Abandoned Stuff by Saskboy

As usual, Saturday Night Live rules in musical parody for weekly TV right now.

Cool guys really don’t look at their explosions. But if you think about it, if they wanted to blend in, they would, or they would at least be running like everyone else.

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Hat tip to Alec

I hate this part, where I link to a song that is good, but the group stinks. At least the Boat is Real! I’m on a boat!

Spam and botnets are the allergies of the Internet. Recently the FTC in the US shut down a rogue ISP that was helping to clog the Internet with viruses, scams, and spams. So the Internet, email, and the Web are breathing a little easier. I wonder if this will spur the scammers to become more resilient, or if this will make a semi-lasting impact.

If only the FTC could shut down the Conservatives’ and Liberals’ 10%er mailbox spam too…

We can all use fewer ads. CanWest is workin’ on it.

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Of course, the supposed professional good guys aren’t much better than the crooks who make fake Anti-virus programs. If you have to pay for something on the Internet, and you don’t get something to hold in your hand as a result of payment, 99/100 it’s a scam or you don’t need to pay for it.

Duck family
vs.

Police cruiser
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DANGER!

Keep off… the ducks.

Would you off the ducks, or swerve at 100km/h on the only freeway in Regina where cars peel off into the ditch regularly because its the only curve in the road between Calgary and Winnipeg? Yes, no one wants to see ducklings run over at highway speeds, but I don’t want to see a police car jam on the brakes and cause a rear-ending on the Louis Riel Ring Road. I’m honestly surprised this …story?… made it into the Leader Post.

This reminds me of that TV show, I think it was 3rd Rock from the Sun, where they swerved to avoid a bag blowing across the road, in case it contained bunnies inside. (And that reminded me where I saw that genie in Charmed.) It’s good to avoid hitting wildlife, but if it’s smaller than you, and you’re at highway speed, swerving or hard breaking may be the wrong choice. If it’s a deer, by all means, swerve away; I did, and it probably saved my car that time out of Assiniboia a few Christmases ago.

Here’s a nifty link for people who can’t get a ticket to the UofR Convocation ceremony, but want to see Craig Oliver get his Honourary degree.

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“History in the Making: The Visual Archives of Kulwant Roy”

The reception, which will be attended by dignitaries such as University of Regina President Vianne Timmons and the Honourable Christine Tell, Minister of Tourism, Parks, Culture and Sport, will take place at 5:00 p.m. on Tuesday, June 2 at the 5th Parallel Gallery.

“History in the Making” is being sponsored by the University of Regina, the Indian Council for Cultural Relations, and the India Canada Association. The exhibit draws on the vast print and negative archives of Kulwant Roy, an Indian press photographer whose long-forgotten work remained unopened in boxes for more than a quarter of a century. Roy’s photos, which will be making their Canadian premiere at the 5th Parallel Gallery, include portraits of iconic personalities of India’s pre- and post-independence era.

The exhibit will be on display at the 5th Parallel Gallery from 11:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m. from May 27 to June 3. It will be open for extended hours from 11:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. from June 4-6 in conjunction with Mosaic, Regina’s annual multi-cultural celebration. Mosaic’s Indian Pavilion will be held adjacent to the 5th Parallel Gallery in the Riddell Centre Multi-Purpose Room.

For further information, please contact Michelle Brownridge at 585-5541
or fifthpar –@– uregina.ca.

Speaking with an expert on the collection, he showed me negatives of important meetings that determined the border of Pakistan and India, but the negatives are chemically fused together and need expert separation/reconstruction. The photographer, Roy, had also lost many important images during his travels to about 20 countries, when he shipped the proofs and negatives in boxes to his home, but they never arrived. He spent some of his final years looking through post offices and garbage dumps for the photos, but did not find them. He passed away in 1984.

Gandhi pops up in Regina everywhere. He’s at City Hall:

Confucius is too, a gift from a Chinese city:

- City Hall with fountain and “I <3 Regina” sign

Moore was ahead of the curve, and now GM has driven into a corner.
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ADDED:

-from Devin
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Goodbye, GM
by Michael Moore

June 1, 2009

I write this on the morning of the end of the once-mighty General Motors. By high noon, the President of the United States will have made it official: General Motors, as we know it, has been totaled.

As I sit here in GM’s birthplace, Flint, Michigan, I am surrounded by friends and family who are filled with anxiety about what will happen to them and to the town. Forty percent of the homes and businesses in the city have been abandoned. Imagine what it would be like if you lived in a city where almost every other house is empty. What would be your state of mind?

It is with sad irony that the company which invented “planned obsolescence” — the decision to build cars that would fall apart after a few years so that the customer would then have to buy a new one — has now made itself obsolete. It refused to build automobiles that the public wanted, cars that got great gas mileage, were as safe as they could be, and were exceedingly comfortable to drive. Oh — and that wouldn’t start falling apart after two years. GM stubbornly fought environmental and safety regulations. Its executives arrogantly ignored the “inferior” Japanese and German cars, cars which would become the gold standard for automobile buyers. And it was hell-bent on punishing its unionized workforce, lopping off thousands of workers for no good reason other than to “improve” the short-term bottom line of the corporation. Beginning in the 1980s, when GM was posting record profits, it moved countless jobs to Mexico and elsewhere, thus destroying the lives of tens of thousands of hard-working Americans. The glaring stupidity of this policy was that, when they eliminated the income of so many middle class families, who did they think was going to be able to afford to buy their cars? History will record this blunder in the same way it now writes about the French building the Maginot Line or how the Romans cluelessly poisoned their own water system with lethal lead in its pipes.

So here we are at the deathbed of General Motors. The company’s body not yet cold, and I find myself filled with — dare I say it — joy. It is not the joy of revenge against a corporation that ruined my hometown and brought misery, divorce, alcoholism, homelessness, physical and mental debilitation, and drug addiction to the people I grew up with. Nor do I, obviously, claim any joy in knowing that 21,000 more GM workers will be told that they, too, are without a job.
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Harper in late 2008:
“We have a budget that’s in surplus, not a budget that’s in deficit.” (7:30 video 1of13)
“We’re paying off debt in Canada, not adding to our debt. We are creating jobs in this country, even in this slow year we are still creating jobs.” – Stephen Harper, 2008

“We’re keeping the economy on course, we’re not going into a recession, we have a slowdown. We are concerned about the ongoing job losses [...]” (8:30 video 3of13)

From A BCer in TO

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CTV is also on track to be the most biased TV station nation wide. And CanWest Global is still broadcasting for now, so they have stiff competition! There will be plenty of media station do-overs in the coming year.

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Look out Stephen, another plagiarist is on the march.

Mac Davis and the Muppets:

To know me is to love me, I must be a hell of a man,
Oh Lord it’s hard to be humble, but I’m doing the best that I can!

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I would have loved to see the ocean as it was hundreds of years ago.

I’ve already reviewed the Star Trek movie, but there’s lots of interesting Star Trek links popping up all over the place. It’s a movie anyone can enjoy, because it’s fun, and doesn’t assume you know everything about the characters introduced.
The parodies of the movie buzz are great too.

Trekkies Bash New Star Trek Film As ‘Fun, Watchable’

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This may explain why there were so few cameo roles for the original cast. I really expected Shatner to at least appear in the film. Supposedly the writer’s strike may have interfered with Nichol’s appearance.

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Geeks love to discuss plot holes, or worse… time paradoxes and heresy :-O

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There’s not much better reading than Slashdotters discussin’ Star Trek. And $72 Million in opening week IS enough, duh!

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I have the Klingon Dictionary on my bookshelf, but it was only loaned to me, and I haven’t read it yet, I swear!

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Yes, this blog post is full of fluff, but it’s the long weekend so you’re not reading it anyway. And at least I didn’t talk about Obama’s mustard choice like some crack pot right-wing blog with nothing useful to say.

- From the Dog Blog

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Just Thursday I again thought that fast booting computers would really save power, since people wouldn’t be reluctant to turn them off when they are not being used. At least I use hibernate on my desktop computer (hold shift while shutting down, and Hibernate option appears where Standby button is, in Windows XP). Hibernate reduces startup time for me, because I leave my aps running while I shut off the computer — ready to be resumed.