I'm feeling "schadenfreude" ("shameful joy": rejoicing in the misfortune of others) after hearing this news about Ralph Klein:


Klein 'shocked' at weak party support

Last Updated Sat, 01 Apr 2006 08:34:27 EST

CBC News

Alberta Premier Ralph Klein is mulling over his political future after Conservative party delegates gave him just 55 per cent support in a leadership review late Friday night.
The premier was "shocked ... and a little hurt" at hearing the results, said his spokeswoman Marisa Etmanski, adding that he will take a few days to consider his future.

Klein has led the Tories to four majority governments in the past 13 years and has received approval ratings as high as 97 per cent.

The premier has said he wants to remain as leader for the next two years. But now some pundits say he may leave sooner.

"Given the results of this vote, I intend to meet with party officials and my staff to discuss my next step," Klein said. "I will do this as quickly as possible and announce a decision about my future shortly."

During his speech Friday night to delegates at the party's annual convention in Calgary, Klein seemed to plead for his political future, asking the party faithful to let him retain his job for another two years.

"I ask you to give me, one final time, your endorsement to achieve what I have laid out for the duration of this mandate," Klein said.

"If you see fit to give me that support, I pledge to you that I will work as hard as I possibly can to bring continued honour to this party and continued prosperity to this province we love."
Ty Lund, the government services minister, said Klein deserves to be supported because he has eliminated Alberta's debt and has built the province into an economic powerhouse.
One of the hopefuls in the leadership race, former cabinet minister Lyle Oberg, has openly questioned Klein's plans to stay in the job. But Oberg told CBC News that the vote results have nothing to do with a political showdown.

"This is purely about the length of the leadership race and I think people saw that in the question, that it was the length of the leadership race, and they've decided that two years would not be good for the party and would not be good for the province, and I agree with that."

The Top 10 Best April Fools Day Hoaxes of All Time

#1: The Swiss Spaghetti Harvest

In 1957 the respected BBC news show Panorama announced that thanks to a very mild winter and the virtual elimination of the dreaded spaghetti weevil, Swiss farmers were enjoying a bumper spaghetti crop. It accompanied this announcement with footage of Swiss peasants pulling strands of spaghetti down from trees. Huge numbers of viewers were taken in, and many called up wanting to know how they could grow their own spaghetti trees. To this question, the BBC diplomatically replied that they should "place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best." Check out the actual broadcast archived on the BBC's website, http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/70000/video/_70980_aprilfool_vi.ram

#2: Sidd Finch

In its April 1985 edition, Sports Illustrated published a story about a new rookie pitcher who planned to play for the Mets. His name was Sidd Finch and he could reportedly throw a baseball with startling, pinpoint accuracy at 168 mph (65 mph faster than anyone else has ever been able to throw a ball). Surprisingly, Sidd Finch had never even played the game before. Instead, he had mastered the "art of the pitch" in a Tibetan monastery under the guidance of the "great poet-saint Lama Milaraspa." Mets fans everywhere celebrated at their teams's amazing luck at having found such a gifted player, and Sports Illustrated was flooded with requests for more information. But in reality this legendary player only existed in the imagination of the writer of the article, George Plimpton.

#3: Instant Color TV

In 1962 there was only one tv channel in Sweden, and it broadcast in black and white. The station's technical expert, Kjell Stensson, appeared on the news to announce that thanks to a newly developed technology, all viewers could now quickly and easily convert their existing sets to display color reception. All they had to do was pull a nylon stocking over their tv screen, and they would begin to see their favorite shows in color. Stensson then proceeded to demonstrate the process. Reportedly, hundreds of thousands of people, out of the population of seven million, were taken in. Actual color tv transmission only commenced in Sweden on April 1, 1970.

#4: The Taco Liberty Bell

In 1996 the Taco Bell Corporation announced that it had bought the Liberty Bell from the federal government and was renaming it the Taco Liberty Bell. Hundreds of outraged citizens called up the National Historic Park in Philadelphia where the bell is housed to express their anger. Their nerves were only calmed when Taco Bell revealed that it was all a practical joke a few hours later. The best line inspired by the affair came when White House press secretary Mike McCurry was asked about the sale, and he responded that the Lincoln Memorial had also been sold, though to a different corporation, and would now be known as the Ford Lincoln Mercury Memorial.

#5: San Serriffe

In 1977 the British newspaper The Guardian published a special seven-page supplement in honor of the tenth anniversary of San Serriffe, a small republic located in the Indian Ocean consisting of several semi-colon-shaped islands. A series of articles affectionately described the geography and culture of this obscure nation. Its two main islands were named Upper Caisse and Lower Caisse. Its capital was Bodoni, and its leader was General Pica. The Guardian's phones rang all day as readers sought more information about the idyllic holiday spot. Few noticed that everything about the island was named after printer's terminology. The success of this hoax is widely credited with launching the enthusiasm for April Foolery that then gripped the British tabloids in the following decades.

#6: Nixon for President

In 1992 National Public Radio's Talk of the Nation program announced that Richard Nixon, in a surprise move, was running for President again. His new campaign slogan was, "I didn't do anything wrong, and I won't do it again." Accompanying this announcement were audio clips of Nixon delivering his candidacy speech. Listeners responded viscerally to the announcement, flooding the show with calls expressing shock and outrage. Only during the second half of the show did the host John Hockenberry reveal that the announcement was a practical joke. Nixon's voice was impersonated by comedian Rich Little.

#7: Alabama Changes the Value of Pi

The April 1998 issue of the New Mexicans for Science and Reason newsletter contained an article claiming that the Alabama state legislature had voted to change the value of the mathematical constant pi from 3.14159 to the 'Biblical value' of 3.0. Before long the article had made its way onto the internet, and then it rapidly made its way around the world, forwarded by people in their email. It only became apparent how far the article had spread when the Alabama legislature began receiving hundreds of calls from people protesting the legislation. The original article, which was intended as a parody of legislative attempts to circumscribe the teaching of evolution, was written by a physicist named Mark Boslough.

#8: The Left-Handed Whopper

In 1998 Burger King published a full page advertisement in USA Today announcing the introduction of a new item to their menu: a "Left-Handed Whopper" specially designed for the 32 million left-handed Americans. According to the advertisement, the new whopper included the same ingredients as the original Whopper (lettuce, tomato, hamburger patty, etc.), but all the condiments were rotated 180 degrees for the benefit of their left-handed customers. The following day Burger King issued a follow-up release revealing that although the Left-Handed Whopper was a hoax, thousands of customers had gone into restaurants to request the new sandwich. Simultaneously, according to the press release, "many others requested their own 'right handed' version."

#9: Hotheaded Naked Ice Borers

In its April 1995 issue Discover Magazine announced that the highly respected wildlife biologist Dr. Aprile Pazzo had discovered a new species in Antarctica: the hotheaded naked ice borer. These fascinating creatures had bony plates on their heads that, fed by numerous blood vessels, could become burning hot, allowing the animals to bore through ice at high speeds. They used this ability to hunt penguins, melting the ice beneath the penguins and causing them to sink downwards into the resulting slush where the hotheads consumed them. After much research, Dr. Pazzo theorized that the hotheads might have been responsible for the mysterious disappearance of noted Antarctic explorer Philippe Poisson in 1837. "To the ice borers, he would have looked like a penguin," the article quoted her as saying. Discover received more mail in response to this article than they had received for any other article in their history.

#10: Planetary Alignment Decreases Gravity

In 1976 the British astronomer Patrick Moore announced on BBC Radio 2 that at 9:47 AM a once-in-a-lifetime astronomical event was going to occur that listeners could experience in their very own homes. The planet Pluto would pass behind Jupiter, temporarily causing a gravitational alignment that would counteract and lessen the Earth's own gravity. Moore told his listeners that if they jumped in the air at the exact moment that this planetary alignment occurred, they would experience a strange floating sensation. When 9:47 AM arrived, BBC2 began to receive hundreds of phone calls from listeners claiming to have felt the sensation. One woman even reported that she and her eleven friends had risen from their chairs and floated around the room.

© 2003 Alex Boese http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/aprilfool/

Today is the anniversary of the official opening of the Eiffel Tower in Paris (1889). It was built for the International Exhibition of Paris, commemorating the centenary of the French Revolution. At the time, it was the tallest structure ever built, at 1,000 feet. The architect Gustave Eiffel was a specialist in bridges and the design for the Eiffel Tower was based on his previous bridge designs. He chose to leave the tower's skeletal structure exposed because it was the easiest way to protect it from wind resistance.

When it was finished many Parisians thought it was horribly ugly. Artists and writers wrote a letter of protest, calling the tower a "truly tragic street lamp," a "mast of iron gymnasium apparatus, incomplete, confused and deformed."

The writer Guy de Maupassant described the Eiffel Tower as, "A high and skinny pyramid of iron ladders, [a] giant ungainly skeleton upon a base that looks built to carry a colossal monument of Cyclops, but which just peters out into a ridiculous thin shape like a factory chimney." He hated the tower so much that he started eating in its restaurant every day, because, he said, "It is the only place in Paris where I don't have to see it."

It was almost torn down in 1909, after the expiration of its lease, but the city saved it because its antenna was so useful for the new invention of radio. It's now the most widely recognized symbol of Paris.

- from "The Writer's Almanac" on National Public Radio (NPR) in the U.S.

Here's some Buddhist wisdom:

"All beings tremble before violence.
All fear death.
All love life.

See yourself in others.
Then whom can you hurt?
What harm can you do?"

-Dhammapada 129-130

From 365 Buddha: Daily Meditations, edited by Jeff Schmidt. Reprinted by arrangement with Tarcher/Putnam, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.

It's the birthday of Eric Idle, born in South Shields, Durham, England (1943). He's one of the six founding members of the British comedy group Monty Python, famous for its movies and its long-running television show, Monty Python's Flying Circus. Idle often played old ornery women, as well as creepy old men and annoying talk show hosts. Monty Python's first movie was Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975), in which Idle plays Sir Robin the Not-So-Brave, who wets his armor at the first sign of danger.

Eugene McCarthy said, "Being in politics is like being a football coach. You have to be smart enough to understand the game and dumb enough to think it's important."

Family Of Canadian Gay Hostage In Iraq Kept Sexuality Secret Out Of Reprisal Fears
by The Canadian Press
March 27, 2006 - 5:00 pm ET

(Toronto, Ontario) The co-director of the Christian Peacemakers Teams says the family of freed Christian peace activist James Loney kept his sexual orientation quiet out of fear for his safety.
Doug Pritchard says the family feared Loney might come to harm at the hands of his Iraqi captors had they known he was gay.

Pritchard says it likely wouldn't have helped if Loney's partner, Dan Hunt, had come forward with public pleas for his release.

Hunt made his first public appearance since Loney's ordeal began last November when he greeted his partner Sunday at the airport.

Loney arrived in Toronto after he and two other peace activists were rescued by coalition soldiers in Iraq.

The 41-year-old Loney was kidnapped in Baghdad along with fellow Canadian Harmeet Sooden, Briton Norm Kember and American Tom Fox, whose bullet-ridden body was found earlier this month.

Loney is expected to travel to his hometown of Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., where red ribbons decorate the trees and store and restaurant owners have posted welcome-home messages in their windows.

In the city of 75,000, signs reading, ``Prayers Answered _ Welcome Home James'' were to decorate several city buildings. At the Civic Centre, a message book was waiting for well-wishers to leave Loney a personal greeting.

The Sault Star also published a full-page color photograph of Loney for residents to post in their windows ``so that Jim, his parents Claudette and Patrick, and other family members see the joy of an entire community as he arrives home.''

Loney's parents have kept a low profile since their son's arrival back in Canada, and so far no one is saying exactly when he's expected to arrive in Sault Ste. Marie.

© www.365Gay.com 2006

Tennessee Williams said, "I have found it easier to identify with the characters who verge upon hysteria, who were frightened of life, who were desperate to reach out to another person. But these seemingly fragile people are the strong people really."