Ted Morton or Lyle Oberg win (I don't know why they are worried about Lyle, he is more of an opportunist than an ideologue).

I know that if Jim Dinning wins it will be hard to hold the blue wing of the party in the tent. Jim's supporters are very disparaging of real conservatives.

Mark gets support and respect across both wings. His open, approachable style makes him acceptable to many, many people. Mark considers himself a blue Tory. He recognizes that he may not be as blue as me and others. But he respects deep blue Torys like me. He is comfortable around red torys, they like, they trust him, they don't fear him. I view Mark as the best candidate to hold the party together.

Mark can win the next election
Everyone has focused on the leadership race and not on the vote that really matters: the next general election.

Choosing a new leader is how our party renews itself and reconnects with Albertans. If we screw it up we can look back at the experience of Harry Strom and the Social Credit.

For the last 10 years the PC party of Alberta has benefited from a largely incompetent and uninspired leadership among the opposition. Yeah, they have to wear the hated Liberal name, but if you remember 1992 under Laurence Decore the Liberals were matching us in the polls. A strong opposition leader (think Bronconnier or Anne Mclellan), and a gimmick (think renaming the party to The Alberta Party)and all of a sudden the next election gets dicey.

We can't assume the opposition will suck forever. We can't assume that picking a nice guy for Leader will work (think Stelmach/Stromm). We should be terrified about picking someone who will split the party. We should be terrified about picking someone whose personality will put off Albertans -- Lyle criticizing you is NOT unethical.

I think Mark is the candidate that can renew the party, reconnect with Albertans and lead us to victory in the next election.

So, he can get things done, he can keep the party together, and he can win!
That's why I am supporting Mark Norris!

I've been busy but will be blogging very soon.

This story makes me smile.

TheStar.com - Harper tips Star journalist for federal post

Harper+ Meritocracy+ Subtlety= Conservative Majority. For a long long time.

I once called Gwynne Dyer an Idiot. Some points are worth reiterating.

Who benefits from new hysteria about security? - Gwynne Dyer - theage.com.au

Terrorists of various sorts have been in business for about 40 years, and the present crop of Islamist terrorists are especially dangerous since they are willing to kill themselves along with their victims. But in the United States more people die on the roads every single month than Islamist terrorists have killed since the year 2000, and in Britain it's more people every week. Yet neither country has tried to restrict access to cars.

Maybe it's cynical, but there are strong grounds for suspecting that this is all a charade. If they infiltrated these terrorist cells many months ago and have now have arrested most of the members, then why would they institute drastic new security measures on flights at this point? And did they really only realise in the past few days that explosives come in liquid form as well?

...

This is all hype, designed to frighten the British and American publics into supporting the wars of their deeply unpopular governments (and the war of their Israeli ally as well).

H/T

New York Times Busted in Hezbollah Photo Fraud!

Gateway Pundit: New York Times Busted in Hezbollah Photo Fraud!

It's a tragedy. Between showing the photogs where to take pictures the evil Israelis killed him with one of their micro-genius bombs and there he is dead, still holding his hat. In a photoessay in the New York Times!

Exposing Kyoto bunk.

Go read this:
Report on Climate Change Assessments

Let me translate:
- You lied about your stats.
- You cooked the data.
- Of course the other study agreed with you, they used your cooked data!
- The same 20 shysters reviewing each others papers is not good scientific method.
- The policy papers advocating more research dollars should not be written by the same shyster who wrote the cooked data papers proclaiming a crisis.
- Go talk to a real statistician.
- Go learn some stats.