Evens

As I may have mentioned, we were introduced to the comedy of Iranian-British comedian Omid Djalili when we went to Britain for Christmas. Now, his show is on BBC Canada every Sunday night. In this, there is not just Omid's stand-up, although there is plenty of that, but sketches too. I think he's so funny that he almost, almost cancels out that other Iranian, Head Boy, Mad-bad-jihad for me. Not quite, but Omid evens up the score somewhat.

So, the Oscars suffered the lowest ratings since 1974 when the current system of score-keeping started. Oh shucks.
On the one hand, the viewing choices of so many never cease to disappoint, on the other hand, perhaps we don't want to sit and watch a bunch of people congratulating each other on just doing their job.

Bizarre that the Talib-tubbies have demanded that mobile phone companies in Afghanistan should shut down between 17.00 and 0700 so that the UN forces couldn't track them. It seems to me that the best bet would be to not listen to the Talibs and hope that the UN does indeed manage to track them down. Get rid of the threat and you - well, get rid of the threat. Oh, except for one thing, contrary to what the beardy-weirdies might think, it seems it's satellites and not mobile phones that are being used to track them.

On the day that a report claims that anti-depressants are no more effective at combatting depression than placebos, Paul Keedwell in the Graun, tells us that no-one talks about the good side of the illness. And the good side seems to be that it 'can lead to great insights and achievement'. Well, that's good, and it makes sense, since higher IQ and depression are linked.
The good news, in the UK at least, is that 3,600 more therapists are to be trained to cope with the problem.
I know that when I suffered clinical depression after the death of my parents, I felt that both drugs and therapy helped enormously.

Here in Richmond, a local crack house has managed to blow itself up. I have no idea whether acetylene would be needed in the manufacture of said crack, but either way, keeping a cylinder of it around isn't clever. The man speaking to the local news station about the explosion and consequent conflagration, didn't look like much of a chemist, and I couldn't help thinking that hippies should stick to weed or at the very least, not smoke weed while manufacturing the crack.
Vancouver is thinking about the mayoral elections. Of course I don't get a vote because - well, I'm not Canadian and I don't live in Vancouver, but if I did, then I'd probably vote for the most competent woman candidate. And good luck with that, because there isn't even an incompetent woman candidate.
And somehow, this isn't the first thing people notice about the whole kerfuffle.