Ranting and Roaring

It’s my birthday today.

This story is thick with wonderful irony. What a brilliant plan.
Could a hotel be built on the land owned by Supreme Court Justice David H. Souter? A new ruling by the Supreme Court which was supported by Justice Souter himself itself might allow it…

I swear that there must be a whole team at Rogers that sits around and plots how to make the whole high speed Internet experience more unpleasant.

I just scanned this mixed media masterpiece by Trinity-Anne. The girl in green with the unhappy face is stealing the cake from the birthday party.

I was reading this article in the subway the other morning and via Kathy I find it’s online.

11 ideas to make ideaCity a little more compelling

…

1. More Provocation: There was a collective intake of breath yesterday when ASPCA senior director Stephanie Lafarge described personally breast-feeding a chimpanzee. Ms. Lafarge declined to answer Mr. Znaimer when he asked if she condones romantic relationships between humans and animals, but her frank reference to the future of bestiality (there will be more of it, she predicts) was the most (and perhaps only) controversial moment of the festival. There are few revolutionary ideas that do not prompt fierce opposition, and ideaCity needs to solicit ideas that will spark debate.

Straight out of the “they laughed at Galileo, they laughed at Einstein, they laughed at Bozo the Clown” files. Anyone can play this this game; let’s see if I can:

If a Canadian artist gets a pan in the (let’s say) Toronto Sun it should be legal for the next 28 days to hunt them down with a crossbow.

Sure, to the little unvisionary people that idea may sound psychotic and could prompt “fierce opposition” but I’m just trying to solicit ideas to spark debate. Just like those other revolutionary ideas, such as screwing Spot.

Yep:

Remember, this is a meme for the Left that goes back forty years. It’s practically a dogmatic belief for them that the American military is no better than the enemies it faced, probably ever. It’s part of the multicultural moral equivalence that has turned a respectable philosophical discipline—liberalism—into a form of mind rot that the American Left exemplifies. Whether it is John Kerry equating Vietnam veterans to the Mongol hordes of Genghis Khan in his stentorian Boston tones or Durbin picking up the hat trick in the Senate by using Nazis, Soviets, and the Khmer Rouge all wrapped up together, they want to argue that any kind of interrogation that results in uncomfortable conditions equates to the deliberate physical torture and slaughter of millions.

Why does the Left need to argue this? They want an end to the fighting, regardless of what that means to American security. They want a return to the failed policies of the 1990s, when we treated terrorism like an international crime, and for a couple of reasons. First, they want the US to give up part of its sovereignty to the UN and the World Court in order to impose on the US policies that they cannot achieve through the ballot box domestically. Second, they value the veneer of reasonableness over the reality of what it takes to keep the nation secure, and if we get attacked, they want the holiness and martyrdom that comes from being a victim. Why else do they stand on their soapbox and bemoan the loss of the “sympathy” given to us on 9/11? That, to them, is the pinnacle of achievement.

There’s another “meme”: travelling around the blogosphere about the seven things you can’t say in Canada. I’d like to draw attention to three items in Colby Cosh’s list, since they’re near and dear to my heart:

• It’s completely, utterly inconsistent to heap extravagant encomiums on Henry Morgentaler while being opposed to private medicine with every fibre of one’s being.
• It’s also completely inconsistent for feminists to stand on their individual classical-liberal right to total personal inviolability—when it comes to abortion—and to proclaim an illiberal doctrine of collective, identitarian rights in every other sphere of human activity.
• Our aboriginal peoples are far worse off in every respect than Indians in the United States. Being chased, hunted, ethnic-cleansed, cheated, and slaughtered for 300 years was better for Indians in the U.S., in the long run, than being made wards of the state was for Canada’s.

Today was Trinity-Anne’s last day of pre-school.

The Post Money Value (sort of) asks who didn’t cosponsor the anti-lynching bill the passed in the US Senate yesterday.

A list of US Senators. The bill with 83 cosponsors.

The missing senators:

• Alexander, Lamar- (R – TN)
• Bennett, Robert- (R – UT)
• Cochran, Thad- (R – MS)
• Cornyn, John- (R – TX)
• Crapo, Michael- (R – ID)
• Enzi, Michael- (R – WY)
• Grassley, Chuck- (R – IA)
• Gregg, Judd- (R – NH)
• Hatch, Orrin- (R – UT)
• Hutchison, Kay- (R – TX)
• Kyl, Jon- (R – AZ)
  * Landrieu, Mary- (D – LA) (see comments)
• Lott, Trent- (R – MS)
• Shelby, Richard- (R – AL)
• Smith, Gordon- (R – OR)
• Sununu, John- (R – NH)
• Thomas, Craig- (R – WY)

Apropos of nothing, I’m mulling in my how this result could be accomplished (easily) by a Semantic Web type application, without requiring standardized names and semi-sophisticated CMS to generate the pages. Even if you strip off the middle initials, here’s the computer generated difference:

• Alexander, Lamar
• Bennett, Robert
• Biden, Joseph
• Biden, Joseph R., Jr.
• Clinton, Hillary
• Clinton, Hillary Rodham
• Cochran, Thad
• Cornyn, John
• Crapo, Michael
• Enzi, Michael
• Frist, Bill
• Frist, William
• Grassley, Chuck
• Gregg, Judd
• Hatch, Orrin
• Hutchison, Kay
• Kyl, Jon
• Landrieu, Mary
• Lott, Trent
• Nelson, Ben
• Nelson, E. Benjamin
• Rockefeller, John
• Rockefeller, John D., IV
• Shelby, Richard
• Smith, Gordon
• Sununu, John
• Talent, James
• Talent, Jim
• Thomas, Craig

Where the White Women At? Read all about it (þ Silflay Hraka):

However, society has changed, and the business of journalism has changed with it. These days, with the increased opportunities available to white women, we as a nation are losing track of even the prettiest white women. White women are dissappearing in Aruba, from their jobs as Washington interns, and even right before their own weddings. And while we do our best to give the public all the necessary information about missing white women, the job is just too large for any one cable network to handle.

I’m going to take a wild-ass guess here and say that Calgary hasn’t had a great spring.

The French and the Dutch recently had referenda on adopting the EU constitution. In both countries the “no” side posted decisive victories. Now Denmark is reconsidering having a referendum at all. My first though was that they’ll just ratify the EU in parliament to get the answer they want. But after reading the BBC article, well, I have no idea what they’re planning:

“We want clarity that it is this treaty, nothing more or less, on which we will vote on 27 September, and if there is no clarity on that, because various processes are started which in principle could change it, then you cannot hold a vote.”

If you can make sense of that, leave a note in the comments.

The other day John Cole thought he found a pretty good comment thread. Well, that’s been topped. Digamma describes it best (þ Catallarchy.net):

Greatest flamewar ever

A guy starts out looking for some female companionship, and 19 posts later ends up claiming responsibility for 9/11.

Here’s the message thread. I’ve saved a copy in case they delete it.

Here’s the start:

Be everything as it may, this transcontinental, international cyclotouriste is navigating to locate a good companion for an extended bicycling tour. Good is defined as——female, healthy, cyclist, with a sense of bold adventure, and the willingness to be compatable on an extended world tour with yours truly.

… I be fifty-three, healthy, six feet, 180 pounds, good looking but nothing to get all up in the air about, blond receding hair, green eyes, university grad., writer, teacher. Can work in exotic locations and have done so, easy to get along with, adventurous, survivor, world traveler. Have bicycled thirty thousand miles through nineteen countries——USA, Canada, Mexico, western Europe, eastern Europe, former Soviet Union, China, south Korea.

And here’s comment #19:

Fuck you goddamn punk. Bring it on is exactly what I am gojng to do. You go fishing for trouble you no good son of a whore and that is exactly what you will get. When I say that I have had it with bastards like you that is exactly what I mean, and you are going to find out what that means too.

And you just remember this too you bastard. I am the guy who found out in detail about the plans to attack the WTC, the pentagon, and the US Capitol on or around 9–11-01. I have a book in the making right now, and part of it is on the internet. You read it and you will see that I kept those attack plans under my hat because I know about no good bastards like you and how you permeate American society. It was my opinion that you and people like you need to be taken off this planet. America was attacked because of people like you and because of attitudes like yours. The fact is that even if 9–11 had been nuclear, I still would not have warned you bastards well enough so that you could have done anything to prevent it. You interfere with me and I will interfere with you in ways that you would never dream possible, except that with a chickenshit like you, you would not be worth the consequences. Offing big groups of people like you would have some meaning, but a no good bastards rat like you is not worth the trouble.

The Supreme Court struck it down. I’m shocked, and happyish—it was close and at least 3 justices (Ian Binnie!?) thought this law didn’t violate the charter.

Joey deVilla pops up on a CTV news article about new filesharing laws being introduced by the Federal Government (þ Sari):

The new legislation will contain rules that will make it illegal to hack or break into the digital locks often used to prevent the copying of movies and software—although it will remain perfectly legal in Canada to copy a CD for personal use.

“The digital locks themselves can be used to take away rights that users already have,” University of Ottawa law professor Michael Geist told CTV News.

You should be concerned by this: it invents a whole new class of physical property rights: things you own but can only use in ways the manufactor tells you. If you like your DVDs today, we’re it takes minutes of experimenting to get past the ads to the main menu—or DVDs like Hollywood Bollywood, where you’re forced to watch the ads, well ready for more. DVDs that expire after 1 year? Why not? Music CDs that force you to register and log every time you listen with the RIAA? Why not?

Via Penny we learn that:

The Supreme Court of Canada is set to issue a ruling Thursday that could have significant implications for the country’s medicare system.

… He says he should have had the right to pay for the surgery himself, even though it’s illegal to pay for health services covered by medicare.

… They argue that spending months waiting for surgery amounts to a violation of their constitutional rights to life, liberty and security of the person.

They say that patients should have a right to pay for services from private doctors and that doing so would pose no threat to the public health-care system.

To put it a different way, this is the day:

1. we learn whether we have more or less rights wrt. health care than a dog
2. whether the words of the Charter of Rights mean anything besides “insert your own constitution here”.

I’m not hopeful. As CTV reports

The Quebec Superior Court ruled that the provincial law’s intention was to prevent discrimination based on ability to pay and that the collective rights to a universal, publicly funded system are more important than individual rights.

What section was that in?

The Guardian reports:

France’s new prime minister, Dominique de Villepin, refused yesterday to push the country down the road towards free-market reform, saying “Gallic genius” would help put back on its feet a “suffering, impatient and angry” nation that has failed to adapt fully to a changing world.

In a speech to the packed lower house of the national assembly, Mr Villepin said his top aim was to cut the country’s stubborn 10%-plus unemployment rate and announced €4.5bn (£3bn) of extra money to achieve it.

But he insisted that an increasingly heated public debate about the shortcomings of France’s high-tax, high-protection social model compared with the more liberal Anglo-Saxon system was irrelevant.

“In a modern democracy, the debate is not between the liberal and the social, it is between immobilism and action,” he said. “Solidarity and initiative, protection and daring: that is the French genius.”

This isn’t one of those “pick on the French” blog posts, it’s just about the commonplace emptiness of that last sentence. Unemployment, inflation, deflation, Africa, North Korea, Iraq, Iran, teenage hoods, vandalism, cars with the bumpers hanging off, etc.: no one’s not saying we should do something. The question is: what? That’s the hard part, not the “when we figure it out we should do it élan and style”.

(þ Simberg)

Sean O’Shea of Global News (CanWest) now has a blog (þ John Gushue).

I had this Todd Zywicki post lying around on my desktop for the last day and I’m still laughing about it, so I guess it’s post worthy. It’s also my first test of using Textile for formatting blog stuff on Movable Type

People Who Don’t Shop at Wal-Mart Oppose New Cleveland Wal-Mart: From today’s Cleveland Plain-Dealer:

This is why so many job-starved Clevelanders have voiced concerns. Consider the coalition that is building: civil rights groups, elected officials, labor unionists, ministers, small business owners, and, most recently, Cleveland bloggers. We raise our voices in opposition because of the negative effects of a Wal-Mart Supercenter on our town.

In other words, Cleveland’s elites who don’t shop at Wal-Mart are opposed to allowing other people to shop at Wal-Mart. And those with jobs are raising their voices on behalf of “job-starved Clevelanders.” Real profiles in courage. Good thing they weren’t around when the dry goods stores and blacksmiths were feeling competitive pressures many years ago from supermarkets and the “horseless carriage”.

I’ve been tagged by Kathy via Kate so here goes.

Number of books: innumerable thousands, spread over three locations (home, my parent’s home in Newfoundland, my wife’s warehouse)

Last book read: Chretien Volume I – The Will To Win by Lawrence Martin.

Last book purchased: Testament by Nino Ricci. I almost threw this one back in the shipping box to Amazon.ca after I read the blurb on the back:

Yihuda of Qiryat (Judas Iscariot), a freedom fighter for Rome’s overthrow…

Fortunately, I kept reading and it’s not nearly so bad as that would suggest. Ricci is very sympathetic to the people and the times without the overbearing hoserisms implied by that quote.

Five Books that Mean a Lot to Me (and you should read):

1. A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge. This is the book that made me believe that there was science fiction worth reading again.
2. Brothers Under the Skin by Christopher Hope. The subtitle is “travels in tyranny”; the book relates Hope’s experiences in Zimbabwe, South Africa, Eastern Germany, and other delightful places.
3. The Great Human Diasporas by Luigi Luca Cavallai-Sforza and Francesco Cavalli-Sforza. How humans spread across the world, as studied by statistical methods. Browse through chapter 6 if you ever see this lying around.
4. Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies by Douglas Hofstadter and others. This is a series of moderately technical (but accessible) papers on an approach to artificial intelligence. If human intelligence type AIs are creatable, I believe the concepts from book will be at the foundation. There’s very little Hofstadter first person interjections in this book, which is good because he’s an unbearable snot.
5. Berlin Game (Mexico Set, and London Match) by Len Deighton. A great first-person spy story set in Berlin of the 1980s. John Le Carre can eat my shorts.

Now I tag:

• Al
• Amritas
• Mike
• Old Joe
• Joey

Technorati Tag (add this link to your responses):
Last 5 Books