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Charlie Angus for Prime Minister
Posted July 6, 2010 at 03:20 EDT under news.
As I've said before, I come from a long line of social democrats. This means that I often find myself aligned with many of the approaches to governance taken by moderate political parties like the NDP.
For example, take this nuanced and measured response to bill C-32, the disastrous anti-copyright bill that the Fake Conservative Party of Canada is hanging its political hat on.
This is an example of a case where the slippery and absurd notion of left
and right
make no sense.
Angus is taking a reasoned and informed approach to the problem of how Canada aligns itself with well-established international law regarding intellectual property in order to critique flawed thinking.
Our Lack of Culture Minister, on the other hand, appears to be a simple ideologue who equates anything except resounding applause for this terrible bill as extremism.
I'm sure the irony that The Fake Conservative Party of Canada itself seems to be taking the most extreme position on Canadian copyright reform is lost on him.
This is to be expected, I suppose; delicious, delicious irony is traditionally the tool of artists, and The Fake Conservative Party of Canada seems to be hell-bent on crushing the remaining bits of Canadian Culture under some ridiculous and extreme digital lock measures.
Seriously, how bad does this shitty government have to get before we chase their asses out of parliament?![[Jump to top]](/images/seal.gif "Jump to top of page")
Sharron Angle is a douchebag
Posted July 2, 2010 at 11:18 EDT under news.
Sharron Angle is a douchebag.
If my language offends you, rest assured that was the entire point. I find the mere existence of Ms. Angle offensive, so you can call this one even if it makes you feel better.
Shout out to my homies in Edwinase
Posted June 22, 2010 at 11:17 EDT under news.
Ghana is leading Group D! Go Black Stars!
Ahem, well. I'm not much of a footie fan, and as far as I can tell, the more popular and international a sport is the more corrupt it becomes. Still, good on Ghana for doing so well in the opening rounds.
The next match is against Germany, who probably have more to lose and seem to be struggling this World Cup (based on what little I know about football) so I predict if Ghana stays loose and plays well in their own end they should either fight to a draw or hand Germany their second loss.
Here is a picture of Mohammed
Posted May 20, 2010 at 11:50 EDT under news.
Apropos of this, here is my contribution:
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What?
Consider this an incendiary political statement intended to offend some delicate sensibilities
Posted May 18, 2010 at 12:19 EDT under news.
Finding Ada
Posted March 14, 2010 at 10:42 EDT under news.
Don't forget about Ada Lovelace Day 2010, which is a world-wide internet event happening on March 24.
Go over to Finding Ada and pledge to write, make a video, paint a picture, draw a comic or whatever you usually do on on your blog, and talk about women and technology.
This has been a public service announcement.
Carriers and broadcasters: fuck the both of you
Posted November 15, 2009 at 10:33 EST under news.
I've been working up to a rant on the state of television, spectrum management and Canadian broadcasting, but for now I give you this:
Via BoingBoing.
Fuck Polanski
Posted October 2, 2009 at 06:59 EDT under news.
What Bitch Ph.D. said.
Polanski's movies are mostly crap faux-French New Wave, anyway.
Yes, I just dissed Polanski. Get over it.
Demand an official apology from the UK government over the shameful treatment of Alan Turing, war hero
Posted August 17, 2009 at 02:19 EDT under news.
We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to apologize for the prosecution of Alan Turing that led to his untimely death.
UK citizens! Consider signing this petition to ask your government to formally apologize for ruining Alan Turing's life, and contributing to his early death.
Alan Turing is recognized as a true hero of World War II. It is uncertain that the Allied counter-intelligence efforts would have had nearly the same success in cracking Axis military codes (and hiding this fact for so long) without his involvement. Turing was a critical member of the WWII Bletchley Park team that was instrumental in breaking these codes and thereby facilitating an early end to the war.
Let's not forget his work in math and computing that made the post-digital world we live in possible in my lifetime. In a time where the most we can hope for is to stand on the shoulders of giants, Turing was a giant among his own peers and recognized as a true genius of math in his own time.
It is absolutely shameful and inexcusable how Turing was treated by his own government after the war, and all because of parochial, wrong-headed notions (and outdated laws) about his homosexuality. This treatment is widely considered the source of his suicide at the age of 41.
Via BoingBoing and the Manchester Evening News.
Steven Metalitz can suck on my big hairy first sale doctrine
Posted July 30, 2009 at 05:40 EDT under news.
We reject the view that copyright owners and their licensees are required to provide consumers with perpetual access to creative works.
Maybe not required but up to now, yeah, that's pretty much how it has worked. I have novels with Garfield
bookplates in them I've had since I was a child. If I wanted to I could keep that book forever, or sell it, or even give it away. Just because you think you can rent a fucking book to me over and over now doesn't mean this is how it has always been. It just means I won't rent a book from you or the losers you represent, you moron.
So, how about if I reject
your offer
of a choice
of more media goods and services through happy corporate rights-holding. Thanks, but I choose to consume media in ways that don't suck.
Via Ars Technica, the professor and all the rest.
SCIENCE: UR DOIN IT WRONG
Posted July 27, 2009 at 11:59 EDT under news.
Please don't take anything about this article seriously.
Plainly put, this research
(or the Times synopsis of the research) is some of the weakest anti-science horseshit I've read this year.
He used data gathered in America, in which 1,244 women and 997 men were followed through four decades of life. Their attractiveness was assessed from photographs taken during the study, which also collected data on the number of children they had.
Are you fucking kidding me? From a single population study they conclude that women are getting more attractive, and that attractive women make more children? And their basis for attractiveness is how a select part of the same population through time qualitatively feels about photographs. Seriously?
Even if there was some arbitrary standard of beauty
for this culture in this time, it certainly would never translate cross-culturally, or be even reasonably unchanged through time. Reducing sexual selection in evolution down to a reified notion of beauty is a serious category error that, quite simply, negates any value that this sociological survey might actually have.
After millions of years of evolution and thousands of years of complex human cultural expression you'd think that we would all be perfectly gorgeous gods by now. Looking around at all the homely people I see every day, clearly this is not the case.
And I'm not even going to talk about using photos as the basis for their tests. As if photos actually represent real life
in any reasonable way, never affecting the subject in subtle ways.
Bogus studies like this are precisely why many people both mistrust and fail to understand science. This is cargo-cult science that illustrates exactly how not to assert that the so-called soft sciences are worthy of investigation. They are, but not like this. Save this sort of tripe for Pinker's next circle-jerk, please.
I'm not going to tell you where I heard about this, because the site that reprinted it should be fucking ashamed of themselves. (Hint: the site rhymes with Splash Plot.
)
Michael Geist for Prime Minister
Posted July 27, 2009 at 10:02 EDT under news.
Canadians! Speak out on copyright.
I have no place on this site for these socio-political banners anymore.
Political post quota
Posted June 4, 2009 at 11:47 EDT under news.
Apparently, this site is not blocked by Chinese authorities. So, I thought I'd take the opportunity to share the following video:
There you have it. This is actually dumb, because I'm sure China is smart enough to block YouTube. Pointless political gestures are like that, so the Chinese government and I have something in common.
That guy in front of the tank? I understand that few people know his name, and they aren't sharing.
DIY
Posted May 6, 2009 at 07:12 EDT under news.
I haven't really talked about this at all, but insofar as this is a local
blog, it might interest some folks to know that there is a Make:KW meeting scheduled for tomorrow. Make:KW is a local incarnation of the maker movement made famous by Make: Magazine that intends to provide a local face to the growing maker, hacker and crafter movement. I think of it as a geekier and less-focused version of those local Stitch 'n' Bitch sessions those crazy knitters organize.
Seeing as I've always been a bit of a hacker, this interests me more than a little. I tend to not be a joiner
and often skip these sorts of scenes but, quite frankly, KW is no Toronto and there really isn't a lot going on around here otherwise. Unless you want to go out and get trashed, there isn't much to do as an adult in this town. The whole maker/crafter movement, along with hackerspaces (see below) can be a really clever way to make your own damn fun.
This meeting is going to focus on what people want from a Hackerspace, which is slightly related to the maker zeitgeist. Think of a hackerspace as a creative melange of a private club for geeks, a community centre for post-everything hipsters and a never-ending art gallery opening. Other locales have had quite a lot of success with this cross-pollination of tech, craft and arts. I suppose NYC Resistor is the most well-known example.
Anyway, there you have it. If you have ideas for a place like this in KW, you should come to the meeting. If you like the idea of a hackerspace, but don't know what it all means, then you should come to the meeting. If you like the idea of a hackerspace, but are concerned it will turn into just another boring boys' club, you should come to this meeting.
If you don't, that's fine. Just don't bitch to me that there ain't anything cool or interesting to do on Friday nights. Because I already know that.
We blame the pigs and the birds, but never ourselves
Posted April 28, 2009 at 04:29 EDT under news.
... one death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic. It's confusing the statistic for the tragedy that exaggerates fear.
Health and science researchers have been warning about the next influenza pandemic since the 70s. Epidemiology suggests that we are long overdue for new general mutation of influenza for which most of us have no antibodies. For decades the virus has been mixing it up in a variety of pig, avian and human hosts, exchanging genes with other virii like sweaty Magic: The Gathering gamers swap cards. There was always the chance that this genetic Boggle could come up a perfect score.
Given that influenza (and venereal disease) probably killed more people in both world wars than those who died because of direct or indirect military action, we should take what these folks say seriously.
However, we should also keep things in perspective. Not only because humans are terrible at estimating risk (and, therefore, may not make the right assumptions or actions when confronted with a potential pandemic) but because we are pretty much always in the middle of a pandemic.
One of the single greatest pressures on any population (in genetic terms) are the parasites that target the individuals of that population. We are always under attack by a constantly evolving rogues' gallery of virii, bacteria, parasites and miscellaneous and sundry suckers, biters, pokers and killers.
As Sterling points out, we are in the middle of one of the largest pandemics that has ever burned through the human population: AIDS. Whatever the full life-cycle is of the agent that causes AIDS, it is clear that this is a modern, emergent disease we have had almost no chance to evolve a response to. And it is literally killing its way through populations as I write this.
And it hardly makes the news. Because it is no longer news.
So, yes. We should be concerned, and we should be informed, but we should also be aware of our responses to that information.
Great. Now I'm envious of the problem-solving abilities of an 8-year old.
Posted January 26, 2009 at 01:23 EST under news. Updated January 26, 2009 at 01:33 EST.
To me, this story about a kid who uses the fundamental nature of avian eyesight to solve a problem by improving on an existing solution is the exact sort of wild-eyed hacking that we need to encourage.
Think about it: even the most clever among us tend to reduce the problem space when thinking about solutions, and this sometimes has the effect of reducing the solution space, too. In this case, we are all familiar with those black silhouettes of birds that we can tape to windows to let real birds know that they might be about to smash their little skulls against the glass, which they might not perceive as a danger until the last moment. So, I suspect many of us would discount similar sorts of solutions because they have already been tried.
Instead, we might want to ask ourselves the question, what is it about the current solution that works and what about it does not? Sometimes this can lead to one of those so simple, why didn't I think of that?
moments.
Charlie Sobcov came at the problem from the other end, allowing him to see the problem from a new perspective. So with only a small change to an existing solution he was able to solve the problem in an essentially new way. He pretty much redefined the problem, which allowed him to redefine the solution.
In this case, he suggested that you could make the silhouette out of material that was transparent to mammalian eyes, but obvious to birds.
Brilliant. Why didn't I think of that?
This is also a big win because now we have a new solution with new properties. For example, this allowed him to suggest different materials and applications, so now we have a cheap vinyl sticker than anyone can apply to their window panes, and can even be automatically inserted into the manufacturing process for industrial glazing.
I hope his parents continue to encourage his endeavours, and that they patent this new process or application
so they can reap some of the benefits. He deserves it.
Via Make:
Edit: Ok, well, this is already a commercial product. Still, I'd rather we encourage basic research over crawling the internet for prior art, especially at the grade-school science fair level.
What a surprise!
Posted January 22, 2009 at 05:48 EST under news.
The much-criticized US government NSA wire-tapping program was used to spy on non-terrorist
citizens, and may have targeted journalists?
A massive secret program with little oversight was misused by a government agency in order to collect information about their own citizens, especially those who might be in a position to criticize them?
My owl is shocked. Shocked, I say! Who could have imagined such a thing?
Re: my scheduled political rant
Posted December 3, 2008 at 07:30 EST under news.
As per M. Nutshell, Ph.D., the rant I was working up to regarding current events in Canadian politics has been suspended. Instead, like the good doctor, I give you Yarn Harlot. Absolutely spot-on.
Seriously, the way some folks are going on about this, you'd think they weren't familiar with the basic machinery of their own governments. It's enough to give one an aneurism.
Burst blood vessels, averted.
Oh, and by the way, Governor General Michaëlle Jean is totally hot. I'm just not afraid to admit it.
What is it to you?
Posted November 11, 2008 at 02:26 EST under news.
I've never seen Olbermann so choked up. I love that his primary role is as a sports pundit, but that he regularly delivers these searing socio-political comments.
(Text transcript for those of you who are bandwidth-poor.)
Canada did the right thing. The only thing. A democracy must extend all rights and privileges equally to all citizens, regardless of their minority or majority standing in the republic. Failure to protect one of us is a failure to protect all of us.
Via Bitch Ph.D.
WARNING: blind observance to a narrow and incomplete moral code developed primarily during a period of ancient agrarian vs. pastoralist conflict may lead to unclear thinking.
Posted October 7, 2008 at 05:13 EDT under news.
Is it just me, or does this guy look a little like Quasimodo in this picture? One might say he is quasimodo Quasimodo.
A pun in Latin, FTW!
The bells! The bells! The homersexuals are coming!
Via.
Can we stop talking about gender differences in places where it doesn't matter?
Posted July 25, 2008 at 02:42 EDT under news.
From the well-duh dept.
Yeah, so no differences between men and women when it comes to the ability to do math, achieve high math scores or earn degrees in mathematics. It turns out that (surprise!) if you teach math in a manner fair to everyone, everyone manages to do just fine.
Like anyone who reads this ever thought different. Apparently, you have to be the President of Harvard, or a Professor of Psychology with a hard-on for genetic determinism to fall for this particular gender trap.
Perhaps white male academics are naturally disadvantaged when it comes to the ability to understand implicit institutional violence?
See, I'm not being sexist. I'm pointing out natural, obvious differences inherent to a specific gender, so we can help those who are, by dint of their genetics, unable to understand certain advanced subjects. We can offer remedial courses, and stream those men into fields more suited to their abilities.
Via.
The Yellow Scare
Posted July 20, 2008 at 12:15 EDT under news.
I ran across this hysterical screed about China's close involvement with Africa, and just had to share.
The main thrust of the article seems to be that China is somehow skirting around established notions of development to make a sort of end-run around the West's involvement in African politics and economies.
This is patently absurd.
Of course, I can't let something like this pass without comment, so I tried to give them my 1000 characters of criticism, but the stupid comment system barely works and then the lame CAPTCHA failed. So I thought I'd publish what I would have said. This also allows me to expand a little on what appears to be a transparent and bald-faced attempt at race-baiting for the purposes of bolstering some anti-Chinese politicking. Perfectly timed for the run-up to the Olympics, too.
Bill C-61 is stupid. Say no to copyright zealotry.
Posted June 13, 2008 at 10:39 EDT under news.
Canadians! Our lame-duck government is coasting over the edge again, and has decided to betray Canadian interests to the highest bidder. Again.
This time, it's DMCA-style copyright reform
that is a giant step forward into a time where culture is illegal, and everything you do with information will make you a criminal. If bill C-61 passes as-is, there is literally nothing a private individual can do with media that will be exempt from government oversight. This is clearly the stupidest thing this government has done in months.
Contact your Member of Parliament and tell them that nobody wants laws like this except for transnational media conglomerates. Which should be a pretty obvious warning sign right there, if you ask me.
Bill C-61 does not reflect the interests of Canadian citizens, Canadian artists or Canadian media companies. It is a sham of a bill that only continues to illustrate the long tradition of pork-barrelling in this country. It's cute that our Industry Minister and this government think they know anything about this difficult subject, but taking their advice from copyright-reform zealots is not the right way to do draft law.
Tell the government, unconditionally, no
to bill C-61.
Bell Canada Video Store closing its doors for good
Posted May 23, 2008 at 08:35 EDT under news.
I just want to make sure I have the scoop on the end of the new on-demand video rental service announced by Bell Canada before anyone else does.
Windows only? DRM? On a network that does traffic-shaping to foil its competitors that are forced to use the same network? With such an obvious recipe for success, it's hard to know how this vital service failed.
Bell Canada announces that it has bowed out of the highly competitive on-demand video rental service after months of weak sales and low demand.
A Bell Canada spokesperson outlines why the service never really took off:
Due to pressure from free software zealots, activist judges, hackers and pirates, Bell Canada has decided to make the difficult decision of shutting down the Bell Video Store. Our remaining customer will have all their services suspended and all their digital media rights have been revoked. We have also filed suit against this customer to recoup our estimated losses of $6.3 Gazillion dollars. Pretty Canadian dollars, not those nasty US dollars.
What a scoop!
Photography is not a crime. But skateboarding is.
Posted March 5, 2008 at 10:27 EST under news.
We are winning the war on the unexpected!
The London Metropolitan Police force wants you to identify and report suspicious behaviour you see. Specifically, they are interested in individuals behaving oddly
or suspicious
while:
- taking photos
- talking on a mobile
- living in a house
Let's go over this one more time, shall we? Just so we are all clear:
They want you to identify and report odd or suspicious behaviour, carried out by strangers, in London.
I'm wondering, has The Met ever actually, you know, been to London? I have, and I can tell you that this list of theirs falls a little bit into the too general
pile, if you know what I mean.
The fact is that there is value in identifying hinky
behaviour. The problem is that few of us are any damn good at it, and it is a hard skill to learn. You either got it, or you don't. Pardon me, but I just don't trust that J. Random St. Stiffbottom, II from Milton Keynes, is the right person to be asking to provide you with tips on persons behaving oddly.
Via Boing Boing.
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