There's no doubt about it: chuckwagon races are as exciting as hell. There's also no getting around the fact they’re cruel to horses.

With the 100th anniversary of the Calgary Stampede almost upon us -- the "Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth" marks its centennial on July 6 -- it's time once again to turn our attention a popular event that uses pointless cruelty for entertainment.

For, sure as shootin', a horse will die in a Stampede chuckwagon race this year, as horses die pointlessly every year for the entertainment of the humans who pack the Stampede grounds to witness the thundering excitement of the races.

If you have a problem with something written in the Edmonton Journal, you can forget about seeking help from the Alberta Press Council.

Early last month, the Journal quietly pulled out of the 40-year-old voluntary organization that was set up to help resolve conflicts between newspapers and the people they write about. Journal management told APC officials that they no longer saw any value in the organization the newspaper once enthusiastically supported.

It seems that the Calgary Herald is the only media organization some corporate executives will talk to when it comes to the news stories they'd rather not talk about.

This convoluted fact goes a long way to explaining why, even though the last link between that newspaper and downtown Calgary is about to fall, it makes little difference because the ties that mattered were severed ages ago. And not just in Calgary.

Wow! This just in! Alison Redford is so popular….

How popular is she?

Alberta's new premier is so popular she's more popular that her popular party. And they're so popular they're called the Popular Conservatives, right? So that means, surely, that "the Conservatives have basically recovered from the Stelmach era."

Now that the Alberta Progressive Conservatives have chosen a new leader, and that new leader's been sworn in as premier -- Alison Redford, for those of you who've slept through the past few days -- an important file from the days of the party's leadership contest remains open and needs to signed off before we all scurry away to cover cabinet shuffles, the creation of massive human services ministries and the like.

To wit: Who took the party's membership list and gave it to the Calgary Herald? This question is one of those not-so-ancient mysteries that deserve to be solved, in the name of openness, transparency, the right to privacy and the other core values we all agree on here in our Albertan democracy.

A good memoir is no easy thing to write, and I can tell you that without ever having bothered to read one before.

I mean, really, why would I read someone's memoirs, for crying out loud, when there are stacks of mysteries, police procedurals, noir explorations of the seedy underside of the City of Angels and thrillers waiting to be read? There's only so much time in a day devoted to blogging, karate and work, after all, that can be used for reading -- so whatever one reads had better be entertaining.

Leo Tolstoy? Please!

GRANDE PRAIRIE, Alberta

Just when you thought it was safe to breath the isotope-laden Western Canadian air again, now that the wind from Japan has died down a little, comes word that the tireless lobbyists for a nuclear power plant near the Alberta tar sands are back at it.

A Calgary Herald report last Friday told the story of a "debate" about nuclear energy in the oil sands at a conference of petroleum industry toffs at a famously luxurious Banff hotel.

Uh-oh! Someone's got some 'splainin' to do!

Yesterday morning's blog post on the strange circumstances surrounding the use of an Alberta Progressive Conservative Party membership list and a flurry of activity behind the scenes in Tory circles provoked a strong reaction late in the day by the party.

On the face of it, yesterday morning's surprising Edmonton Journal-Calgary Herald-Environics poll of which Alberta Conservative leadership candidates have the most support among their party's members seems like a brilliant journalistic coup.

It showed Gary Mar in the lead, but not by enough to capture the leadership on the first vote. Astonishingly, Alison Redford was in second place, possibly poised to win on the second ballot. Steady old Doug Horner came third. And Ted Morton, the leading candidate of the right, was fading into the distance. What a terrific yarn!