A regular reader (and replier) on this site, our good friend Alan McLeod has won a major legal victory for the intelligent and honest people of Canada. Hopefully, the decision will be a long overdue step away from the absurd cycle of political patronage here on Prince Edward Island – where provincial staffing often changes with leading party.

Congratulations Alan, and thanks for contributing to these amusing excerpts from an article on the ruling on the Halifax Daily News.

Yesterday’s historic victory came on McLeod’s second-last day as a lawyer. He is leaving to work with six 23-year-olds in a Web application company, silverorange.com.

“This decision will probably be appealed,” McLeod said, “but I think it will be upheld. If I had lost this case, I was going to really have to question P.E.I. I would have said this place sucks.”

Well said – good to know that PEI does not actually suck (and I’m actually 23¾-years old, thank you).

Wow – well over 100 names on the Northern Exposure petition already. I’m pleasantly surprised by the reaction.

A few updates:

• I did get one email from someone who claimed to have spoken to Universal employees. He suggested that a release of the show on DVD would never happen. However, I remain optimistic – especially in light of the response here. If there is anyone who can shed any light on the financial / political / logistical realities of releasing a show like this on DVD, please let us know.
• I’ll wait until we get 250 names (or more, hopefully) and then I’ll print them off and send it to anyone and everyone who might influence a release (anyone who has info on who I should send it to or any mailing info, please contact me).
• A few readers also pointed me towards Amazon.com’s Northern Exposure DVD page. Since it doesn’t exist yet, you obviously can’t buy it. However, you can sign up to be notified if (when?) it is ever released. By doing so, you’re also ‘voting’ for the eventual release, as the page on Amazon.com states:
  

  NOT YET RELEASED: The studio is currently not producing this title on DVD, but to be notified when it is available, enter your e-mail address at right. You’ll also be voting for this release; we’ll let the studio know how many customers are waiting for this title.

Thanks to all those who have signed and linked to the petition. Tell your friends.

For anyone interested, things have been a little slow around here as I’ve been working on the next version of aov, and I’ve bought a house.

A snippet of a conversation overheard in line at the grocery store – one annoyed girl says to another:

“…and I was like, Andrew, I can’t be snoring. I’m awake.”

Regular readers please forgive me as I use this space to promote one of my few fanaticisms.

I wish that I could buy the entire series of Northern Exposure on DVD (or at all). A few select episodes are available on VHS, but nothing close to the complete series sets available for other shows (The Sopranos, The Simpsons, Sex and the City, Star Trek TNG, X-Files, even Buffy the Vampire Slayer!).

The customer base is certainly there (unless I have the economics of DVD production completely wrong). We will buy it!

So, I would like to start a petition to Universal Playback:

We, the undersigned, kindly request the release of a complete Northern Exposure series DVD box set. Thanks.

View the current signatures and Sign up (way at the bottom of this page).

Update: The petition is closed – thanks for all of the signatures. I don’t think it had anything to do with us, but there is news that NX may eventually be released on DVD.

Five long years after the release of Netscape 4, it has finally arrived: Mozilla 1.0.

A few videos of Triumph the insult comic dog from Conan O’Brien found on MetaFilter:

• Triumph on Hollywood Squares
• New Jersey Fans of Bon Jovi Mocked by Triumph the Sock Dog
• Truimp mocks Star Wars fans

Some people might find these somewhat offensive, but they are remarkably funny.

In the last month, I’ve seen both Cuba and Iraq criticised on American television news for their state-sponsored celebrations of their government and leaders. The term state-sponsored is used as an insult – you know, those backwards countries where the government throws parties for themselves?

Then, this week, the CBC is all over the Golden Jubilee, which is, as far as I can gather, a state-sponsored celebration of the Queen in England. Every country does this.

I realize there is a big difference between England’s celebrations and those in Cuba and Iraq (and I’m not suggesting that Cuba and Iraq are similar either – except maybe in the eyes of the U.S. administration). The most obvious example of this difference is that those who criticise the British Monarchy aren’t thrown in jail. Also, there is a fundamental difference when a democratic government celebrates itself – since a democratic government represents the people, in theory, the people are then celebrating their own government.

Still, I find it remarkable how we in the west (and I include myself in this) are able to hold such obvious double standards.

Thank you for reading my amateurish political opinions.

As I was poking around the Apple History, trying to sponge up as much of my new heritage as possible before my iBook arrives, I stumbled across an anecdote concerning Apple’s 20th Anniversery Macintosh. It was a pricey beast at around 10,000$ but somebody wrote in with this bit, making it all seem worthwhile:

… it started at a retail of $10 K. But what this included was that a limo would deliver the Mac to your house, and a man in a Tuxedo would set it up for you… Not bad for $10 K.

Don’t they do stuff like that at Saturn?

Netscape 7 has materialized. I watched somebody try to install it, and it crashed after trying to force support of AOL’s ART format and RealPlayer onto him. Bad first impressions.