The Daily Me - H. Witney Mauve

There's a new show starting this week called Revelations, about a nun and a scientist trying to avert the Apocalypse. This may be the first series in which a substantial number of Americans are rooting for the good guys to lose. If they get their wish, though, it doesn't leave a lot of dramatic possibilities for next season.

SOURCE: Ukrainian TV Guide

Canadian Credit Unions are pushing the New Democratic Party to support bank mergers, arguing that consolidation in the industry could lead to greater competition. Hmm...less competition equals more competition. And Party strategists wonder why nobody trusts the NDP to run the finances of the country.

SOURCE: Glob and Maul

A new study by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University shows that babies respond better to baby talk than normal speech. The study showed that this was true for girls up to the age of two, and boys up to the age of 52.

SOURCE: Scientific Canadian

How a new Pope is elected in six easy steps:

1) Cardinals get together, mill about and say, "Beeswax, beeswax, beeswax" for cameras to give the world the illusion that they are consulting with each other and praying.

2) Cardinals each place a bead in a box. While tradition has it that the different colours represent different candidates, actually the Cardinals are putting together a necklace for some lucky African child born with AIDS thanks to the Vatican's rules against contraception. Votes are actually cast on paper ballots (and, oddly enough, not tabulated by computers).

3) American Cardinal Barnard Law makes a rude joke about alter boys which breaks the tension in the room.

4) A white plume of smoke is initially thought to signal that a new Pope has been chosen, but it turns out to be smokers who were asked to leave the room.

5) Days more milling about, beeswax and, perhaps, another necklace for another lucky African child - lord knows, there are enough of them. The tension mounts. A game of "scissors-rock-paper" breaks out in one corner of the room, and soon all of the Cardinals are engaged in it.

6) In the early morning hours, a new Pope, a traditionalist who believes that Vatican II is a Christian theme park in North Dakota, is chosen.

SOURCE: Unicycle

Canadian business leaders, virgins all, claim to be appalled by the testimony revealing political corruption at the Gomery trial, claiming it "besmirches Canada's national reputation." Apparently, Canadian corporate corruption is just business as usual in the international arena.

What really seems to be steaming the executives is the paltry nature of the accusations. "Come on. A million here, a couple million there? Small town cheap. I don't get out of bed unless I can steal a billion dollars from my investors. If you want to know the truth, the lack of ambition of the Liberal Party is the really embarrassing part of this whole mess."

SOURCE: The Financial Riposte

Odds of having an accident driving a car...

SOURCE: Teen Persons

Governors from 33 American states are trying to get the amount of ethanol, an oil substitute based on crop by-products, mostly corn, increased from five to eight billion gallons a year by 2012. Ed Murphy, a representative of the oil industry, argued that it had looked at the five billion gallon a year limit and, "We think that's adequate."

Murphy stated that his organization, the American Petroleum Institute, had considered the possibility that people only needed 20 calories a day to survive. "We think that's sufficient," he said. And, as for the possibility that legislators could pass laws with a less than 20 per cent public approval rating, he added, "That would be enough."

It certainly is.

SOURCE: The Postington Wash

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, a left-wing think tank, has argued that the Ontario government must spend more money to shore up deteriorating social services. Included in its package of recommendations was that the minimum wage be raised to $10. The Fraser Institute, a right-wing think tank, laughed uproariously; when it finally caught its breath, it pointed out that a higher minimum wage would lead to lower employment. The CCPA, trying to maintain its dignity in the face of such intentional humiliation, suggested that this would not need to be the case if compensation packages for corporate executives were reduced.

Shhhh. Did you hear that? That was the sound of a thousand CEOs choking on their cocktail wienies.

Ever wonder why left-wing think tanks are so seldom quoted in newspapers? They're a health hazard!

SOURCE: Toronto Startle

"The newspaper editor looks out into the bullpen, wearily sizing up his troops, diminished in numbers by a cost-cutting new publisher and an emerging 'rats abandoning a sinking ship' mentality. The editor clings to the idea that his newspaper's constant drumbeating for lower taxes and smaller government represents the views of a majority of Canadians, even as polls and his own publication's declining circulation indicate otherwise. Should I have stayed in the world of magazines, he wonders, not for the first..."

The National Whipping Post - a bitter read

SOURCE: The National Whipping Post