Attn: Mr. Ignatieff

He's the smartest person on Earth, Iggy, so think about it. Maybe you can be the first person to fuck up the best country on a completely different planet.

Who really killed Steve Irwin?

Yesterday, a ?friend? of mine was chatting with another body about 9/11 conspiracies. And, with the Quebecois nation resolution, the Liberal leadership race and with just four episodes left until this season's Survivor finale, I thought I'd spend a word or 250 on this hot-button topic.

Last week marked the 43rd anniversary of the birth of the granddaddy of all conspiracy theories. Now, conspiracy advocates have been around since God created the Earth 6000 years ago (did the Lord conspire with the snake in the Tree of Knowledge just to kick his freeloading kids out of his house so He could get on with His life...?) and they've gotten more sophisticated (read: stupid).

My favorite is probably Roswell. I was a big fan of Mulder and Scully in the early to mid 90's and I wanted to believe the world government was a gravelly-voiced chain-smoker who was selling my future short so he could have a nice 2 bedroom on Georgia and Burrard. But it requires of me to think the worst of my fellow man, which is easy on some days, but no less cynical.

And that's ultimately the problem with cynicism; it takes comfort in pessimism as if it were a justifiable world view.

Which takes me back to my friend, and the 9/11 conspiracy. I won't argue the fine points in this post; smart people do it here. I'll only offer this opinion of the whole messiness. A conspiracy of this size requires a lot of people in the executive governments (not just American governments), the military and the media to keep their mouths shut (and who believes that this guy can keep a secret?). Most people come clean about their crimes, even if only confidentially, but, with time, the truth will out itself.

Constitutional algebra

Better men than me have already chimed in on the Quebecois nation notion silliness, so I won't spit out someone else's ideas translated into Francese. Needless to say, it's a bad day for Canada and for her particular kind of federalism. It's a bad day for the Tories, the Grits, and das Kapitalers.

Quebec federalists lose by winning, Alberta separatists win by Reform attrition, and the Canadian nation atrophies from a diet of constitutional reform and a steady routine of navel-gazing.

Thus, the following: (see if you can solve for x,y and z. Winners get a diabetic coma.)

It won't be long into the future that the minimum conditions for x will be intolerable to y. z will say to y to be generous, to which y will balk and tell z to stop being such a pussy, show some self respect and stand for something other than the national anthem. z will go back to x, upset that everyone's fighting.

On a side note, partisan politicians should never agree on anything, not even the theory of gravity. When they do, they're always wrong.