Posts

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When the going gets tough, gutless cowards cut and run

Yes it’s true, Stephen Harper has now suspended Canadian democracy for two months, for no reason except that he found himself unable to shove unacceptable bills down the nation’s throat. What a good way of starting 2010, under a right-wing dictatorship from Alberta. Eventually we will all see this Conservative government for the miserable, catastrophic blight on this country’s history that it is, but by then it just might be too late and Calgary’s neo-Texans might well have sold our future down the river already.

Of course Harper (whom I will never call either Right nor Honorable as I eschew lies) is not the sole person to blame here. A special mention goes to the most incompetent Governor-General in the country’s history, Michaelle Jean, who’s probably too busy jet-setting around the world to realize that the GG’s job is supposed to consist of doing more than just turning to Harper and asking “oh I don’t know, what do YOU think I should do?”.

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A neat Googletrick

Ever been desperately curious to know how many seconds are left until the new year? Neither have I, but now that I’ve sewn the seed in your mind, the best way is to go to Google, leave the search text field blank, and click “I’m feeling lucky”. Voila: the seconds that are left until New Year’s day are shown in a countdown.

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I think this calls for a facepalm…

In a spectacular display of the sort of current-events knowledge and attention to detail that made her an ideal fit as White House Press Secretary under George W. Bush, Dana Perino went on some Fox News pundit show and affirmed that no terrorist attacks took place in the US while Bush was President. Which must mean that I and millions of others just imagined seeing the WTC buildings collapse into a heap of rubble.

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I can barely contain myself!

Today is World Toilet Day, a day of awareness so people can reflect on their less fortunate counterparts who do not have access to proper sanitation facilities. I think it was invented by people who like to make bad puns. The organizers hope that this will lead many developing countries to make sanitation infrastructure their top priority, but I and many others would settle for it being number two [/rimshot]. People who visit the web site are encouraged to twitter their thoughts on the event, but frankly I don’t think that’s such a good idea. So if you’re having a party tonight and there’s an awkward pause just connect your laptop to your TV and celebrate with a mass viewing of 2G1C.

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Play head games with yourself

If you like the idea of sending yourself a message in the future, broken.com’s email capsule is something you might want to check out. I’ll only know how well it works tomorrow, though. I’m surprised I didn’t know about this before, it’s a simple enough idea…

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How time flies

It’s been 20 years since the Berlin Wall fell today, and I haven’t been able to put that out of my mind all day. Not being German it’s not something I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about, but 20 years ago I was in front of the TV watching CNN and witnessing what turned out to be the end of the Cold War — the only geopolitical frame of reference I had ever known in my life. Basically, the Communist world, in a very short amount of time, realizing that it was done, that its page of history had turned already.

I find it quite striking personally because this really is the first history-changing event I experienced as an adult; so really all but 7 months of my adult life has taken place since then. Sometimes it’s hard to keep from thinking about how much of that was wasted, but there’s little purpose dwelling on that. You have to wonder, though — besides events like 9/11, what is it that the generation after mine will remember fondly in its middle age? It’s not to say that such a big terrorist attack was insignificant, but it just doesn’t strike me as the same sort of event.

Things I found out recently — the wall came down as a result of a mistake. An East German official, Günter Schabowski, screwed up when reading about a plan to lift restrictions on travel by East Germans, and said that the new “open border” policy applied right away, which it clearly wasn’t intended to. This was picked up by West German television stations that ran with the story an hour or two later, and the East Berliners, who watched mostly West German television, heard about it and rushed the border points. The guards didn’t have the faintest idea what was going on, but there were far too many people for them to control.

How did it look when that Schabowski interviewed for his next job… “well, in my last job I misread something on television and started the demise of the country I was working for.” I’ve not always been a perfect worker, but I can honestly say that in no previous job have I ever caused a country to cease to exist.

Things I found out today — the Berlin wall was only built in August 1961. Prior to that Berliners (and Germans generally) could go from East to West Germany and back. So when Kennedy gave his famous “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech the wall was practically still new.

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Too big to fail, indeed.

What if they built a mall, at the time the world’s largest, and (almost) no one came?

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Fact checking… Investors’ Business Daily has heard of it.

In a spectacular outbreak of foot-in-mouth disease the right-wing newspaper Investors’ Business Daily avers that “People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn’t have a chance in the U.K., where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless.” Without realizing of course that Hawking IS in fact British and that the NHS didn’t just leave him on a mountaintop to be pecked clean by the crows, something which any American health insurance company would no doubt have done decades ago. This, I’m afraid, is typical of the level of debate in the United States about health care reform.

Note: I’m quite sure that the original article will be removed as soon as it starts getting a lot of traffic, so if you can’t find the quote I highlighted have a look at the article as it originally appeared (local cache).

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Same result, no reward.

When Microsoft offered nearly fifty billion dollars last year to acquire Yahoo I thought this was the stupidest thing Redmond had ever done, and in hindsight not accepting the offer was indeed the stupidest thing Yahoo had ever done. In a new development this week Yahoo has announced that it was ditching search and concentrating on its ad service in a 10-year agreement with Microsoft. Effectively Microsoft ended up getting almost as much control over Yahoo as they would have by owning it but for a fraction of the cost, while sidestepping antitrust regulations that would have resulted from an acquisition. In the end it goes to show that Yahoo really has been managed by the dumbest people in the IT business for the past couple of years…

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I really need to take up cycling. In Sweden.

From the “things you don’t hear about every day” dept. — a 50 year-old Swedish man has reportedly complained that while he was out biking he was pulled of his bike by a lady with tattoos on her arms who then proceeded to have her way with him. He also reports that the same unspeakable crime was committed again when he rode in the exact same spot the next day. And the day after that. And the day after that. In fact he’s so upset that if these incidents don’t stop within 6 months he’ll be forced to consider maybe changing his route.