Ready Aye Not Ready, Stumble Upon & Paying for '76 in '06

Ready Aye, Not Ready
In regard to last night's post, the conflict in Lebanon has escalated again today with Israel launching limited ground operations over the southern Lebanese border. Air attacks by the IDF continue to pound Bierut and other Hezbollah targets. Evacuations have began in Bierut with the United States, Greece, Italy, France, Sweden & Spain, amoung others to transport nationals and citizens out of the country. For example, the United States has sent a commercial ship, 2 destroyers and 3 helicopters to the region to evacuate American nationals. Other nations are arranging alternate forms of tranportation. Denmark and Poland are busing there citizens to Syria, the U.K. is sending an Aircraft carrier and a warship to evacute it's citizens (kind of overkill, but what floats your boat) In contrast the Canadian government's response has been sluggish. They have chartered 6 ships from Cyprus to transport Canadians from Lebanon back to Cyprus, where they will then be flown home to Canada. Only problem-The ships won't be ready until Wednesday at the earliest. In contrast- Sweden, the United States, Spain and other nations already have evacuation operations underway. Another factor is protection for the transports. Hezbollah launched two missiles and crippled the INS Hanit. And that was a military ship with armor plating. So imagine a convoy of ships sailing from Lebanon and Hezbollah decides just for kicks they fire of an Anti-Ship missile at the convoy. Or two, or three. Dozens, hundreds or even thousands could die. If the convoy was under military escort, now that would be a different matter entirely. Even a single Halifax-Class frigate could detect a threat before it threatened the convoy. But without an escort of some kind, the convoy is a sitting duck and a target to juicy for Hezbollah to pass up. So my advice to government : Send out one of the ships that are sitting at dock or their figurative butts and get them to the Med ASAP
Review: Stumble Upon
Being home today and having the first chance in eight days to catch up on podcasts and vidcasts I was watching an episode of commandN when Amber mentioned an extension for Firefox called Stumble Upon, and it is one of the coolest extensions for Firefox to date. Basically you go through the setup process which is painless, selecting things that interest you (For example I selected Humor, Computer Science, Mac OS, amoung others) and when your tired of the same old stuff you just go to your Stumble Upon toolbar, select a catagory and hit the Stumble button. It will take you to a site you never knew exsisted. Best of all most of the sites are very useful. SU has in place a very good feeback system where you can rate a page good (thumbs up) or bad (thumbs down) That ranking is taken into consideration and it is either promoted or buried according to your choice. The system reflects that of Digg. Stumble Upon is an amazing extension and I recommend it to anyone who is tired of reading the same content over and over again.
Paying for '76 in '06
Who knew Montreal hosted the Olympic Games in 1976, anyone? Well it's a little known fact that Montreal did in fact host the Olympic Games that year. But did you know that it almost didn't happen? Here's the story:
After the success of the Expo '67 in Montreal mayor Jean Drapeau pitched his idea of hosting the 1976 Olympic Games. It was a long shot, but they won the bid. The Olympics became Drapeau's obsession, he became manager of the massive work projects in Montreal, namely, the Olympic Stadium and the Veledrome. At one point there where 84 cranes on site. "The cranes where getting in each other's way, the workers where getting in each other's way" says Dr. Victor Goldbloom who was in charge of the construction of he facilities after the provincial goverment stepped in forming the Olympic Installations Board. The project was also deeply in debt. The Olympic stadium, supposed to cost $156 millions ended up costing $2 Billion. Just to get the stadium completed, 10,000 workers worked around the clock to get the projet completed. The city is finally seeing the light at the end of a vey long dark tunnel as payments for the games end later this year.
This situation was comparable to the debt that Great Britain accumulated from the Lend-Lease program during the Second World War. The final check for the debt was mailed just days before the 60th aniversery of D-Day. Vancover faces the same problem Montreal did but in a different way. Inflation has driven up the costs of things like Steel and skilled labour through the roof and it's becoming harder and harder for contractors to find skilled workers. The reason: The booming Oil driven Albertan Economy. It's not just from the East coast that workers are migrating, it's from B.C. that they come as well. The price of oil (over $70 U.S. a barrel) has caused the price of things like Steel to spike considerably, rising the cost of the construction of facilities and forcing the Vancouver Olympic Comittee to cut venues. So will it all be worth it in the end? I think so. It's been 18 years since the Olympics came to Canada. It'll be 22 years when Vancouver Whistler rolls around.
Come back tomorrow night for more Commentary,
Nathaniel