Speaking of governmental douche baggery, don’t think that my lack of constant complaint about Harper and almost EVERY DECISION he makes means I’m not constantly enraged–I’m just deep in outrage fatigue at this point. Everywhere I turn there are utterly reprehensible decisions. Sending Canadian citizens to serve time in US prisons for things that aren’t crimes in Canada, refusing to do anything to help Canadian citizens threatened with death or torture in other countries, pushing terrible copyright legislation, pretty much everything about the G20 handling, indefensibly stupid action on the census (oh, and Tony, if one citizen’s complaints are enough to change government policy, well, I’ve got a LOOONG list for you), Lysenkoist interference with science, and… well the list goes on. Can we kick these bums out yet?
Category: Head-Explodes
What the hell, Obama?
If you’ve read here over the last year, you’ll know that I’ve pretty much lost all hope that Obama is going to fix things–I’m willing to live with “won’t make it worse”, and clearly he was a better choice than the alternative, but I am labouring under no illusion now that he’s going to actually undo all the evils of… Read more →
Criticism, Privacy, Authority
A couple of days ago I had a bit of a rant about police misusing (or at a minimum, appearing to misuse) authority to stifle criticism. A few minutes ago I had a nice rant about Harper’s proposed privacy changes, with an implicit text of “you can’t trust these people to handle private data correctly without strict legal oversight”. And… Read more →
What, You Don’t Trust “Policing Services” Implicitly?
Canadians who are interested in the conditions under which it’s legal for private information and documents to be shared might want to take a good long look at Bill C-29. I’ll quote a bit from the legislative summary below, but in essence one of the things this bill says is that any documents/information the police (or anything that meets the… Read more →
Speaks For Itself
powered by Change.org Start a Petition » Read more →
The mind literally boggles…
So, um… A Public Policy Polling nationwide survey of 1,151 registered voters Jan. 18-19 found that 49 percent of Americans trusted Fox News, 10 percentage points more than any other network. …I believe the appropriate response here is: “WTF??!!?” Seriously? Fox News is not only considered news–shocking enough–by a significant number of Yanks, but it’s actually the most trusted network… Read more →
Aside
Looking at politics here, and in our neighbour to the south, I am starting to think that there’s maybe something to the depressive realism proposition. I am too rage-fatigued to post about today’s particular stories, but as usual Ferocious J has it covered, saying what I would probably say if I had the energy left to rant.
Aside
OK, the latest round of crazy TSA rules had solidified my resolve to not fly into America again (at least not until there are substantial changes in the way border and airport security are run)–not that this is a big deal, since my basic hatred of airports has had me driving to Boston and such locales rather than flying for well over a decade now. But now I have to see my own country make even more STUPID security theatre rules than the Americans? Argh. No books or magazines on the plane? Seriously? The directive is specific to “US-bound” planes, and as I said, I wasn’t planning to get on any of those, but still this kind of stupidity actually makes my cranium ache.
Aside
Over the last decade I’ve become increasingly cynical about, and frankly afraid of Americans. Not all of them–I know they’re not all the same, and there are lots of them I love–but Americans in the aggregate. I had some hope that things were changing there last year, but when I read statistics like 58% of US voters favour the use of torture in gathering information–specifically in a case where there is no ticking bomb–I am more scared than ever. Factor in that the rate is even higher for younger people and I’m left wondering if there will be anyone left who understands that this isn’t how things should be. Those numbers about how many people think the US legal system is too worried about individual rights make me despair for humanity, and for the American voting public’s ability to read.
A Note On Scanning
I should mention, as a very long aside, that I almost couldn’t scan those picture for that last post. When I left my old job I had to return all the corporate hardware–which meant all the machines that were even vaguely current in my house. Part of what I’ve been doing over the last few days is dragging some ancient… Read more →
That’s a new one on me
“Thou hadst a whore’s forehead”. I have to admit I haven’t heard that one before. That’s part of a Bible quote that crazy old Fred Phelps pulled out this week as part of his ever-expanding GOD HATES X empire. This week X has been expanded to include Lady Gaga. I’m sure she’s proud to be in company with all the… Read more →
When The Black Wind Blows
I’ve been very busy the last few days, with a combination of post-moving stuff (hey, look, we’re close to family now, and it’s the holidays), and with some important changes at work (on which I shall write a very journal-y entry shortly). Which explains why I haven’t already written about an utterly unacceptable, and miserably predictable, incident. Quite a bit’s… Read more →
Aside
Cuddles and Mr. Mushroom illustrate the dangers of unthinking conformance to societal norms of civility.
That’s The Problem.
I will have more to say about this when I’m not about to start a 24-hour flight around more than half the world, but I just want to nail down this quote from Clay Shirky talking about Iran/Twitter/etc: Absolutely. I’ve been saying this for a while — as a medium gets faster, it gets more emotional. We feel faster than… Read more →
Aside
Um… this is not a story in the Onion. This is actual news. Everyone please take a moment to breathe and settle yourselves down–we’re beyond farce at this point: Afghanistan’s only pig quarantined in flu fear
