Abandoned Stuff by Saskboy

I don’t know how I missed this earlier, but May 24th was when bison were returned to the prairies in Grasslands National Park. They might not be allowed to migrate into the States like they once did, but it’s a fantastic start to restoring our grassland ecosystem to before it was altered in the late 19th Century with the slaughter of all but a few [hundred?] buffalo. As long as bison don’t become the “moose of the west” and start killing highway drivers, I’ll be happy to have them around to graze that shortgrass praire and provide a foodsource for countless other critters. I don’t mind chowing down on bison myself now and then too.

I’ve been wondering what the whole William Jefferson scandal in the States has been about, and without the Daily Show to summarize I’ve not bothered to dig up the facts. Here’s the summary as provided by Americans who are paying attention, and are rightfully enraged that their Congressional representatives are trying to cover up a bribery scandal.

1. Rep. William Jefferson is caught on tape accepting a bribe to the tune of $100,000… almost all of which is found in his freezer at home wrapped in aluminum foil. (Probably to keep the aliens from finding it)

2. After waiting 9 months, the FBI raids Rep. Jefferson’s Congressional office using a LEGAL search warrant.

3. Members of Congress don’t complain about Jefferson or kick him out, they complain to the FBI, saying that they have no constitutional right to search the office of a Congressman!

Now if that’s what’s been going on, how in the heck is that not the top story in the USA today?

TheFordFocusWagon’s Lins writes about John Gormley’s questionable crusade against drivers who use the left lane of a 4 lane highway, at or slightly below the speed limit. While I have some sympathy for people in a hurry, the general truth is that impatience on the highway can kill, and letting the urge to drive faster than all other people overtake your thoughts, is the highway to a high gas bill, speeding tickets, higher insurance, and more serious accidents. Unless you’re drunk, high, talking on a cell, an ambulance, police, firecrew, or a frantic parent with sick child, you have no reason to be driving on average more than 20km/h above the posted speed limit for your highway. Cars and especially SUVs can’t respond quickly enough at that speed to human reflexes when a road hazard such as deer, children, or potholes jump in front of your vehicle. And in SK, you know all about potholes jumping in front of your wheels.

Instead of worshiping vigilante patron saints like Trevor [or was it Tyler?] the former producer of Gormley’s CKOM radio show who is the “patron saint of left lane bandits”, we should be encouraging people to slow down, save their temper, save gas, save a little doe, and save lives. I have a radical idea. Instead of passing someone who’s driving slower than you by 5km/h, ask yourself why they are driving so much more slowly. Surely they want to get where they are going as quickly as possible too? Maybe they have a good reason for going the speed limit, other than it being the law.

Perhaps we should feature some kind of entertainment on the back of vehicles, making it undesirable to pass in most cases? The Entertainment would have to be engaging, yet not distracting. Maybe retrofit all vehicles to have a flat screen television on the back bumper? It can’t be any more dangerous than driving while on a cell phone, right?

Fixed election dates are an improvement to Canada’s electoral system, as long as national TV/radio campaign advertising doesn’t start before a fixed date as well.

I think even more important than fixed dates, is to have a rule that a PM can’t be in office more than 8 years consecutively. Living in SK I know the mis-governing that can arise from a single party ruling way past their “best before date”. Requiring the party to renew their leader at least gives democracy a chance, and could intimidate a leader into doing the right thing because the next leader might not take kindly to scandal or corruption going on.

The Green Party requires a leadership vote every two years. I think that is closer to democracy than requiring no review. Considering that Canada is a country of 33 Million people, it seems fishy that only a handful of people/families are deemed worthy to rule. Just look at the States:
Ford [Rummy involved in gov't]
Carter
Ronald Reagan [Bush Sr. involved in gov't]
Bush Sr. [Cheney involved in gov't]
Clinton, Bill [Hillary First Lady]
Clinton, Bill [Hillary First Lady]
Bush Jr. [Rummy, Cheney involved in gov't]
Bush Jr. [Rummy, Cheney involved in gov't]
- talk of Bush, Jeb (John) being President
- talk of Clinton, Hillary being President

Something is seriously wrong, when the best man [or woman] for the job just happens to have governed previously. And it’s normal for tabloid rags to speculate on celebrities, but governing Florida which can’t even run a proper election, is hardly reason to be seriously considered for a presidential run. Obviously in some cases it will happen due to excellent training or family experience, but we should guard against providing the reigns of power to so few people, for such a long stretch of time. Do we really want Hillary Clinton running the United States? Do Americans have that little imagination that the best woman they can think of for the presidency is a former First Lady they saw at the White House in the 1990s?
Bush Jr. is showing how much he likes to suppress criticism [and critics] of his government’s illegal activities. It’s just plain good sense to require that he can’t be in a position of supreme authority for more than 8 years, so that in theory if he did things wrong [and we know he has] then the incoming government can order something be done about the crimes. Chretien wouldn’t have ordered an inquiry into how he messed up promotion of Canadian unity with the sponsorship adscam. Calvert isn’t fixing healthcare, which ironically Romanow [from the same party] was given the task of reporting about after he spent terms in power not fixing too.

Leaving a few people in charge when there are millions of other adults to consider for government, is a bad practice for our democracy.

Don’t ask me how I got them, but here are the headlines in the newsblogs [2106 word for "newspapers"] for May 27, 2106:

American Idol elects the first Hip Hop President of the United States of America, with record low voter turnout

Apple releases their popular OS L, a full 2 years after it was leaked on the Interweb

Clone of famous 20th Century celebrity Sylvester Stalone releases Rocky XXX

And don’t even ask about the gossip pages, they are over half of the publication and you wouldn’t understand half of the crazy stuff going on in them. Who’d have thought that reality TV would take such a tragic turn…

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Yesterday morning on CJME.com, caller Tara explained how ODD affects some children “genetically”, making them resistant to all attempts at training them to behave. Oppositional Defiant Disorder, is a catch-all “disorder” used either when a proper diagnosis of a behavioural problem can’t be determined, and/or when a doctor has to tell a parent something other than, “You’re not using the right techniques to make your child behave properly.”

Gormley read the 8 criteria, of which four must be present, with the handy sliding scale of “moreso than peers” available as an “out”.

The criteria for ODD are:

A pattern of negativistic, hostile, and defiant behavior lasting at least six months during which four or more of the following are present:

1. Often loses temper

2. often argues with adults

3. often actively defies or refuses to comply with adults’ requests or rules

4. often deliberately annoys people

5. often blames others for his or her mistakes or misbehavior

6. is often touchy or easily annoyed by others

7. is often angry and resentful

8. is often spiteful and vindictive

Despite my overwhelming urge to declare ODD complete nonsense, and that be the end of it, clearly some children who are being labeled with it are suffering from some problem and acting out. Whether or not they have something called ODD, or a real medical/environmental problem, they need treatment. Treatment doesn’t have to mean with drugs though. Drugs might play a role if every other behaviour modification plan has been exhausted by experts, but it should never be the sole treatment. You can’t drug a child for years on end, it’s obviously the wrong answer to the problem.

One suggestion from that ODD site is to, “Ask to sit down with the [child's] principals and teachers regularly.” To that I say, “Good idea,” and, “Duh.” Every parent, whether they are having problems with their child or not should be meeting with their child’s educators. In theory a parent would meet with a daycare provider, so why wouldn’t you meet with your child’s teachers? Apallingly few parents apparently meet with their child’s teacher before the kid starts school, at least that’s my experience in one southern state.

Since I only fit criteria 2. and 3., I’m not in danger of being labeled with ODD, although some people do think I’m a touch odd anyway. You can’t make foil hats for pets without getting that label thrown your way now and again. Ahh, social sciences, where you get to quantify something using the word “often”. If you use the word ‘often’ often enough, pretty soon you’ll forget how often you use it. Remember, before the word ‘often’ was used so frequently, kids who acted out had a “bad attitude” that was treated with various forms of punishment? I think punishment has fallen out of style, in favour of “free range” children.

Slashdot.org writes that Symantec, who makes Norton Antivirus, could cause a worm to spread. Computers without Symantec installed would not be infected by the possible worm. This is yet another reason to stop paying for Symantec Antivirus and go with either free or registered Grisoft.com AVG.

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On CBC As it Happens, and CNN via Slashdot comes the theory that the chicken came after the first chicken egg. I came to this theory myself years ago, since it makes sense if you understand simple concepts in evolution. Two birds similar to chickens produced chicken offspring. Also there is the smart-alleck answer that there were dinosaur and fish eggs before chickens existed, so obviously eggs existed first, even if they weren’t chicken eggs.

The best jokes about this are gleaned from Slashdot comments:

Q: Which came first; the chicken or the egg?
A: The Rooster.

“So the chicken and the egg are laying in bed together. The egg’s smoking a cigarette. The chicken says, “Well, I guess we know the answer to THAT question!”"

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25 worst tech-products. I’m in definite disagreement about one member of the list - the Timex Data Link watch. I’ve had one since 1997, and it’s cool feature has saved my bacon on numerous occasions, and given my brain room to remember important things instead of phone numbers I’d only want to use a few times a year. Most of the list members deserve to be there, including Sony BMG’s DRM Rootkit, Comet Cursor, RealPlayer, Windows ME and IE, and AOL.

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I was in Churchbridge, Esterhazy, and Stockholm today. The day was very rainy, so I drove to work instead of biking. It would have been a soggy morning bikeride if I pedalled. I got a Lexmark Color Jetprinter 2050 working last night, with some old ink I bought. It prints fine, but the quality sure is nothing like what we’re used to seeing from printers these days. At least there’s more than 3.5mL of ink in my printer’s tanks. Now I need to think of things to print. Maybe a business card, I’ve been thinking of doing that for a while.

I also watched Edmonton lose the 4th game at home last night. I picked them to lose in my eBay hockey pool. At least I have Pronger if they knock off the Ducks with one more win.

As I talked with friends about the old computer game Star Control, I tried to help Ross of breakfastmeat.com get his blog page to work in Firefox. There’s something about his page file that is being interpreted as a text file instead of an html coded text document as it really is. So far, no luck.

An American student is finding himself facing expulsion [Caution: annoying website alert] from school after he complained about suspensions at his school, on his blog when at home.

In other school news an Illinois school district is going to force students to give up their First Amendment rights, and have their blogs monitored by snitches. That should be easy, since they’ll neglect to teach the children that right in the first place.

Most times when an unrelated adult [or peer] monitors a child, it’s known as stalking.

“Teacher! Teacher! Bobby is talking about how he downloaded the new Gnarles Barkley song without paying iTunes. That’s illegal!”

“Bobby! You’re expelled!”

Oh yeah, I can see this working out really well…

And remember if you blog, it’s best to be discrete about work.

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And I guess Stephen Harper is going to start a blog, because otherwise we won’t know what in the heck he’s going to be doing. Shunning the press because they won’t line up inConservative pre-determined order? Who’s the control freak here, the press or the baby who won’t speak to the media because they might ask him tough questions?

- From SkylarKD

There’s a centennial arena in Churchbridge. Limerick lost their 1967 arena about five years ago due to age and collapse.

Churchbridge not surprisingly has a few churches.

There are many murals on the walls of public and private buildings in Churchbridge.