Abandoned Stuff by Saskboy

Today I read a story that’s so off the wall in magnitude and scope, that I could hardly comprehend that it was getting international media attention (due to the absurdity of the lawsuit). You see, the perpetrator claims to be a victim, and that’s why he’s suing Google, non-profit Wikipedia, and several other bloggers and large webmasters for either hosting or linking to apparently offensive anonymous comments made about him. I’m not going to name this person, but some research on your part might reveal the person with such a crooked sense of reality that he thinks suing bloggers left, right, and center is going to teach them a lesson.

Out of respect for the various blog aggregators I’m listed on, I will not be giving a link to the story, since apparently that is all it takes to draw the ire of this sue-happy-victim-of-alleged-libel. But I will suggest you read Section 15 because this story has serious implications for communicating online [and also in the real Canadian world].

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Update:
And what in tarnation would compell a judge to give a criminal a smaller hit than his captors?

And where’s Olaf? It could be the Canadian version of Where’s Waldo.

It’s the start of TV Turnoff Week (April 23 - April 29, 2007) and I wouldn’t be a very good leader of the BAN TV group The Teleban if I didn’t point out this fact.

Life is a lot easier if you aren’t planning how to find time for TV. As a form of entertainment, TV is the modern day equivalent of watching a campfire — low tech and non-interactive. The cool cats are busy on the Internet and the Web 2.0 instead, which you can confirm since you’re reading this on the Internet, and you are also cool.

The Teleban is always looking for new members, so if you have a blog, and think TV should be banned (or at least people should feel guilty about watching too much of it) then our Web 2.0 organization wants you! There is no hazing ritual for initiation, and we aren’t affiliated with the Taliban or the CBC so you can trust us.

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Here are details from a TV Turnoff from last year.

“Friends don’t let friends watch Friends.”

Remember that December 1 is BAN TV Day.

I was talking with my sister and her boyfriend about what could possibly be the ingredients for “sticky-tac” that blue or white gummy substance you can use to hang posters on the wall without putting holes through them (never mind the oil spots that appear from extended use). Joel mentioned that the quality of the stick-tac has gone downhill, and more is required to achieve the same stickiness. I figured they must have started using Chinese wheat gluten, and that’s why it’s thinner now. He countered with the idea that the children in China chewing the blue and white gum have been having quality control issues.

So there you have it, sticky-tac is probably made of months old, sweatshop, chewed kids gum with poison wheat gluten added afterwards (not before, or the kids die).

I’ve given notice on my Yorkton apartment, and have a place in Regina already. Saturday Ashley and I packed up a full size van load of my stuff and went to Regina, then unloaded it into our townhouse. There’s another trip to make next weekend, and then I’m moved away from Yorkton, maybe forever. I’m still looking for a dream job in Regina, but if one doesn’t pop up soon, I’m sure I’ll find a regular job in short order, there is certainly no shortage of job listings. I may meet the perfect employer while I’m attending the TLT/IT conference in Saskatoon May 1, where I give a presentation on the Microsoft Shared Computer Toolkit. It will be a good chance to rub elbows with important people in Saskatchewan’s education and technology fields.

One of my old high school teachers will be presenting something, as will another SaskBlogger. The teacher taught me calculus in high school via satellite. He’s obviously going to speak about distance education, and he must be an expert by now since it’s been nearly a decade since he taught me in Limerick from his Regina classroom.

Some people from my brother’s church had a look at our van today, in order to see if they want to buy it. They pointed out a couple maintenance issues I’ll have to get fixed, but considering the vehicle is only about 4 years younger than me, it’s in super shape for having driven about half a million kilometers.

I caught most of the ACC Top 40 today, which has been a favourite radio program of mine since the mid 1990s. I’m not sure if I’ve warmed up to Kix Brooks as the host instead of Bob Kingsley, but it still sounds a bit like an old friend.

A “spare time” film Of Gods and Men utilizing professional Star Trek actors has been delayed. I’m surprised Ross didn’t cover this news yet. There are some nifty video clips of the trailer and behind-the-scenes available already though.

New Voyages released new episodes that I haven’t seen yet.

There’s a nifty new technology that could make microscopic surgeries much closer to the level of miraculousness that we see on science fiction shows. It’s a robot that shows the operator the subject through Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI).

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And here is a fancy pantsy robot that can outdraw you on a childhood toy. I had just been thinking if a robot could be built to turn the knobs on an Etch A Sketch, and then on Digg a commenter led me to the answer.

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This is serious: bees may be getting killed in a big way by cell phone and other EM radiation. Bees are essential for our crops, and so without bees, we’ll have job losses or even starvation. Hopefully a solution can be found very quickly, and conclusive evidence rules out our communication devices.
Even if it isn’t cell phones, we still have massive bee die-offs.

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And this is anything but serious. Check out the video on Revver if you don’t have Quicktime to play Tim and Ernie. They give an excellent review of Alberta, and have some planetary jokes thrown in too. They talk about Alberta as if it’s a real country and not something Stephen Harper dreamed up to scare Ottawa with!

Greg has an excellent analysis about why the Dion-May pact is happening, and how we can stave off the need for deals like this in future elections. The article is short, so take a minute to read it over.

The problem is caused by our First Past the Post elections, which skew the number of representatives elected to favour a two party race. Since we’re trying to fit many parties into this system, we need our elections to adapt and become more Proportional in nature, so that so called third parties don’t “split the vote” by weakening support for only one of the two candidates at the top of the race.

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The Backroom Myth

The bloggers calling May a “backroom dealer” have a lot of nerve if they don’t support featuring the Green party in the televised leaders debates.

“The broadcasting consortium says that the decision about who is invited to participate in the leaders’ debates is made “on editorial grounds” and explained that in this (the 2006) election, the consortium has only invited the leaders of the four most prominent parties with representation in the House of Commons.”

If you want to talk about “backroom deals” you don’t get much more “backroom” than the broadcasting consortium deciding which parties will be seen by Canadian TV watchers. That’s where the subversion of democracy takes place in this country, not a discussion between two elected party leaders preparing party strategy for an election.

I think if you read over www.demanddemocraticdebates.ca you’ll agree that there are benefits for the country and our democracy if more parties are included in televised leaders debates. Don’t just add the Greens, but add other registered parties. It adheres closer to the Election Act that way, and more information on Canadian representatives isn’t a bad thing. Conservatives whine that the CBC doesn’t act its role of the public broadcaster enough. So why don’t they set aside a few hours either late at night, or in prime time, and tape delay or broadcast leaders debating live during the campaign? Is hearing more Peter Mansbridge really doing more for our country than listening to people running for office? CBC TV should be educating the public as well as entertaining, and many people find debates to be both educational and entertaining.

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Scott has more.
And there are all sorts of desperate NDP partisans trying to shut the barn door after the horses have already escaped. (Oh my, this is the second time writing today when I’ve referred to May or the Greens as “horses” figuratively speaking.) I can only say that it’s nice for the Greens to finally be noticed. And I predicted a while ago that the way it would happen would be when the NDP couldn’t stop attacking after some bold move by the Green leader. The Greens are the new Liberals, only in that they are the new target of the NDP attack machine that Layton has based his victory strategy upon.

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I should note I suppose, on a different subject, that I was contacted by a journalist/ism student at Carleton and am a thesis research subject. I gave a 30 minute interview about my blog and blog habits, over the phone on Tuesday and will probably be poked and prodded no further to the end of the study. I’m anticipating better results than the work of a professor out of Calgary who generalized bloggers as people who are more lonely than “normal” people.

I don’t know how much of the chocolate that makes it to North America is affected by this awful fact, but if it does, I have some proposed slogans for popular chocolate products.

(I am not looking to get sued, so let’s hypothetically say that every chocolate product producer is somewhat responsible for employing slave drivers, and take the following marketing suggestions with a grain of salt:)

Nestle Quik: Made by children not able to run Quikly away from servitude.
Caramilk secret? How do they get those running children into the cocoa fields?
Recharge on Mars! Named after a God of War only by coincidence.
Pot of Gold: Child labourers are like leprechauns.
Smarties: When you pay your children, do you pay the dead ones last?

Any one else like to suggest something snappier for their favourite treats?

Teun van de Keuken, 35, is seeking a jail sentence [for himself] to raise consumer awareness and force the cocoa and chocolate industry to take tougher measures to stamp out child labor.

“If I am found guilty of this crime, any chocolate consumer can be prosecuted after that. I hope that people would stop buying chocolate and thus hurt the sales of big corporations and make them do something about the problem,” van de Keuken said.[...]

I heard the interview on CBC radio the other day, and am outraged that candy companies not only exploit the health of children on this continent, but on impoverished continents as well.

Red Jenny has the money-quote:

Blood Chocolate. Blood Diamonds. Blood Oil. Blood Gold. Are you seeing a pattern? I’ll give you a hint: the problem isn’t chocolate. It’s this whole rotten global corporatism that ensures businesses are rewarded (hooray, stock increase, let’s go play golf!) for squeezing as much as they can out of those who actually make the stuff they sell.

And that isn’t “capitalism hating, liberal, lefty, socialist” mumbo jumbo either. It defines the problem with capitalism that we haven’t yet solved. Something needs to serve as the check to corporate greed, and it’s completely obvious that the “consumers will remove their support from bad businesses” theory isn’t working [quickly enough, or possibly at all]. The slavery and exploitation of entire weaker countries aside, capitalism is great! It’s especially easy to see that from Canada, and probably just a little bit harder for an African chocolate slave child to recognize the brilliance of a global system where you earn more the harder you work.