Remember Tucker Carlson? Remember how much of a boor he was to a Canadian MP while she was trying to discuss US-Canada relations? (If you don’t, click here and skip forward to 2:12). Well, CNN just fired him, and it looks like Jon Stewart’s appearance on Crossfire was the final nail in the coffin. The full story is available over at the CBC.

Just got back from listening to Canadian, er, I mean World Junior Men’s Hockey Championship at Darren’s with Cam. We were tuned in to Fan 960, a Calgary radio station, which was broadcasting the Grand Forks, North Dakota-based game via the Internet.
Canada clobbered Russia 6-1. What can I say besides “Woohoo!”? Someone get the dustpan ’cause I hear a SWEEP. 🙂

• CBC Sports Online: Canada crowned world champs
• TSN (CP): Canada wins first WJHC gold since 1997
• CTV: Team Canada wins hockey gold, beats Russia 6-1
• ESPN (AP): Canada wins first title in 8 years
• StarTribune: World Junior Hockey title: Canada 6, Russia 1

Related:

• Globe and Mail: TSN takes heat over missed game

So for a while now, I’ve been keeping track of how much it costs me to buy gas, and the average distance between fill-ups. The idea being, that, after a while, I can characterize the performance of my car.

(Ugh… forgive the crummy photo, I only wanted to get the idea across.. but in case that didn’t happen… those are gas receipts…. 🙂
I decided it would be good to update the Excel spreadsheet again (last time was November 2003).
The results? Since October 2002, I’ve filled up my tank 74 times. On average, I drive 235 miles between fill-ups, put in 9.735 gallons of gas, and spend $16.26 doing so (a rate of $1.625/gallon). That’s an average gas mileage of 24.13 miles/gallon. Okay, but not great by any means. (For comparison purposes, the car is a compact sedan from 1995.)
I plotted a few graphs with the data, but the most interesting one was price/gallon vs. time. There were a few very solid peaks and valleys in the graph. Which of course got me wondering about the influence of the political situation on the gas prices. So I went out and found a timeline of events in Iraq. A few timelines, actually, since none of them had all the dates I needed. Anyhow, the result is below; click on it for a bigger version. Breaks in the line are where I’d lost a receipt.

So, as the go-ahead is given for war or continued occupation, the price of gas goes down. It goes up again as casualties rise. Not too surprising, I guess 🙂
References:

• http://www.ringnebula.com/Oil/Timeline-Iraq_040903c.htm
• http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/page/0,12438,793802,00.html
• http://www.infoplease.com/spot/iraqtimeline2.html