Third Edge of the Sword turns 5

What I will do in this blog is I'll be discussing science, conservatism, baseball and hockey, Alberta Indepedence, food, women, life, good books/movies, and anything else that comes to mind.

And with those immortal words mid-afternoon on December 11, 2005, Third Edge of the Sword was born. 1749 posts later, we continue to bring you the high quality blogging that was so promised many moons ago. In celebration of these 5 years, let's just take a look back at a post a year. 2005: Porn proves internet not to blame for sales slumps

Now you've put your porn together, and slapped it on a DVD ($30 for a 50-spool of DVD-Rs at A&B Sound), and sold it. The article above says the prices are under $50 now. Now if the whole operation cost you about $10,000 and you charged $30 per unit, barring shipping and promotion costs you would recoup your ten grand after a mere 334 sales. Let's say you went to $20, then you need 501 sales. How hard can it be to sell 500 copies of a porn? There are tons of adult video stores in Edmonton... even if each only bought a copy and you cut it down to $15 for them (typically the movie industry charges rental places more...three guesses which practise is likely the better idea) you'd already be two-thirds to your total without a single private sale. A couple hundred on a website with promotion and suddenly you can sell a few hundred more, and boom you've just made a profit.

2006: To beat the impossible team -- The Miracle on Shale

Adam Stern is the big story of this Team Canada win. Under contract to the Boston Red Sox, Stern was considered a long shot to make the major leagues this season (that has to be considered slightly differently today, one thinks). He was used only occasionally in Boston late last season as a pinch runner (he got fewer hits for them all season than he scored for Canada today), and didn't even make it onto TSN's rundown of Canadians in the majors (that, too, has to be reconsidered). Which highlight from today's game did you want? His triple in the second inning with Canada up 1-0 to that drove in some guy named Aaron Guiel to put the Yankees down by 2? How about his single in the third inning to score both Justin Morneau and Pete LaForest? Maybe you'd prefer his third consecutive hit: an inside the park home-run in the fifth inning to put Canada up by 8 runs. That was a good one too. And those were his offensive plays. Now lets cover the defense: when he made a catch in centre field in the 6th inning when it looked like Michael Young was going to get a base hit blooper...Stern went down, and the ball hit the ground. For sure it hit the ground. Sure Stern made a valiant effort, but he was a split second too slow. And then he rolled over, triumphantly raised his arm into the sky, and you could see that in fact he had caught the ball, as it hung precariously at the very edge of his glove. It was an impossible catch, and he made it. But he wasn't done: in the 8th inning, score 8-6 with 2 outs, Vernon Wells makes it to 2nd base when Johnny Damon is walked, and substituted 2nd baseman Chase Utley blasted a monster shot to deep centre-right field. The ball soared high and wild, almost as potent as the Jason Varitek deep-bleachers grand slam 2 innings earlier. Its back, its back, they don't even mentionthe warning track, and the ball comes firmly down against the top of the way-too-high-fence...dropping down into the waiting globe of Adam Stern!

2007:Gretzky/Messier starting a grand Edmonton tradition

2. The Whitemud Drive can be named after Chris Pronger, which should cut down on traffic. Hell, I'll put an extra 30 miles on my car a day to avoid taking Pronger Drive. 3. Edmonton City Hall can be renamed Mike Peca City Hall. Both Peca and City Hall cost way too much money, didn't do what they were supposed to do, and ultimately weren't needed anyways. 4. A police station should be named after Dave Semenko. 5. Likewise, a rehab centre should be named after Grant Fuhr, along the Betty Ford model. 6. Since Paul Coffey could skate rings around most players, and Anthony Henday already has a university residence named after him, the latter's name should be taken off the outer city ring road, and the former's put in its place. Alternately, Coffey could be the name given to the west half of the ring road currently under planning stages. 7. 91.7 The Bounce, in deference to the only reason anybody listened to it, should be named 91.7 The Laraque 8. The now closed Sidetrack Cafe should remain a legend, and the new home for live music should be "Club Niinimaa".

2008: Queen Victoria Day 2008:

From my own experiences in Quebec and dealing with transplated Quebecers, there's not a thing on this earth save perhaps Eve and the Apple which cannot be directly traced back to "the hated English". And there's not a normal Anglais thing that the goddamned useless French can't allow to exist without their own sick subversions. So, I have a plan. As you may know, June 24th is Saint-Jean Baptiste Day where St. John, the patron saint of Quebec, is honoured. It is Quebec's biggest holiday, and the "pride" of their culture. We should totally subvert it. I propose that June 24th become a statuatory holiday in the Province of Alberta, and that we name it General Wolfe Appreciation Day

2009: Better a lean agreement than a fat lawsuit

n the end, Harper reached an agreement that didn't give either side everything they wanted (as all agreements do), but in the end Canada got $4 billion of the $5.3 billion we were owed back. Ignatieff says that he wishes that we got all $5.3. No shit Sherlock. Of course, just saying you want the money somebody owes you doesn't bring it to you. In the end, the post title's old adage came into play: we got most of what we were owed from an organization that was perfectly willing to pay us nothing. In negotiations, there's something called a BATNA (no relation to NAFTA): the best alternative to a settlement. This is your proverbial "ace in the hole" (though in the commonly understood sense of the term this isn't how you treat it). In the event of no softwood lumber agreement, the Americans simply keep $5.3 billion (back when the U.S. government cared about $0.0053 trillion dolalrs). This is a good thing, and that Harper and Bush allegedly did it all in one half hour phone call speaks to Harper's skill (and Bush's easygoing nature). Naturally Ignatieff has to trash it. What would he have done?

2010: Alberta: where the poor are choking to death in the streets (we can make a .pdf, so it must be true!)

At the forefront is the hilarious implication that "access to social programs" is a measure of quality of life. Check the people using social services, then check the people not using social services. Hey, anybody wanna guess whose quality of life is lower? Next comes how their lofty goals are to be reached: right away you see that involves spending more of your money. That's right, spending those social worker salaries just aren't enough. AUPE has a lot more members in the education and healthcare fields that could use some sugar too! ACSW has scratched their back, and surely the next glossy .pdf you can read from the Alberta Teachers Association will contain some seemingly random tidbit about the need for more social workers to identify special needs and problem children right away to scratch in return. When they say "increased spending for culture and leisure" you didn't think they meant tax cuts so that families could spend more on culture and leisure, did you? Same with "reduced working hours and increased vacations". Is anybody dumb enough to read this yet think the point was we're supposed to ask the boss to up our annual vacations from 15 business days a year to 25? Of course not. What they want is to petition to legislate a 34 hour week rather than a 44 hour one, or increase mandatory vacation pay from 6% to 12.