Monday 30 November 2009

Pathological self-abnegation

Brilliant!
It isn’t enough to deny the Holocaust. It isn’t enough to deny the Jews a right to a state of their own. If you really want to see “justice” for Palestinians, you have to deny the Jews’ legitimacy  as…Jews. 
This has always bothered me - like the time last winter when Jewish Mothers for Peace held a vigil at City Hall with the Palestinians Against the Intifada.

Wednesday 18 November 2009

Wildrose Alliance - Official Opposition?


Poll Diva Janet BROWN has calculated Alberta seat projections if an election was held today, WRA would win 20 seats making them the official opposition! 

Well, I think that is a bit premature at this point, but you never know what a little hard work will accomplish.

Lets get at it.

Thursday 12 November 2009

Color Guard has no colour


"A tempest in a teapot dome" perhaps, this is a post I saw at Michelle Malkin's blog referring to the controversy over the U.S Naval Academy's Color Guard presence at the World Series.  The select group of soldiers was "reconstituted" to include a women and "non-white" soldier to represent the "diversity" of the Army.

Unfortunately the Color Guard has been through long tradition and history been selected on merit - and the fact that all are white males presumes that others of race and gender failed to meet the strict criteria.    Perhaps this year was a fluke, perhaps not. Perhaps it indicated discrimination, I don't know.  But for sure it stinks that the composition was altered at the last minute, obviously to be "Politically Correct".  It was made worse by a gag order given to the members of the Color Guard by base commanders regarding any discussion of the issue.

Wednesday 11 November 2009

Legislative Onslaught

On of my growing problems with the Stelmach government has been how "prolific" it has been in introducing reams of legislation since it achieved a landslide victory on March 13, 2007.  It is almost as if it decided to "open the flood-gates" and admit everyone to the bonanza - civil servants included.   Or perhaps they were just trying to prove they were worth it!

Anyways, here is a visual idea of how extensive that legislation has become.


Handy tools when printing website articles, etc

I got this from daily blog at www.makeuseof.com - it is a handy link that reformats a busy web-page to eliminate some if the annoying formatting that often prevents a nice "clean" printed look.  It is called "Readability" and they recommend that you just place it as a "link" in the toolbar menu - and whenever you want to "print" a web article, just click on the link and "Readibility" will reformat the text on that page.  You don't have to use it in every case - but it made alot of pages look better when printed to PDF for me.  Here is an example of "before" (top) and "after" (bottom).  Sorry for the gory topic.


Canada not last in Cell Phone Charges

I''m glad that someone (even if  he is slandered for being self-serving)  has rebutted that OECD Report that perpetually places us last in the world for cell phones value.    Not everything seems quite right, but alot of his point ring true.

And here was my comment:

Well I disagree with Rete2009. Mr. Engelhart's explanation makes alot  of sense to me.  I may quibble with his self-congratulations - but he has made  a number of good points about the shortcomings of that OECD Report - which has for years put us last. I as well have traveled to Europe and Australia and found Europe more complex and costly.  Australia plans/costs per minutes seem to be cheaper - mostly I think as they use a GSM system and I assume that they gain some scale advantages in subscriber equipment and consumer handsets.  Now that everyone is fully converted here I hope we shall see some lower prices. I note that FIDO (the Rogers entry brand) has begun to offer 2000 minutes/mth for $45 - that works out to 2+c/min!   That seems pretty attractive for high usage I think.  I want to thank Ken Engelhart for clearing the air - and I think we should give 'em a break.  Cheers, crj

Monday 9 November 2009

Delusional Optimism?


Barbara Ehrenreich has has written a book.

Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America

 

Somehow this women has been greeted as a "intellectual giant" for suggesting - loudly -  that America's "Big Business" is suffering from Delusional Optimism. (Which is a little odd as she seems to be taking on the same guise.)

Here are some of the points I got from the CBC/Ehrenreich interview (Anna-Maria herself not showing her most critical thinking and ability to challenge):
  • Artificial positivity has become ubiquitous in America.
  • Ehrenreich claims it caused the US Financial market meltdown b/c no one wanted to hear "negative/critical" opinions at the major banks when they strayed too far into dubious financial lending. (actually sounds true)
  • She got this idea when she got a cancer diagnosis in 2000/1 and was told she had to take on a positive attitude.  Someone gave her her crayons to write down some "happy thoughts" about her condition to fend off the negative "energy" of "bad thoughts - and she rebelled against this as an infantile state of minds that was to encourage her, but disabled her from taking action, to fix problems and seek solutions.
Some of this may be popular wisdom, but I suspect these arguments are mostly "straw Men" that she uses to easily knock down.
  • unfortunately she reveals her true (feminist) ideology when she blames "male doctors who encourage women to think positive and chase away that cancer" rather than the hard work.  Her comments also railed against the tendency for religious dogma to be similar
  • As a "scientist" (someone needs to fact check this as it reminds me of David Suzuki falling back on his Biology degree to gain credibility for Environmental Science!) she says' there are lots of study's that bad thoughts do not "kill germs" and have no impact on recovery (no reference at all to these quoted "big study's").
  • Her biggest concern is why women in Developed Countries get Breast Cancer? 
  • She has "evidence" like the whistle-blower at Freddy Mac who was fired, but was hired back again after things went bad.
  • Telling people to "don't worry - be happy" is really a form of "social control" to discourage dissent, similar to the way the Soviets used "positive messaging" to eliminate social dissent.
However, one point of hers is valid - and it applies to Stelmach Government - they are suffering from an "Empathy Deficit" - they blame the "victim" (voter) for H1N1 Vaccine problems - among many others , like the media.

Friday 6 November 2009

The Case Against Copenhagen


Peter MUNK's (he is the founder of mining giant Barrick Gold Corp) think tank is sponsoring a debate on Climate Change in Toronto on Dec 1, 2009 with invited speakers Elizabeth MAY, Green Party leader and George MONBIOT, columnist in UK for The Guardian speaking to the Pro side.  Lord Nigel LAWSON, a former Chancellor of the Exchequer in Margaret THATCHER's Conservative government from 1983-89 and Bjorn LOMBERG, Professor of Business Studies at Copenhagen University and author of  The Skeptical Environmentalist will represent to Con side.  It promises to be an interesting event and will be streamed online.

Among some of the titillating points mentioned in the advance PR by Rudyard GRIFFITHS in the National Post today were the following factoids from LOMBERG's book (itself subject to an intense intellectual attack reminiscent of the Newton vs. Leibniz controversy or Galileo vs. the Catholic Church) :
  • Rising Global temperatures will reduce the number of deaths from "cold spells" that far outweigh the number of deaths from heat-related causes.  LOMBERG recites the offset of 1.8 million lives saved per year with  warmer climates, likely to continue for 200 years.
  • The direct costs of Kyoto have been estimated at $150 billion per year, yet LOMBERG questions if this is the best use of such resources given other pressing humanitarian problems in the world.
  • $27bn could prevent 28 million from getting HIV; 
  • $12bn would reduce malaria infections for 1bn people per year; and 
  • $10bn on food aid and development of agricultural production could feed 229 million people around the world who now live with constant hunger.
Climate skeptics think saving lives should take precedence over Climate Change treaties that only serve to enrich bureaucrats for a perceived problem that may not be real.


[Also see this FP editorial that points out it depends who's counting when you claim "4,000 Scientists support Global Warming"]

Sunday 1 November 2009

Barcode Generator

I sometimes find an interesting software app or online service that I think deserves attention, and this online service is one such case - the Online Barcode Generator which allows anyone to quickly generate a barcode image for download according to many variables - barcode protocol, type, size, and orientation.

If you wish to find some FREE barcode fonts I recommend this website with a detailed explanation how the various codes are derived and some background/history on them (along with MSExcel and OpenOffice spreadsheets with conversion macros) .

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