Abandoned Stuff by Saskboy

Last weekend I got a tour of a rabbit ranch, and here is a photo of the largest critter:

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On a completely unrelated topic, here are some reviews of wings in Regina. I give it 4 clucks out of 5.

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Got Meat?

If you had your ear turned to the news of Canadian politics last week, you’d find it amusing that the Liberals happened to audition for a new video sensation. It’s called Grits Gone Wild, and it was timed pretty well with the occurrence of Mardi Gras.

Anyway, Olaf has come out in support of Proportional Representation for the reason of civilizing debate in the House. With coalition governments, parties would learn to work together and debate policy, instead of putting on such a ridiculous show fit for sensational videos sold for $19.95.

Something that occurred to me is how everyone knew when Dingwall said, “I’m entitled to my entitlements,” his expression would define modern Canadian politics. People who weren’t Liberals said it defined Chretien’s party and the “Libranos”, but this past week shows the problem extends past the Liberal Party of Canada.

Why do parties figure they are entitled to the absolute power a majority government provides them with, when they routinely have less than 40% support of the voting public? Isn’t that the very definition of “entitlement”; an attitude of superiority, where no superiority exists?

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VP Cheney is summed up nicely by Adrian (in some not so nice potty language, so cover your eyes if sensitive).

Cheney in reference to the level of effect humans play in climate change says:

“I don’t know, I’m not a scientist”. But I refuse to believe what 99% of the scientists in the world are telling me? Does anyone else see the clusterfucked logic of that statement? Truly the administration down south is in the grips of some serious foray into fantasy land only visitable by the most rightwing of believers.

Cheney’s feigned ignorance coupled with denial is the exact kind of nonsense I hope we’d do away with in Canadian politics by bringing in PR. Real world issues wouldn’t get ignored just because a party who wants an issue untouched, can distract from the work at hand through lame partisan deflections. Each issue would be dealt with on its own merit, not on the say-so of a party who might be embarrassed about a conflicting stance they’ve taken on a connected issue.

I knew travel to foreign lands was risky, but now I know why so many Americans wondered if I had been arrested in my bus travels a few years ago. It seems archaic laws exist in even the most unlikely places. Who’d have thunk that you couldn’t break out in spontaneous dance in a New York bar?

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I love the headline for this news story:
Watt! Residents get billion-dollar electric bills

The movement to Ban TV, also known as the Teleban, is bigger than I first thought. I discovered a secret chapter of the Teleban hiding on Facebook, a social networking site. There were nearly a dozen members there, unaffiliated with the official Teleban blogroll.

We’re growing, and coming to take your TV. Learn to like YouTube and books, because if you’re Desperate for Housewives, you’re about to lose your Idol.

If you want to join the Teleban, leave a note here, or send Saskboy a Hotmail email so I can add you to the membership roll.

Remember, in order to save the children repeat after me:
“Friends don’t let friends watch Friends.”

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Continue Reading »

There is a lingering buzz in the media about the prospect of either the United States, or Canada [hopefully both] choosing to eliminate a low value coin from regular circulation. With the dawn of the new American “golden dollar”, perhaps other coin changes are on the horizon. Now, we know the only people less inclined to accept changes than Canadians, are probably Americans (who still haven’t switched to metric), so I don’t think coin removal will really come about. But there’s a lot of money to be saved by ditching a coin like the penny, if we can’t revalue our currencies to have more purchasing power again.

They’ve switched in Australia, and Europe, and their economies are fine. Now things bought with cash are rounded to the nearest 5¢.

Another idea, would be to either revalue the penny to 2 cents, or start minting a new version of the coin to replace the old, letting us round to the nearest two cents. Then we could give exact change for any amount divisible by 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, etc. That would possibly be cumbersome, but there would be very few cases where exact change couldn’t be delivered. However, we have to consider efficiency in this calculation, and a 2 cent coin would be neither more efficient than a penny, nor desirable as a spending tool. No vending machine or parking meter would start to take the 2¢ coin, as the much more valuable nickel is already (almost) forgotten.

We should get rid of the penny. All pennies do is make holes in my pockets.They cannot be used in vending machines. They cannot be used to buy or renew bus/el fare cards. They cannot be used in copying machines. They cannot be used at the laundromat. The only time pennies serve any purpose is when I produce one of the worthless buggers to avoid receiving four of them with my change.
Posted by: Don Dopke | Jun 5, 2006 2:30:07 PM

A less thoughtful commenter suggests:

if we get rid of the penny, what happens to “a penny for your thoughts?” and what will students collect to see how much a million really is? will we have to start putting in our 2 nickel’s worth? what will happen to penny lane? i say long live the penny!
Posted by: peter

Peter, there’s nothing to worry about. English continues to use archaic expressions and words long after the root of their formation was lost to progress. I’ve heard one theory on the root of a popular swear that it was about Fornication Under Consent of King, and now you certainly don’t have to ask Queen E. (or her representative) if you can have a roll in the hay with your life partner.

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I’ve written about ditching the Nickel before. We can add up to 5¢ with our penny. We could otherwise get rid of the dime, but since it’s twice as valuable as the Nickel, and uses less metal, it makes more sense to keep that coin.

Digg linked to this journalist’s opinion.

I think it’s rather amateurish of the Prime Minister to insinuate that a Liberal backbench MP is somehow responsible for that party’s position on letting old “anti-terror” legislation expire.

There are Blogging Tories with more tact, and that’s saying something. The word slime came to mind, too. That’s a shame too, because we should have more respect for our politicians. It’s too bad their collective behaviour doesn’t warrant it. I’d be embarrassed to be an MP right now.

Sure their job is stressful and adversarial, and maybe the best we can hope for from humans in that situation is sniping and shouting, but really if that happened in a “real” workplace, the lot of them would be fired. Isn’t there something we can do to get decorum back into government? Could the Prime Minister stop insinuating that the Liberals are “soft on terror”?

If the whole world is a stage, the House of Commons is striving to be the king of side shows. We already have Canadian Idol, we don’t need more TV-driven theater running our lives, and dominating the news.

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Garth Turner untangles the web that Harper has woven.

This could be a sign of the times ahead, where DRM in legally bought online music becomes the exception instead of the rule. MP3 files are unencumbered by Digital Restrictions Management, and so there is no copy protection to annoy paying customers. I can reconsider my boycott of Puretracks music service now.

Here’s their newsletter notice of the change in their service:

Hi [Saskboy],
Thank you for being a Puretracks customer. We are very excited to announce that as of today Puretracks will be offering MP3 files for sale on our site at Puretracks.com.
And as the first North American digital service provider to launch ‘a la carte’ MP3 music downloads, we’re happy to offer you a free MP3 track from the popular Canadian band The Barenaked Ladies.
The track, called ‘The Sound of Your Voice,’ will be delivered along with the February 27th Puretracks newsletter. You will need to be a registered newsletter subscriber to be eligible to download this track.
If you don’t currently receive our newsletter (filled with weekly free tracks and exclusive content), click here to register.

MP3s at Puretracks
MP3 tracks are easy to download (no licenses required) and can be played on all digital audio devices. Puretracks currently offers over 50,000 tracks in French and English from popular artists such as: Sarah McLachlan, Broken Social Scene, Feist, The Barenaked Ladies, Jean Leloup and Richard Seguin. Track prices starting at $ 0.79 each.

Be sure to register now for the Puretracks newsletter to get your free MP3 track from The Barenaked Ladies! Click here to register. If you are already registered, watch for your February 27th Puretracks newsletter to get your free track.
Regards,

Alistair Mitchell,
CEO

Make sure you tell your online music provider that you won’t buy unless the music is offered in MP3 or another completely DRM-free format. It seems Puretracks is starting to listen to consumers and artists.

I was considering telling Slashdot.org about this, but someone else beat me to it.

Wednesday I went up to LeRoy today to fix up a computer, and in the library there was a CJVR radio personality doing live broadcasts from where the call center of the LeRoy Leisureland lottery is hosted. Tickets sell out by Friday, and are $100, or 3 for $250.

On my way back I met a couple of nice fellows from Elfros, Lee and Rod I think they said their names were, who gave my vehicle a push when I took a corner on a street too sharply, and the wheels fell through some hard packed snow that was masquerading as ordinary snow covered street. That’s the first time I’ve needed a “tow” this decade, and like my first [and only other] tow, I didn’t end up having to call CAA to get unstuck.

Clearly my driving incident makes me unable to be the province’s smartest radio listener this week. I had no guess for the question of:
This statue in Price Rupert, BC is related to Saskatchewan how?
Some people were guessing it had something to do with wheat, but it was actually a statue of Mr. C. Melville Hays, who I heard the SK city of Melville was named after. Hays died on the Titanic.