TKs Log Book

inssnemesis @ 2009-10-29T15:28:00

2009-10-29T21:28:52Z

I just got hired on as the back of house manager for the new Boston Pizza that opening in Vegreville. I start on the 20th.

Effects of Climate Change on Wine Production

2009-08-20T21:28:44Z

http://tinyurl.com/kkt8eo

"Prominent French chefs have given warning that the country's wines will lose their complexity and the best produce will come from Scotland if the effects of climate change are not tackled."

Is there a contemporaneous ranking of wines produced during the Medieval Warm Period? That would be an interesting tidbit.

Of course, this story suggests the obvious question: What wine goes best with Haggis?

This is Only the Beginning

2009-02-18T04:48:49Z

It's been coming for a long time, now, sure as the turning of the
worlds. Now it's here, and people are starting to suffer. And this is
only the beginning.

One of my roomates works in construction. He came home today and
announced that he had been laid off. Big surprise, that. In a
recession, construction jobs are usually among the first to go.

The company I work for, in order to be able to delay having to lay
people off as long as possible, implemented a 1.5% pay cut all across
the board, from management all the way down. That didn't come as a
surprise, either. I still consider myself lucky. It could have been a
lot worse. I've heard tell of local companies that have cut wages as
much as 5%. And I still have my job.

North America has been very fortunate for a very long time. But some of
us still remember the last recession, and the lessons it taught us.
First and foremost was to count your blessings. Be thankful for what
you have because it can be taken away from you in the blink of an eye.

The second lesson is to do whatever it takes to keep a roof over your
head, clothes on your back, and food in your belly, because you won't
always have the luxury of holding out for the job that you want.

We've all got some tough times ahead, but how long those tough times
last depend entirely on how our governments handle the economy. Now,
I'm not an especially well educated man, and I sure as hell ain't no
economist, but I do know when something doesn't feel right. Governments
the world over are spending money hand over fist to try to hold off the
negative effects of the credit crisis and the recession, which doesn't
seem entirely logical to me. But then, I suppose it depends entirely on
how that money was spent.

In the States, President Obama has signed into law the single largest
appropriation of borrowed money in the history of the US. This giant
package, which adds up to several hundreds of billions of dollars that
the American Government just doesn't have, is touted as an economic
stimulus package, the injection of vast sums of money into various and
sundry projects intended to pump money back into the economy. Sounds
like a good plan, right? Sure, it does. The problem is that I can't
really find any source that will tell me exactly where that money is
going. Not all of it anyway. We know that billions are being set aside
to construct the framework of a socialized health care system similar
to what Canada and Great Britain have. We also know that some money is
being set aside for infrastructure projects like roads and bridges.
That's a good thing, exactly the kind of project that generates jobs.
But still, vast sums of money in this package are completely and
totally unaccounted for.

Here in Canada the Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen
Harper was pressured by the opposition parties into tabling a budget
which drives Canada into a defecit the likes of which hasn't been seen
since the last recession. Granted, most of the things that I know of
that were included in the budget were good things, like money for
infrastructure projects, money for short term loans to struggling
industries, changes to the Employment Insurance system, and the like.
But I still question the amount of money involved. Was it really
necessary to go that far.

Economic performance depends entirely on confidence. It's a con game.
Always has been. When people are confident in their country and their
position in the world the economy soars. We go through periods of
seemingly unstoppable growth. But the thing of it is that the economy
also works in cycles, and the law of gravity tells us that what goes up
must come down. For every boom there is a bust, and as soon as the
bubble bursts people start losing confidence, and that's when the
economy tanks. All of this has happened before, and it will happen
again.

Obama and other liberals tell us that the solution to the financial
crisis is government. I'm not entirely sure I believe that, since it
was government that got us into this mess in the first place, but I'm
willing to accept that liberals believe it. I'm also willing to accept
at face value the proposition that President Obama is taking the
actions he's taking because he believes in his heart that it's the
right thing to do, and the other world leaders are following his lead
for the same reason.

But I have a question: Why do we need to spend billions of dollars to
restore peoples confidence in the economy? Why can't we simply say,
"Look, there are some tough times ahead, and we're not going to come
through this entirely uscathed, but if we tighten our belts and act
responsibly then we can weather this storm and come out stronger on the
other side."?

But what do I know? I'm just a manager.

Well, That Was Fun ...

2009-01-21T07:07:57Z

It all started just before I moved.

My primary computer, Wayfarer, is a AMD Sempron 3000 based machine that I built from a discount kit a couple of years ago. It was a pretty good deal, too ... motherboard, CPU, case, and 512mb of RAM for about $100. I did the assembly myself and that computer has stood me in good stead ever since.

Then last month I started having some overheat problems. I'd be chugging along working on something, and the computer would just lock up. I'd have to physically cycle the power to get the thing to fire up again. Of course with a move staring me in the face I didn't have much of any time to deal with it, but once the move was done I decided to turn my attention to fixing the problem.

A quick Google search turned up enough information to tell me that other people had had this kind of problem with this same motherboard and cpu bundle. The cure, it seemed, was to pull off the heatsink and fan, scrape off all the old grease that served to connect the two components together, and then put on a new layer. First day off I had after reading this that's exactly what I did. When I was done I fired the machine up and left it on to burn it in while I went gaming with the lads. For good measure, I even told it to apply a whole bunch of OS updates. I had just done a format and restore of my Linux partition, so the list of updates was significant.

When I came home that night I discovered that all of this was in vain. I still had the problem. Even worse, when I power cycled the machine and tried to restart, she just wouldn't fire up. At all. You guessed it: I waited too long and took out my CPU. Good job, Mike.

I put in a bid on a motherboard and CPU of the same class. If I win, then I should be able to bring Wayfarer back to life in the next couple of weeks. In the meantime, I'm staring at two PowerMac G4's: one acting as a server running Linux and the other acting as my de-facto main machine running OS X 10.3.9.

Interesting, isn't it, how the most reliable machines I have are Macs.

Obamamania ... I Get It ... I Really Do

2009-01-21T06:56:41Z

It was inauguration day in the US today, a day that marks the 43rd peaceful exchange of power from one outgoing president to one incoming president. The simple fact that this has happened 43 previous times is noteworthy enough, but there's no denying the historical significance of the incoming president.

I mean in when I say I understand the historical significance of the first African-American president in American history. Race is so important to our neighbors to the south. They like to pretend that it isn't, but if that was the case then the ethnicity of the incoming president wouldn't be as noteworthy as it was.

I've been thinking about it lately, going back over some of the publicly information about President Obama, reviewing some of the speeches he made, some of the things he said ... and while I have no doubt that the president is a skilled orator I think that the reason he won has less to do with politics and ideology and more to do with the message he sent, a message that the American people needed to hear in a big, bad way: yes, we've got some tough times ahead of us. Yes, our economy is almost at a standstill. Yes, our soldiers are fighting a war on two fronts on foreign soil, not only for us but for a group of people who despise their presence and wish they were elsewhere. Despite all of these things there is still hope out there, and if we have the will to do so we can reach out, hold that hope to our hearts, and cling to it mightily, just like our forefathers before us.

It's because of his message, and because of his skill as an orator that the media so readily latched on to this otherwise ordinary person. And it's the media, as much as anything else, that's largely responsible for his victory, for it's the media that took this otherwise ordinary senator from Illinois and turned him into something the American people so badly needed: a leader that can inspire hope in an era where despair comes so readily.

Obamamania. I get it. I really do.

And as much as I wish President Obama all the luck in the world I find myself compelled to stay realistic. He has a long and difficult road ahead of him, and the entire world hopes he's up to the challenge.

As a Canadian I look to our neighbors to the south and wish them good luck and prosperity in the coming years. President Obama's first foreign visit will be to Canada, and inasmuch as I think that improving relations between the US and Canada is a good thing, I'm also mindful of the fact that as president Obama is obligated to look after the interests of his people, and Canadian interests and American interests don't always lie in the same direction, and aren't always compatible. This is reality, and nothing can change it.

And I can't help but feel a certain amount of envy. I look at our American brothers and see a leader who inspires hope, and then I look at Ottawa and see a pack of squabbling sycophants scrambling to grab as much power as they can, each one convinced that his way is the best for our country and his opponents are both wrong and misguided. I look at the insults and the finger-pointing and I start to feel some of the despair that seems to have permeated the US over the last few years.

Hope. Sure could use some of that up here.

Obamamania. I get it. I really do.

Moving is a pain in the ass!

2008-12-30T18:47:57Z

Moving is a pain in the ass and I hate it. Have I mentioned this before? Well, I'm mentioning it now.

The new apartment is paid for. Has been for the last month. The people I normally recruit to help me move are unavailable, so for the last little while I've been scrambling to find alternate victims, I mean, volunteers. This has not been fun. I thought I had some people lined up, but I've not been able to get in touch with them to confirm. The reservation for the truck was today, but since I can't get in touch with the people I had lined up I think that I can safely assume that I won't be moving today, and the truck isn't available tomorrow. So I have to go to U-Haul and rescind the reservation and collect my deposit.

So, bottom line: I need trucks, I need drivers, and I need movers for tomorrow afternoon or evening. I need to move the contents of a shoebox bachelor apartment from over by Bonnie Doon to Callingwood. With enough people and sufficient cargo space this shouldn't take more than a couple of hours to accomplish. Anyone who donates a vehicle will have their gas tank topped up, and all participants will be treated to dinner on me as a thank you for helping me out.

So, what do you say, guys. Any volunteers?

I'm Sorry, Does That Make Me Automatically Wrong?

2008-10-16T09:03:46Z

Went in to work for a meeting today. Technically, it's supposed to be my day off but I'm a manager now so that means I'm kinda obligated. Gotta set the example and all.

After the meeting one of the ladies I work with asked me if I voted yesterday. I proudly answered that yes, I've voted in every election that's come down the pike since I was 18, and that I voted Conservative. Her eyes went wide and her chin hit the floor. She looked as if she wanted to take me by the shoulders and shake some sense into me. I asked her, "I'm sorry, does being a Conservative make me a rotten human being and automatically wrong?"

"Yes," she answered instantly and immediately started giving me a lecture about all the things that Conservatives do wrong, and how our Conservative government is ruining and eventually flatlining this country of ours. I didn't say a thing, just stood there and let her get it out of her system. This isn't the first time I've had discussions like this, and I really didn't feel any need to get into a point/counter-point with her. Eventually she took my silence to mean that she was pissing me off and apologized for ranting at me.

This is a long standing issue for me. I don't agree with Liberal ideology of virtually any stripe, but I know our modern, politically correct world is getting more and more liberal with each passing year. I've come to the conclusion that, despite the fact that it really doesn't matter what I think, Liberals are not automatically wrong, they're just misguided. But I will happily defend their right to hold whatever opinions they want to hold, whether I happen to agree with them or not. Would that the liberals felt the same way. One can't help but look at our modern world and come to the conclusion that if you're not a progressive then you're automatically evil, misguided, in denial about what's really going on in the world around you, and just plain wrong.

And it pisses me off. It does. If you're not liberal then you're a moron. This is the message that our liberal dominated mass media and popular culture is sending out, and people are buying it hook, line, and sinker, often without having any real clue exactly what the differences are between conservative and liberal ideologies. It doesn't matter. What does matter is that conservatives are evil. Look at George W. Bush, they say. That's all the evidence they seem to need to condemn an entire subset of the popluation.

The lady in question is intelligent and well spoken. She argued well and had I been in a better mood I might just have been willing to debate her, despite the fact that she voted NDP. I've decided that I'm going to try not to hold that against her.

A Conservative in an NDP Stronghold ...

2008-10-04T07:49:59Z

I realized something today when I went to the post office to pick up Mac #3: I live in what appears to be a predominantly NDP neighborhood. There isn't a single Liberal or Conservative sign in sight, although there is a Green Party sign posted next to an NDP one. Between the two is a third sign demanding action on Climate Change.

So, here's me with my Conservative leanings wondering what the hell I got myself into when I decided to move out here.

I'm Not A Liberal, and I'm Sorry

2008-10-04T07:46:04Z

My name is Uncle Scotsman, and I am a Conservative. I have never
had a progressive thought. According to what seem to be the currently
prevailing beliefs of the modern age, this means that I am irrational,
illogical, un-educated, un-enlightened, and a rotten human being to
boot. I therefore feel it necessary to apologize in advance.

I know it sounds like I'm being sarcastic, and I am, but there's a
reason. If the progressives continue to become even more powerful and
influential than they already are, and with a man like Barack Obama
running in the US presidential election that's entirely a possible
scenario, then there's going to come a time when naughty people like me
are going to be rounded up and told that we must change our ways for
the good of society. Sacrasm therefore becomes my way of shouting "WAKE
UP!!!" at the sleeping masses.

What does this have to do with the upcoming Canadian election? Everything.

I was working during both leaders debates, so I never got a chance to
watch them, but I have been reading the press coverage of the event and
watching snippets on the nightly news. And I have got to say, I am less
than impressed. Now, maybe I'm a little old fashioned, but I was taught
that a debate is supposed to be a two way exchange of points of view in
which each participating member is given a chance to state their case.
What little coverage I've seen of the debates leads me to conclude that
what I was seeing wasn't a debate, it was the parliamentary equivalent
of a gang mugging.

Picture, if you will, the country's leading progressive elite
facing off against a single conservative. What do you think is going to
happen then? Exactly what did happen, of course. The progressives are
going to skewer the lone conservative on everything from the
environment to family issues to national defense, and anything else
they can think of along the way, all in the name of demonstrating to
the viewing masses that the Progressive vision of the future is the
only vision that takes ordinary Canadians into account. In other words,
it was nothing but a PR campaign for liberal philosophy.

On the other hand I can't really say that I blame them. This entire
campaign hasn't been like past ones. There have been more attacks than
there have platform speeches. It's one thing to attack a party's
policies, it's quite another to attack an individual politician, and
all sides have done more than their fair share of the latter in this
election. That many progressives up against a lone conservative was
just an opportunity for more of the same, and I can't really blame them
for taking advantage of it.

And that's what kind of pisses me off about the whole thing, because
we're not seeing a traditional campaign in which all sides put forth
their platforms in the hopes that the majority of the voting public
will see things their way when the magic day comes. What we are seeing
is more of a battle between competing ideologies than an election
campaign. This becomes obvious when you look at the campaign promises.

The Green Party wants to tackle poverty with a Guaranteed Livable
Income Supplement, which I find especially interesting. Essentially,
they're giving welfare to the masses. There's also the usual promises
one would expect from the Greens: requiring appliance and equipment
retailers to accept and recycle or repair goods they have sold, helping
industry establish a national deposit and recycling system, giving more
money to post secondary institutions and research grants to
institutions that focus on renewable energy and conservation, etc.

The New Democrats, who seem to want to be regarded as the Green Party
more than the Greens do, have an interesting platform. They want to put
a moratorium on expanding the Alberta Tarsands, which I find
interesting because Jack Layton has been pretty outspoken about the
tarsands in the past and I don't trust him to stop at just ceasing
expansion. Eliminating the tarsands would essentially strangle
Alberta's economy, which seems a lot like biting the hand that feeds
you. The environmental agenda by itself isn't enough for them either;
they also want to outlaw ABM fees, and cap credit-card interest rates
at 5% over prime.

The Liberal environmental agenda focuses primarily on taxation. The
plan is called the Green Shift and is essentially a carbon tax on
fossil fuels to cut emissions. They also want to upgrade Canada's food
safety system, put money into helping homeowners refit their homes for
energy efficiency, and beef up Canadian building code standards for
energy efficiency.

The Conservative agenda seems to be the most reasonable of all. They
want to reinstate benefits for Second World War veterans who have lived
in Canada for more than 10 years, recognize foreign skills credentials
for immigrants, and have set a deadline for the withdrawal of Canadian
Forces from Afghanistan.

Notice something very fundamental here: the Conservative agenda is
actually pretty cheap, even frugal, while the various Liberal
platforms, with the exception of the Liberal party agenda, are both
expensive and feel a little intrusive to me. The Conservatives seem to
want the country to function and be economically stable, while the
liberal parties seem more interested in saving the planet and providing
for Canadian families than anything else. Correct me if I'm wrong, but
aren't jobs and employment supposed to provide for Canadian families?
Why should it be the feds responsibility to make sure that Canadians
have enough money in the bank to live? Isn't that a provincial and
municipal concern?

The Liberal Party itself is coming across as fairly reasonable, which I find interesting. Shocking, even.

But the various platforms all come down to ideology. It all comes down
to what you believe, not what's best for the country. In all fairness,
though, a lot of people on both sides of the fence will insist that
ideology and what's best for the country walk hand in hand. For all I
know they could be right, but I don't necessarily think so.

What do I think? I think that the Greens and the NDP are completely out
to lunch. Big surprise there; they always have been. The Liberals are
actually being fairly reasonable, if a little more interventionist than
I would like. The Conservative platform, however, is the one I find the
most appealing. It's steady and frugal, and that makes Uncle Scotsman a
happy man.

Which brings me back to the issue of my apology. Again, I am not a
progressive by any stretch of the imagination. I am a Conservative,
which means that I am automatically wrong about everything, and that
I'm inherently evil. I have no desire to debate either of those
assertions, on the grounds that I happen to agree with one of them. But
I will apologize for not being progressive In the meantime, I'll be
sitting here waiting for the thought police to arrive.

Welcome to Bozeman

2008-09-28T20:26:32Z

It took a certain amount of screwing around to make it all work, but I now have a new file server. Of course, there's a story behind it.

I've been thinking for a while that my next machine might just be a Mac. I've always liked the Mac's, but I've always had a problem with the OS. It hides things from you, insists that it does things its way without ever giving you any control over what happens behind the scenes. Since I started learning in command line environments this kind of control is important to me. That's what happens when you're a repressed type A personality.

I've also always had a problem with the cost of Mac hardware. Let's face it, cash is a precious commodity, and while I'm making more money now than I have in years I don't want to go locking myself into one very expensive platform when I can easily work with a much less expensive platform that suits my needs just fine, thank you very much.

All of the above is the practical stuff, of course. Mostly I just wanted to fuck around with OS X.

So, since I'm not willing to pony up the cost of a brand new iMac, or one of the even more hideously expensive Mac towers, and I'm too cheap to pony up the cost of the good version of the Mac Mini the only road open to me is to buy one used. Enter eBay, where I was able to secure an old PowerMac G4 tower for $130 including shipping.

So, there I am at work and I'm explaining this to one of the pin techs. The gentleman in question, his day job is at a print shop, which is traditionally a heavily Mac-laden environment. "You want an old Mac?" he says. "Fuck, why didn't you just say so?" The next day he comes in to work with two G4 Mac towers and a 17"Apple Studio monitor.

One of the towers had a hard drive, the other one didn't. I didn't happen to have a copy of OS X kicking around (how short-sighted of me) so I fired up the one with the hard drive and instantly discovered two things: First of all, the software guys at Apple are just as fond of hiding things now as they were in the Mac OS Classic days, and secondly, if I was going to use this system I was going to need to perform a Format & Restore.

So, I did some fooling around while I was looking for a used copy of OS X and learned a few things. I learned that OS X is very stable, thanks to the BSD Unix core. I also learned that some things are deliberately disabled, and that you sometimes need third party tools to enable them. For example, I use NFS instead of SMB to move files between my Linux boxes. SMB is the network transmission standard that Microsoft uses to allow Windows machines to talk to each other. It works, but it's slow, and sometimes certain software under Linux won't open files if you're trying to access them on a remote SMB share, which is the whole reason why I went to NFS in the first place. Now, since OS X is built on BSD Unix, the NFS functionality is there but it has been deliberately disabled, which left me wtih a choice: I could hunt through reams of documentation and try to discover how to enable the NFS server, or I could find a simple solution. The simple solution turned out to be a program called NFS Manager, which allowed me to set up the NFS server on the Mac. Problem solved.

I also spent some time fucking around with Linux on the PowerPC platform and learned a few things there too. Primarily, I learned that while I have now doubt that PPC Linux works on PPC machines using more generic hardware, about the only PPC Linux distribution that works even remotely painlessly on a Mac platform is Yellow Dog Linux. It works, but the graphics environments are horrible and detract from the whole experience.

Once I had a copy of OS X I did some thinking and decided it was time to replace my file server, and with two pristine PowerMac towers sitting here, both of them with dual processors no less, I decided that there was no time like the present. I shut down Old Nemesis and pulled the 320Gb hard drive (after backing everything up to a removable hard drive) and moved it over to one of the Mac towers, the one without a hard drive. Fired up the OS X install and waited. It got to the point where it was ready to partition the disk and then reported that it could only see about 130Gb, or a little less than half of what was there. A little bit of time in the Apple support knowledge base revealed that this is a known problem with the boot ROM and that the solution is to get a more recent computer. Crap.

Still and all, nothing for it but to go ahead. I went through the OS X install, downloaded and installed NFS Manager, set up the appropriate NFS and SMB shares, and made the appropriate changes to the drive mappings on my primary system. A couple of hours later I have a stable connection between my Mac and my main machine. Big cheers.

A dual processor G4 with 512Mb RAM is pretty sprightly under OS X 10.3.9, and the display looks pretty decent on my 19" widescreen Viewsonic LCD. Transferring files between the two machines is as fast as I expect it to be over NFS. I haven't tried a SMB transfer yet, and I doubt that I will today. I'll save that for the next time I have to fire up Windows.

The new server, incidently, has been named Bozeman. I haven't decided on a name for the other Mac yet, but I imagine I'll probably use that one as a dedicated writing machine, after I lay in a new keyboard and a couple of good mice since I despise Apple single button mice.

Incidently, the third Mac hasn't arrived yet even though the payment cleared about a week and a half ago. Must remember to e-mail the seller and find out what's going on. I really don't know what I'm going to do with that one when it comes in, but I imagine I'll bomb that bridge when I come to it. As for Old Nemesis, she's going to my buddy James' teenage son, just as soon as I get around to putting it back together ...

Another Lesson Learned

2008-09-15T05:53:35Z

It isn't that the installer doesn't like the Apple Studio Monitor, it's that Linux itself doesn't like the Apple Studio Monitor. Which is a pity, because it's a damn fine monitor.

Lesson Learned

2008-09-15T02:51:47Z

Right ... lesson learned ...

When installing Linux on an old Mac PowerPC tower, do not use the Apple Studio Display. Use anything but.

Thank you.

Sarah Palin

2008-09-04T03:09:30Z

I know that as a Canadian my opinions on American politics are less than meaningful, but sitting here and watching the Republican National Convention I have decided that I rather like Sarah Palin, and I heartily approve of the way she's come out of the gate swinging.

But that's just my personal opinion, and as a card carrying conservative I'm told that I'm inherently evil and rotten, so maybe you really shouldn't listen to me.

Spitting Image - The Chicken Song

2008-07-29T06:08:24Z

Because I can:

Its the time of year
Now that Spring is in the air
When those two wet gits with their girly curly hair
Make another song for moronic holidays
That nauseate-ate-ate
In a million different ways
From the shores of Spain
To the coast of Southern France
No matter where you hide
You just can't escape this dance

Hold a chicken in the air
Stick a deckchair up your nose
Buy a jumbo jet
And then bury all your clothes
Paint your left knee green
Then extract your wisdom teeth
Form a string quartet
And pretend your name is Keith

Skin yourself alive
Learn to speak Arapahoe
Climb inside a dog
And behead an eskimo
Eat a Renault Four with salami in your ears
Casserole your gran
Disembowel yourself with spears

The disco is vibrating
The sound is loud and grating
Its truly nauseating
Let's do the dance again

Hold a chicken in the air
Stick a deckchair up your nose
Yes you'll hear this song in the holiday discos
And there's no escape in the clubs or in the bars
You would hear this song if you holidayed in Mars

Skin yourself alive
Learn to speak Arapahoe
Climb inside a dog
And behead an eskimo
Now you've heard it once
Your brain will spring a leak
And though you hate this song
You'll be humming it for weeks

Hold a chicken in the air
Stick a deckchair up your nose
Buy a jumbo jet
And then bury all your clothes
La la la la la
La la la la la la la
La la la la la
La la la la la la laaaaaaa

Technorati Tags: lyrics

inssnemesis @ 2008-07-26T15:27:00

2008-07-26T21:27:55Z

Last night I learned that I have a conscience. I have since decided that this is a serious disadvantage in the modern world, and so I'm off to have it surgically removed.

Good day.

inssnemesis @ 2008-07-11T01:31:00

2008-07-11T07:30:26Z

The vast majority of the human race, myself included, can best be described as semi-sentient mouth-breathing cretins who lack the intellectual capacity to form rational thoughts and complete sentences. This is the natural order of things and it isn't going to change anytime soon.

Because we're such complete and total gits it is therefore inevitable that we're going to make stupid decisions that end up doing us more harm than good. This is the reason why we smoke cigarettes and drink too much booze. This is the natural order of things and it isn't going to change anytime soon.

A corollary of this cardinal rule of our universe is that the more people you have gathered in one space the greater the likelihood that something fundamentally stupid is going to happen. Governments and committees, being two of the few known forms of life that possess six or more legs and no brain, are perfect examples of this rule.

Remember that. It's important.

The government of Alberta has recently passed two very interesting laws. The first forbids all businesses that sell cigars and cigarettes from displaying their product openly. Their merchandise must now be hidden, kept away from prying eyes. The second and most recent pronouncement has actually gone so far as to outlaw happy hour. As of the beginning of August, all bars in the province will no longer be able to offer happy hour specials.

I find myself strangely ambivalent about these edicts. On the one hand I understand full well what the government is trying to do. A few years ago the Klein government spent millions of dollars on consultations and meetings with health care officials, providers, and the community to come up with a series of guidelines to make our health care system more sustainable and more efficient. The document created by this process, the Mazankowski Report, was a very long winded document which essentially said the following: The only way to keep our health care system alive is to find new and improved ways of pumping more and more money into it. Or, as an alternative, we need to encourage Albertan's to live healthier lives.

The first step in this continuing quest to make Albertans healthier was to increase the taxes on cigarettes, which had a net effect of increasing the retail price. This, I thought, was a good and logical move. If you want someone to stop doing something then the most effective way to make that happen is to hit them in their pocket book. The few die hards who remain will pay whatever price you ask of them, and at least this way we're making some more tax money off of them. Perfectly rational and logical.

Hiding cigarettes behind a barrier so that people can't see them is neither rational nor logical. It's insane. Think about it for a moment. What does the government actually hope to accomplish here? I mean, it's not like we don't already know that the corner store sells cigarettes. They have for years. This is hardly news. And it's not like we don't know that the cigarettes are still there, nor is there any significant barrier to acquiring them if you are of legal age and choose to do so. So, really, what's being accomplished here?

Absolutely nothing. It's a smokescreen, an illusion, a way for the government to say that they're sensitive to the concerns of the progressives who think that people need to be protected from every single thing that can harm them without actually doing anything. Coincidently, this is the one and only thing that is being accomplished by outlawing happy hour, and it's happening for exactly the same reason.

People make stupid decisions. It happens every day. Sometimes their stupid decisions are harmless, and sometimes there are consequences. Sometimes people are hurt, or even killed. And while I have nothing but sympathy for people who have lost loved ones to drunk drivers or cancer, I do have to ask if we have lost our collective minds? Have we gone so far down the progressive, politically correct path that we've lost touch with reality? Is protecting people from the things that can harm them really the answer? Do we really need to have that much of a nanny state?

Apparently we do, if these new laws are any indication. I don't agree, but then I wasn't asked, neither of which comes as any great surprise.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I am an antiquity. I have lost touch with the modern progressive world and thus maintain my belief that if someone does something dumb then they themselves should live with the consequences of their actions and that should be the end of it. I am a conservative, and thus I belong in a museum or an insane asylum, somewhere I can be locked up, observed, and kept from harming myself because obviously I can't be trusted.

A quick question or two before I go: Is Canada really going to cease to exist as a country if we allow people to see packages of cigarettes when they walk into the corner store? And, at the same time, is Canada going to cease to exist if we allow people to buy cheap drinks during certain hours of the day?

If your answer to either of these questions is yes, then you've already been converted to the Progressive camp and I wish you luck. If your answer is no, then I encourage you to keep your silence. It's only a matter of time before the progressive police find you.

Extermineron!

2008-07-06T18:48:26Z

Call me crazy, but it strikes me as more than a little amusing to hear a Dalek scream "Exterminate!" in German.

Dear Penis ...

2008-05-30T02:11:23Z

And now, an open letter to my penis ... with apologies to Rodney Carrington.

Dear Penis,
I don't think I like you anymore,
You used to watch me shave,
Now all you do is stare at the floor.
Oh dear Penis,
I don't like you anymore.

It used to be you and me,
A paper towel, and a dirty magazine,
That's all we needed to get by.
Now it seems things have changed,
I think that you're the one to blame.
Dear Penis,
I don't like you anymore.

Now he sings,

Dear Rodney,
I don't think I like you anymore,
'Cause when you get to drinkin'
You put me places I've never been before.
Dear Rodney,
I don't like u anymore.

Why can't we just get a grip,
On our man to hand relationship.
Come to terms with truly how we feel.
If we put our heads together,
We'd just stay home forever,
Dear Penis,
I think I like you after all.

Oh and Rodney,
While yer shavin',
Shave my balls

Sorry To Let The Wind Out Of Your Sails, But ...

2008-05-19T17:09:51Z

The vast majority of the human race simply lacks the capacity for cogent, logical thought. It's not because we're incapable of it, but because we've allowed ourselves to be lulled into a false sense of entitlement that effectively says we don't have to think for ourselves when there are plenty of media types, talking heads, experts, and informed activists who are willing to do our thinking for us.

I'm starting to sound like a broken record, here, but there are things that I'm going to say again anyway:

The concept of human-induced climate change is a hoax. There is no data to support it. Never has been, and with the current crop of scientists working for the IPCC I honestly don't think that there ever will be.

The planet is not in any real danger and does not need to be saved, not from the likes of us.

I'm tired of hearing about the climate crisis. There isn't one. The climate is changing. It's supposed to. Climate is a cyclical phenomenon, so every few hundred years or so there are going to be changes. This is completely natural.

Global Warming means that some areas that were capable of growing food will now either need help to do so, or will be unable to support that activity, while other areas previously unable to support farming and agriculture will suddenly be available. Net effect on agriculture: zero.

Global Warming is nothing to be feared. What we should be afraid of is the possibility that the climate could shift drastically in the other direction, thus heralding the return of the ice. I submit that a new ice age would be inherently more dangerous for the human race than a warming trend of a few degrees.

For all of my inherent cynicism, however, I am not entirely insensitive to environmental issues. I do, however, think that we're getting so wound up over details that we've stopped being able to see the forest for the trees.

Burning food for fuel is a bad idea. Always has been, always will be. The net energy to be gained from ethanol as a fuel source is less than the energy required to grow the necessary sources, and then to process and refine them. If we're going to rely on ethanol and other so-called bio-fuels then we need to come up with more efficient means of processing and refining them, as well as work on increasing the energy output of these sources.

Wind power does not work. While it is certainly clean, it does not, by any stretch of the imagination, provide enough power to satisfy the power requirements of a first world, industrialized nation. I think that it shows a certain amount of promise as a supplementary source of power, but not as a primary one.

The only truly clean and reliable source of power that can satisfy the requirements of a first-world industrialized nation is nuclear power. But that's never going to happen because David Suzuki and the Sierra Club and Al Gore will throw a shit fit if it does, and heaven forbid we should piss them off.

Nuclear power is clean and safe. Chernobyl was a rotten design, and the Soviets knew that when they built it. They built it anyway because it was cheap and because they didn't care. Three Mile Island, on the other hand, was an exercise in containment, and a successful one at that, which really just proves the point. As for waste, that's what underground concrete bunkers with electric fences and computerized security systems are for.

Taxing carbon is not the be all and the end all of reducing emissions, but it is a good first step. However, the only way that it's going to work is if the government also provides grants earmarked to the development of technologies to replace the use of carbon. The two go hand in hand. One won't work without t'other, and none of the political parties seem to realize this.

AS for the use of hydrogen fuel cell technology, I find myself somewhat ambivalent. On the one hand the use of hydrogen as a fuel source can potentially provide very efficient energy output, but on the other hand I can't get past the fact that hydrogen is inherently unstable and has a distressing tendency to explode.

But what do I know? I'm old and crotchety and cranky and hopelessly conservative.

Interesting Facts

2008-04-09T08:21:13Z

And now, a collection of interesting facts.

In Lebanon, men are legally allowed to have sex with animals, but the animals must be female. Having sexual relations with a male animal is punishable by death.

In Bahrain, a male doctor may legally examine a woman's genitals, but is prohibited from looking directly at them during the examination. He may only see their reflection in a mirror.

Muslims are banned from looking at the genitals of a corpse. This also applies to undertakers. The sex organs of the deceased must be covered with a brick or piece of wood at all times.

The penalty for masturbation in Indonesia is decapitation.

There are men in Guam whose full-time job is to travel the countryside and deflower young virgins, who pay them for the privilege of having sex for the first time. Reason: under Guam law, it is expressly forbidden for virgins to marry.

In Hong Kong, a betrayed wife is legally allowed to kill her adulterous husband, but may only do so with her bare hands. The husband's illicit lover, on the other hand, may be killed in any manner desired.

Topless saleswomen are legal in Liverpool, England - but only in tropical fish stores.

In Cali, Colombia, a woman may only have sex with her husband, and the first time this happens, her mother must be in the room to witness the act.

In Santa Cruz, Bolivia, it is illegal for a man to have sex with a woman and her daughter at the same time.

In Maryland, it is illegal to sell condoms from vending machines with one exception: Prophylactics may be dispensed from a vending machine only 'in places where alcoholic beverages are sold for consumption on the
premises.'

Banging your head against a wall uses 150 calories an hour.

Humans and dolphins are the only species that have sex for pleasure.

The ant can lift 50 times its own weight, can pull 30 times its own weight and always falls over on its right side when intoxicated.

Butterflies taste with their feet.

An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.

Starfish don't have brains.

Turtles can breathe through their butts.

And now you know.

Climate Change Likely To Effect Beer Production

2008-04-08T17:26:06Z

From an Associated Press Article:

WELLINGTON, New Zealand -- The price of beer is likely to rise in coming decades because climate change will hamper the production of a key grain needed for the brew -- especially in Australia, a scientist warned Tuesday.

Jim Salinger, a climate scientist at New Zealand's National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research, said climate change likely will cause a decline in the production of malting barley in parts of New Zealand and Australia. Malting barley is a key ingredient of beer.

"It will mean either there will be pubs without beer or the cost of beer will go up," Salinger told the Institute of Brewing and Distilling convention.

Similar effects could be expected worldwide, but Salinger spoke only of the effects on Australia and New Zealand. He said climate change could cause a drop in beer production within 30 years, especially in parts of Australia, as dry areas become drier and water shortages worsen.

Barley growing parts of Western Australia, South Australia, Victoria and New South Wales would likely be harder hit than growing areas in New Zealand's South Island.

"It will provide a lot of challenges for the brewing industry," even forcing breweries to look at new varieties of malt barley as a direct result of climate change, Salinger said.

New Zealand and Australian brewer Lion Nathan's corporate affairs director Liz Read said climate change already was forcing up the price of malted barley, sugar, aluminium and sugar.

Read said that in addition to climate change, barley growers are grappling with competition from other forms or land use, such as the dairy industry.

Climate Change is going to affect beer production? My GOD! The horror of it all! We have to DO SOMETHING, RIGHT FUCKING NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Wait a minute? Isn't this panic mentality the biggest part of the whole Climate Change/Human Induced Global Warning/Make Al Gore Rich scare? Isn't that what's driving us to do silly things like burn food to make fuel?

Just a thought, you know ...

The Foreigh Policy Contradiction

2008-03-23T07:49:25Z

Canadian Foriegn Policy in the 21st century is largely a contradiction. Our armed forces only go where they are invited, but it's a rare occasion that their destination country is the one that asks for them; the invitations generally come from either NATO or the United Nations, and I can't recall any instance in the last thirty plus years that we've said no.

I was on my way home from work yesterday when I saw a sign posted on the back of a bus bench at University Station. It was an activists posting calling for people to rally in support of ending the mission in Afghanistan right now, bringing the troops home, and withdrawing from NATO. Now, maybe I'm a little reactionary, and maybe I'm a little old-fashioned, but things like that have a general tendency to annoy me ever so slightly. Call it a pet peeve. Here's why.

More and more with each passing day I see the continued liberalization of western civilization, and while I think that some of the changes the more progressive elements of the human race want us to make are largely positive and can only be of benefit I also find that some of the stances taken by these same progressive elements to be totally lacking in any basis of reality or logic.

The progressives have a vision of a utopian society in which all racism, prejudice, persecution, and intolerance are things of the past. We're better than all that savagery, they say. Instead of fighting people, we should negotiate with them, find some common ground that both sides can agree upon and build from there. It's a nice idea, in principle. But nice ideas very rarely survive contact with reality.

The simple fact of the matter is that some adversaries simply cannot be negotiated with. They're hell bent on the total and complete annihiliation of anything that doesn't agree with the tenets of their chosen ideology. They honestly believe that they have not just a right but a duty to destroy anything that's different because God told them it was okay. They are religious fanatics and terrorists, the very epitome of zealots. You can try to negotiate with them, but it's a lot like talking to a brick wall because the one and only thing that will cause them to stop all the killing and the madness is nothing less than total conversion of body, heart, and soul to their chosen ideology.

To these people, negotiation is a sign of weakness. You negotiate because you're afraid of them, and that gives them a psychological upper hand. Their threat of violence, which they've demonstrated over the last few years that they're more than willing to carry out, suddenly becomes on hell of a bargaining chip. Indeed, it becomes the only bargaining chip they really need. You have a choice: conversion, or the sword.

The progressives on the left side of the political spectrum are more inclined to negotiate, to try to find some way to appease these people. The more conservative elements on the right side of the political spectrum are more inclined to fight, not because they crave bloodshed but because their freedom is precious to them, and they have a strong urge to defend it. Interestingly enough, the progressives have the same feelings and honestly believe that by negotiating they're doing preciesly what the conservatives want to do with arms and armor.

But some adversaries cannot be negotiated with. They are incapable of seeing any reason other than their own. They're the chosen of God, and we're the infidels, and if we won't convert then we need to die because God told them so. Such is the nature of expremist Islam as it is practiced in the 21st century.

As for me, I believe in freedom. I believe that I should be free to shag sheep and worship the great god Sha-Boom if I so desire, and no one should really bat an eye because it's none of their goddamn business. By the same token I have no problem with someone else's beliefs for the same reason: what they believe is what they believe and it's really none of my business. This, to my way of thinking, is the natural order of the world.

Our enemy in Afghanistan is islamic extremists. They are terrorists and they cannot be appeased or negotiated with. They are dedicated and powerful, and if they are not brought to heel then the middle east will endure a dark ages of persecution, corruption, and terror the likes of which hasn't been seen on this globe since World War II. That dark ages will spread across Europe and Northern Africa like wildfire, and it will not end until the enemy stands at our gates and issues the great ultimatum: Islam, or the sword. What will it be? It is an unpleasant reality, but in order to protect what we have we need to win in Afghanistan, and in order to win in Afghanistan there must be war, not because we want it but because we can't protect what we have without it. This is the reality we face.

I don't like having the troops overseas in harms way, but I understand the necessity of what they're doing and I thank them for it. I'm not an especially religious person, but I say regluar prayers for their safe and victorious return. When I meet a soldier I shake his hand and thank him, whether he's been overseas or not. The simple fact that he wears the uniform is sufficient for my respect and my gratitude.

People like Jack Layton and the anti-war activists don't understand this. They think that we can leave the fighting to other people, secure in the knowledge that we'll be protected because we're Canada and everyone loves Canada. We'll be protected bacause that's what NATO and the United Nations are for. They're living in a dream world.

They think that by restricting our military to providing humanitarian aid and assisting in reconstruction we buy ourselves a measure of peace, because the enemy will see that we're just trying to make things better than they were when we got there. They'll be impressed by our efforts and leave us alone. They don't understand the sheer weight of the enemy's resolve, which means they don't understand the enemy.

Make no mistake, we are at war. It may be undeclared, but it is a war nonetheless. If we don't win, then our way of life will cease to exist. It is preciesly that simple.

I Suppose It Had To Happen Sooner Or Later

2007-12-12T23:53:03Z

I honestly didn't believe it when I first saw it, but I've since been able to confirm that it's true. And now I don't know what to think.

Allow me to explain: the Canadian Government is tabling legislation to create a Canadian version of the American Digital Millennium Copyright Act, only the Canadian version is going to be a lot tougher. I've not had a chance to look up the particulars of the act as of yet, but there are rumors on the net that the new act will have little to no exceptions built in as to what does and does not constitute copyright infringement.

On the one hand, as a creative writer I believe very strongly in the idea of copyright and intellectual property. How can I not when I intend to make a living off of it? Sanely crafted copyright laws allow me to control how my work is distributed and give me legal recourse to go after people who are using it without my permission.

On the other hand, there has to be a certain amount of give in any set of copyright laws to accommodate fair use, by which I mean such things as the ability to borrow a friends copy or a copy from the library, the right to make a backup copy OF A WORK THAT I HAVE PURCHASED, and, in the case of music, the right to copy a track from a CD that I HAVE PURCHASED to my MP3 player or iPod. And from what I understand this new set of laws will seriously restrict what does and does not constitute fair use.

For example, MS Vista has a boat load of new security features installed. As a performance minded power user I would be inclined to disable as many of those as I could because they impede performance, get in the way, and they're annoying as all get out. The new laws would make that illegal. I would have to leave those pain-in-the-ass security measures in place in the name of protecting Microsoft's investment in Windows Vista.

Likewise if I bought a DVD player that had DRM features installed. If I disabled those features I would be in violation of the new laws.

I have no problem with DRM as long as the following conditions are met:

It should be completely invisible and unobtrusive.
It should in no way, shape, or form, punish or restrict the person who holds the legitimate license for the work in question.
As the legitimate license holder, I should be the one with the keys, meaning I should be able to turn the damn thing off at will.

Of course, none of this is going to happen because the publishers are the ones who want to be in control. This is especially true of music and movie studios, both of which have a significant congressional lobby in the states. Not so much up here, though, where consumer rights activists have more of a hold on parliament.

No matter how you slice it, though, the one and only thing that this new set of laws is going to do is put American companies in control of Canadian print, music, and movie industries. You won't be able to do anything unless you get a special dispensation from the publisher, who I guarantee will be based somewhere in the states and will tell you no just on general principal.

The good news is that I don't seriously think that this law will pass. The last two Members of Parliament who tried to propose such legislation quickly found themselves unemployed, and one can only hope that the same thing happens this time, too.

That having been said, we live in interesting times.

Has Stephane Dion gone insane?

2007-12-04T20:35:17Z

I do not understand Stephane Dion, and I don't imagine that I ever will.

Allow me to explain. I saw a news story the other day that stated specifically that the honorable leader of the federal Liberal Party is seriously considering toppling the government early in 2008. His reasoning: people are generally dissatisfied with the way the Tories are running the country and because of that they'll flock to the Liberal banner in the name of a fairer, more prosperous Canada.

First off, fairer for whom, and more prosperous for whom?

Secondly, is he nuts? I ask this in all seriousness.

Think about it for a moment. The Liberals are showing hideous approval numbers in every poll that's been conducted over the last several months, which means that if an election were to be called right now the odds are good that the Conservatives would win either a majority or another minority. Forcing an election in that kind of political climate is nothing short of suicide by referendum.

And another thing: the Liberal party itself is divided and fractured because there's no strong leadership presence. Dions own party doesn't like the way he's been managing the party and doesn't appear to trust him, and if his own party doesn't trust him how in the name of hell can he people of Canada trust him to run the country?

Besides which, I don't think he's thought this thing all the way through. The Conservatives are the ones who control which issues are confidence issues, and you can only topple the government on a confidence vote. What Dion has effectively said is that if there is a confidence issue in early 2008 he is going to use it to topple the government. This is roughly equivalent to the US government announcing to the general public that there is a covert operation under way to assassinate the leader of a foreign power. So, what makes him think that Harper is going to give him a chance to carry out his threat now that he's made it?

Canada does not trust the Liberal Party. They didn't trust them under Cretien but they were the only game in town. Now there is an alternative, and despite what you may think about the Conservative Party and it's policies the simple fact of the matter is that Canada is in better shape now than it was when the Liberals fell.

So, what does that tell you?

Only in Wisconson ...

2007-11-23T11:42:56Z

Saw an interesting story in the Edmonton Sun today.

A man in Wisconson was so pissed off when his wife refused to bring home beer that he exorcised his anger by shooting one of his family's two pet goats.

That's right. He gunned down a goat because his wife refused to bring home beer.

Question: wouldn't it have been easier to shag the damn thing instead?