On the subject of Thanksgiving – just when you thought it was safe to go back to Alaska. Saturday Night Live should so offer her a writing position:

I’m sorry but she does make fun poking a little too easy sometimes. I recently heard the comedian Paul Sinha link the futures of Sarah Palin and the athlete Paula Radcliffe: rumour has it that they both fancy running in 2012 but will probably both be beaten by a Kenyan again.

He who slings mud generally loses ground.
- Adlai stevenson

Well that’s it. Nobody landed a knockout blow to dramatically alter the polls in the final pre-election debate last night. Race over I reckon. The USA has a new leader. Welcome to the White House President David Palmer. Sorry, I obviously meant Barack Obama. I can’t be the only one to have noticed the similarities with the character played by Dennis Haysbert in 24 – there was even an assassination plot!

This election seems to have been going on forever but the end is in sight. In stark contrast, Canada has held three elections in the past four years and at least it has the attention of the people, unlike the general apathy that an election is greeted with here in the UK.

Obama is in favour of Net Neutrality which won him the geek plaudits. The material on the Internet makes it easy to poke fun at the Republicans so that’s exactly what I’m going to do. McCain voted for the DCMA and, in a great turn of fate, YouTube have been removing his “fair use” campaign clips in accordance with said act – much to his chagrin.

I keep having a worrying thought: what if McCain and Palin win in just under three weeks time? Can you seriously imagine the gibberish-talking Sarah Palin as President?

She has been impersonated fantastically by both Tina Fey and Gina Gershon and rather disturbingly by the South American dwarf Internet star La Pequeña. Even John Cleese has been voicing his opinion of her.

Some people are obviously going to vote Republican and are just plain insane for McCain or are naming their offspring after Palin.

I think the opinion of the Internet can be summed up pretty well with the brilliantly simple but powerful “Candidates as . . .” meme.

If you had purchased £1,000 of Northern Rock shares one year ago it would now be worth £4.95, with HBOS, earlier this week your £1,000 would have been worth £16.50, and £1000 invested in XL Leisure would now be worth less than £5, but if you bought £1,000 worth of Tennents Lager one year ago, drank it all, then took the empty cans to an aluminium re-cycling plant, you would get £214. So based on the above statistics the best current investment advice is to drink heavily.

Update 19/08/08
I think I may have found who may be responsible for Blockbuster going down the tubes. When your CEO is this out-of-touch this you should start worrying. I’m wondering the same thing as John Gruber: How does Jim Keyes still have a job?

I have to say that I’m glad Manchester United won. I only actually dislike them now compared with hating Chelsea with a passion and I think that it was somehow a fitting victory 50 years on from the Munich disaster. Bobby Charlton showed so much decorum when Platini tried to give him a winners medal and you have to admire the sportsman in Paul Scholes who went straight to console the opposition.

I had another celebratory pint with the Liverpool supporting barman and then made my way into Vancouver on the Airporter bus trying to spot anything that looked vaguely familiar but a lot has changed in the six years since I last visited the city.

• A Pizza the Action
• Wok Right Inn
• Thai Me Up
• The Frying Scotsman
• The Codfather
• Jason’s Donner Van
• Cheeses of Nazareth

I’ve not eaten in all of them so I can’t make any comment on the quality of the fare. I’m not sure I could ever order anything from the last in the list for laughing out loud whenever I even just think about it.

“For my birthday I got a humidifier and a dehumidifier. I put them in the same room and let them fight it out.”
- Steven Wright

I was out and about in Edinburgh this afternoon to blow away the cobwebs after an epic weekend. It’s fair to say that I wasn’t really paying attention and I just about walked into the huge guys of the French rugby team leaving their hotel on Princes Street on the way to Murrayfield for the 6 Nations match against Scotland. I then saw this item for sale in a shop window and thought I was still not thinking straight.

I do understand the basic tenets of commerce. However, the exchange of currency for goods or services rendered is about as far as my understanding of the financial world goes. Take, for example, the €4.9 billion loss made by Societe Generale which has been attributed to just one of their traders, Jerome Kerviel. Where has all that money ended up? At the other end of the spectrum is the $11.6 billion made by Goldman Sachs in 2007 by gambling against everybody else. Michael Lewis sums it up and concludes Goldman Sachs assumed that everyone in the industry (including their own employees) were “a bunch of idiots”.

I am also curious as to why this speculation is given protection by the government. Of course, I’m talking about the £25 billion bailing out of Northern Rock. Alistair Darling is obviously defending his actions but I don’t see why other forms of gambling are not given the same protection. I understand that my pension is affected somehow. Just how different is this to when I lose money in the casino?

In an attempt to find out more about this befuddling area I came across an interview with a hedge fund manager. I think I’ll have to read it again a few times as the only thing that is currently sticking in my mind is an arcane Simpsons reference. For now I’m going to rely on Bird and Fortune to simplify things for me and make me chuckle at the same time.

Update: The YouTube video is no longer available.

Another unwanted awards list is this breakdown of the worst science stories of 2007. This is how the media spreads fear and panic among the non-scientific populous who in turn fan the flames with chain emails. I can forgive Joe Sixtooth for not checking their facts before blindly forwarding these ‘warnings’ but professional journalists should really know better.

The last review of 2007 is far less idiotic and much more creative. Nicholas Felton is a graphic designer in New York city who produces a personal annual report on the facts and figures that constituted his past year. I’m not sure that I’d remember to record everything I do over the course of 365 days.

Eventually I remembered where I’d seen it (or at least seen a possible source of inspiration). I submitted the link to BuzzFeed to let them know about the cuddle mattress in this xkcd comic.

Of course keeping on top items of from several important news oriented sites (and entertainment like xkcd and I can has cheezburger) becomes a lot easier with the use of RSS but when relying on these feeds alone you do miss out on the interaction element and fun of the comments.

From the linked BBC article:

“The gene CLOCK and its partner BMAL1 control the body’s internal clock.”

Now, I’m no expert in genetics but I would have thought that a gene called CLOCK would have been one of the first places to look for clues about defective circadian rhythms.

Now that it’s finally getting cold in Edinburgh I propose to study the effects of sudden relocation to warmers climes on the human body (specifically mine).

After we stopped laughing at the new London 2012 Olympics brand I noticed some user submitted attempts on the BBC. Flicking through a fair amount of dross, my jaw dropped in disbelief. It couldn’t be, could it?

I took a screen grab just in case it disappeared (which it duely did, and in double-quick time too) and called for verification from my colleagues. They agreed it couldn’t be anything other than a goatse reference!

Sure enough, it was already the top story on Boing Boing.

The word itself is enough to strike terror into the heart of anyone who actually likes good music. On the other hand, it’s a great excuse for a party!

Singing along with a Timmy Mallet lookalike dressed in some kind of tinfoil drag outfit, to a tune you’ve never heard with lyrics you don’t know, subtitled in an alphabet you can’t read and in a language you don’t speak – a little booze obviously helps!

For the uninitiated, the site searches UK data and tells you how many people share your name, or any other name you enter for that matter. My new pastime involves checking how many people have a comedy name. For instance, Isla Wight (four people), William Ding (one person), Helen Back (six) and Michael Hunt (a frankly staggering 561).

Seriously guys, either take it in turns and set up some kind of Threadless T-shirt rota or start phoning each other in the morning to check!

I can now however keep myself amused with my very own rumours thanks to applegazette.

I was annoyed when it was announced that the ladies prize money would match that of the men at Wimbledon this year. If women want equality, then how about playing the same number of sets?

Some women (and I stress the word ‘some’) still expect me to give up my seat on public transport just because they happen to be female. You can’t have it both ways ladies. I’m not downright selfish – I have no problem with doing so for pregnant women or the elderly or infirm of either gender.

This rant was bought to you by International Womens Day.