Steve Martin.  Somewhere in the basement is my 1979 high school yearbook with a picture of me with a fake arrow through my head.  The line from the albums I remember most as an anglo New Brunswicker, the bilingual province next to Maine, was:  "The French have a different word for everything!"

Here is another combination for a 269-269 tie.

We still have the "Midget" division (15-17 yrs) of minor hockey in Canada.  The younger levels are "Atom" (9-10), "Bantam" (13-14), and always funny "PeeWee" (11-12).  Haven't heard anyone complaining about that name "Midget" after decades of use, other than it being a inverse description of your average 16 year old defenseman raised on a diet of Timbits and poutine.

Wonderful reading all day today in the primarily conservative sites about Hitchens.  I found Hitchens when discovering my own conservative sensibilities in the years following 9/11.  As with most, I didn't agree with everything he wrote, but my goodness it was always a great read.

But there is something I've not seen mentioned today that I want to ask about.  It's about this subject that was mentioned in a column today by The National Post's Jonathan Kay:  "...subject himself to waterboarding so he could decide whether it’s truly torture (it is),...".

I remember this incident, and video, of Hitchens voluntarily being waterboarded...and asking for it again a second time.  Doesn't this incident result in the opposite conclusion, that the technique is not torture?  If you are willing to have this done to you a second time, let alone the first, how could it be torture?

It has been noted many times that in the past when Tiger Woods was at his very best he intimidated the other players.  Generally that meant the other players hitting bad shots and missing putts at crucial moments.  Now, Tim Tebow is no Tiger Woods.  But could the attention now focused on Tebow and his late game heroics be contributing to the errors the other teams are making late in these games?  This question came to mind as I'm currently reading David Brooks' book "The Social Animal" and there are interesting chapters in there about the battle between level 1 subconscious and level 2 conscious.

James, I've been following the Climategate 2.0 scandal at WUWT and ClimateAudit.  The attempts by the "team" to get a professor fired in NZ was especially shocking.  Is there an equivalent to being disbarred in the academic world?

Beyond the jailing of Sandusky for his crimes, a few questions come to mind.  Will it be shown that Penn State officials had a legal obligation to report what they knew, or should have realized, was a crime?  If so, and whether or not there is a legal prosecution of those officials, what sanction should the NCAA hand down?  Could this lead ultimately to the death penalty of the football program like what happened at SMU a couple decades ago?

I've been listening to McCotter's interviews on the Dennis Miller show regularly for at least a couple of years.  He makes Miller laugh out loud nearly every time.  Very witty guy.

Is Conrad Black correct when he says that we're headed to a two party country:  Conservatives with moderate Lib defectors on the right, and the NDP with the lefty Lib defectors on the left?  It means the elimination of the Liberal party and that just sounds unthinkable.  Many thought the Conservatives were dead and buried in the post-Mulroney years.

There are several people I've followed on this subject.  Whether or not they would consider themselves skeptics varies.  What they are not is part of the "consensus" as described by the IPCC:  Steve McIntyre, Ross McKitrick, Anthony Watts, Richard Lindzen, Lord Monckton, Roy Spencer.

Warren Meyer has good summary material at his http://www.climate-skeptic.com/  site.  I have a Powerpoint PPT of his with the filename "Climate Presentation Annotated 1-1-2010.ppt".

Richard Lindzen's congressional testimony can be found here  http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/11/18/profess-richard-lindzens-congressional-testimony/

JoNova has a nice basic summary in her skeptic's handbook:  http://joannenova.com.au/global-warming/

WW1 was also when Canada found its legs as a country.  The Battle of Vimy Ridge remains to this day the most famous battle in our military history.

BTW, I had the pleasure to be in Australia during ANZAC in the early 90's.  In the town of Warnambool in Victoria.  With an Australian on our our survey crew as a guide, we attended the local veterans hall to play "Two-Up", a traditional gambling game during ANZAC Day.  Don't remember if I won or lost that day, but I do recall looking around the circle of about 40 locals flipping coins in the air and betting on how they would land, and thinking that I wasn't going to find this activity in a tourist guide.  We were all Australian on that day.