Ever heard the expression “beggars can’t be choosers?” Well – apparently the Chilean government hasn’t.

Chile asks Canada for “a field hospital, a pontoon bridge, generators and telecommunications equipment”

This is horrible horrible HORRIBLE etiquette. Imagine if your neighbours had their home burn down, and maybe lost a child or the family dog or what. It’s a terrible tragedy – to be sure – not many would deny this. I’m sure that most people would contribute help in some way to the bereaved family, perhaps financial, or perhaps in other ways. But even under these circumstances, it would doubtless be considered a faux-pas if the family then gave specialized lists to each of their neighbours (eg: vinyl siding, cellphones and computers for all family members, and a new central air conditioning system). For a nation’s ambassador to make such a directed and blunt demand, is quite honestly, so absurd as to rival the most narcotic/psychotic inspired works of art.

While I approved of the current Governor General’s (Michaelle Jean) actions regarding the hunting/ingestion of seals, my confidence in her at this time is at an all-time low due to her lobbying to get Canada to contribute the most earthquake aid money to Haiti (by the way: she’s of Haitian descent) of any country (at least initially – see my last post). She has a chance to somewhat redeem herself now by lobbying to tell the Chilean government to go fuck itself until it can learn some manners.

Yes yes, I’m an ogre for not feeling compassion for fellow human beings. I should think before I speak, I’m not being PC enough, whatever. What I think makes the earthquake situation in Haiti – correction – the international aid that’s flowing into the earthquake stricken Haiti that’s being championed as some sort of “chance to pull together” for all, regardless of political or other agendas. Since I’m Canadian, I’m most concerned with the promise that the federal government made to match all donations by Canadians. The fact that our current Governor General is of Haitian descent doesn’t really help placate my concerns.

However, over and above all of these other legitimate self-serving concerns, I’m quite distraught about the fact that all of this aid is not actually going to have much positive impact on the lives of these people in the long run, even if it is morally justifiable. The people of Haiti were (for the most part) living in poverty before the disaster, in a country devoid of transparent systems and decent infrastructure. After all of the aid arrives and the earthquake victims consume all of their bottled water and Canadian bacon, or whatever it is that we’re sending, how will their lives change? What’s to stop the donations from being diverted by corrupt officials for uses other than originally intended? I for one don’t support the donations; if those people weren’t worthy of donations before the earthquake, I don’t think they’re any more worthy after; the corruption index for Haiti is rather too high to be able to entrust the Haitian government with large quantities of supplies and money. It’s entirely possible, and even likely, that donations will perpetuate the state of poverty and misery that the majority of people in Haiti are already in, rather than alleviating the problems.

Microsoft warns of banned Xbox 360 consoles for sale on eBay

The comments section here is quite interesting; it illustrates that a large number of (presumed) Canadians are seemingly unable to comprehend the definition of the word copyright. I think that, in light of this apparent ignorance, as we approach a time in which essentially everyone is connected to high-speed internet at all times, a fundamental change in the way that we pay for software rights is bound to occur. We have already seen some examples, such as with the game Company of Heroes, for which an internet connection is required to play the game at all (even single player). More strikingly, in China (where software piracy is rampant [not to mention other piracy]), the popular game World of Warcraft is essentially free (I think it costs ten Yuan or something ridiculously trivial, and it might even include a time credit, in order to get users “hooked”), but users have to pre-pay for playtime.

In the future, I think it’s possible that almost all software will perform a license check before starting (and perhaps periodically while running), and users may be subject to a use based charge, although the software itself might be free. Companies might be able to combat the piracy of say, an office program (which, if pirated, could create documents independently), by having the software that a given client is using first grab a key from a server. Then, only documents that were created by genuine versions of the office program could be accessed by other genuine versions, or shared. Of course, this all would require many agreements between software firms in order to work, as certain office programs would have to be compatible with the files of others, but I’m confident that some sort of “ISO” type standards organisation could handle such a task. It certainly will be interesting to see how accurate this prediction turns out to be in, say, ten to fifteen years.

People angry about man underfeeding dogs

As easy as it is to pick holes in the beliefs of animal rights activists, I haven’t seemed to have tired of it yet. At any rate – I think one of the biggest problems with these sort of cases is that it’s hard to know where to draw the line. What animals are included in this ban? Why do animal rights activists not push harder for the rights of cows or sheep (well, I guess the super hardcore ones (Vegans) do, but they’re completely batshit insane)? Would people be just as outraged over cows being improperly slaughtered? Obviously, “love for animals” is reserved only for cats, dogs, and perhaps seals and whales depending on the sort of animal rights quack who you happen to talk to.

Animals are animals – until it’s illegal to eat a steak or go duck hunting, it should be legal to do whatever you want to a dog or cat (assuming it’s yours). Enough of this pointless, selective, and often hypocritical animal rights nonsense already! I’ve been meaning to get a picture of myself at a dog restaurant eating meat that is visibly from a dog – I guess I’ll have to get going on that – will post pictures!

For those who would argue that many serial killers and such get their start by torturing animals – I have a counterargument: why not set them up in slaughterhouses or allot them a monthly supply of baby kittens or puppies with which to torture? Maybe all this prohibition on “violence” against animals in our society is what drove these guys to become what they became. I mean, maybe all they really needed was some encouragement, along the lines of “yes – those are animals, we can do what we like with them, because they’re not human.” When we start to treat animals the same as humans, then we blur the bounds of morality, and suddenly, a boy who is reprimanded for torturing a kitten thinks “well – I guess torturing a kitten is the same or worse than torturing a baby.” Maybe, just maybe, animal rights activism is one of the root causes of much of the sadistic homicide that is prevalent in our society.

Air Canada passengers can now carry on pets

I’m not sure about the exact details, but it seems like this applies to all flights. I can only hope that this doesn’t apply to international flights. While I’m aware that there are enough “it’s OK if my dog licks my face” pet owning hippie-vegan PETA membership holding animal rights activists in Canada to perhaps economically justify this move, the day a majority of the world thinks this way is the day that the world is ravaged by large herds of newly liberated livestock. It’s probably likely (and it’s definitely fitting) that these smug self righteous airheads probably supported the ban on indoor smoking in Canada while lobbying for the right to inconvenience and disturb others by bringing their animals into the passenger cabin. I wonder how things would go over if I were to light up a smoke to dampen the stench of their pets..

Now, in addition to the already pretty shoddy service that Air Canada provides, passengers can look forward to the possibility of smelling cat shit or listening to a dog yap throughout the flight. Rather than take the chance of this happening to me, I think I’ll just not fly Air Canada until they change this ridiculous policy – I’m ashamed that such an airline is given the right to use my country’s name.

Floridian Teenage Cat Killer may get 158 years in state prison

What the hell is wrong with the USA? No seriously.

I mean, I understand that this guy probably has some issues, and killing cats is bad or whatever, but 158 years for a bunch of cats? Seriously?

I mean, a cat is worth something like $500 on average I guess, if that. This kid steals and destroys something like $10,000 of cat. To my estimates (at $500 per cat), that means he’s eligible for one year in prison for every $60.13 of damage that he caused.

Since when did animal lives become worth so much, and more importantly, since when did human lives become worth so little?

For those who are unfamiliar with Canadian news, or who live with your heads buried in the sand, Robert Dziekanski was a Polish man immigrating to Canada to be with his mother. He’d apparently never flown before, and was at least somewhat frightened by the prospect of human flight – at least of the personal kind. I could drone on about the incident, but to get down to brass tacks, it can be summed up as: man is afraid of flight and stressed out, doesn’t speak English, lost in airport for a long period of time, nobody tries to help him find a translator, he gets agitated and starts throwing things around (as may be the Polish custom – I have no idea about the culture of ex Soviet bloc rubbish countries), security calls the RCMP, the RCMP (4 pretty buff men) come in and taser him, causing five times, including while he is on the ground, kneel on his head, and stand around while he dies. This, by the way, was video recorded, and the video is available on the wikipedia page (I believe – use Google).

OK – so we’ve established that this man was an ignoramus from the hinterlands, but did he deserve to die? Probably not. First off, while not necessarily related, I should point out that one of the officers has since been charged in connection with a fatal hit n’ run incident. Additionally, from watching the video, it’s incredibly obvious that the RCMP officers involved used excessive force.

The RCMP as an organisation, for its part, has been handling the situation far from well, and in my opinion, deserves many a harsh word. They have repeatedly made outrageous claims regarding the incident, such as the suggestion that Dziekanski was showing an “aggressive stance” by raising his hands (hands up – again, watch the video), and now, they give us this:

Psychologist defends claim Mounties panicked in airport Taser incident

Seriously? God keep our land glorious and free indeed.

OK – I recently re-watched the “9/11 truth” episode of South Park, and it got me thinking about the 9/11 conspiracy theories that I’ve seen over the years. Some of them appear quite convincing, and I think that for a time, it was even popular for high school students (perhaps even including myself) to do up reports on the possible theories and spell America with three ‘K’s instead of a ‘C’.. at least, my reality removed teachers gave me ‘A’s for such reports.

Anyhow, since “911truth.org” was featured in the episode of South Park, I checked out their site and quickly stumbled upon this article which was apparently censored by “them”.

Now, call me elitist or overly sceptical, but I just can’t take anything as poorly written as this article seriously. I haven’t been in school for a while, but – at least to me – these seem like really elementary mistakes that a journalist certainly would not make. The insure / ensure one particularly.

Here’s a few mistakes that I noticed:

All [of] these would require public debate and [the] participation of Congress.

Canada’s influential Department of National Defence; its new Chief of Defence Staff, General Rick Hillier; and Defense Minister Gordon O’Connor are on board as well.

1 US policy seeks to insure America gets unlimited access to Canada water as well.

… when I got to that last one, I stopped reading. Perhaps there’s a good reason that these “articles” aren’t proof read: I’m guessing that the target audience is largely uneducated and ignorant and wont notice anyway, and anyone who would notice such mistakes is obviously not stupid enough to believe this dribble anyhow.The occaisional slip up I can take, gradeschool level homonym confusion – no, sorry, “your stupid”.

I’m a pretty conservative thinking person – but this guy needs the boot. The only problem is that I’m not sure what other parties are worthy of taking over. I’d never vote for the NDP or the BQ (or the Greens, LOL), so I guess that leaves the Liberals. The problem, however, is that the Liberals would work with the NDP / BQ, and that’s probably even worse. I guess in an ideal situation, the Conservatives would work with the Liberals, and the NDP and BQ would be largely ignored (as the should be).

Nice Harper video right here:

I was reading this article, and one of the comments by a reader really leapt off the page.

Charlotte the Hambeast wrote:

Walt, I am one of those women who would never come to a guy’s house to cook dinner with him as a first date….maybe a third or fourth date, but I will not spend any time alone in a guy’s home with him until I know him a little bit. If there is another couple there for the dinner, that’s different, or the guy’s mom or kid, but no WAY would I put myself in such a potentially dangerous situation unless I already know the guy fairly well. This doesn’t mean I “want a free dinner.” Personally I am not a fan of eating out. I’d prefer something that doesn’t involve expense for the guy, or danger for myself. We could go skiing in the winter (unless that’s too dangerous for HIM), go horseback riding with friends, go to the rodeo, the fair, a crafts market, a flea market or go garage saling together just as a way to do something inexpensive that provides for conversation…..

If a man rejected me because I vetoed the idea of dinner alone in his apartment as a first date, he isn’t worth my time because he cannot see past the end of his nose and isn’t smart enough to grasp the real reason a woman would not want to do this. It has nothing to do with mooching a free meal. I make more than enough money to feed myself, as do the lion’s share of women, and we have no interest in mooching off a guy. If that’s his idea of “the only reason she won’t come to my home alone on the first date” then he isn’t very bright, is he?

Seriously lady? You don’t sound like someone I’d want to penetrate with my worst enemy’s member.

I think the answer is quite simple. They’re not afraid of being raped, they’re afraid of nobody wanting to rape them. Mid to late 30s, starting to get a bit fat, still single – best to act the part of the attractive young girl who is actually in danger of being raped.. best for the ego, anyway. It’s always the ancient whales who probably have to pay young Sri Lankan boys to mount them that are so morbidly “afraid” of rape, too. In fact, I don’t think I’ve met a single fun loving young attractive girl who has ever expressed fear of rape. Do the world a favour, the next time you see a woman who is prime past her time express fear about the sanctity of her virtue, please waste no time in vigorously dispelling such fears with utmost lack of subtlety.