Some minor changes to the Blogroll. Seeking the Alien Shore has been promoted to Tier 0 and Jay and Paul to the “my favorite Canadians” block. I’ve put Eugene Eric Kim in the tech tier just to see what it’s all about. I’ve also added The Belmount Club, EURSoc and Being American in Toronto to the roll in various spots.
I hoped I didn’t mess anything up. I’m still looking for more good tech development blogs.
My old co-workers in Vienna at their Weihnacht Party (right now!), sipping on schnaps. Second from the right, constant drinking buddy Aussie-mate Ben.
Jonathan Kay of the National Post has a column on Rocco Galati, confirming my gut feelings about this guy:
He has recently been reported as saying, for instance, that Canada’s anti-terrorism laws are “totalitarian”; that the Canadian security establishment “engages in racial institutional apartheid”; and that Canada’s Muslims are being thrown into the “gulag.” (For more quotes in the same vein, see Bruce Livesey’s cover story in the current issue of Canadian Lawyer.) At one point, he claimed someone was trying to poison him. In another case — foreshadowing last week’s developments — he literally walked out during a courtroom proceeding because, he claimed, participating in Canada’s “Alice in Wonderland” legal system would violate his Barrister’s oath.
I think it’s great that the worst criminals are defended by good lawyers — I really do — but that doesn’t necessarily make those lawyers good or noble people. And there’s a broad and clear line that’s been crossed if one starts identifying with the criminal’s actions and intents rather than with their defense.
In any case, I very much doubt we’ve heard of Mr. Galati.
Steyn (plus a bonus Pax putdown):
So I have made a New Years resolution or, if you cant say that any more, an Eid resolution to be extra-super-sensitive as we look at the state of play at the close of 2003. First of all, Im amazed that we can still win anything, given the palpable urge of the Western worlds elites to abase themselves in the name of multiculturalism. Their position is basically that of Bernd Brandes, the computer engineer eaten by the German cannibal: go ahead, devour me, but chop my penis off first so I can watch you sauté it.
This started of as a response to the comments in this and grew out of control.
Though I have family that work in the construction trade, I know no one who has ever had a serious fall from a ladder. Most everyone I know washes every day (as far as I can tell) and yet I don’t know anyone who has drowned in a bathtub. I know of several near-misses, but I don’t know anyone who has been killed by a firearm, either accidentally or deliberately.
The funny thing about social policy is that there’s only so far you can push before stuff starts popping out in strange places.
There’s not much you can reasonably do about ladder falls, except maybe occasionally remind people to ‘get a buddy to hold the damn thing for you’. The bulk of ‘firearm deaths’ (the phrase carefully chosen so the careless reader thinks only homicides are involved) in the US are caused by suicide, and you’re either going to do that or your not. One can debate gun policy till you’re blue in the face, but there seems to be an inverse relationship between the ability and willingness of homeowners to use weapons and the amount of property crime one gets in society. I have no serious policy suggestions for stopping bathtub drownings, though if one generalizes to water accidents, we could cut that number in half by banning booze. And we know how that worked out.
Most accidents are caused either by dumbasses or people acting like dumbasses, and I’m afraid there’s very little solving that.
9/11? I won’t bore you with the details, except to note that I knew 3 people there, through 0 or 1 levels of indirection, and two of them are dead. I work in the financial sector so you could claim that it’s not too surprising; or perhaps it’s just too crass of me to mention them at all, to make my case on somebody’s immolated body. Ok, fair enough.
You know anyone retired or retiring in the last three years. Odds are, they were affected by 9/11. Do you know anyone working in tourism? I do. They were screwed by 9/11. Do you anyone who works in an airline? I do: they were screwed by 9/11. Do you know anyone in New York? They have no neutral opinions about 9/11, I’m sure. Do you know anyone in the military? In the reserves? Their life has been made a lot more interesting in the last few years, don’t you think especially, though not exclusively, if they’re Americans. Do you know anyone self-employed? I was; now I’m not. Do you know any Jews? Of course you do, they all didn’t show up to work at the WTC on the morning of the 11th, ha ha ha, just kidding (though the ones making that claim aren’t).
Look, shit happens: every single person who ever lived knows this deep in their bones. Life often ends too early, in tragedy or in farce, fodder for drinking stories or cautionary tales. However, 9/11 wasn’t an accident: 9/11 was done to us.
And if there’s one thing I expect from my government, it’s to do everything in its power to stop it from happening to us again. That’s why it’s there.
On September 12, I listened to several hours of Gwyn Dyer (with Rex Murphy) on CBC and he was insightful and brilliant. I guess it got stale for him quickly: he got over it, what’s the matter with the rest of us? It’s so ’01; wake up man, people are drowning in bathtubs! Or perhaps it’s all just upside now, what with all the punditry jobs and so forth.
Damian Penny writes about Gwyn Dyer’s insane assertion that drowning in your bath or falling from ladders should be greater worry for society than terrorism. Even if the statistics bore him out, it still misses one important fact: the primary function of government is defense — stopping foreigners with weapons from killing me at home. In a near tie, the second most important function of government is law inforcement. In either case, if there’s a terrorist threat, finding and f*cking up terrorists should be a government obession.
It’s easy to stop almost all ladder deaths and bath drownings (beyond what it has done with basic saftey regulations): only allow highly trained professionals to use ladders and ban bath tubs. There, problem solved (excepting that the government has no moral mandate to do so).
Gywn Dyer used to be an interesting writer, but he’s become yet another victim of American Loathing Syndrome.
I’ve just posted a story about Sinatra singer Adam James over on Switching to Glide. Plus read about the Tijuana Bibles and Brad Sucks and all sorts of more Canadian music goodness.
CBC reports “Quebec unions to hold day of action“. Well, it’s about damn time they did something.
If warblogs didn’t exist, would there even be chance that you’d think something other than that Iraq was Vietnam II?
Bruce points out some news on Iraq you won’t see on Instapundit. Fair enough, though it’s not like it’s hard to hear as much nattering every day as you can bear to stand about how bad things are over there. This story gives me great hope though. Not because a 1000 people (or so) marched against terrorism in Iraq, but because it’s been spiked in the newspapers and TV here. Never forget:
The same media pundits who are telling us we’re losing today are exactly the same ones who were telling us we were losing 48 hours before the US rolled through Baghdad.
Stalingrad my ass.
Update: more here.
Update II: Armed Liberal at WoW is pissed.
While I’m saddened to see Canada shut out of top-tier Iraqi building contracts, we shouldn’t be surprised: we have spent the last decade souring our relationship with the United States, for no reason except trivial smug self-satisifaction. Is this a welcoming kick in the shins for Paul Martin, to make him grovel a little, or are we really just entirely under the radar now? Time will tell.
As for Germany, France and Russia, it’s a shame that Bush didn’t make it more clear to them in the past that there’s a price for backing the wrong horse; I guess this is a start. Why should Americans spend tens of billions of dollars and have their children shipped home in refrigerator boxes to enrich to the business/political oligarchies of Europe? It’s almost makes me physically sick reading the Eurocomments, considering they haven’t even pledged a cent to sort of the mess their boy left. They made their bet last year for self-enrichment: hundreds of billions of dollars in oil-contracts to sell out their allies and the people of Iraq.
They lost their bet.
I’d like to recommend some people/companies to you:
* making up for years of abuse, plus I have a great dental plan.
It’s worth nothing that if Iraq’s debt is truly “odious”, then they really don’t need to ask to repudiate it. Still, it’s hard to see how Bush’s latest maneuver can lower the “Axis of Weasel”‘s opinion on the US, so it’s good to get a few more bargaining chips on the table.
CBC had an interview with Steven Clarkson of the University of Toronto last night, where they were trying to decide whether Bush was just wrecking blind vengeance against his ideological enemies or merely insane. It was kind of annoying and I turned it off after Clarkson stated (with a sneering voice) that “the Bush administration believes it’s at war”.
Clarkson may or may not be the ex-husband of the GG.
KMG asks:
Several weeks ago I noticed that my spam routinely incorporates lengthy strings of gibberish, often historical in nature. For instance, a message from Harvey connie (sic), soliciting membership in “a free dating website created by women,” contains this:
cheng by name, was quicker to see an opportunity, and said:walls and refused to fight. Teng Ch`iang said: “Our adversary. learn the enemy’s condition.” And Chang Yu says: “We must temptFletcher, of Balliol College, my Secretary. I am also considerably. opposites you would least desire?contain matter that has either been added by a later hand or “What the devil is it all about?” said my brother’s fellowwalls and refused to fight. Teng Chiang said: “Our adversary. contain matter that has either been added by a later hand orcheng by name, was quicker to see an opportunity, and said: opposites you would least desire?met, how shaggy the hair of the men, how large and bright their eyes,
Does anyone have an explanation?
It is an attempt to defeat anti-spam software at both the server[1] and client level[2].
At the server level, spammers are making sure each spam message is “unique”. Otherwise, it would be trivial for the server to identify bulk mailings by taking a checksum[3] of each message passing through and looking for frequent repeats. This is often why you see random characters appended to spam messages.
At the client level, adding lengthy quotes from (freely available) historical novels is an attempt defeat “Bayesian filtering” software. Bayesian filtering attempts to identify which messages are spam (and which are not) by learning from previously classified e-mails. Adding text from novels tends to make messages “look” (to the computer) more like non-commercial e-mails.
[1] Server level: i.e. the machines that pass your e-mail around the Internet.
[2] Client level: i.e. the mail software on your desk; though occassionally a piece of software running remotely on a server on your behalf.
[3] A checksum is a mathematical function that can be applied to text. The checksum is generally much shorter than the message itself — from 4 to 24 bytes — making comparison much easier (at the cost of occassionally getting false matches).
If you’re waiting for an e-mail from me (there’s several), it may be a little while. I’ve had the flu (or something) for the last few days and my energy levels are very variable.
Ah, it’s a thing of beauty (all emphasis added by me, though it’s difficult to know where to stop):
Lisa G. from Pittsburgh writes to Marilyn vos Savant (Parade, Dec. 7, 2003):
Many of my friends and I are intelligent, liberal-arts graduate who, due to an economic system that glorifies science, medicine, business, and law, are toiling as secretaries and retail clerks. Is there any hope for the philosopher, writer, dancer, poet or sculptor to find paying work in Western society? Or are we doomed to relegate our talents to hobbies while working in drudgery until we die, just to pay the bills?
Marilyn gives a namby-pamby work hard, follow your dreams sort of answer. Here is what she should have said.
First, stop whining. You had a choice of poetry or business and you chose poetry. If your love for the subject is not enough to make up for the loss in income then go back to school. Two, stop blaming “an economic system” that glorifies science etc. and notice that these jobs pay highly because the skills they require are rare and people are willing to pay for the product of these jobs. If you produce something that people want you will be paid highly also but don’t expect other people to pay so that you can fulfill your dreams of writing poetry that no one wants to read. Third, what do you mean by it’s difficult to find work for the philosopher, writer, dancer, poet or sculptor in “Western society.” Do you know of any society at any time or place that has offered more for the arts? A retail clerk who does sculpture on the side has a far higher income than does your typical sculptor working in India. Try visiting most of the rest of the world – where science and business are not glorified – if you want to truly understand “drudgery.”
CBC news reports:
However, there are still a lot of Tories who remain uncomfortable with the change. At least three MPs confirmed on Monday they intend to sit as independents, including former leader Joe Clark.
The PC caucus held its final meeting on Monday afternoon. Some members sat mute as leader Peter MacKay was introduced. At least three said they’re leaving, including Clark.
“I came to say goodbye,” the former prime minister told reporters. “This is not my party, this is something entirely new . . . . I will not be part of this new party.”
No one epitomized the old-order Tories than Joe Clark, whose personal vision for his party and his country extended no futher than being the B-list Liberals, the first alternate for when Canadians occasionally tired of having the Liberals in power. History has recorded both your brief months in power and your lengthy stint as second, third and fourth tier opposition leader as abject failures.
Peaktalk reports that recent developments toward a new EU constitution are “quite promising“: i.e. bad for the EUrocrats.
The last line of this paragraph wins my “line of the week” award for sure http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,3605,1099727,00.html
So emboldened by the filthy free-for-all, the danse macabre of resurgent Judeophobia – attacks on Jews in this country have risen by 75% this year; and since 2000, there has been a 400% increase in attacks on synagogues – are the ignorant armies of darkness that even Germans are opening their yaps on a subject that you’d have thought they’d have the sense, if not the decency, to keep away from. Just a few weeks ago, a German MP was forced to resign after claiming that the Jews were responsible for Soviet army “atrocities” against the defeated Nazi state (makes you want to go back and bomb Dresden all over again, only properly this time).
A few more notable posts today on Relapsed Catholic [starting here], which cover a few things I wanted to blog today:
The British found all the variety of India ready-provided; whereas they had found Canada nearly empty, when they arrived here. Outside of Quebec, a distinctive British North American society was shaped and formed, into which new arrivals were assimilated. Only later did they — or now, we — turn what has been indelicately called an “immigration hose” on the product of our labours. Our Liberal Party discovered that by importing various exotic immigrant groups, and discouraging them from assimilating, they could create dependants — pools from which to harvest reliable Liberal votes.
The formula, once again, is, “We rule, and They” … can do pretty much anything they want, so long as it is compatible with, “We rule”. Master wouldn’t dream of intervening unless something is done that might undermine his place at the top, in which case all this cultural relativism goes quickly through a window.
One girl who’d escaped Mr Gharbi’s insanity (and who’d seen several women gunned down) gave an adhoc interview to a reporter….between sobs.
What stikes me NOW about her three minute blurb into a C.B.C. mike was not her terror, but rather something she claimed the killer had been shouting as he made his rounds. “What was he screaming”, asked the C.B.C. reporter. “I’m not quite sure”, replied the young student, “but I think it was Arabic”. Then she went on, ” something like…er.. “Allay Ackbeer” or “alak akbor” ……”something to that effect”, she sobbed
As noted by Kathy, the National Post online is now subscriber only. I think. The new entry page pops up a small window with the following gooblygook. What’s a six day subscriber, and how did I become one? Am I supposed to do something?
Today, National Post is launching an enhanced online product at nationalpost.com and an exclusive bonus for subscribers. As a six-day subscriber and loyal reader of National Post, you are now entitled to online services which will be unavailable to others. nationalpost.com will serve as an unabridged version of everything you have come to enjoy in National Post with additional features such as archiving and search capabilities.
Michael Crichton writes:
Today, one of the most powerful religions in the Western World is environmentalism. Environmentalism seems to be the religion of choice for urban atheists. Why do I say it’s a religion? Well, just look at the beliefs. If you look carefully, you see that environmentalism is in fact a perfect 21st century remapping of traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs and myths.
There’s an initial Eden, a paradise, a state of grace and unity with nature, there’s a fall from grace into a state of pollution as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge, and as a result of our actions there is a judgment day coming for us all. We are all energy sinners, doomed to die, unless we seek salvation, which is now called sustainability. Sustainability is salvation in the church of the environment. Just as organic food is its communion, that pesticide-free wafer that the right people with the right beliefs, imbibe.
[...] And so it is, sadly, with environmentalism. Increasingly it seems facts aren’t necessary, because the tenets of environmentalism are all about belief. It’s about whether you are going to be a sinner, or saved. Whether you are going to be one of the people on the side of salvation, or on the side of doom. Whether you are going to be one of us, or one of them
And as we’re constantly lectured by Sven Robinson-types, religion has absolutely no place in determining public policy…
Last week I wrote about how DVDs may change the economics of TV shows, partly inspired by a Michael Jennings post about the movie biz on Samizdata several months ago. Well, I learned today that Jennings has more episodes of BtVS on DVD than I do. In my defense, I don’t have time to watch much TV so getting through the 3rd season is taking longer than I expected.
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