Jan. 8 and newer can be read at:
AbandonedStuff.com

Jan. 7, 2006 Saturday

    I think that the Main Stream Media (MSM) [gosh I hate that acronym because it looks like MSN] is starting to use the more sensational and well known blogs as their interface with public opinion.  People like it when answers are handed to them, and journalists for the most part are no different.  Just look at our news, it's mostly rehashing of press releases of anything from Hasbro to the White House.  The only people who can't get their press release read on the 6 o'clock news are organizations like the WWF and the Green Party who don't have corporate sponsorship in a big way.
    Since Angry and other bloggers have strong opinions, and sometimes try to back them up with figures and charts that play well on TV, it only makes sense that the news is going to pick up these stories.  After all, the research and the lead is already taken care of, and since maybe half of the Canadian public who watches TV don't go online much if ever, then whatever Angry writes about is NEW news to the public.  A blog is essentially a dumpster in Quebec with a pile of papers placed beside it, just waiting to be picked up by the right person.  My insight that Bush's nutty Daylight Saving Time plan saved less oil than is typically used in an American day, over 60 days of saving, wasn't picked up by the main stream media really, even though it summarizes how insignificant the change was, and how it was possibly a distraction technique to avoid making cuts in significant ways.  If I had a popular blog like Small Dead Animals, there'd have been a chance the story perspective would have been noticed by someone who could have put the facts on TV for the masses to understand.
==

    MediaMatters.org is a place to check out if you ever wonder what the fuss is over nuts like Bill O'Idiot of Fox News, or radical fundamentalist Pat Robertson.

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Jan. 6, 2006 Friday

    I was in Buchanan today, and there's nothing like an intermittent wire problem to make an afternoon crawl by.

    In other news, nothing happened in the world outside my apartment.

    Oh, I got "tagged" on the Internet and am obligated to "List five weird things about [myself], then tag five others to do the same," or look like a blogging party pooper.  Well since this blog gives into Internet "memes" now and then, I'll list 5 things, but I'm not going out to tag anyone else.  Instead, if you're one of the first 5 people to read this, then you're obligated to saddle 5 buddies of yours with this task, or angry llamas will eat your underwear or something.

1. I fill a garbage can until garbage starts to slide off the pile on top, and then the bag must be changed.
2. Unless I'm emptying other garbage bins, then I might empty others early to save a trip out to the dumpster.
3. When I'm not talking about garbage, I write it.
4. I looked around the room about something that was weird, and came up with garbage first, what does that say about my place?
5. This wasn't really 5 things, but people who don't read closely will think I've fullfilled my obligation to the meme game.

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Jan. 5, 2006 Thursday

    STC Busing failed to make a profit, but they did increase ridership last year.  Could $1/Litre gas have contributed to that increase? Quite possibly, but I think it was mostly due to the Centennial Youth Pass which for only $75 had lots of young people like me riding around the province in style.  If you think that STC should offer a pass again this year, please let them know that at their STC email address.  I suggested that they make a more expensive pass for any age class in the Summer.
==

    I was in Kelliher today, and sent a sympathy card from the post office.  I also picked up a few 51 cent stamps in anticipation of this month's postage hike by Canada Post.  Some of the stamps have modern windmills, which look good.  I had good luck in my repair at the library, but Microsoft didn't release their urgent patch for the WMF flaw in time for me to install it manually while I was there so I'll let the auto update take care of it later.
==

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Jan. 4, 2006 Wednesday

    Michael Geist has again shown Canadians the light when it comes to copyright lobbying in our still free country.  It seems copyright dependent industries are making donations specifically to the MP in charge of Heritage Canada which was pushing to amend Canada's Copyright Act with Bill C-60 before the government fell.  The new laws would give these companies new powers to obtain your information from your Internet provider to sue you, even if you've done nothing wrong.
==

    Can anyone tell me why someone would search the web for "naked lloyd robertson photo -bare", which is the search that brought someone to my website the other day?  I don't think anyone needs to see Lloyd naked.  That's about as horrific as photos of Peter Mansbridge doing a naked limbo would be.
==

    I was in Neudorf today, and once I fixed the computer at the library I headed across town for a short break to take a couple pictures.  There was frost when I'd arrived in town, and when I left it was sunny, giving the trees a fantastic appearance in the mid-afternoon sun.

I came across a blog of another UofR alumni Derek who I met through writing a few times for The Carillon campus paper.  In the interesting links department there's also Election Predictions to look over and check back on after January 23rd.  I've also linked Catprint a blog from SK, over on my side panel since the author has created a list of SK specific blogs that are frequently updated.
grrrl meets world posted The Onion's funny Top 10 list with such gems as:
6. Prince Charles Weds Longtime Horse

I watched "The House of Flying Daggers" [6/10] on Sunday, it was a subtitled Chinese movie with a good story, but a type of ending I didn't like.

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Jan. 3, 2006 Tuesday

    The Pope figures that religious extremism is causing the world harm.  It's a shame the black pot can only see the kettle from The Vatican windows.  I wonder how he reconciles his predecessor's fatwa on condom use, with the rapid spread of HIV in Africa and even developed nations of the world?  Surely forbidding extra-martial intercourse is enough prevention, and you don't have to also ban the only thing that might protect an "oversexed" non-married person from sexually transmitted infections like HIV?  Ah, but we wouldn't want to interfere with pro-creation, even if it's extra-marital, at least according to the bastions of religious mainstream in The Vatican.  Perhaps they reason that nothing bad can be born from idle hands and extra-martially active genitals.
==

    There's a nasty new computer virus or two about to make its way around the world, due to a flaw in Microsoft Windows since version 3.0 in the early 1990s.  It lets a malformed picture file called a WMF run a virus by only looking at the infected picture.  This means any untrusted website, any email previewed, or an Instant Message from MSN or Yahoo could bring a worm to your machine.  Great huh?  Microsoft doesn't even have a patch yet as of today, although they've provided a partial workaround that disables the affected picture viewing slightly.  I've got a lot of patching to do this month in other words.  Here's an alternative MSN client, although I don't know if it's affected as completely as Microsoft's version will certainly be when the time comes again for it to spread worms around the globe until the service is temporarily disabled.

==

    Are polls provided by the best bidder going to be as accurate as what the government uses now?  Maybe it will work better than the current system what ever it is.  Harper's idea to make a poll accessible to the public is a good one, and I'm more than a little surprised that they aren't right now.

==

    If you don't have an ING Direct bank account yet, consider this an ad for one.  If you ask me for a referral code, then sign up for a savings account with them, you and I will both get a bonus $13.  ING is the only bank I've not yet had any trouble with, and I've not heard of anyone having trouble with them either.  They give 2.75% interest on a simple savings account, and you can take your money out at any time unlike a GIC or savings account in one of the Big 5 banks in Canada.  I usually don't plug a company, especially a bank, but if you look past ING's pervasive and somewhat overly orange TV and Internet ads, then there's really nothing wrong with them.  So if you've got a few hundred, or few thousand dollars in a chequing account that you've been meaning to invest, throw the money into ING today until you make up your mind about investing.  In the mean time, you'll be raking in the free, taxable interest money, plus $13 in real blue or purple money.

==

    Negative campaign ads are here to stay.  How can you tell a negative ad from a positive ad?  What makes an ad "negative".  Here are my guidelines:
For something to be a positive ad, it really shouldn't suggest that the other candidates will destroy things, it should only highlight the constructive policies of the party paying for the ad.

Pretend the Liberals buy ad time [something they know how to do a little too well]:
"The Liberals will give every puppy a home." Positive ad - A Liberal policy is given as information, and voting for Liberal just makes sense if you want puppies to have homes.

"Only the Liberals can be trusted to ensure every puppy has a safe home." Neutral ad - It implies dire consequences for puppies if Liberals aren't chosen.

"If you vote for Stephen Harper, will your puppy have a home? Vote Liberal." Negative ad - It gives no Liberal policy, and implies doom will come from supporting other parties, the Conservatives in particular.

    Now that you know how to spot a negative ad, you can start pointing them out to your political friends.  Say something like, "Did you catch the negative NDP ad that drops a lump of coal saying that's what the Liberals are giving us?  It figures that the Liberals would give us a fossil fuel, they are so environmentally unfriendly.  Then the NDP ad drops a boot into the frame, and says we should give the Liberals footwear.  I think it's a pun on the Sask. Liberal plan of 2003 to give the elderly Winter footwear to reduce injuries.  Or it just means you should kick Liberal campaigners in the butt if they knock on your door this January."
==

    Here are some health tricks, some of which are very cool even if they don't work for you completely.  You can try several of them in the next few minutes, the muscle eye trick being one of the better ones in my opinion.  Usually I ignore the MSN homepage links, but these were genuinely interesting, although I'm not sure why they say they are men tricks, since women can do them all. One reason might be their 3rd tip, which is just bad:
"Need to pee? Fantasize about Jessica Simpson. Thinking about sex preoccupies your brain, so you won't feel as much discomfort, says Larry Lipshultz, M.D. For best results, try Simpson's "These Boots Are Made for Walking" video."

    Imagining a bad Jessica Simpson video isn't recommended by me though, since that trick certainly won't work out how the author was planning.  Either you'll get the shudders from thought of that horrid video or movie she's in, or if you do end up aroused and are a man, you could have trouble emptying your bladder once you do make it to a washroom.  Don't ask me if females suffer from this problem too, I've not asked any one, the subject of peeing while aroused has never come up, not surprisingly.
==

    Apollo Chronicles by NASA talk about moon shadows and how they are much darker than daytime shadows on Earth. This is because there is almost no light reflected from atmosphere molecules or secondary light sources like "earthshine". "It is very easy to see in the shadows after you adapt for a while," noted Armstrong. But, added Aldrin, "continually moving back and forth from sunlight to shadow should be avoided because it's going to cost you some time in perception ability."
    Working on the moon even in the daylight might present unique problems not typically encountered on earth, if visual coordination in a shadow riddled area is required for a task.  Astronauts might need to wear ambient light sources, possibly LEDs [unless they freeze or melt in space too easily] to help avoid tripping or disorientation when walking into a shadow.
    {This was posted to Slashdot's science page Wednesday, and written by me on Tuesday.}

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January 2, 2005 Monday

    Happy New Year everybody! I'll be adding photos soon.  I was in Indian Head last night at my friend's place, and today I did a tour of the town, and drove around Lebret too.  Right now I'm watching the scariest show on TV - Medium.
==

    If you have something stolen from you, try to find it on your own.  A woman who had her purse taken was able to find it in a dumpster near a place her credit card was used.  If you're determined enough, you have as good a chance as the police of getting your things back.
==

        Today I also stopped in Lebret for the first time, to take some photos; I was led into town by an impressive church steeple visible from the highway north to Balcarres.

Dec. 31, 2005 Saturday

    Paul Martin has a shadow blogger, someone writing his thoughts down for him, but without actually speaking with the Prime Minister to get the thoughts.
==

    I added a list of "non-partisan" blogs, so that I'll be included in the list.  It doesn't mean I don't have political views, it just means that my blog best fits with nearly any political group, since being mostly Centrist, I take the best policies from any political wing and hold them up for admiration.  I enjoy the Liberal's beer and popcorn products, the Bloq's stance on absurdity, the Conservative's call for more military in B.C., and the NDP's idea to retrofit all buildings with efficient lighting.  The Green Party has too many good ideas to even list here, but to name one I'll mention their call to hybridize taxis in Canada.
==

    To further my rants on Day Care, I found an article citing poor parenting as having a lot to do with the problem of today's violent youth.  They just don't care about other people or themselves; they were never taught to be nice to other people. It's easy to see why the Liberals are pushing to put all children into government funded, and thus cookie-cutter day cares where in theory the poorest of children will be taught the manners and customs they might not otherwise encounter in their "lower class" homes. I'm not saying this is the way poorer people are, but that's the Liberal backroom attitude most certainly.

    The opposing view that parents should be given funding to raise children is more along my line of thinking, that parents need to be encouraged to raise their own children, and if they spend an extra 8 hours a day with them they'll be more likely to insist that the child behave. After a few years of little Sally or Timmy jumping up and down on the couch, either a parent will go stark raving mad, or they'll find Dr. Phil and realize that they need to make rules for their child and stick to them. Too few customs of politeness are being passed on. Kids don't even realize these days that old people consider it rude for them to wear hats to the table, or not give up their seat on the bus for those unable to stand well.
==

    Here's a link fest of reading goodness:  Canadians like Americans are weary of scandal, and if it doesn't directly affect our job or evening we don't seem willing to punish a government over a little thievery or incompetence.  I think the Internet also brings us and journalists word of the coming scandal bringers that we've yet to elect, and so people predict that the media knows what it's talking about and figure no change is good change.  It's ironic how that very definition of conservatism has come to haunt conservatives, since they aren't in power and thus need voters to change to bring about their proposed policies that are filled with a lack of changes.
    Here's a page to help you decide how to upgrade your blog to be better than mine [which doesn't take much upgrading].
    Not for young eyes, but funny for the old ones. And it's not safe for work either, but it's just a flow chart.
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Dec. 30, 2005 Friday

    I was driven home from Winnipeg today.  The city I affectiononately call "Winterpeg" wasn't so frigid this time, although there was some freezing rain on the way to Brandon but long enough before we drove on the #1 Trans-Canada Highway, so it didn't affect us or anyone else apparently since there weren't cars strewn in the ditches although there was a day-old wreck of an overturned black sports coupe with police tape wraped around it.
    We dropped my sister off in Brandon, did some shopping at Future Shop where we bought nothing and I went over to Subway to get lunch.  We managed to find the highway going south then west to Souris, and my parents stopped for lunch there while I walked down to Canada's longest suspension bridge to take pictures [which I'll include here later when I get back to Yorkton].
    There was fog in Saskatchewan as soon as we returned to the more familiar bumpy roads,.  Bumpy roads beat the heck out of rhythmically cracked roads that they have surrounding Winnipeg, apparently to keep tourists out of the city, or if they'd flown in - from leaving by car.   The highway from Sanford to Winnipeg is so bad, that you'd pray for icy gravel conditions because at least that is smooth, and can be just as slick.  Every winter visit seems to bring another tale of my Manitoba relatives sliding into the ditch or witnessing a ditching after a Winter rain.  My cousin had recently added intense body damage to his vehicle after avoiding a sliding semi and going into a ditch with an improperly installed hydro-pole guide [gye?] wire that faced the road.  MB Hydro fixed the wire, into the same illegal position.
    As we approached Pangman, Jenkew [a blogger who sometimes visits my site] was reading the news on CBC, and mentioned that a good samaritan had almost been stabbed by a violent man with a ponytail, when the samaritan had stopped to look into a car on the side of a road and saw a woman who was hurt.  There was a vehicle stopped by the side of the road as we were approaching the town, so naturally Dad stopped beside it so we could roll down our window and ask if they needed assistance.  Just then a crazy man with a ponytail,... just kidding.  It was a young woman who waved us on saying someone else was already on the way to help her.  What I didn't understand was that CBC didn't give the complete description of the man or vehicle they were looking for, I'm wondering if perhaps it was because he was Aboriginal, and they didn't want to be accused of implying that they were stereotyping Aboriginal men with ponytails and knives in damaged green trucks with bleeding women as being wanted by the RCMP for questioning.  It's not like the public should know to be on the lookout for a certain group of ethnic, ponytail wearing, knife wielding, green truck driving, EMT threatenting, ONE PERSON like that.
==

    There's good news on the green power front.  SK is producing 90MW of power using the wind turbines built near Swift Current.
==

    I guess it's more important to find the whistle blower than it is to penalize the criminal Bush.  Sure they'll have to determine if someone's leaking classified information, but the question should also be if evidence of criminal activity, which is what spying on Americans using the NSA is, can be classified information or if it's information that automaticly becomes declassified since it's concerning civil liberties and a US President violating the consitution.
==

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Dec. 29, 2005 Thursday

    I'm at my aunt and uncles' appartment while everyone else is out shopping at Polo Park mall. I just had lunch at Red Lobster.  Last time I ate at this restaurant I had a job within a week, and also mysterious hives, so I'm hoping it wasn't connected.
==

    Last night on the news I saw a ridiculous Chinese boot camp for "Internet addicted" youth, and then brought up the Chinese crazy kid who killed himself apparently because he couldn't seperate computer game fiction, from real life.  Of course it was the game's fault, not the parents for letting a mentally ill child play a fantasy game.  They were going to have a story about "music piracy" being a campaign issue, but I missed it sadly.  Perhaps if I look through CTV's online site I'll find their take on the dead Bill C-60.

    [Update] I found the story online at CTV News.  It seems fewer than 1/3 Canadians would vote specificly for a candidate that supports stronger copyright laws, and nearly 1/5 would vote against anyone supporting draconian copyright law.  As it stands now, Canada is a leader [by trailing behind] in our copyright legislation, so that corrupt record companies can't sue Canadians left right and center for sharing their music collections online.  Ideally these organizations want to outlaw any program that can be used to share music from one computer to another, despite the numerous non-infringing uses of those programs like Bit Torrent and Kazza.

    The National Post failed to notice that Online music sources can be legal too such as Puretracks, and Itunes, which could also account for falling CD sales.  The most likely reason is that CDs have so few quality songs, that consumers decided that to get the one or two songs they cared to listen to, they weren't willing to pay ~$20 to get 8 they didn't want.  If Pollara had asked questions like, "Are you in favour of private companies being able to sue you, based on your Internet Service Provider handing over your contact information to that private company if the private company SUSPECTS you of violating their information property?" I'm sure they'd not get as high a number of people willing to hand their freedom over to the litigious CRIA.  The American RIAA has sued pre-teens, and a dead woman, and has yet to win a case in court.  Some poor souls settle out of court when they could probably win, since the monetary damage figure made up by the RIAA is so ridiculous, that it would make an 'ambulance chasing style' attourney blush.

    I sent this to CTV:
Your story from Thursday night about Canadians "wanting tougher copyright law" was misleading at best, and incorrect.  Only 32% of Canadians who were push-polled by the Canadian wing of the American RIAA - CRIA were in favour of tougher laws.  Your headline should have read: 68% of Canadians satisfied with current copyright legislation.  We need to stop listening to a litigious lobby group like the CRIA, and stick with our copyright law that works for the majority of Canadians, including Canadian artists.

    I sent this to the Post:
In regards to:
Kevin Restivo, Financial Post
Published: Thursday, December 29, 2005
"Most Canadians want tougher copyright law"

Perhaps Mr. Restivo should check the facts before writing the headline and opining that "most Canadians" want a tougher copyright law.  Fewer than 1/3 of Canadians who were push-polled by the litigious CRIA copyright-dependent organization agreed with supporting a candidate in the election that would vote for a tougher law. Nearly 1 in 5 would specifically oppose any such candidate.  68% of the voting public is clearly satisfied with the gist of our copyright law, like I am.  We lead the Western world in many respects, simply because our law hasn't yet been updated using primarily the input of industries desperately trying to preserve their outdated business models such as CD sales, and ignore the rising popularity of Creative Commons licensing and legal online information distribution methods such as Apple's Itunes.
Your readers deserve a less biased, or at least balanced report on this poll conducted at the behest of CRIA.

Sincerely,
Saskboy
Yorkton, SK
==

    I added some new stuff in the comments for Dec. 24, I think was the date.  Plus my site got linked from SamathaBurns.com because I wrote an Offline Christmas article for her site.

    Yesterday I realized that if the Liberals banned the Electromagnatic Spectrum, then even more problems than rampant handgun use in Toronto would be solved.  Issues with pornography, cancer, microwave dinners, sunburn, TV remote control laziness, and radio censorship would all be taken care of with one law.  Sure, no one could see anything unless we handed out "visible light permits", but I think we could work around this issues.  It's an idea I'll explore in more detail later.
==

    Don't you love it when grown men get into flamewars?  You'd think the media,  and these politicians just discovered that you can insult someone on the Internet and it becomes a big deal with more name calling thrown back.  It's a terrific distraction from the real issues, after all.  I realized years ago how message board communities tend to flame [fight] like this, but I only just realized how common it is for bloggers to attack other specific bloggers, much like how Al Franken [Comedian/Air America Radio] and Bill O'Idiot [Fox News] fire back and forth at one another.

Permalink

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Dec. 26, 2005 Monday

    I hope everyone is having a good holiday.  I have a cold, and so this is a rudimentary entry, and I'll add details of my weekend later.  I went to Lafleche on Christmas eve for a party, and stayed home in bed the past two days.

Dec. 24, 2005 Saturday

    This Christmas I'm going to have a Happy Holiday from email and all things computery. Won't you all celebrate with me, and post nothing interesting on the Internet for Christmas day in honour of the season. If a back barn manger is good enough for Jesus, one day without email ought to be possible for us, right?

    So, unplug the modem, power down the tower, and zip up the laptop, cause we're going offline for:

    Some people use their computers as their phone, but if you happen to be fortunate enough to be with your family, who do you really need to email or phone on Christmas Day, that's what Boxing Day is for ;)
See you on Boxing Day. And remember, it's not polite anyway to sell your Christmas gifts on eBay, until at least 24 hours have passed since you opened them.
==

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Dec. 22, 2005 Thursday

    Old fruit cake is the best fruit cake it has been said.  1998 isn't that old for a fruit cake, which can last decades if treated properly, and restored with a bit of brandy or rum.  Yum?  I like fruit cake, although I know there are a lot of "haters" out there that wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole.
==

    I did my Christmas shopping today, officially putting me in the "procrastinator" class of shopper, yet still leaving enough time for an emergency buying spree had things I was seeking today been unavailable.  I was also able to do a bit of work to wrap up things before my holiday, including replacing a server fan which is worth $213!  Fans typically cost $20 at most, but this one has a fancy light and power connector, so a certain international business machine company gets to charge whatever they like for it.  I also tried calling Viewsonic who hasn't repaired or replaced a LCD monitor I had to ship to them on the library's dime to get warranty service.  Their phone system was too busy their machine told me, and asked me to try calling again later before disconnecting me.  I then tried emailing using the address I got when they sent the RMA number, and they told me they'd changed the email procedure, and if I wanted to be served in a timely way to go to their website and follow the steps there.  There was nothing there available for a customer like me who was in the middle of a service nightmare, so I just left the slow email as my only hope of ever seeing that monitor again before Summer.  So here's a hint: don't buy from Viewsonic.
    In the mall, I walked through Zellers, The Bay, Coles, cdplus.com, Radio Shack [The Source], Sasktel, Sobeys, the food court, and A Buck or Two.  It was busy, but not packed wall to wall like I thought it might be. I noticed that cdplus was selling the XCP Ricky Martin CD, so I took one up to the counter and told them Sony had recalled it, and they said, "[Sony's] already replaced some of them".  I left it at that, eyed a few DVDs that would have been tempting had they been $5 cheaper, and left.

    I also stopped into the Garry Breitkreuz campaign office, and picked up an "I [HEART] Canadian Beef" sticker.  I'm going to the free pool and food at the pool hall on west Broadway St. on January 12th, where he's a guest speaker.  I let his office worker know that they didn't respond to my 3 emails about Bill C-60, and she suggested I try another email address of his which she'll get first rather than his Ottawa office.  I suppose it's possible he never got my messages, rather than just ignored them, but that's about as bad.
    One interestedin thing I learned is that the hospital and The Bently retirement home are using beef from Uruguay!  They were even doing this through the border closure when beef ranchers right here in SK were struggling to sell their cattle.  Something is definitely very wrong with a place that would import beef at a time like that.

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Dec. 21, 2005 Wednesday

    Today is the first day of Winter.  It's also the first full day where I've been sick enough to not go to work, since last Winter.  I didn't live up to my fellow provincial employees who manage to be sick on about 10 days through the year, according to a study the Canadian Taxpayers Federation highlighted earlier this year.

    Just as I wrote that last paragraph, Murray Wood mentioned a media-grabbing scheme that will have the CTF delivering a petition to government people, while dressed as Santa.  Mr. Wood rightfully gave their idea a thumbs down, as we shouldn't turn Santa into a political figure.  It's bad enough there're mobs of drunken men that dress up as Santa and bring mayhem to the streets of large cities in strange parts of the world.

    Fort Alexandria which was on the south bank of the Assiniboine River had a monument on Highway 9 north of Canora that's been there presumably untouched since 1968.  About a month ago it started to look like the picture on the right:

    Sex clubs for consenting adults has been found to be "decent", by the Supreme Court of Canada.  I have to applaud their reasoning this time, since they've put the onus on the complainer to demonstrate how harm is coming to the public from an act they claim to be indecent.  On the radio a woman from Calgary of course brought up, with indignation, how smokers can't have a smoking establishment, but people who want to have consentual sex can now have their private clubs.  The difference she was either ignoring, or hadn't realized, is that smoking causes demonstrable harm to both the user, and the bystander who can't legally consent to being poisoned, while sex is a natural act that causes no harm to a user or bystander under typical, careful, and consentual use.
==

    Well, it has been several working days now, and even the police don't take the weekend off, so why hasn't Bush been indicted yet for his illegal authorization of spying on Americans within America?  Surely a president isn't above the law?
==

    Two CBC stories caught my eye today, one being that only 25 people showed up to an All-Candidates forum in Brandon, MB.  This doesn't surprise me much, since Wood Mountain's All-Candidates forum only had about 10 people show up for the 2004 election.  The difference is that Wood Mountain's population is about a thousand times smaller than Brandon's.  It would seem that you couldn't pay people to care about the election campaign, which ranks on people's holiday "to do" list somewhere beneath getting food poisoning from the improperly thawed turkey, and somewhere above lighting their hair on fire with the advent candles.
    The other story was about big-oil's subsidies, and how Ottawa likes to give Shell and other massivly profitable companies over $1.5 Billion for "research".  For a country that has signed Kyoto, this is a bit like the RCMP giving $1.5 Billion to biker gangs to "support their community outreach programs".  Jim Harris would like to stop the insane investment, at least until more efficient means of using oil are developed by those companies living high on the hog.

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Dec. 20, 2005 Tuesday

    Judge intelligently decides that  Intelligent Design is not to be taught in a science class.  Score one up for good sense in the justice system, since it was already determined that creationism can't be taught in American public schools.

    Meanwhile, Fox News and other right wing propaganda media outlets in the USA are blasting Canada for holding different views from the Bush administration.  Some have recently gone so far as to describe Canadians as "retarded", "lacking any intelligence", and "harbouring terrorists".  This is unfortunately nothing new, and is yet more destructive and divisive ranting from some of the most sour Bush backers allowed on air.

Noses are Red
I am so Blue
If you were sick also
You would be too. - Saskboy
==

    Oh yeah, this ISN'T a DEATH TRAP waiting to happen...  Edmonton has OK'ed businesses to allow their patrons onto insured busses, where the people can smoke.  I don't know about you, but a bus designed for drunk people from bars to burn things stuck in their mouths, are about the least safe thing I've heard all day.

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Dec. 19, 2005 Monday

    I'm back from Regina.  It was a fun weekend, I went bowling twice, and saw a few movies.  Today I had a meeting at the provincial library, and learned oodles of stuff I can use on my job.  I'll add more later, but I was talking with an old principal on the bus home, instead of getting a nap to fill in for not sleeping enough last night, so I'm going to bed now.

    Today I got a call from CJME to do a People's Panel, but I was in my meeting all day so I had to decline.  I wonder if they had meant this Monday as the one they'd had me booked to do, but they certainly didn't make that clear.  I felt sorry for the person arranging it, because they'd mentioned the other person lined up had to back out, then I had to let her know that I too couldn't do it.

Archives & More & More & More & More & More & More & even older blog available here.

  Saskboy is a computer scientist who comments on news, as well as movies and his thoughts.
  He often writes to be funny, and wrote this bio in the third person to make it seem at first as if he had someone else endorsing this site.

Saskboy can be emailed at Hotmail, or contacted through MSN Instant Messenger.

Site News:
You can comment on this page now! Or get a stale Atom feed at my Blogspot site. I've started to forward the home page to current material, but will rework things to be more like other blog pages with no Redirecting soon.

 

Blogging Alliance of Non Partisan Canadians

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