OK, I for one won’t be showing for my retina scan:
Every person in the world would be fingerprinted and registered under a universal identification scheme to fight illegal immigration and people smuggling outlined at a United Nations meeting today.
…
“There are no technical problems. It is only a question of will and investment,” he said.
“Refugees meeting hears proposal to register every human“, smh.com.au, 2001.12.13
Via fellow Newfoundlander Damian Penny.
Select quote from a great article by David Brin (boldfacing by me):
Nevertheless, what strikes me is how WELL our security measures functioned!
Despite years of preparation, determination and well funded ingenuity, the terrorists could only smuggle aboard a few knives… small ones! Apparently plastic box cutters with razor blade tips.
Plastic handled razors? How could any security system block such things? Any moderately clever person could find ways to smuggle aboard a razor blade – or something that looks plausibly like one. This level of threat cannot be effectively prevented. Moreover, trying to do so could harm us far more than the WTC collapse.
Despite the yammerings on TV, a lack of security measures did not cause this tragedy. No, the failure on 9/11 was almost entirely one of DOCTRINE — a policy on how to deal with hijackers that was taught to pilots, flight attendants and the public for forty years.
Back when hijackers wanted simply to make a political statement, it made sense to teach passive surrender. Better to safeguard passengers than risk some ‘foolhardy gesture,’ This policy of maturity and patience probably saved lives… and was never seen that way by terrorists who came from macho cultures. They saw it as cowardly and decadent.
“The value – and empowerment – of common citizens in an age of danger“, David Brin, The Futurist
Click here for an amazing composite photograph of the world at night.
The image is a panoramic view of the world from the new space station. It is a night photo with the lights clearly indicating the populated areas. You can scroll East-West and North-South.
Note that Canada’s population is almost exclusively along the U.S. border. Moving east to Europe, there is a high population concentration along the Mediterranean Coast. It’s easy to spot London, Paris, Stockholm and Vienna.
Check out the development of Israel compared to the rest of the Arab countries. Note the Nile River and the rest of the “Dark Continent”. After the Nile, the lights don’t come on again until Johannesburg. Look at the Australian Outback and the Trans-Siberian Rail Route. Moving east, the most striking observation is the difference between North and South Korea. Note the density of Japan.
What a piece of photography. It is an absolutely awesome picture of the Earth taken from the Boeing built Space Station last November on a perfect night with no obscuring atmospheric conditions.
I had a hell of time tracking the original source for this, but I think it’s from here.
If anyone ever mentions that the west consumes X% percent of the world’s resources (where X is a large two digit integer), tell them that it’s because we’re the only ones actually doing anything.
I recently started my first “real” job in the last 6 years. Given the economic downturn, and the massive layoffs in the tech sector, I didn’t think it was time to be a contractor any more. My first paystub arrived today: I was quite pleased to see the first number — my earnings — only to see that by the time the government had finished with me, the final number — my net — was only 4/7th of what I had started with.
Sigh.
William Thorsell adds as an aside in his column:
The latest outrage is Izzy Asper’s unprecedented attack on intellectual capital in Canadian journalism through centralized control of editorial opinion about significant matters in all Southam newspapers. It is time to break up the chains
“ The first casualty of war“, William Thorsell, The Globe and Mail, 2001.12.17
Perhaps it’s time to ask — is this even relevant anymore? Is it just a conceit of ex-editors that their words actually shape the opinions of the masses, or has the age of the Internet (and TV, for the matter) moved us far beyond this.
In case you didn’t like the current version, here‘s a reasonable alternative to baffle your children.
Incipit gestis Rudolphi rangifer tarandus / Hwæt, Hrodulf readnosa hrandeor — / Næfde þæt nieten unsciende næsðyrlas! …
Here begins the deeds of Rudolph, Tundra-Wanderer / Lo, Hrodulf the red-nosed reindeer — / That beast didn’t have unshiny nostrils! …
Have you been wondering why righteous left-wing zealots aren’t bothering with the NDP anymore? Well, probably not, but here’s a possible explanation — why bother, when with time you can get appointed to Canada’s unelected dictatorship. Anyhoo, this is upsetting some do-gooders:
Higher tuitions — lower ideals (letter to the editor)
… As for accessibility of a legal education, the faculty cannot reasonably argue a $25,000 tuition is accessible to people who aren’t rich — or heading to Bay Street.
… The stereotype of lawyer as an ambulance-chaser prevails. However, the ideal of the profession as a powerful tool for social justice and protection for vulnerable members remains — and it is why we’ve gone to law school. If the “best” law school in Canada becomes a corporate feeder, what will the long-term implications be for the legal profession?
Perhaps a few years of exposure to different opinions other than their own would do them some good, before the head off to crusade for “social justice”.
I supose I’ll have to mention this, just so I can state where I show up. Almost every one I know is in Quadrant IV (as we’d say in math class), and certainly everyone is on the bottom half.
Anyhoo, here I am:
Economic Left/Right: 1.25
Authoritarian/Libertarian: -4.05
Headline: ‘Wrongful life’ ruling outrages ethicists.
How do you tell if a university subject is a not science? It has the word science in the subject name. How do you tell if someone doesn’t know anything about ethics? I’m not exactly sure, but if they call themselves ethicists, they certainly don’t.
Headline: Mantiboa’s Christmas tree can be called a Christmas tree
How exactly did we get here anyway?
Headline: Glenn Miller killed by friendly fire, paper says
Apparently, a fleet of Lancasters returning from an aborted bombing run dropped their payload on the lower flying Miller.
In unrelated news, I hear batshit loon Mariah Carey is flying around somewhere over there…
From the Globe and Mail. Here’s a whole different style of weasel:
And now everybody wants to make jihad
By RICK SALUTIN
Friday, December 14, 2001 – Page A21
Let me bypass any doubts about yesterday’s Osama bin Laden video release (“Johnnie Cochran better go straight to the race card,” said a wag) and concentrate on a brief, less dramatic moment that even bin Ladenites might not contest.
Somehow I doubt Salutin’s so dissociated from reality that he thinks the bin Laden video isn’t real. Nevertheless, he uses weasel words just in case a concensus develops among his ideological buddies to say it isn’t. If this doesn’t happen, hey, he has plausible deniability.
I live approximately here. I went to four different NP newspaper boxes trying to put in my buck-fifty before I gave up and bought the damn thing at Mac’s. Can we get with the program?
From the Globe and Mail:
Muslims fear reaction to tape
For Mr. Asfour [John Asfour, president of the Canadian Arab Federation], the tape is intriguing.
Why would the architect of such an evil act be stupid enough to allow the taping of a conversation connecting himself to it, asked Mr. Asfour, who is also a professor of English literature at Concordia University in Montreal. “If it is authentic, and it is Osama bin Laden who is incriminating himself willingly, I think the man is a lunatic.
Is it remotely possible that these “community leaders” could condemn 9/11 without using weasel words to imply that the Jews or the CIA did it? I didn’t think so. There’s a lot more to be said here, but that’s for another day. There’s no surprise that this is at Concordia, of course.
I’m keeping this blog for two reasons:
I think the second will mainly be referencing articles and letters in the National Post and the Globe and Mail. The Toronto Star is not worth my time, or I’d be here all day typing stuff in. I’ve always claimed that writing letters to the editor is the first sign of crankdom. Hopefully, this doing this as a blog is a suitable loophole.
What’s a green flash? Well, I’m not particularly fussy over the colour green, and I don’t have Flash installed on my computer (the better not to see ads and/or how clever you think you are because you did a 4 month “web design” course). It’s not this or this either
A green flash is this.
What does it have to do with this blog? Not a lot maybe, be the concept of something interesting, elusive, and seldom seen except by those who know where to look for it is quite appealing. It’s also something I’d like to see some day, though that doesn’t seem likely to happen in Toronto.
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