Interesting news in Canadian politics has surfaced late yesterday. According to excerpts from the upcoming book “Worth Fighting For” received anonymously by Broadcast News, Prime Minister Paul Martin apparently wanted to scrap the Canada Health Act when he was a deficit-fighting finance minister.

What is the Canada Health Act? According to the Canadian Government’s website, “the Canada Health Act is Canada’s federal health insurance legislation. The Canada Health Act establishes criteria and conditions related to insured health care services and extended health care services that the provinces and territories must meet in order to receive the full federal cash contribution under the Canada Health and Social Transfer (CHST).”

The book, which is to be released on October 26th, is written by Sheila Copps, who was dropped from government when Martin became leader of the Liberals. Apparently the book reveals that Martin wanted to replace the health act with something more flexible. Copps on the other hand, felt that it was political dynamite to breach what she calls the sanctity of medicare.

Unfortunately, as I have not read the book, I don’t know any other details. What I do know is that every story has two sides, and perhaps Martin had a plan for something more flexible that would still retain the “sanctity of medicare”. I don’t think any politician in Canada would dare get rid of medicare altogether.

So that makes me wonder. If Copps really has something that would destroy Martin, why not get it out there during the campaigning for the last election? Why would she wait until now? And if she doesn’t have anything that damning, why mention it at all?

Tonight we posted the first episode of our newest show, called Blogoversial. Basically it is a current events or hot topics show. The spin is that we discuss the topic using posts from around the blogosphere. So write a good post on a hot topic and you might be featured in our show!

The first episode is entitled Blogoversial: NHL Lockout. Andrew, Megan and I take a look at some posts from around the blogosphere, and we check in with Sue MacDonald at BlogPulse to get a better idea of what bloggers are posting.

Give it a listen, and let us know what you think!

Apparently, it happens:

Mr Buchanan told the Australasian Sleep Association how a patient of his, who was a respectable middle-aged woman with a steady partner, would leave the house while sleepwalking and have sex with strangers. The woman was totally unaware of her double life until her partner became suspicious and found her engaged in the act. “He was aware of some sleepwalking and there was circumstantial evidence, including the unexplained presence of condoms around the house,” Mr Buchanan told the conference.

Kinda scary if you ask me! I wonder if you would still seek out only individuals you would be attracted to when awake?

Read: Boing Boing

Ever install a new version of a program, only to realize that you like the old one better? A lot of times, the old versions are not available after a newer one has been released. Today I came across OldVersion.com, which solves exactly this problem for many of the most popular utilities and small applications. Check it out!

I was first introduced to Jon Stewart when he appeared on Jay Leno. For those of you that don’t know, he hosts The Daily Show on Comedy Central. Recently, he wrote a book entitled America: A Citizen’s Guide to Democracy Inaction and went on CNN’s Crossfire to talk about it, and the upcoming election.

I just downloaded and finished watching the clip, and his appearance was priceless, to say the least. He took the opportunity not to plug his book or his show, but instead to roast the Crossfire hosts over what he feels is harmful to America. Basically, Jon Stewart feels that Crossfire has “a responsibility to the public discourse, and [they] fail miserably”. If you are at all interested in the election (and I know you are, sure beats Canadian politics) then I strongly encourage you to download and watch the clip. Good stuff.

You can get a torrent of the interview here, a transcript here, and Jon’s Daily Show monologue following the Crossfire appearance. Enjoy!

From the Edmonton Journal:

Rookie city councillor Stephen Mandel won an upset victory Monday, defeating Edmonton’s three-term mayor in what had been expected to be one of the tightest races in Alberta’s municipal elections.

Bill Smith conceded to Mandel with about half the polls in, stunning some of the supporters at his campaign headquarters, who felt the outcome of the race was still in doubt.

According to the election results, Mandel got 40.68% of the votes, Bill Smith got 32.57% and Robert Noce got 24.93%. Estimated voter turnout was a paltry 41.79%.

Mandel celebrated his win on Whyte avenue this evening – kind of makes me laugh, he doesn’t look like a party animal now does he? Anyway, check out his site, http://www.mandelformayor.org, as I am sure there will be some updates posted.

I am happy Mandel won, I voted for him this afternoon. I hope you got out and made your vote count as well!

Here is a copy of the LA Times article that we appeared in. Unfortunately, this one doesn’t have the sidebar, so our mention really is quite small – but a mention nonetheless! It is also missing the domain name in this version, but here, I’ll help you out:

http://www.blogosphereradio.com

Read: BlogBloke

Aguhhhh!! I cannot believe it has snowed so much already, this sucks! Any it’s only going to get worse according to Environment Canada:

While the heaviest snow has already fallen however another 2 to 5 centimetres are possible before the system moves into Saskatchewan adding to the 15 to over 25 centimetres already on the ground. Visibility is still reduced under the snow and will continue to be a hinderance to travel this evening.

Read: Environment Canada

This podcasting thing has been getting lots of mainstream media coverage lately, and it’s only going to increase. The LA Times today published an article entitled “Pirate radio’s next generation” in which BlogosphereRadio is mentioned.

First came pirate radio, then Internet radio. But in the last month, a new way of circumventing the big, bad broadcast corporations has emerged: podcasts. Tune in to these blog-based homemade radio shows and you’ll hear any number of things: a weekly…

Pretty cool! Unfortunately you need a subscription (or 14-day free trial membership) to access the article.

Hot news of the day? Google has released Google Desktop. Of course, it is still in beta, but so is everything at Google that they can’t figure out how to make money from.

I’ll probably try it out and post a review later.