It might be a really interesting experiment if Calgary did elect a 19 year old student to Mayor. Jeremy Zhao is running in the current election and is focusing on taxes & voter apathy. Is he aware of all the bigger issues, all the political manoevering, all the budgetary constraints. I don't personally know the answer to that but I can speculate that due to his age he would at the very least have a new and different slant on what is going on in Calgary.

I read through his website www.jeremyzhao.com and what strikes me the most is contained in his bio. His immigrant roots flavoured by the hard work his family endured while becoming established in Calgary. He makes it clear that he is an average Calgarian and that is his strength, knowing what the average Calgarian wants and needs.

Good luck Jeremy, you may not (yet) have the credentials of Dave B but you certainly have my interest.< ...

I just read about the new public toilet in Calgary. Apparently it has a ten minute time limit and once that is hit then the doors open and sirens go off. I don't know about you but sometimes ten minutes can be awfully short!

So if the automated toilet led to you being "exposed" would you be ticketed for indecent exposure?

The idea is floating around that perhaps with the loonie versus the greenback we should look at a common currency. Personally I really like the idea. Why? Mostly because I hated the way our standard of living suffered when the dollar was low ( ie 60 cents).

Is there a danger here? Probably, since a unified North American currency would be impacted by the ever so large US national debt. Not being an economist I can really only look at it in everyday terms. Flip over the book and there would be one price not two. There would be some comfort in knowing that the price of lettuce in Texas could be compared to the price of lettuce in Calgary without having to convert the currency. ( sidebar , now if we could just get rid of that silly metric system life would really be grand)

Of course the biggest problem is what would we call the darn thing. We can't use Euro, it's taken. Let's see ( as I begin to muse), North American currency. Could we call it the Nora. Maybe but ...

The "our fair share" idea leaves me with a certain amount of uneasiness.  You could easily surmise that somehow we have been getting screwed by some evil business types, in this case BIG OIL.  Is that really the case here? I don't mean to give you a course in capitolism here but really the job of any business is to make profits. How do we make profits? It is extremely simple. You buy low and sell higher. Big Oil, medium Oil and even small Oil have been doing exactly what they are supposed to do. Negotiate their best possible deal on the supply side.

If we haven't been getting "our fair share" then to me - and I readily admit I am no expert in the O & G industry- the real blame must fall on the original supplier. Gee wonder who that was? Hint, think previous governments.

Clearly to me, this whole thing is a diversionary tactic with a nasty twist. Think election, think put the blame on someone else.< ...