-TSS-

Sad news. A truly great athlete. However, I must admit to my shame that I was surprised to hear the news as I thought he must have died years ago.

Isn't it so that although in different countries cities such as Vancouver and Seattle have a lot more in common with each other than either of them with cities in the east of their respective countries?

When you come to think of it, countries such as Canada, Australia, New Zealand and various others which have the arrangement of having monarchy but GG representing the monarch, have the worst of two worlds. Namely, if you prefer to have monarchy, then at least you would prefer to have your countryman or -woman as the monarch but you don't. Your monarch is a foreigner who lives on the other side of the vast ocean. If Canada ever turned into a republic it would probably only mean that you changed the office of GG as president as today GG is de facto president. Presidents in republics which have a constitution whereby presidents are almost like monarchs without any real power are basically totally useless puppets. With monarchs there is at least some glamour about it but with powerless presidents it is totally boring. But you have it both ways; you have a monarch who is a foreigner and you have a de facto powerless president.

Trump has declared his intention to run for re-election in 2020. A bit early to make such a statement, don't you think, but fortunately for him that can't be considered as a binding promise.

Who would have thought in 1994 it would eventually come to this? Well, just about everyone with an ounce of common sense. Britain, canada and Australia have all received hundreds of thousands of white South-Africans ever since 1994 and it will continue. The only alternative is really for the white people to carve up a piece of land for themselves to establish a country for themselves. That is unlikely to be a very realistic alternative.

I guess all South-African whites who have somewhere to go and money to do so have already left. The ones still there just have to manage.

The thing is that as I'm coming from a small country and I can only understand a unitary form of government. The very concept of federalism is totally alien to me.

So it is more relevant who is in charge at the provincial level than which party leads the federal government?

I have been googling about history of the NHL and I was surprised how relatively undeveloped the league was until the 70's. The same six teams played against each other for 70 rounds. That means that all teams met each other for 14 times and on top of that the play-off games. Only in the 70's the league started to expand. Furthermore, as these days all North-American ball game-leagues have artificial east vs west-finals, that was not the case in the NHL until the 80's. There were finals between NY Islanders and Philadelphia or Philadelphia and Buffalo. Only later on this silly artificial obsession that the final must be east vs west thing has caught the NHL too.

Haven't they done away with tied matches even in the NHL? If the game is tied after 60 minutes then there is overtime and the loser gets one point?

Play-off games must be decided somehow, by shoot-out if necessary. Otherwise they could keep on playing until the next morning. However, they should bring back the possibility of tied matches in the preliminary groups instead of having these silly three point wins and two point wins.

Is there a professional hockey-league for women in North-America? In Finland and Sweden hockey is a hobby even for the national team players who all have their day-time jobs.

The curling-stones weigh 23kg. It is not that easy as it seems on TV to direct the stones accurately at the wanted target.

As it has been said, Justin Trudeau is certainly the best internationally known Canadian PM since his father. However, do some Canadians begin to wish that he wasn't that well-known?

Canada unexpectedly lost to the Czechs. They will certainly beat the hosts S-Korea tomorrow. Finland-Sweden match will be important; the winner will enter the play-offs as the number one ranked team.

According to statistics in 2016 there were 17500 homicides in the US. That makes it about 45 every day. I think that is a fairly plausible number for a country of 300 million people. 45 a day on average but when 17 happen in a single place that makes it a worldwide news.

There have been these school-shootings and other massacres in the USA for years with no regard to which party has their man in the White House so trying to say that it's this or that party's fault is just trying to capitalise politically on the issue.

The Swedes are trying to erase their gender-based personal pronouns han and hon ( he and she) with a neutral hen. Too bad for the loonies that evolution of language takes a bit longer time than a commandment by the leading feminist.

I understand that people in the USA take the jury-duty quite seriously and consider it as privilege and trying to avoid it is quite rare. Perhaps only in cases of serious crimes which involve organised crime people may have second thoughts about attending the jury. However, I also have thought that if you really want to avoid the jury-duty it is not difficult as both sides of the trial interview all the prospective jurors and if you manage to make yourself seem biased one way or another either side of the trial may demand that you are not suitable to be a member of the jury and you must go.

So, you mean that those people have volunteered for the jury-duty and are unlikely trying to avoid it?

Russians lose their first game but so do the USA. However, every team makes it to the play-offs.

English is quite a masculine language and the Canadian PM can't change that even though he certainly tries. Telling people to say peoplekind rather than mankind only makes him seem foolish rather than make people obey his wish.

How does it work exactly? Random adult citizens are picked to the jury and that is considered as a public duty? The justice-system varies somewhat between the Anglo-Saxon countries as compared to the European countries as in the USA, the UK etc the judge has much more power as the system is based on the so-called common-law system. In European countries the judges have limited leeway on declaring sentences.

The same question could be asked of the British counterpart.

Biathlon is very entertaining sport; no matter how fast you ski but if your hand shakes when it comes to shooting your competition is ruined.