Sadly, the mayor of Saguenay, Jean Tremblay, doesn’t care about human rights because apparently he’s a religious bigot:

“I know they prefer me to stop, but I won’t do that,” he told CBC News. “For me, God is much more important than the commission. When I arrive on the other side, maybe in 10 years, 20 years, I don’t know, they won’t ask me if I follow the commission, they will ask me if I follow God. And I follow God.”

He also said that the 30 second prayer addresses all religions… Is that so Mr Tremblay? Do you mention Vishnu in that prayer? And Mohammed? What about Xenu? Buddha? The Flying Spaghetti Monster?

What about us atheists? How does the absence of religion fit into a religious prayer exactly? Or are we expected to leave the room while you wish to your imaginary sky friend?

Here’s an idea for you Mr Tremblay: Pray at home before you go to the meeting, or stop off at a church on your way. That way you’re only wasting your own time, not everyone elses.

Kovy’s crash looked really nasty, I was convinced he had at least one broken leg, especially seeing the gaping hole in the front of his pod. It’s a testament to the safety of those cars these days that he came away with just a concussion. He went almost head first into a tyre wall at 140mph, burying the car 3 tyres deep (luckily it was a 4 deep wall otherwise he probably would’ve hit something more solid), and came out with a headache.

In other news, the Max Mosley sex scandal has gone from bad to horrible for Max now that his bestest friend Bernie has joined the chorus calling for his resignation. Only three teams refused to sign Bernie’s letter: Ferrari, Torro Rosso (aka Ferrari Junior) and Williams (Super Aguri didn’t sign either but they’re busy with their own problems).

If Max has any love for motorsport left he needs to realise he’s damaging the sport and walk away. We can all wail and gnash our teeth about the horrible invasion of privacy the man has suffered, but the damage is done. We know what we know, it’s not possible to un-know it. Every time someone talks face to face with Max they will either be smirking at him or looking faintly disgusted. He claims he will attend the Monaco Grand Prix, so I’m looking forward to some of the banners the fans will have on display for him.

While in Anaheim I walked a lot, went on five rollercoasters at Knotts Berry Farm, walked some more, ate at IHOP twice and at the Rainforest Cafe once, perused lots of Disney merchandise, went to Target, oh and did a bit of work.

The presentation went well. We had about four hundred people in the audience. I got a couple of laughs and some good questions at the end, including people wanting to steal my code (if it were up to me I’d GPL it, but it’s not up to me).

Although I’ve been within spitting distance of the border, I’ve never actually entered California before (I don’t count sitting in LA airport for six hours) so that’s another state to cross of my list even though I doubt I’ll get to see much of it.

No, I’m not leaving McGill… Today I accepted a new position at McGill as a web developer in the Web Services Group, the team who look after the content of mcgill.ca and are involved in other web initiatives around campus.

It’s a step in a new direction for me. The WSG use mostly open source tools, which I’ve been playing with personally since I first installed linux on an old computer several years ago but I haven’t been able to use in a work setting. I’m stepping away from Oracle, the proprietary RDBMS that I’ve been working with for 20 years, to embrace open source technologies like PHP, Python and PostgreSQL. It looks like there might even be a bit of WordPress thrown into the mix.

I’ve had six good years here on the Finance IT team but I’m really looking forward to something new.

It looks great, as do the 2.5 release candidates that I’ve been playing with for a few days. There are some big changes to the admin interface which are mostly good. This blog will be upgraded sometimes this weekend.

Sadly, budget cuts means one of these Mars rovers, Spirit, is to be put to sleep and the other will have reduced duties. While the US government spends the amount required to keep this research alive for a year every week in Iraq, NASA are forced to reduce funding. It costs $20 million per year to keep the rovers running, a pitiful amount compared to US defense budgets, but the US government are too busy killing people to be interested in science (unless the science helps with the killing people).

The team are planning an appeal against the cuts; I hope somebody listens.

Kimi showed the kinks in his armour last weekend with two very silly errors. Has he become too reliant on the driver aids? Did he forget that he can’t come into corners that fast any more? Or was it just early season rustiness? Time will tell but I expect he’ll sort himself out in the next few races.

The safety car rules almost caught some drivers out this time. I think the rule about closing the pit lane needs to be changed somehow. Barrichello was basically forced to break a rule to get fuel in his car or risk being stranded out on track, all because of a situation that had nothing to do with him. This obviously flustered him and his team, causing a dangerous incident in the pit stop and the running of a red light resulting in Barrichello’s ultimate DQ.

Unlike many races over the past few years, this one actually became more exciting as it progressed. Even though Lewis was off on his own happily winning the race, everyone else was still busy trying to survive and gain a few points. The fight between Alonso and Heiki was great to watch in the final laps and it’s a real shame that Kovaleinan hit the speed limiter in his excitement after taking Fernando.

I’m looking forward to Malaysia, it’ll be another hot one, and there will be six cars running on old engines and gearboxes. It’s going to be a topsy-turvy weekend. Sadly I’ll be in Vermont all weekend but I’m hoping our hosts have a decent sports network…

And talking of TV coverage, I just heard that the BBC are getting F1 back next year, great news for British F1 fans, I’m very envious.