On men blogging: Among many of the male bloggers I know — especially the ultra successful ones — there’s a sort of rivalry to see how much stuff they can pump out, how quickly. That’s really a guy thing, don’t you think?

Ultra-competitiveness is not a male-only activity. Women are into one-upmanship, too.

Margaret Wente wrote an opinion piece in the Globe and Mail entitled “Why are bloggers male?” She basically states that blogging is “more of a guy thing” and goes on about it being related to why talk shows and opinion pages are “still dominated by male voices” and similar piffle.

The piece is accompanied by a picture and a tagline that reads “Guys get pumped by going higher, faster, farther than anyone else. That’s why they spit out instant opinions”. The tagline is attention grabbing hyperbole, so meh. The picture, on the other hand, is a little more controversial.

If you’ve been paying attention to the news lately, you may recognize this as a photo of snowmobiles at the site of an avalanche in Revelstoke that killed at least two people a few days ago.

Now, I don’t know whether it was Wente or some random editor that chose the photo to accompany her opinion piece, but whoever it was is lacking in good judgement. I’m sure that the families of those who died are thrilled at being used as the example for Wente’s piece.

Oh, and the last time I checked, some of the biggest talk shows on the air are hosted by women – Oprah and The Ellen Degeneres Show are just a couple that spring to mind. @benlucier on Twitter pointed out that The View should also have sprung to mind.

And at a recent gathering of bloggers from the Ottawa area, the ratio of male to female bloggers was evenly split, or possibly skewed in favour of the women. A quick review of my Ottawa blogroll shows that about half of the blogs listed are run by women.

Apparently, she’s pissed off women bloggers because they’ve added an editor’s note at the bottom of the piece that there’s going to be an online debate between Margaret Wente and female bloggers at noon on Friday. Should be interesting to watch.

As for the title of this blog entry, it’s taken from her opinion piece:

All you have to do is write “Margaret Wente is an idiot” and hit send. Instant gratification!

At least she’s right about something (and it’s not the instant gratification).

Updated to include a reference to The View.

Earlier today, the House of Commons has passed a motion 139:135 that reads as follows:

"That, in the opinion of the House, the prime minister shall not advise the Governor General to prorogue any session of any Parliament for longer than seven calendar days without a specific resolution of this House of Commons to support such a prorogation.”

While not binding on the Prime Minister, it makes it clear that the majority of members of the House of Commons do not approve of Harper’s recent suspension of Parliament. Cool.

Jack Layton uttered a great line in the House of Commons earlier today when the motion was being dealt with:

‘Our prime minister is not a king and it’s time he understood that.’

Regardless of your politics, you have to admit that’s a great sound bite!

A story posted on the National Post’s blog caught my attention in my RSS reader and screamed “click me”. The headline was “Woman aspires to weigh 1,000 pounds” and was based on a Daily Mail story.

So I clicked. And then I wished I hadn’t.

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There’s been a lot of people disparaging our athletes, saying Canada’s Own The Podium program has been a failure. Some of the athletes have responded, saying that it works.

Fourteen gold medals — the highest count for a host country in the Winter games. Ever.

I think it works.

Congratulations Team Canada!!!

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you probably know by now that Canada’s women’s hockey team kicked ass at the Olympics yesterday. Claiming a 2-0 victory over Team USA, Canada’s women’s team took their third gold medal in as many Olympics.

But it seems that half an hour after the fans had left the arena, the locker room party spilled onto the ice and some of the women were spotted drinking beer (gasp!) and champagne (double gasp!) and smoking cigars (triple gasp!) on the ice while still kitted out in their team uniforms and wearing their gold medals. But the biggest shock is that Marie-Philip Poulin was apparently spotted taking part and she’s only eighteen (infinity gasp!!1!1eleven!!!).

Are you still with me? Do you need some smelling salts? Ok, carrying on…

The IOC’s executive director of the Olympic games, Gilbert Felli, after being tipped off by an AP reporter has launched an investigation into this behaviour and is quoted as saying:

“…that is not good. It is not what we want to see. I don’t think it’s a good promotion of sport values. If they celebrate in the changing room, that’s one thing, but not in public.”

“We will investigate what happened. … We will first find the facts and then act accordingly.”

Sucked into this “investigation” are the International Ice Hockey Federation, the Canadian Olympic Committee and Hockey Canada.

Hockey Canada‘s response last night was

“The members of Team Canada apologize if their on-ice celebrations, after fans had left the building, have offended anyone.”

“In the excitement of the moment, the celebration left the confines of our dressing room and shouldn’t have. The team regrets that its gold-medal celebration may have caused the IOC or COC any embarrassment.

“Our players and team vow to uphold the values of the Olympics moving forward and view this situation as a learning experience.”

Which I really think can be best summed up as “meh, our bad” and a possible “get a life, Gilbert”.

Oh, and for those going “but an eighteen-year old was drinking and BC’s age of majority is nineteen!” — she’ll be nineteen next month.

And she’s of legal age where she lives.

And she scored two points in the first round of the game.

Did I mention that we won by two points? I’m willing to cut her a bit of slack.

Trashee mentioned this in his week’s summary.

The Ottawa Sun is reporting that Jayhaed Saadé’s pirate radio station is off the air. It’s unclear what finally caused the plug to be pulled, just that he was being “forced to go off air”. Industry Canada’s threat of fines in the order of $5000/day probably played a role.

I didn’t hear his last broadcast, but people in the Digital Home forum said that someone could be heard in the background telling him to turn it off. Whether it was his father or someone from Industry Canada is unknown. He apparently is confident that his application for a broadcast license will be granted, something that most of the posters in the forum think is highly unlikely.

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