Ranting and Roaring

Everything I eat comes sterilized and shrink wrapped.

Le Grande Roi spent $100 million to by two Challenger 604 business jets from Bombardier. No tenders were called and the deal was announced on the last day of the government’s fiscal year.

Canada’s Novemumvirate has left the town of Shellbrook, Saskatchewan on the hook for $2 million dollars in damages to a man who was left quadriplegic after going for a drive with a friend who was piss-loaded drunk after an 18 hour drinking binge. The court says more signs should have been posted.

The Arafat death watch has been ticking down since last night over at USS Clueless.

Steyn’s latest is up on the NP.

Sun is adding C++ style generic types — templates — to Java.

The ExpatPundit writes about the humorous Family Circus reviews on Amazon.com. What many of you Internet youngsters may not know is this is an offshoot from the amazing Dysfunctional Family Circus. Choice FC cartoons were posted — without the captions — and readers were invited to add their own. If you every see a reference to Uncle Roy or CGS on Amazon, it’s probably an original DFC poster. ” It was probably the funniest site ever on the web, but Bil Keane and King Features Syndicate killed it, signaling the end of the web’s golden age.

Here’s some links:

• Selected DFC cartoons
• How DFC posters went over to Amazon
• Suck.com on Amazon
• Wired magazine on DFC
• Melonheads Unite: The Death of the `Dysfunctional Family Circus’

“That’s the last time I try to go shot-for-shot with Dolly.”

Binge drinking soars at women’s colleges.

He “jumped out the window” of the police station. That’s exactly how it happened, now doubt.

No one seems to have mentioned this before, but the 9/11 hijackers could have easily targeted the Twin Towers by visiting with a GPS and taking a waypoint. Likewise, the Pentagon and the White House would only have to have their latitude and longitude entered from a map. Thus, the fact that the White House is not easily visible from the sky because of the trees is not that important — just follow the little LCD arrow on the Garmond. I wasn’t going to post this particular factoid, but I just read that the highjackers did in fact have GPSes. Thus, it’s fairly probably that the White House could have indeed been a target for Flight 93.

A according to Reuters, the Napster-like file sharing company KaZaA has won a major victory in the Netherlands: “The Amsterdam Court of Justice ruled that KaZaA was not liable for any individuals’ abuse of its software, which is being used by millions of people around the world every day to swap copyright-protected games, music, pictures and films“. Unfortunately, the ruling comes to late to save the original company which had to be sold off to Australian company Sharman Networks to because of the original court decision. However, the legal battles continue as a suit against KaZaA continues in the US, the Dutch music rights organization Buma Stemra may still appeal the descision to the Netherland’s High Court, and KaZaA may now countersue to recover costs and lost revenue.

Jackass

Judy Rebick asks in this taxpayer funded opinion column: So if spring is such a time of hope and I am generally such an optimistic person, why am I feeling so little hope these days? Perhaps it’s because all her hopes and dreams are turning to ashes in her mouth. That Jews are realizing that never again actually means that you might have to stand up and fight for yourself once in a while. That the dream of having millions of demonstrators permanently mobilized to attack the police and the government and tear down the system has dissolved into a few pathetic screeching hooligans. That the hope that the Americans would go into Afghanistan a slaughter hundreds of thousands of women in children in revenge for 9/11 never happened — that Afghanistan men and women now cheer for the freedom that Americans have won for them. That Canada has decided to stand up and be counted among the fighters for freedom and morality. That the citizens of other enslaved countries may be freed soon from the polished black boots of dictators. That citizens of the west have woken up from a too-long slumber and realized that the dead dumb ideologies of the past need to be sent to the garbage heap. That people realize that freedom doesn’t mean conformance with the thinking and beliefs of our sneering self-identified class of superiors — that freedom actually means something; that freedom means freedom.

Despair, Judy: the tide has turned.

Roger Ebert comes out against misguided copy-protection schemes in this article, titled “Don’t Confuse Fans With Pirates“. Back when I was a member of the prime music-buying demographic, I went into Markland’s Record Store on Main Street in Urbana, Illinois, and took the latest 45s into a soundproof listening booth where I could sample them. I sampled them a lot. So did all the other kids. Sometimes we would sample the same song every day for a week. The Marklands knew what we were up to. They also knew that we yearned to own those records, and that when we found the 89 cents for a 45 or the $3.98 for an LP we’d be their customers. We were fueling our enthusiasm. MP3 fans using the Web are essentially doing the same thing. They are finding new bands and singers. They are spreading the word. If the music industry ever finds a way to block the copying of music, the bands that are protected will be invisible to this most sincere form of promotion and publicity.

I don’t agree so much with this article, but I love this bit (I can just picture it in my mind): The difference now is that conservatives have moved on — just like the liberals begged us to. There’s a war on you know? Bill Clinton, no doubt, spends his time in his Harlem office eating bucket after bucket of fried-chicken skins while constantly asking his “secretary” to come in and pick up the pencils he “accidentally” dropped in front of his desk. So, most of us ask, why bother with him?

Peter Fenwick writes about how miguided (and counterproductive) the Newfoundland government’s position on FPI is. (Via DP). It’s hard to believe that this guy actually ran the NDP once.

I just removed Eurotrash to make room for Jim Treacher; they’ve stopped updating their blog.

The good fellows at Enter Stage Right think I might be an out-of-the-closet Ernie Eves supporter. I think I’ll sit out the next Ontario election (just like the last one): I really can’t forgive the Harrisites for fucking up Toronto, and Eves is all of the bad parts of Harris, without any of the revolutionary part. And the Liberals are led by an idiot, and the NDP are idiots. I may have voted for Flaherty, despite the abortion thing. Why not? Legality of abortion is a federal issue, so despite Flaherty’s opinion of the subject, it doesn’t really make too much of a difference in the big scheme of things.

I don’t know what to say, so I’ll let Stephen do it for us. What’s wrong with Bush, that he can’t distinguish between right and wrong when it comes to this? Does he need the support, such as it is, of the Arab world so badly?

This is in issue on which I’ve been really torn. On one hand, I’m for increased Moby beatings; but on the other hand, I’m against anti-American ranting by drunken Australians. What to do…

I see Miss Hawk Girl has added to be favorites list. Must post more to be worthy.

This is the planet we have choosen to live on, or with. Monsters.

And it has nothing to do with the worldwide flu that has affected/infected everyone. The ruling Liberal party spends almost 80% of its cultural spending money in Quebec, doles out $160 million to three Quebec marketing firms which donate large amounts of cash back in turn to the Liberals, and sets up slush funds for Quebec Liberal MPs. I’d say this is a case for Lawrence Garvin, but I just noticed it already is.

I just liked this quote from an otherwise unremarkable G&M article: And good deeds vanish in a puff of smoke the moment you stick a price tag on them.