May. Almost mid-May. This is the best part of the year, right? Is there anything better than the pre-black-fly world? It's like mosquitoes (is there an "e"?) don't exist, let alone wasps and hornets. It's still all about the plants but not quite yet the mowing. May is a time of imagination.

• You know what may is? May is the time for thinking about the things you will never do this summer. Like going to that bluegrass festival with mass banjo instruction. My inner novice banjo star would do so well at that sort of thing. But there might be bugs.
• Good to see the powers of the surveillance crime controllers are entirely misplaced:

  In becoming the world's most-watched nation, Britain was promised a commensurate drop in crime. But the estimated 4.2 million closed-circuit television cameras in the U.K. have made barely a blip on the graph of public safety, a senior London detective in charge of the program admitted yesterday. Calling Britain's multibillion-dollar surveillance network "an utter fiasco," Detective Chief Inspector Mick Neville said video footage has solved only 3 per cent of crime.

  Multibillion. That is the beauty of a new technology. Boosts the economy without any real idea whether it works or not.
• There is one thing that I don't understand about the post-9/11 anti-faithers like Martin Amis:

  As the Ayatollah Khomeini used to say — in scandalized terms — affiliates of other religions think that they can go to church once a week, or even pray once a day, and that’s that. He said, Islam isn’t like that. The whole wave of Islamism is the revival of the idea that Islamism is the total guide to existence, that it’s not on the edges but right in the centre. If you adhere to this literalist way, [Islam] does follow you into every room in the house. It’s without its grandeur and beauty if you deny this central severity.

  What kind of person has faith that doesn't get into every room in the house? It is like you have a relationship with the creator of all things and say: "feh - you can stay around but only in the rec room"? What kind of faith is that?
• Dark matter is really out there. It's apparently baryonic - unlike me.

Gotta run. School bus trip.

Did you know the Russian constitution barred two consecutive presidencies for one person? No wonder the Putinese powers have placed him as Prime Minister. I wonder how long the gap has to be? Can he be el presidento, say, next Tuesday and the week's intermission be enough to satisfy the constitution?

"Russia is respected once again," Medvedev said. Medvedev suggested Putin would have a strong influence on Russian policy for years to come. He said Putin had been involved in setting goals for the country's development through 2020 and "as Cabinet chairman will play a key role in their realization."

Medvedev? Oh, he's the new Presidentette. Goals? Invasion of tiny former Soviet republics is one.

I thought that Tims had lost it when they introduced centralized baking. They certainly lost my trade but this is whacked:

Giving a free Timbit to a baby has cost a single mother of four her job. Nicole Lilliman, 27, was fired yesterday from her Tim Hortons job for giving one of the 16-cent blobs of fried dough to a tot. "I have been fired for giving a baby a Timbit," Lilliman said yesterday. "It was just out of my heart – she was pointing and going `ah, ah...' I should have gone to my purse and got the change, but it was busy."

Can you imagine worse PR? How about Jesus showing up for the second coming and getting booted out before he's done his coffee for annoying folks with the glow off his halo. No that would be not as bad - because that wouldn't be firing someone for giving a baby a frikkin' timbit!!!

What is it about technology that makes you think your widget will solve everything? This idea is one that I trust never happens, given the foreseeable consequences variations on road rage and simple bad driving that inevitably would ensue:

"Today I am talking about making aviation available to everyone as a daily means of transportation. Transportation changes society. When they dumped the horse and cart people took over two continents. 150 years ago steam turned America into a nation. Today 50 per cent of the world lives in urban areas thanks to the car. And in the last 50 years, the aviation industry has made one world thanks to the airplane."

Hmmm...I think people live in urban areas thanks to public transportation and live in the country and burbs due to a car in, umm, one or two countries. But think about it. Do you really want to be jostling for a place in the on-ramp with that crazy neighbour down the block or the moronic teen in the boom-box rust bucket? Of course, this isn't really about doing this but getting investment to provide the tinkerers with decades of care free tinkering but can you see one actual advantage to this idea as a form of mass transit?

If you ever wonder who is watching the watchers and also who is watching the watchers watch, apparently it's the FBI and NPR:

A multi-year investigation leads federal agents to search the Office of Special Counsel's building. Employees have alleged the agency was misused for political purposes. Neither Office of Special Counsel head Scott Bloch nor anyone else has officially been charged with a crime. But the FBI secured a separate subpoena for Bloch's home.

Who? This is who...and if that disappears, this.

Oh, for the 1950s and their simple concerns - nuclear fear, lack of access to tea:

Even in the nation's darkest hours, nothing has traditionally given so much comfort and succour to the British soul as a nice cup of tea. So much is the beverage bound up with the national character that recently declassified documents showed yesterday that British contingency planners worried there would be a dramatic shortage of tea in the aftermath of a nuclear attack.

The shortfall of the staple British beverage would be "very serious" if the country were to come under attack with atomic and hydrogen bombs, according to a memo drafted between 1954 and 1956 released under the Freedom of Information Act by the National Archives in southwest London. "The tea position would be very serious with a loss of 75 per cent of stocks and substantial delays in imports and, with no system of rationing, it would be wrong to consider that even one ounce [28 grams] per head per week could be ensured," it said.

This is not so much quaint but also speaks to a point in time when people were not so much in touch - and by that I mean our time. Are we concerned about the tea supply or even the grain supply or are we living in a la-la land of endless cheap supply despite of everything no matter what? Is that fair? Is the biofuel effect just a blip to you or do you need to set aside more for your fuel, your bread and even your beer because of the confusion it has thrown into the market? Will it take a run on tea?

Did you see Many Saturday night? Of course you - unless you are Chris - didn't because only Chris and I have invested wisely in the baseball sports package. Because of that decision we saw Manny pick a runner off at home plate throwing from the outfield. He picked him off with enough time to watch his face say "oh, my God, I actually picked a guy off at home" on his face before the guy was actually out. It was an amazing thing to see. But you didn't. Unless you are Chris.

• Did you see the horse being put down at the Kentucky Derby? Not me. I was making spicy chicken tacos and burritos. There will be a flurry of talk about the wickedness of breeding horse to have all that weight on tiny pins of legs but that is what is.
• The Boston Celtics finally beat the Washington Wizards to move on in the NBA playoffs. I didn't watch that either. If I had a favorite NBA team, it would be the Celtics. They played in the Nicks in Halifax in a pre-season game around 1979. The next round with the Celts v. Mr. James may actually attract enough interest in my to watch some of a game.
• The Habs are done for the year, being put to pasture by the Flyers. We will have the "why are there no Canadian Cup winners??" stuff for a while. It used to be we couldn't afford the good players due to the exchange rate. Now the Canadian dollar is strong and our teams still lose. Maybe good hockey players just hate Canada. Hey - I picked Dallas the the darkhorse! Wooot!!!
• Now that the Morton have safely stayed up, we can notice the junior leagues of England and play there. Man U - yawn. Chelsea - yawn. Arsenal did well and Wigan stays up. EPL in a nutshell. If I could justify another specialty sports channel, I would have paid more attention to Spain given Barcelona has both Henry and Ronaldinho but...no. I will not pay - unless they could get me Morton games, too.
• Time of Roger Clemens to simply pack it in and go away. Slightly sadly, that may be what Yanks wonder child Ian Kennedy is doing. Too bad for the Giants that no one noticed Barry Zito had done just that some time before they signed him for 126 million over seven years. His fast ball is 81 mph now. What will it be in 2013?

That's it. Sox against Detroit tonight and only one month to go until the Watertown Wizards season starts the CFL training camps open. Funny - when you put "CFL training camps" into Google that it asks you "Did you mean NFL training camps?"

How was your May Day? Did you think of Stalin? Didn't pop into my head once but I did about seven loads of laundry. Does that count?

• Update: photobombing...potentially NSFW depending on where you work and who is watching!
• Were you aware that India launched ten satellites with one rocket launch? I had no idea. How come no one thinks of the role of India in the coming global tensions. They can read you license plate from space now.
• Control freaks are in charge and are expanding their control freakiness. Stephen Taylor finds this not worrisome:

  The more time that the Prime Minister has to restructure the Canadian state, its identity and political brands, the more permanence his agenda will have.

  Isn't the idea of someone with 30% support "restructuring the Canadian state", especially considering his previous work in the junior ideologue club?

• Do you remember usenet? Remember that 1990's part of the internet where everyone could respond to everyone else's position on everything in a sort of web 2.0 thing without the 2.0? Then it died through spam. Rob thinks its happening again with the web. Noise creep. Which is different from creepy noises.

• Did you know that the sports memorabilia market was teetering, too?

• After paying my taxes, I am tell you I am just delighted that Ontario is slipping into have-not status while still sending 20 billion dollars to the rest of Canada. I really hope Flaherty tells us again how Ontarians need to change our ways.

• The new British coins are very cool.

That's it for now. Go look at something pop out of the ground.

Is May the best month? Every year I get to March with gasping relief that the piercing cold is gone but it is only 60 days later that you can relax - just yesterday there was snow and hail...the size of corn kernels, too. No canned hams or golf balls but definitely corn. The crocus is done and lily of the valley is on its way. Even the annual two day ant infestation of the house is over. I should mow by Monday.

But April was kind, too. How many times did the Red Sox win in the last few innings, coming from behind or, like last night, waiting for the starter to fade so that they might attack his team mate - the unfortunate signing, the untested prospect or the fading star? Going 17-12 in an April that started in Japan is neither fluke nor overheated. Who would have thought May's games against Tampa Beelzebubbians, Baltimore or KC would have meaning?

The last two cars I bought were no interest deals. But is the entire economy of North America moving to a place where there is no profit and no consequences from borrowing money?

The Federal Reserve cut a key interest rate by a quarter-point Wednesday, a smaller move than the aggressive easing it undertook earlier this year. There were signs the Fed may believe it has done enough to prevent a deep recession.

The Fed action, after a two-day meeting, pushed the federal funds rate down to 2 per cent, the lowest level since late 2004. It marked the seventh rate cut by the central bank since it began easing credit conditions last September to combat the growing threat of a recession brought on by a severe housing slump and credit crisis.

Given that real property in some markets and production costs in others are going through a retraction of value (which means it's worth less than was assumed), in some cases is a zero return pretty good? But in an economy soaked with debt and staggering under its weight - is the creation of easier access to debt such a good thing?

Well, at least we're not Japan. Good thing we haven't got much to do with them economically.