Shocked But Not Surprised

When you have a radio station that caters to middle age guys who are predominately conservative, what could go wrong when you start a drive home show conversation about aboriginal issues?

On the way home I tuned in briefly to hear the tail end of a conversation about aboriginal property rights and the Indian Act. The two hosts made a segue to the story about the makeshift border crossing re-opening on Cornwall Island. One of the hosts made the comment, and I'm paraphrasing, that the Mohawks obviously don't want armed guards because they're afraid they'll be shot trying to smuggle cigarettes.

Even for talk radio, I found this unusually inflammatory. I guess this is why these people want to end the Human Rights Commissions, so they can make this kind of talk normal and mainstream.

The background to this, I think, is the fact that the Tsuu Tina nation recently rejected a half billion dollar offer from the City of Calgary and the Province to build the south-west ring road through the Nation's land. This rejection has certainly led to a lot of negative commentary about Tsuu Tina, and aboriginals in general.

This Just in...Woman's Tennis Sexist

This article about woman's tennis was making the rounds on Twitter today, and to be honest it didn't surprise me much. It seems the centre court matches at Wimbledon are not decided on seeding or talent so much as the looks of the players. I was looking at this picture of Serena Williams and I couldn't help but think what a wicked athlete she is. Those biceps...

If you remember, Anna Kournikova was never ranked higher than 8th in the WTA, and never won a Grand Slam, a Major, or an Olympic Medal. Yet she was always on centre stage courts, got huge endorsements and transitioned into a successful modeling career.

I want to see the best players in the marquee matches. I want to be challenged and to think about what athletic excellence means.


PS. ESPN still holds a hottest female athlete online constest every year. Seems a little outdated to me. Frat boys, what can you do.

Download This

Download the MP3 and share it. Pass the link around to all your friends. Maybe even your ex-friends. Not to mention future friends, casual acquaintances, parole officers, one night stands, and so on.

Update: Forgot to mention the MP3 has no DRM. It is intened to be shared freely.

Carrington Fire Apparently Arson

My 80 something mother had been living at the Carrington Assisted living apartments in Edmonton. She lived in the building on 106st and 40th avenue. On May 31, in the middle of the night, the building went on fire and over 200 seniors were out on the street. Miraculously, none of them were hurt. The EFD, EPD and passers by did a great job in making sure everyone got out in time.

The western wing of the building went up in flames and was destroyed completely. The east wing where my mother's suite was, was thoroughly damaged by water. None of these seniors will return to the building as it is condemned and it is unlikely any personal effects can be recovered.

The Carrington facility at Riverbend was under capacity so they took in most of the displaced seniors on short notice. However, imagine the circumstances of having no personal possessions, no furniture. This was a highly traumatic event for people who shouldn't have to deal with something like this at their age.

TV's and couches can be replaced by insurance. But family bibles and love letters from the 1940's are gone forever.

The City of Edmonton announced this morning that the fire is believed to have been deliberately set and the EPD is investigating. The fire was briefly discussed in the AB Leg QP a few weeks ago, relative to fire code adherence and evacuation protocols. As expected, the Government said everything was fine.

Check with the Salvation Army or Red Cross in Edmonton to see if they still need donations of money or personal effects. Or phone Riverbend facility at (780) 433-2223 to see if they still need anything.

Update: Edit for Clarity. The Whitemud facility burned down. Most Seniors were relocated to the Riverbend facility which was under capacity.

Unintended Widget Side Effect

I've been using the newest version of blogger templates for a few months now. Generally I like them better. These templates support some custom xml tags that allow easy integration of generic widgets. If you look to the right you will see a widget that displays a list of blogs and their latest post, with the leading text. I like this widget and don't mind promoting other blogs. I you want your blog over there drop me a line and tell me I'm the sexiest person you've ever seen.

The side effect is the text from other blogs gets built into my html on the server side when the page is built. Then google ends up indexing it as if it were my content. So if you google some phrase you may end up on a blogger site and be mystified why you were sent there. The widget updates content quite frequently.

I'm not sure if this is considered a bug or not, or just a weird side effect of dynamic content. Depends on your viewpoint.

Lying For Jesus. Part...Sorry Lost Count

I was surprised when I mistyped my blog URL and found out that a wacky Christian cult had registered www.rwmcbean.blogpot.com to host their dubious bible studies. The web site titled LIFE IS A TEST.ORG looks a bit suspicious to me. It could be a spam/spyware repository, or maybe there's even a back door to child porn. You never know these days. You never know with these type of people.

Anyway, I dropped them a note in their contact form and like clockwork their Jesus-bot responded:

Dear rwmcbean,

We want to thank you for your guestbook message.
The administrator has to revise your message first, therefor it is not visible yet.

Your entry ( Today at 03:08 ):
---------------
your choice of URL makes you a liar and a thief.
---------------

our guestbook:
---------------
http://www.bibledesk.com/cgi-bin/firebook/firebook.cgi
---------------

best regards,
i-dreams.net Gästebuch Team

It raises some ethical questions, but I'm not really angry. I just think its kind of ironic unethical people are cranking out bible studies.

Do you think I'm being too hard on them?

Eds new BFF

The one and only sentence in the press release: Premier Ed Stelmach met with His Excellency Lan Lijun, Ambassador of the People's Republic of China to Canada.

In keeping with the opaque operations of the GOA, God only knows what Ed is discussing with the Ambassador of China. After Bill44, I may be better off not knowing. But they do look happy together.

Could be they're discussing China's stake in the Alberta Oil Sands.

Maybe Ed is reassuring the Ambassador that he will never ever be in a photo op with the Dalai Lama.

Maybe they're discussing ways to subvert human rights, environmentalism, or how to kill citizen engagement. China does a pretty good job of terrorizing people into silence. Maybe they're not discussing the Tiananmen Square massacre that didn't occur.

Or maybe, with the Chinese Government taking over the GM Hummer division, they're discussing plans to build a Hummer that runs on Bitumen.

All lame sarcasm aside, the fact is we'll never know what goes on in that office. Ed Stelmach campaigned on a new era of transparency, but it turns out he has a different dictionary than everyone else.

Ashamed

I stayed up late to listen to the final reading of Bill 44 in the Alberta Legislature and to follow the Twitter feeds from #ableg and #bill44.   About 1:30 MST the bill was passed 35 to 7.  Half the PC Caucus didn't bother showing up. The Premier came in late just in time to vote and didn't listen or participate in the final debate.  As an additional insult to the Opposition members they invoked closure, which may have saved them a whole ten minutes.  Petty and undemocratic.

The 7 opposition members raised one compelling argument after another against this horrible law. The government provided nothing useful, and tossed out brainless cliches like the silent majority and severely normal Albertans.  That's the problem when you govern on the advice of special interest groups, you pretty much have to turn your brain off.  

When they started talking about natural families it was a dead give away they were pandering to homophobes, but homophobes who chose to stay in the shadows.

Bill 44 is indefensible and I'm ashamed.

Time to test Torture Theory

The alleged murderer of Dr. George Tiller, who is now in custody, may be part of a larger terror cell planning more killings. Presumably the supporters of torture in the war on terror would agree that torturing this suspect would be prudent, and would help settle the debate over whether torture is an effective tool.

I say waterboard the man. See if there are any other ticking time bomb snipers out there.

Yes, I'm in a *great* mood today, thanks for asking.

Children of a Stupid God

...he's our child and is a very very bad boy...

Dear Brain

I really hate it when you walk by some thing 20 times a day and your brain chirps at you we really ought to do something with that thing,  and you talk back to your brain ok ok,  maybe tomorrow. Then tomorrow comes and you remember and you say to your brain,  where's that thing we were supposed to do something with and your brain says,  what thing?  and you say that thing we saw 20 times yesterday.  And your brain say, no idea what you're talking about hummina hummina hummina....

I also hate it when I wake up at 4am with a brilliant idea that's going to revolutionize some software project I'm working on. Before noon the next day I will have mentioned it to someone only to have them tell me what a completely shitty idea it is.  I know they're right.  They know I know they're right.  They know I was up at 4am "thinking".  I vow never to be a visionary again, and to only do dull and repetitive work.

Thank you for your forbearance.  Please proceed to the next item in your reader. Oh,wait. The McGarrigles and Emmylou Harris:

Karma and the Prop 8 Ruling

On the same day that the California Supreme court released its ruling on the request to overturn Propisition 8, the Alberta Legislature continues to debate Bill 44.  There is some irony there and both Twitter feeds are fascinating and highly emotional.

The key issue in the California ruling is the sad reality that referendums can be used to alter the State's constitution, even in areas that affect minority rights.  This is basically what the Reform/Alliance party wanted for Canada. 

If there's any sunshine in this ruling, its that payback is a bitch.  The precedent has now been set and can actively be used by liberals just as well as conservatives.  If a referendum is passed demanding all Christians die their hair read, so be it.  No recourse.  

And I'm sure they wouldn't try to overturn such a thing in the courts, because as we all know they're against judicial activism.

The other good news is that gay marriage will be legal in California eventually, definitely within 5 years. Its too fundamental to be held back