In other skating related news, the not so wise people who run the Montreal 24 hour marathon sent out an email. In that email the September race date was explained:
Why the later date? Primarily for safety reasons, Parc Jean Drapeau has decided that from now on, races will be held on different dates than other kinds of events, thus avoiding interference from cars and pedestrians on the track. This means that the 2008 edition will take place entirely on the main track, without any detour through the woods.
Alright, recently I decided to avoid ranting about skating because it causes so much grief and a good deal of skater politics that I really could live without thank you very much. But this is idiotic. Running a 24 hour race in Montreal in September when evening temperatures fall to near freezing is just begging for some serious cases of hypothermia, but at least this year no one will have to skate though the woods at mid day when the chance of a wipe out is just so appallingly huge that I don't think it even happened once last year. Honestly what are these people thinking? Is it really the case that they wanted it in September or was it just maybe a case of, oops, we can't book the track for July or August cause someone at our end dropped the ball? When I am alone on a trail skating I love the sport, but it seems to be that as more people get involved the worse things get and soon enough I feel like screaming: get me out of this insanity! Skater politics, so petty it transcends childish.
Enough of that politics, onto the real thing.
I am slowly recovering from my Daily Show withdraw. Despite the continuing WGA strike I find John Stewart, without writers, is really on fire, the man is genius. After watching a re-run of last night's Daily Show I could not be bothered to move and saw some of Stephen Colbert. Colbert replayed an interview with Bill O'Reilly of Faux News infamy. Bill said something to the effect of John and Stephen can't find a camera without their screen writers. It is a shame really, O'Reilly has so many viewers yet it is no secret his viewers are among the least informed in America, meanwhile viewers of The Daily Show are better informed of current events than viewers of any regular television news program, even the Jim Lehrer News Hour on PBS.
At the end of the Colbert report, Stephen interviewed, Neil Shubin, the author of Your Inner Fish who said something interesting. Specifically, Shubin said humans are now evolving not because of evolution but because of our own medicines and machines, 25 years from now we might be entirely different because of our own inventiveness. All I could think of was the line in Understanding Media the Extensions of Man by Marshall McLuhan, We shape the tools and thereafter the tools shape us. It seems like every year, Understanding Media becomes less complicated and more prophetic. The first time I read that book, in 1998 it was a horribly complicated read, I wonder what I would make of it today.
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