Dear Sun Media

Dear Sun Media,
This is what passed for a newspaper columnist? Monte Solberg 'writing' a rambling self-congratulatory screed against various 'monsters' without any facts, discussions, or opinions? Dear god I hope you didn't pay him for that piece of shit.

I know we consumers get what we pay for, but that is beyond the pale. I should charge you for the pain of having to have read that on your site.

Regards, Bill

P.S. How much do you pay? I'm sure I could churn out crap better than that at the very least.

Reality Check

The headline of the Ottawa Sun caught my attention as I filled up my car this morning (woo hoo, less than $20 bucks!). It screamed "NO! NO! NO!" and the sub headline was about how the three opposition parties were going to overturn the will of the people of Canada by forming a coalition government and tossing the Tories out.

Um, what?

The will of the people was that the Conservatives do not form the government of Canada, they just couldn't agree who to replace them with. After all, the Cons got ~35% of the popular vote, about one in every three voters. And with a 66% (I'm going on memory here) turnout that means that only one in four picked them.

The three opposition parties got MORE votes combined than the Conservatives. Their members were elected to represent the people. If the members of those parties decide to work together to govern than in essence the will of the people has been enacted. The system works and the Tories lost this round; get over it.

Inaccurate and inflamatory claims that the will of the people is being subverted and the opposition leaders are staging a coup are irresponsible and deserving of ridicule.

Asshats.

Dear Americans:

Your basic electoral process is f**ked up:

SUSAN FILAN: Yeah, it’s a real problem, Tamron, though, because your constitutional right to vote in this country is one of your most sacred and fundamental rights. We’re a democracy, that means that the people who govern, who lead us, are elected by us. If our ability to vote and to choose is interfered with, our democracy is at stake.

And what’s happened here in this California charge is that this person supposedly, allegedly, because he’s innocent until proven guilty, told people they were signing a petition but that they had to become a Republican to do it, and switch their parties in some cases. In other cases, he didn’t even tell them that he was in fact switching their party. They thought they were signing a petition, and their party got switched. What’s going to happen to them on voting day when they go to register as their Democratic vote that they thought they were registering, they’re not going to be on the right poll. They’re not going to get to vote.

{Emphasis mine}

Here's an idea you dumb American politicians: how about you scrap the stupid party registration involvement in the voting process. Every programmer knows that hard-coded values come back to bite you in the ass sooner or later, and this is a perfect example.

If voters were registered simply as voters, this fraud would not be a problem at the voting booth. You idiots.

It boggles the mind that after the numerous reports of voter fraud and confusion in the past two presidential elections that someone hasn't come out and said "ENOUGH! We're standardizing everything into a clear and concise manner so our election doesn't resemble some third world banana republic!"

Look to the Canadian model. It works like a charm.

Idiots. There is no excuse for it.

LOL

I was reading this post about the idiocy of Sarah Palin and in the comments one made me laugh out laugh out loud:

comment by Sean S. on Thursday, September 25, 2008 at 6:52 pm:

Dan Quayle,

From the bottom of my heart, I apologize for everything I ever said and thought about you. Compared to this hunk of meat, you are a friggin’ philosopher king.

Sorry again, dude.

Its so funny because its so true.

Bah Humbug

The crazy election season is upon us and I find myself more interested in the US Presidental Election than the Canadian Federal election. Part of the problem is I find a lot of faults with all the parties at the moment and I feel generally disenfranchised.

Where is the fiscal conservative yet socially liberal party I yearn for? Before the election I was considering the Liberals for the first time ever but their Green Shift non-platform-plank has left me confused at first glance and despondent at second glance. The Green party went from fiscal conservative to socialistic nightmare for me, and the NDP... well... I'm still scarred by Bob Rae's days in Ontario thank you very much.

My goal over the next couple weeks is to analyze more closely all the platforms and try to come to a decision, but I'm not confident I'll be able to vote for anyone with holding my nose.

Idiots

Think America has a health insurance problem? McCain's Health Advisor would like you to think differently:

But the numbers are misleading, said John Goodman, president of the National Center for Policy Analysis, a right-leaning Dallas-based think tank. Mr. Goodman, who helped craft Sen. John McCain's health care policy, said anyone with access to an emergency room effectively has insurance, albeit the government acts as the payer of last resort. (Hospital emergency rooms by law cannot turn away a patient in need of immediate care.)

"So I have a solution. And it will cost not one thin dime," Mr. Goodman said. "The next president of the United States should sign an executive order requiring the Census Bureau to cease and desist from describing any American – even illegal aliens – as uninsured. Instead, the bureau should categorize people according to the likely source of payment should they need care.

"So, there you have it. Voila! Problem solved."

Only an asshole whose never been uninsured would think that provides adequate health care.

Jerk.

Let's Not Be Stupid

Most of you have heard about the poor guy who was attacked and killed on a Greyhound bus in Manitoba yesterda y. Tragic. Yes the killing was senseless as far as we can tell. And yes its terrifying to consider it happening to ourselves or someone we love.

But I hear rumblings about "what can we do to improve bus security" and "should buses have check ins like airports", etc.

Whoa. Stop right there. Let's not be stupid. Metal detectors? Security guards? Whatever the hell for?!

Violence on buses, especially long distance buses, is extremely rare. Its almost unheard of up until yesterday. All these added security measures would increase the safety of the passengers and drivers by an imperceptible amount yet cost the bus companies, already struggling with rising diesel costs, bogs of money.

Think about it and don't let one anomalous event dictate all policy, regardless of the horridness.

"Race" is SOOOO 19th Century!

One of the most bothersome things to come out of the U.S. presidential election campaigns this year is the constant talking about Barack Obama's "race":

"He's black."

"He's half white."

"He's a secret Muslim."

"He's a Christian."

"He's too black. "

"He's not an authentic black."

"He's the first black president."

"He's talking white to black voters."

OH MY FREAKING GOD! ENOUGH ALREADY!

In my opinion, the concept of human "races" has long since been discredited as bogus and divisive. Its time to move past skin colour, eye shapes, and other physical characteristics and realize that its all about where you grow up and how you are raised that matters. The blood in all of our veins is still red (barring some medical conditions) and people should be more concerned Obama's qualifications and positions rather than the supposed colour of his skin.

If only we were all colourblind. (But then we'd have those claiming who the real "greys" are and who are only half-grey. Sigh.)

A Difference of Opinion

On Sunday I was entertaining the boys and flicking through channels for some background distraction (after all, babies are only so exciting for so long). I tuned in to the early going of the movie Thirteen Days about the Cuban Missile Crisis back in the sixties.

I had seen it before but it was worth watching again because its such a good movie. I don't know how accurate it is but from what I've heard a lot of the White House dialogue was taken from official government transcripts and is mostly historically accurate in major events.

As I was watching the movie (5 out of 5 stars on my review scale by the way, a "must see") I was struck by several thoughts:

1) Damn there was so many roads leading to escalation of hostilities and it feels like only one road that didn't and someone they found that road through luck, perseverance, and sheer will.

2) The American military command was chomping at the bit for a shooting confrontation. I mean even if the movie exaggerated their enthusiasm for conflict 100%, they were still practically begging for the chance to blow stuff up. And the events suggests that they tried to paint the President into a corner to force him to order a shooting war.

3) While the parallels to recent years and the Iraq war against Saddam Hussein's government are weak at best, I couldn't help but think that if Dubba & co (or reasonable facsimiles) were in charge in the sixties I wouldn't be typing this right now. Instead civilization as we know it would be the remnant survivors from World War III.

Ridiculous

This news story is ridiculous:

A father plans to appeal after a Quebec court ruled that he didn't have the right to punish his 12-year-old daughter by banning her from a school trip.

Quebec Superior Court Madam Justice Suzanne Tessier ruled Friday that the girl should be allowed to attend the three-day trip within Quebec this week.

The father first forbade his daughter from going online after the Grade 6 student posted photos on a dating site, the Globe and Mail reported in its Thursday edition.

The girl's parents are divorced, and after she had an alleged row with her stepmother, the dad barred her from going on a school trip to mark the class's graduation from elementary school, the newspaper says.

"When he said, 'OK, it's final. You're not going,' she smacked the door, left and went to live with her mother," the father's lawyer, Kim Beaudoin, told CBC News.

Last Wednesday, the dad received a motion petitioning the court to overturn the punishment.

Two days later, the justice ruled that the punishment was too severe since the girl had already been sufficiently disciplined, said Beaudoin.

Beaudoin said the justice also said there was no reason for the punishment to stand, since the girl was now living with her mother, even though the father has custody.

I'm speechless. This time the courts have gone to far.

Its Sad...

... that in 2008 a big issue in the upcoming Presidential Election in the states is that Senator Obama is black.

Is This Wrong?

FBI posts fake hyperlinks to snare child porn suspects

I was browsing the other day and saw that headline. Clicking on it and reading the article I found myself torn.

The FBI has recently adopted a novel investigative technique: posting hyperlinks that purport to be illegal videos of minors having sex, and then raiding the homes of anyone willing to click on them.

That seems awful Orwellian, doesn't it? Sort of a "thought crime" type of justice?

Undercover FBI agents used this hyperlink-enticement technique, which directed Internet users to a clandestine government server, to stage armed raids of homes in Pennsylvania, New York, and Nevada last year. The supposed video files actually were gibberish and contained no illegal images.

A CNET News.com review of legal documents shows that courts have approved of this technique, even though it raises questions about entrapment, the problems of identifying who's using an open wireless connection--and whether anyone who clicks on a FBI link that contains no child pornography should be automatically subject to a dawn raid by federal police.

Roderick Vosburgh, a doctoral student at Temple University who also taught history at La Salle University, was raided at home in February 2007 after he allegedly clicked on the FBI's hyperlink. Federal agents knocked on the door around 7 a.m., falsely claiming they wanted to talk to Vosburgh about his car. Once he opened the door, they threw him to the ground outside his house and handcuffed him.

Vosburgh was charged with violating federal law, which criminalizes "attempts" to download child pornography with up to 10 years in prison. Last November, a jury found Vosburgh guilty on that count, and a sentencing hearing is scheduled for April 22, at which point Vosburgh could face three to four years in prison.

The implications of the FBI's hyperlink-enticement technique are sweeping. Using the same logic and legal arguments, federal agents could send unsolicited e-mail messages to millions of Americans advertising illegal narcotics or child pornography--and raid people who click on the links embedded in the spam messages. The bureau could register the "unlawfulimages.com" domain name and prosecute intentional visitors. And so on.

"The evidence was insufficient for a reasonable jury to find that Mr. Vosburgh specifically intended to download child pornography, a necessary element of any 'attempt' offense," Vosburgh's attorney, Anna Durbin of Ardmore, Penn., wrote in a court filing that is attempting to overturn the jury verdict before her client is sentenced.

I'm sorry for quoting so much of the article, but I think its important to get an idea of what happened here. Mr Vosburgh was charged and convicted of attempting to download child pornography and while I agree that child pornography is heinous and perpetrators of such activities should be punished to the full extent of the law, there still seems something wrong with law enforcement enticing people to commit a crime and then arresting them when they do so.

Its like trying to get out of a marriage by hiring someone to seduce your spouse and then accusing them of being unfaithful. Yes they strayed, but would they have done so had not the temptation been thrown at them?

On the other hand, one might say that the means justifies the ends: a person who encourages child pornography to be made by being a consumer of it is now in jail so the end result is worth the questionable tactics. And its hard to argue with that because its such a terrible crime.

But are we in a slippery slope situation? Would the same tactics be OK to catch, say, a tax evader? Well probably not because most laws are not worded to be against the "attempt" to do something unlike "attempts" to download child pornography.

But let's say someone takes that fake link to a government server and emails it to people without explanation of what it supposedly leads to? And they click on it, see static, and shrug and go about their business only to be a victim of a dawn raid the next day by the FBI and police? Their good named drawn through the mud because the government thinks they are trying to download child pornography, and neighbours looking aghast at them even after their named is cleared when their computer and home is torn apart looking for more evidence. Its a scary scenario but completely possible.

Or perhaps they are using an unsecured wireless network and their IP address shows up in the server logs while its their neighbour borrowing a ride on their connection? Even though the innocent will most likely be found innocent, is the possible destruction of their good name justified by the capture and conviction of actual attempters of child pornography downloads.

As you can see, I'm torn. While fighting child porn at every turn is important, I don't like much the idea of enticing people to commit crimes in order to do so. It just feels wrong, dishonest... or maybe just unrighteous. But maybe its worth it.

Sex Education Works

An article from the Seattle Times:

UW researchers say comprehensive sex ed cuts teen pregnancies

Oh really? And what about Abstinence Only education?

Students who receive comprehensive sex education are half as likely to become teen parents as those who get none or abstinence-only sex education, according to researchers at the University of Washington.

Well what do you know? But surely those those sex-educated kids are having more sex, right?

What's more, teens who had comprehensive education, which typically discusses condoms and birth-control methods as well as abstinence, were no more likely to engage in intercourse than peers who were taught just to say no to sex before marriage, researchers said.

Indeed.

Carole Miller, vice president of education for Planned Parenthood of Western Washington, argues that abstinence supporters are putting their cultural values above the health of young people.

Compared with other developed nations, Americans have higher rates of teen pregnancy, abortion rates and prevalence of sexually transmitted diseases. The evidence is compelling, Miller believes, that more and accurate information about sex for teens is the most effective approach.

Abstinence messages are "not working and we've got to stop it," Miller said. "There are kids getting hurt by this."

I've always said teenagers are crazy but I know most are not stupid. Telling them 'just say no' is not good enough; hormones, peer pressure, and not-fully-mature brains means many will choose to have sex despite the best intentions. Give them the information to protect themselves if they do make that choice, give them knowledge.

Hat Tip Pesky Apostrophe

The Three Trillion Dollar War

I've avoided posting about politics lately because its soooooo depressing. Liars, cheats, hypocrites, idiots... the parade of mankind's worst attributes is a never ending stream.

But I have to comment on this.

The $3 trillion war in Iraq
Only two winners have emerged from the conflict: oil companies and defence contractors

Surprise. surprise, surprise. Read the whole article if you want to be dismayed at what has happened in the War-With-Many-Reasons-That-Were-Out-And-Out-LIES, and how a generation's future has been sucked into a maelstrom of greed and idiocy.

More and More...

... Every day, I'm further convinced....

People are stupid.

Take for example this video here: "Looking for Alaska" Is Not Pornography

Did you watch the video? Right then, so school wants to teach book to eleventh graders, the book is a little controversial, so they send out a permission form to parents. All good, right?

But other people, people without kids in the eleventh grade, protest and want the book banned because they think it is pornographic and will cause immoral thoughts.

Right.

So instead of letting the actual parents decide for their kids what they would approve of or not, these outsiders demand that their position be taken instead. Of course, this is ignoring that most normal people realize that the book is not pornography.

Sigh.

Hat Tip: Bow. James Bow.

Longest. Election. Ever.

As much as the Canadian Political Landscape frustrates me, I am so glad I'm not an American voter.

Presidential elections occur every four years on November 2nd but the run up to the election starts around a year and a half to two years earlier. Last night Kim and I were talking about the election and I explained roughly that the current events are all about figuring out who the candidates for each party are going to be through state primaries and caucuses. For a through description see this webpage but basically they are mini-elections for each party in each state to choose delegates that will vote for the candidates in the party national conventions. Its similar to how the Electoral College chooses the president in a presidential election.

Confused yet?

Anyway, the point is this: for the past 6-8 months each party has had their presidential candidates running for the nomination up for grabs. Then once both parties have picked their candidate, we finally get to see them sling mud at each other for the actual election.

To me its too much. I'm exhausted just thinking about it.

Update: I took an online quiz and apparently my views on the topics quizzed matched very closely with Barak Obama which surprised me, I thought I was more of a Hillary Clinton supporter. Not that I get a vote.

"Social Darwinism"

A lot of hay has been made from the tragic school shootings in Finland this week where a deranged student went on a rampage and killed 9 people. The killer, who killed himself at the end of the shootings, called himself a "social Darwinist" who would "eliminate all who I see unfit".

I tried to read up on what a social Darwinism really is starting here at Wikipedia. Basically it is summed up as this:

Social Darwinism is the idea that Charles Darwin's theory can be extended and applied to the social realm, i.e. that just as competition between individual organisms drives biological evolutionary change (speciation) through "survival of the fittest" (not a scientific term itself), competition between individuals, groups, nations or ideas drives social evolution in human societies.

In other words, human society itself is undergoing evolution under pressure from various sources just like a population of a species would change to adapt to its environmental pressures, or ultimately die out.

Its an interesting idea, but like any idea there are people who could use it as justification for selfish actions.

The killer in Finland looked around and saw people and a society he didn't like for whatever reason. He seemed to think he could be an agent of societal change or evolution by starting some sort of pogrom revolution, killing all those he felt were unworthy.

In evolution of a species, the process works on the population and not the individuals and the same thing would apply, I would think, to social evolution if such a thing exists. But he was looking for justification for his desired actions in my opinion and logic was not an overriding factor here.

What's my point? The kid was sick and needed mental help. Its unfortunate that he didn't get that help before he lost it and killed people, but let's not blame evolution for his decisions. Its an explanation for how part of the world works, not a philosophy to guide your actions.

Interesting Video On Climate Change

Check out this video over on Bow, James Bow's website.

How lucky do you feel?

Liberals Win

Unsurprisingly, the Liberals took home a nice majority in the election and the electoral reform measure for MMP failed. I'm more ticked about the latter than the former, but c'est la vie.

I was surprised that the MMP only got 38%, I was hoping for at least closer to 50%. What it tells me is that either the public is afraid of change or is sufficiently happy with the current system, hard to say which is stronger. Voter turnout was around 53% which is rather pathetic but not surprising; for some reason people can be bothered to vote more in a federal election but not in a provincial even though their say has more weight in the smaller numbers of the latter and the laws and rulings from the provincial legislature have far more effect on their day to day lives. Weird.

John Tory didn't even win his seat. Had he won it I might have suspected he would get another chance in 2011 (yay fixed election dates) but now I figure he is a dead man walking in terms of PC leader. More leadership conventions, sigh.

Election/Referendum Day

The provincial government is going to the polls today and I'm still on the fence about who to vote for, either PC or Greens. While the Liberals have not totally screwed up the province like a certain NDP government did way back, I'm still not happy with their "say one thing to get elected, do something else" philosophy. The Conservatives have some good planks, but like a lot of other Ontarians I have trouble getting past Tory's support for more religious school funding as I would rather go the other way.

The Green party is unproven but I do like their focus on Environment and better cities. Enough to vote for them to make a point? Perhaps.

As for the referendum, I'm definitely voting for the change to Multi Member Proportional (MMP) over First Past the Post (FPTP). I believe that there are real advantages to MMP for properly representing the voters of Ontario, and the fear-mongering of supports of FPTP have convinced me that they have no argument beyond "hey, its worked ok so far." Well, read this column by Andrew Coyne to see why that is not good enough.