A pretty revealing list comparing word counts for various topics on Wikipedia:

Call of Duty WWII Video Game (13 069 words) vs. World War II (11 884 words)
Pokemon (5 721) vs. Poker (1 857 words)
Superman (10 641) vs. Human (10 385)
...and wait until you see the final result - God vs. Knuckles (of Sonic the Hedgehog fame).  Yikes!

One of the smaller jobs I do in my position of Branch Supervisor is review the local library board minutes that are sent in by each of our 47 branches after every one of their meetings (which can be anywhere from 4-12 times per year depending on the size of the branch.)  I have to check that information is being conveyed accurately, policies are being followed, keep an eye for anything branches are doing locally that may require assistance (or intervention!) from HQ, etc. 

There's always a few humourous nuggets to keep me entertained and as I review a stack of them today, I thought I'd pass along one idea you might want to use as a fundraiser in your own library:

"John (Mary's son-in-law) has agreed to donated a quarter of Angus beef for the library to sell as a fundraiser...the draw will be held at the Lion's supper in November." 

(Have I mentioned how much I love being a librarian in rural Saskatchewan? And for those of you with hyper-sensitive sarcasm detectors, I'm not kidding! )

Friends of our have moved to Halifax for school and are keeping a blog to keep the folks back home updated on happenings in their life down east.  This recent entry was particularly hilarious as was the following clip:

A few years back, Canada ranked #1 in a UN survey of the best countries in the world to live in.  That same year, a similar study ranked Saskatchewan as the best province in Canada to live in.  So in honour of Canada Day (and with that sentiment in mind), I present the following list.

Of course, if you're going to make a list like this, the first thing you have to do is figure out what defines "Canadian" - not an easy task and something that writers, politicians, philosophers, artists and the folks on coffee row have argued about since 1867.  But there are some common themes that come up in this discussion every time: hockey, the natural world, our friendliness, our politeness, our export culture, our relationship with the United States, our socialized medicine. 

So why is Saskatchewan the most Canadian of provinces when you consider it in light of these characteristics? 

10. Geography
Canada is a land that celebrates its geographical diversity from coast to coast and, contrary to the "flat boring" stereotype (or as the Corner Gas theme says: "You can tell me that your dog ran away/Then tell me that it took three days"), Saskatchewan is the most diverse province in Canada in terms of geography with eleven distinct geographical regions within its borders.  (And trivia time - did you know that Saskatchewan is home to the northernmost sand dunes in the world?)

9. Export economy/natural resources
The majority of Canada's wealth is based on its history as an exporting nation - from the early fur trade to being the largest supplier of oil to the US in the world today (many people, even in Canada, guess that it's a middle eastern country that is the number one supplier.)  Saskatchewan is a huge part of Canada's export culture as a major exporter of oil, natural gas, potash, pulp & paper, diamonds and more.  Of course there are those that would also point out that the biggest thing we export is our people and unfortunately that's often true as well.  In fact, there's a popular belief among Saskatchewan residents that whenever you find a person in a position of power across Canada, perhaps not at the top of the ladder but the pivot person just below that, you'll often find a person from Saskatchewan filling the role.  (One example - Ralph Goodale as Deputy Prime Minister under Paul Martin.)  Saskatchewan people are apparently disproportionally represented whenever there are volunteer activities as well.

8. Friendly People
In a country that's internationally renowned for its friendly, polite citizens, Saskatchewan's people are arguably at the top of the list.  Why is this?  A settler mentality stretching back to the province's earliest days which meant that you had to get along with your neighbours or suffer the consequences still infuses the province today - in how we deal with each other and how we welcome visitors.   

7. Highway and roadways
Canada is a land of travelers who are often defined by their need to be on the move.  In fact, one classmate at library school did an entire presentation on the "road trip" as the ultimate Canadian experience.  Saskatchewan, although admittedly with highways which leave much to be desired (the worst in Canada according to CAA!) also has the most road miles in Canada due to our grid road system which criss-crosses the province.  Because of the sparseness of our population, we also think nothing of driving 3 or 4 or 6 hours for a one-day visit with relatives or whatever.  (I'll always remember the FIMS classmate who was shocked that Shea and I decided spontaneously to drive to Niagara Falls from London one day - a round trip of six hours.)

6. Weather
Canadians are obssessed with the weather and no where is this more true than "Next Year Country" where, with our agriculture-based economy, the local weather forecaster is the most important person on the nightly news broadcast.  Saskatchewan holds a number of Canadian weather records including most annual hours of sunshine (Estevan), heaviest hailstone (Cedoux) and hottest day (Midale).

5. Relationship with the United States
Some would say that our entire culture is based on our relationship with the United States - how we're similar, how we're different.  In fact, the Canada Day issue of MacLean's this year is titled "How Canada Stole the American Dream". And nothing shows how clearly Saskatchewan leads the way in this differentiation from our southern neighbours than the story about how, in the 1950's, an American publisher produced a social studies textbook with a map showing all of the communist countries on earth in red including Russia, China, Cuba and...Saskatchewan!

4. Inferiority Complex
Sort of related to the last point, a big part of why we're always comparing ourselves to the United States is that Canada has "little brother" syndrome (the more popular analogy is the one about a mouse sleeping next to an elephant.)    Saskatchewan suffers from the same affliction except it's Alberta who is our "big brother" - a close relative who's more glamourous, richer, better looking and drives a bigger car - who we seek to emulate in many ways even as we put them down as too focused on money/fame/power/etc.

3. Hockey
Saskatchewan produces more NHL players per capita than any other province, state or region in the world.  'Nuff said. 

2. Generosity of Its People
Canadians have a long history of selfless dedication to and for others - whether its Terry Fox or Dr. Norman Bethune or Stephen Lewis.  But as a province, nobody can top Saskatchewan which is so generous during Telemiracle, an annual province-wide telethon, that the province has been awarded a place in the Guinness Book of World Records in recognition of the fact.  An average year over the course of the thirty years of the telethon would see $1-3 donated for every man, woman and child in the province.  In 2007, that record was destroyed when more than $5 was donated per capita!

1.  Medicare
Perhaps more than any other value, our socialized medicine system is a point of pride for the people of this nation, especially in light of the dysfunctional system that exists just south of us.  As everyone who watched him win the CBC's "Greatest Canadian" competition, this innovation began in Saskatchewan with a man who was born in Scotland, raised in Manitoba and came to define the province he called home for most of his life - Tommy Douglas. 

When Jessamyn West was here for SLA, this topic came up at the after-event gathering.  I meant to post something about it at that time when the story was still somewhat fresh but never got to it, being as busy as I was with much more important matters like cute baby pictures and Flash-based Friday Fun Links.

A recent invite to the annual Sask Blogs summer picnic reminded me of the fact that the Sask Blogs Aggregator, a site which creates a rolling summary of posts from various Saskatchewan-based and Saskatchewan-themed blogs, is still down.

But I'm getting ahead of myself...

In mid-April, a right-wing, Sask-based blog named "Small Dead Animals" posted a link to another conservative site named FreeDominion that had posted a story about Canadian civil rights lawyer, Richard Warman.  As with most blogs, FreeDominion accepts comments.  Warman saw these and made the claim that the comments were defamatory.  He sued but in a unique twist, he didn't just name FreeDominion (which allowed the comments) but also sites that linked to the FreeDominion story such as Small Dead Animals (and therefore, were re-publishing these comments indirectly in his view.) 

Although the case was still in the works and linking to a third-party site that may contain libelous or defamatory material hadn't yet been defined as legal or illegal by a court, the Sask Blogs aggregator shut down their service completely out of concern that a similar charge could be leveled against them - either for linking to Small Dead Animals or to any of the other dozens of blogs that who were part of their feed and which may contain similar borderline comments which could be actionable. 

Here's a summary from the Regina Leader-Post of the whole situation.

I gotta say, I'm with the right winger on this and think that the civil rights lawyer is stretching too way far.  If FreeDominion libeled you or allowed you to be libel, that's one thing.  But suing every single site that links to the story (or links to a site that links to the story - hey, I just realised, because of all the links I've thrown out to the various sites involved in this case, I'm implicated now too!  In fact, because of the interconnected nature of the Internet, every possible site that includes links to other sites is guility as well!  Oh-oh - do you know what that means?  That's it - shut down the Internet - it's over.  Links are no longer allowed!)

Okay, kidding aside, does anyone see the irony in a civil rights lawyer being responsible for an action that's stifled freedom of speech and sharing of information, not only in the original offending site but for numerous harmless bystanders?  To me, this is sort of like the copyright issue where someone is trying to apply old-world views of how things work now to a new world.  In the old days, yeah, if someone else repeated a libelous statement, they were responsible.  But in the Internet age, where a link is a click away, a statement can go out to a million people as easily as to a dozen, the old paradigms simply don't work anymore.  "The genie is out of the bottle" is a phrase I think of all the time in situations like this.  Warman is trying to corral the spread of whatever libelous statements were made but somewhere, someone is going to be able to access them.  That's the new world and we all have to accept that. 

At any rate, the Sask Blogs aggregator was a great, volunteer service that I miss a lot.  I tend to read blogs that are in my narrow areas of interest or written by people I know so Sask Blogs was a simple way for me to get an overview of what people were writing about across the province - from all viewpoints, all writing styles, all geographic locations, all manner of topics from personal to political and everything in between. 

Hopefully this case will be resolved and Sask Blogs will be back soon.

I'm not sure if I put Pace to sleep tonight or he put me to sleep but at 8pm, we were both in bed, crashed out.  So that means I wake up now and am going to be completely messed up tomorrow.  Oh well - the same thing we always say when he naps at an unusual time - "he's tired - he needs it" applies to my little nap tonight as well!

Here's some randomness...apologies if you were the person who sent me one or more of these links.  I've lost track of where I got them. 

"The Mother's Milk of Literacy: How Breastfeeding May Improve Literacy"
- to which I say, "no duh!"

The Science of Early Brain Development
- you'll have to click on the first search result to see the PowerPoint presentation

Neat New Stuff on the Internet
- by librarian, Marylaine Block. "The sites I include are usually free sites of substantial reference value, authoritative, browsable, searchable, and packed with information, whether educational or aimed at answering everday questions."

"It Takes A Village of Librarians To Raise A Teen"

"Schools should continue to require library research so kids can learn how old folks used to Google stuff."

"The Times (UK) Makes 200 Years of Newspapers Available Online for Free"

"Reading The Future: Planning To Meet Canada's Future Literacy Challenges"
- a new study has lots of stats and info from the Canadian Council on Learning

"Dealing With Book Clutter"
- includes a list of questions that could be used with slight modification during weeding at your library

PaperbackSwap.com
- a site that the previous linked article led to which allows you to swap books (and CD's and DVD's) with others.  It appears to only be for US-based people right now (or people with access to a US mailing address) but still worth taking note of in case they expand to Canada in the future.

"Who Says Librarians and Teachers Don't Like Tags?"

And for a big, non-library-related finish, "What skills would be most useful if you could time travel back to 1000 A.D."

(Man, it always feels good to get this accumulated kludge off the books! )

Entertainment Weekly magazine is one of my guilty pleasures.  In fact, I had a subscription to it in the early 1990's right after it began publication.  And I was surprised to see that last week's issue marked its 1000th issue! 

I still read EW on a fairly regular basis but now it's visits to the local public library for a range of back issues (or when I'm in the area, the one local library branch that permits loans of the most recent issues of their magazines - how cool is that?)

A recent issue had an article about the memoir and included a list of every possible permutation of the genre - memoirs by geography, occupation, addiction, disease and even who had to die in the author's life to provoke the writing of the memoir, etc. 

"What is a cult book? We tried and failed to arrive at a definition: books often found in the pockets of murderers; books that you take very seriously when you are 17; books whose readers can be identified to all with the formula "<Author Name> whacko"; books our children just won’t get…"

50 best cult books - Telegraph 50 best cult books - Telegraph

I was recently introduced to energy drinks by a friend who recommended them as a hangover cure.  I haven't had a hangover for - how old is Pace now? - 13 months or so.  (Er, not counting the post-SLA conference "Books to Beers" event at the Free House - that one hurt a bit.  I blame Jessamyn.)

But that's beside the point.  You've probably seen the energy drinks - when Shea ran in to 7-11 to buy me one in Calgary, she said "When did they take over the drink case?"

Now, back in the day, energy drinks were named Jolt Cola and that was good enough.  Apparently this new version has the added benefit (?) of vitamins.  To which I say, "Whoopdee-doo - bring on the caffiene levels certified to give you heart arrithmia please!". 

Yes, I do have the occasional energy drink.  I can justify it because I don't drink coffee.  Or smoke crack. 

Which is all a long preamble to say I was drinking Bushwakker beer I imported to Calgary for a friend (who coincidentally is the brother of the guy who first recommended energy drinks to me.)  We're both responsible fathers now (he's a newly certified medical doctor for godssake) so we weren't consuming to the levels we may have at one point in our lives. 

But when he showed me this video, I thought it was the funniest thing I'd seen in a long time...

This is my Wordle of the most common words I used on this blog in May 2008...