Twinkle Twinkle Toronto Star; How I wonder when you are

Lately we've been intermittently receiving the Toronto Star. What's particularly odd about this random delivery is that we never actually subscribed to the ruddy thing.

Some Kind of Mistake?
So at first, I thought, well, this must be a mistake. I'm getting my neighbour's paper. As it turns out, though, it's been happening for two weeks. I live on a small court with neighbours who are reasonably comfortable with approaching each other. I think if I were receiving their paper, they would have noticed and either called the Toronto Star to have it corrected, or told me that I was getting their paper and to give it back.

Promotional Delivery?
So, then I thought, "Well, maybe it's one of those promotional things - they give you the newspaper for a couple of weeks and then they try to hook you on a subscription." That might be, but if that is the case, they're not doing a particularly good job of selling me on their subscription service. The paper, for some reason, doesn't come every single day - or rather it comes, but not on the day it was meant to be delivered. Sometimes they skip a day and then, after two or three days, they all appear at once on my veranda. I get three papers in one shot! Now how is THAT going to win me over? What a brilliant pitch:

"Join the Toronto Star where you'll get the newspaper intermittently throughout the week. Why inconvenience yourself with collecting the paper from your porch every single day? With the Toronto Star, just come outside every three days and we'll scatter the newspapers from the last three days across your door step!"

Genius.

Security Feature
Maybe it's a security feature that the Toronto Star subscription service offers. They don't want papers to come every day because somebody may be casing your house for a robbery. Instead, they deliver no paper for three days, and then you get a big stack all at once. The criminals are baffled. They think, "What the hell is going on with that house? I can't rob that place! It's a scheduling nightmare!"

Again. Genius.

What do you think?
Give me your thoughts on what this random paper delivery may be all about. If your explanation is good enough, maybe I'll actually subscribe to the Toronto Star. Probably not, but maybe.

A photo taken from the Hubble Telescope of a strange object that appeared, brightened for 21 days, dimmed for the same time frame and then disappeared. The photo was taken from a paper accepted to the "Astrophysical Journal"

A Transietn of a New Class
OK. This is unbelievably cool. An unidentified object was discovered with the Hubble Telescope. It matches nothing they've ever seen before. It came and went over a period of 42 days. The research paper doesn't speculate on what it is, but they "...suggest that the transient may be one of a new class."

I aspire to one day be a Transient of Another Class.

I must say, when it comes to calling an election, the Canadian political system has its head up its arse.

The rules for calling a Federal Election in Canada are a joke. The ruling party can call an election pretty much any time the urge strikes them. They dissolve parliament and we're off to the polls. Case in point, Stephen Harper had a little chat with the Governor General over the weekend and we're now having an election in just over a month. In what world does that make sense?

First of all, in what other job do you get to determine when you have your own job evaluation? Just imagine how that might work in your own job. "Welcome aboard. Here's how our job evaluation system works: You have 5 years to pick a time for your own job review and you can pick any time you'd like - just let us know when you're ready." And your response might be: "Right, I know I've only just started, but I think most folks here seem to like me and I think they'd like me better than anyone else who's just joined, so, how about we do this right now?" Perfect.

Second, in what other country would you give the competitive parties and the country 5 WEEKS TO PREPARE FOR A NATIONAL ELECTION!? Seriously! And you know that the Tories were ready to go. I live in Whitby, home of the esteemed Finance Minister for the government of Canada. They dissolved parliament on Sunday and I saw election signs this morning on the way to work. Hmmmm ... do you think maybe they had this worked out? Ridiculous.

I think a regularly scheduled election with a longer lead time than 5 weeks should be a standing law. Of course, no elected party will ever change the law because, once they're in, they get to call the election time, so why would you want to change that? Absurd.

What's worse is that the short turn around time means that the parties typically stay with the leaders they have. So, despite the fact that Stephan Dion is looking feeble as a leader and contender against Harper, they're going to go ahead and run with him. What choice do they have? Elecction is in 5 weeks. It's a travesty!

Vote for Pedro!

I think it's great that CNN claims it has the Best Political Team on television. They always say "Reporting and Analysis from the Best Political Team on Television." Cool. They haven't really won an award or been assigned that title by any independent body, but they reckon it's true.

I reckon I am the Most Mediocre Hiker on the Internet. So I'm laying claim to that title. While I'm at it, here are a few more claims from me:

The Best Nail Clipper in the Greater Toronto Area
The Worst Lip Syncher on the Don Valley Parkway
The Best Parallel Parker in Northern Whitby

Jeffrey Toobin is a Senior Analyst on CNN. He's a former prosecutor and a former New York Columnist. I'm not sure how that makes him a member of the Best Political Team on Television, but apparently it does. So I figure, as the Most Mediocre Hiker on the Internet, I am comparably qualified, so I'm going to give my two cents on Sarah Palin's Vice Presidential Speech today.


I agree with Peggy Noonan. A prominant Republican woman who, when she thought the microphone was off, called the Palin pick "BS", "gimicky" and said the McCain campaign "is over". See the video for yourself



We'll see how she does tonight, but from where I'm sitting she's going to have to pull a miracle out tonight.

Setting the Tone
To be clear, I love Hamilton and I think Hamilton deserves an NHL team. I also think Gary Bettman is delusional in his attempts to make hockey a viable sport in any state south of the Mason/Dixon line (with the exception of LA and Tampa Bay where ample Canadians live during winter). I am also a member of the Facebook Group called "Canada vs. Gary Bettman".

Now, having framed this post in an appropriate way, I want to explain why I think it is nearly impossible for Hamilton to get an NHL team owing largely to: 1) canabilism and 2) Gary Bettman's business plan. I think that if someone replaces Gary Bettman and takes a different approach, Hamilton could get a team, but it's not likely. It's more likely that pending the outcome of the "Battle of Waterloo", that another city would win out.

1) Canibalizing an NHL Franchise
As anybody who's created or managed a product knows that if you have a successful product in a particular market, you nurture it and, as it reaches the end of it's life cycle, you begin to plant the seeds of a replacement product. If you want to grow more revenue, you create a NEW product in a NEW market. What you don't do is create a new product in the same market that's going to eat into the market share of the existing successful product. That will generate no new revenue and will only cost more money. So what does that have to do with the NHL? Well, it's the same deal with NHL teams.

Toronto is an established, highly lucrative team that serves a great deal of Ontario. If you plant a new team in Hamilton, how much new revenue will it generate? It will mostly just take fans (and revenue) from Toronto and Buffalo. It will generate some new money from Ticket Sales as there will now be an additional 18k seats available for sale, but in every other way (TV share, advertising, merchandise, etc.), it will only take from existing products (i.e., Toronto and Buffalo). So does it make sense for the NHL to allow another team in an area that has an existing team if it isn't going to generate all that much more revenue? Probably not.

2) Gary Bettman's Delusions
Gary Bettman gets point #1) and that's why he wants new teams in new markets. The problem is more his choice of which markets. He thinks he can expand hockey's appeal, viability and credibility as a sport by getting teams in southern states. He's delusional. Hockey will never appeal to people in those states and, even where it does draw some folks to the games, it will never earn a decent ticket price, nor a decent share of TV ratings in those markets. Why? Because it will always come in fourth place to the sports that overlap in season: Baseball, Football, and Basketball. People will always pick hockey last in those markets when given a choice.

Do you really think that Kansas City Chiefs fans will give up end of season and possibly playoff tickets or TV games to attend or watch a hockey game? Do you really think they'd give up season openers or even training camp games for the Kansas City Royals in exchange for hockey game - even a playoff hockey game? And they'd probably rather watch ANY city's basketball team play basketball than watch a Kansas City hockey game on TV! Gary's dream of successful southern team is ridiculous. It will NEVER happen except in cities like LA (lots of Canadians living there) and Tampa Bay (lots of snowbirds there).

Gary would be better off putting more teams in Northern cities that could/would support them. Even though some of those markets are smaller, they'd be willing to pay more to see games and they'd have a higher TV ratings share. So ... even if Gary wants to keep it American, he should be planting teams in northern states. He should also consider Canadian Cities while he's at it.

3) Replacement Product -- The Battle of Waterloo
Back to Hamilton for a minute. The only chance Hamilton would have of getting a new team would be if people finally recognized that Buffalo, even despite it's recent winningness, is a dying franchise that needs to be replaced. They could certainly put that team in Hamilton. Hamilton itself has a dying economy (we've lost 290k jobs in manufacturing in the last three years in Ontario and Hamilton is a manufacturing kinda town), but it sits in a prime location. It would draw Buffalo fans, St. Catherines fans, Hamilton Fans, Waterloo fans, Guelph fans, Mississauga fans, Burlinggton fans, Oakfille fans, and even Toronto fans. Of course, this doesn't cure the canabilism of the Toronto product, but it does provide a replacement product for Buffalo.

Another alternative would be a Waterloo team. Something Jim Balsillie might well be considering. He purchased a parcel of land in Cambridge that is suspiciously large enough to host an arena. It also would be outside Toronto's competitive zone and would draw new fans from South Western Ontario that couldn't make the drive to the TO area ... places like London, Sarnia, etc. It would also draw from the same places a Hamilton team would ... Guelph, Burlington etc. So that might be an option.

Unfortunately, ol' Jim Balsillie has really cheesed off Gary Bettman, who doesn't want anymore Canadian teams anyway, and he hasn't won any friends among the NHL owners. So, if he were interested in putting a team there, he's sort of created the "Battle of Waterloo". It's not one that will be easily resolved in the near future.

Thus, Ontario hockey fans, it is unlikely that we'll get a team in Ontario anytime soon and even more unlikely that it will be in Hamilton. But we can all still dream, can't we!!