Conservative Sex

Just how far can conservatives extrapolate? Well, with gay marriage, apparently they are tad more liberal with their imaginations than they are ever given credit for. Check out the Canadian Cynic for more.

Make IT Matter

Forrester's Best Practice Report, Make IT Matter For Business Innovation, quotes 2002 survey results of business and IT decision-makers to conclude that "IT organizations have lost their way." While it was recognized that IT is vital to business innovation, only 22% of respondents saw IT as a source of innovation. The usual suspects were dragged out to explain why there is a such a dim view of IT:

• IT is a constraint and lacks flexibility
• IT doesn't meet business expectations
• Support burden continues to increase
• IT wastes energy on prototyping toys with no clear business value.

IT used to be innovative, and can still change. There is significant, untapped value in IT staff that are under-utilized and not called on to be innovative. IT also has to retake its place at the business table, and remind their organizations that they're more than just an expense. Forrester lists key IT assets that are untapped for business innovation as:

Source: Forrester Research.

IT-enabled business innovation is given the following definition by Forrester:

Transforming a business process, market offering, or business model to boost value and impact for the enterprise, customers, or partners.

That definition is further refined by the following qualifying criteria:

Source: Forrester Research.

So how will IT get its groove back? Forrester has a hand 12-step, self-help program for business innovation recovery of IT organizations. After years of cutting, Forrester suggests that IT needs to rebuild its innovation talent, visibility and momentum.

Source: Forrester Research.

How your organization tackles the 12-steps depends on the state of IT, whether its drunkenly falling out of control or sobering to reality, and what type of IT organization it aspires to be. The 12-steps can't be tackled all at once, so there isn't going to be overnight recovery -- and therefore, it is most important for the intestinal fortitude to be there sustaining recovery.

With the short term thinking that organizations excel in, a 12-step recovery program that requires upfront investment and long term planning sounds like it will fail before it starts. That's what the outsourcing vendors and consulting firms count on of course -- organizations inability to do basic long term planning and investing. But, organizations can succeed on the 12-step program if they go for targeted investment, deliver results in the short term and slowly build on their successes.

An older Forrester report that I recently read also sparked similar thoughts. Consumer-Focused Innovation, summarized how forward thinking businesses are leveraging consumers in their innovation processes, to redesign process, develop new products and explore new channels. As I read the report, I couldn't help but draw parallels to the predicament of insourced IT shops that are struggling to "avoid the commodity death spiral." It's a good read in that context.

2006 Application Development

Forrester rolled out the crystal ball for the annual forecast of what the next year might bring -- and on the enterprise application development front, they see a slight shift in focus. Here's what they see coming:

• Governance -- auditability, traceability and accountability. (And I love that word!)
• Collaboration -- to be enabled with new tools for developers.
• High-Fidelity Prototyping -- "Early adopters are proving the value of being able to create near-perfect simulacra of proposed systems." (I love the buzzwords!)
• (Renewal of) Browser as Client -- rich, interactive and zero-footprint deployment apps via architectures such as AJAX.
• No Formal Standards -- formal standards adoption will decline as new technologies deliver more innovation.
• Multilingual Developers -- development languages are not as important as frameworks. Development landscape will become more diverse.

SOA Adoption on the Rise -- the theory should become practice as tools are released.
So, what does this all mean? Not as much as Forrester would probably want you to think. The really big shift the 2006 outlook predicts is the change in focus from formalized standards and locked in language selection, to selecting the right technologies to solve problems. This, coupled with "high-fidelity prototyping" suggests that the frenetic pace to be responsive, to deliver and be a source of innovation has not changed, and will likely increase.

Cost of Maintenance

According to Forrester, application vendors charge between 17-22% of license costs for application maintenance, with Oracle leading the pack. It amounts to re-buying the software every 4-5 years. What do you as a customer, get for such hefty fees? Well, if you call the vendor for help, little to nothing, as your bugs are usually already known and either fixed or on the roadmap for a future release.

For vendors with an acquisition strategy for growth, this is a lucrative revenue stream. Vendors use maintenance fees to fund future development. But what do you care? If your business processes are stable, you've had a few years under your belt with the software already -- so most bugs are known to you -- then you're getting nothing for your maintenance investment. So here's an idea -- stop paying maintenance fees, shore up in-house support and re-buy the software when you want new functionality.

Terror

"Large-scale attacks against civilians continue, women and girls are being raped by armed groups, yet more villages are being burned, and thousands more are being driven from their homes." -- UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, in a December 23rd report released at the UN. That is a fitting description of terror, and it is what is being played out in Darfur, Sudan, as armed militia roam unchecked and a power struggle ensues between rebel groups in the region.

The reasons for the conflict is complex -- but that's an excuse for more debate and inaction. It boils down to simply three reasons: race, religion and wealth. Where have we seen this before? Sudan has two peoples: Africans and Arabs. The Arabs are in power and control the wealth of the nation. The rebels of the Darfur region don't think they're being treated well in their own country. To combat the rebels, the Sudanese government armed Arab thugs and released them in Darfur. Read the quote from Annan again. That's the result. The UN has repeatedly called for the Sudanese government to disband the militias, but the government has done nothing. When will the world intervene? The government in Sudan has demonstrated its inability and lack of interest in ending the violence. It isn't looking for a truce or negotiations. The conflict, which started in the fall of 2003, is creating a state of unrest that only helps solidify their grip on power and the nation. It has also created a disaster that relief agencies and struggling to cope with, as refugees flee their homes to camps ill-equipped to handle them. The world is spending money and effort trying to deal with a refugee problem that is growing, yet is doing little to close the wound.

Where is the coalition of the willing? Nowhere. It is Africans after all that is suffering.

Mother Teresa vs. Bill Gates

Scott Adams asks the question on his blog: "Who is holier – Mother Teresa or Bill Gates?" It's a tongue and cheek question, with Adams just out for a few laughs in his post. (He goes on to ask is Santa Claus fought Jesus, who'd win?)

If we take the first question a little serious for a minute, it does become an interesting one. Not the holy part -- but a little rephrasing, "Who has had a more positive impact on the world – Mother Teresa or Bill Gates?" (I happen to believe that holiness is irrelevant -- irrelevant to living a life and irrelevant to each person's personal relationship with whatever god they believe in.) Mother Teresa dedicated her life to the poor in India, and in the process, gave to many that have nothing. Bill Gates on the other had, has targeted some of his fortunes on eradicating certain diseases, etc. Along the way, they've both influenced others with their positive work.

It's a question that has an answer in time. Today, the answer is Mother Teresa. She lives in the world culture, epitomizing the best of humanity. She has influenced the moral fibre of countless, inspiring to make little changes, give a little, be a humanitarian. We see in Mother Teresa, the best of what we can be. She continues to inspire and lead. Bill Gates on the other hand hasn't had the benefit of time. He's saddled with a multinational conglomerate with capitalist-totalitarian aspirations. I think he can reconcile his humanitarian ideals with his capitalistic aspirations, but thus far he's been sending a mixed message. He's for curing diseases -- but for truly helping the third world, he stops short when there are conflicts of interests with Microsoft. He inspires, but only the brotherhood of the rich. Gates has hardly reached the common folk as an example.

[I got to this after reading Ted Demopoulos' post on the topic.]

Bloggers Are Savage Children

This post is to introduce you to an idiot, a stupid person, a person in need of a lobotomy: Kathleen Parker, of the Orlando Sentinel, who did a recent piece on the blogosphere. She hates us bloggers. She's vicious. She's scared and on the defense. She holds herself above us, proclaiming journalists as the ideal models of integrity ... OK ... I'll stop there, cause you're laughing now. [This post was brought to you via the Canadian Cynic and Think Progress.]

Procrastination

Paul Graham has written an interesting article on procrastination. Graham postulates that

there are three variants of procrastination, depending on what you do instead of working on something: you could work on (a) nothing, (b) something less important, or (c) something more important.

He contends that the last variant is actually good procrastination. Type-C is the procrastinator that puts off the "small stuff to work on big stuff." The small is the stuff that you will never be remembered for when you die -- it's the work that is nothing more than errands in your life. Of course, putting off some of the small stuff could have a material and emotional cost, and could lead to you paying a hefty price later on. However, Graham suggests that even putting off some of that small stuff and paying the price in order to work on the big stuff will put you further ahead at the end. You simply can't do it all. If you're working on the small stuff, it invariably means you're not working on other things. You only have so many hours. If you want to kill something great, remind yourself of all the errands that must be done first before you can start or really commit to the great thing.

For the corporation, Graham labels office workers as Type-B procrastinators -- interrupt-driven people. They are the most dangerous type of people. They let errands consume their daily work lives instead of applying their time to real work. Think of the number of hours you've wasted on meetings that could have done without you. Think of the churn that ensues when the boss mentions that idea s/he has had. Type-B is worse when it's not acknowledged as procrastination, but rather, as work. Accomplishments are being made -- just the wrong ones.

Graham suggests that we all ask ourselves and those around us, the question Richard Hamming of Bell Labs used to ask:

What's the best thing you could be working on, and why aren't you?

Some related reading that Graham and his commenters referenced:

• You and Your Research -- talk by Richard Hamming
• Thinking as a Hobby -- William Golding [PDF]

Of Superfluids and Quark Stars

Researchers at Rice University have managed to achieve superfluidity with supercooled fermions in the lab. Fermions are the fundamental particles that constitute matter, coming as leptons and quarks, and having half-integer spins. (While Bosons are the particles that mediate the forces, such as photons, W vector, gluons and gravitons, and have integer spins.) There are of course, the composite particles that come as fermions or bosons -- without getting into a long explanation that I would probably screw up, let's just say it's all about the total spin of the particles and leave it as that. Full integer spin means a particle is a boson -- half integer spin means it's a fermion. In this case, the researchers used lithium-6 atoms -- fermions.

Source: The Particle Adventure

When cooled to near absolute zero, it has been predicted that fermions with equal but opposite spins would attract each other, forming pairs and behaving like a single particle. This change of phase allows superfluidity and superconductivity to occur.

In a superfluid, occurring in materials that are not electrically charged, there is zero viscosity, zero entropy and infinite thermal conductivity. While in a superconductor, in materials carrying an electrical charge, electrons can traverse the material without interacting with it -- there is no electrical resistance, and no interior magnetic field (you've probably seen the cool experiments where a magnet levitates due to this property). What is most interesting in this experiment, is that the researchers allowed the fermionic pairing to be unbalanced -- thus leaving some particles unpaired. Remarkably, the lithium-6 gas behaved just as would be expected if there was a complete pairing of fermions. This goes a step beyond what an MIT team had accomplished earlier this year.

What does this all mean? Who knows. It's nothing that's ready to have real world applications, but it does provide a platform for further studying of superfluids and superconductors. There is also speculation that the results from this experiment present the type of exotic matter found larger neutron stars, known as quark stars.

Better Than People

Japan is a country in some serious population trouble. Since the end of WWII, there was been a decline in the birth rate, and an increase in the aging population. The total population is expected to peak in 2006, and then enter a period of depopulation for the next 50-years. This period will be a live experiment for the social scientists, as they observe a dwindling youth population cope with an ever increasing aging population. Will Japan's society survive?

Japan is a very insular country -- hardly open to foreigners. (The only country that's more closed to foreigners is probably Korea.) It is a cultural thing, and it goes way back. The culture frowns on interracial marriages for instance, as there still a stigma attached to non-Japanese. Basically, the darker your skin, the more contempt you're viewed with. It's nothing short of racism. (Related reading: The Minority Interracial Couples -- a report reviewing the marriage patterns of ethnic minorities in California.) So barring a sudden change in the social norm in Japan, just how will they balance the load of the aging population on the backs on their youth?

Answer: robots. Japan is forging ahead, spending billions on R&D to make robots look, feel and act more human. Why? The Japanese are more at ease with robots than they are with people. Japan has been groomed on a culture that is accepting of robots -- from Astro Boy and his ilk to the native religion, Shintoism. For a pretty good article on the subject, check out Better than people in the latest issue of the Economist.

Modern Darwinism

The Economist is carrying a nice short essay on the story of humans. It serves as a short introduction to where Darwinism is today. The great lesson of Darwinism is that the strongest, fittest, will always survive. It's a great lesson for capitalist societies, where success is measured by how competitive one can be. But how to explain collaboration? According to social Darwinism, collaboration and competition coexist, pushing and pulling against each other -- neither one truly gaining total control. Human societies evolved collaboration through social interaction, and have worked out ways of ensuring its success. More collaboration occurs between individuals or groups that work together for shared success -- those that cheat, receive less collaboration, or are punished.

Humans may have evolved to be humans in the savannah or jungle, but humanity most likely evolved in society.

Peek-a-Boo

There's been a great amount of noise made recently about Bush's authorization for the NSA to eavesdrop on telecommunications without court approval. The authorization was given after 9/11, to allow spy agency to quickly narrow the scope on suspected terrorists. The Bush administration has steadfastly held that such ability to gather and analyze information is required for rapid response to suspected terrorism action. Critics have charged that the measures the spy agencies have taken violate civil liberties and privacy of Americans. Now, the New York Times that those early reports of the Bush administration enthusiasm, were only skimming the surface. What the NSA has been doing is nothing short of data mining the telecommunications flowing across the network backbone. The NSA has gained the cooperation of the major network carriers in gathering, analyzing and applying pattern recognition algorithms to data on just about every bit of electronic communications.

Now, did anybody seriously ever think that such things weren't actually happening? To a certain extent, if such things weren't happening, I'd be really worried. The James Bond era of gathering data via people in the field has been losing ground to more and more electronic surveillance for sometime. Spying on the bad guys, suspected bad guys and just plain looking for trouble before trouble finds us is a good thing. It should be happening. What I find troubling is the lack of oversight. Who's watching the watchmen? Here's where things get real murky for the Bush administration. Bush's response to such questions has typically been of the "trust me" nature. That's enough to leave 50% of American's coughing nervously -- for the rest of the world, that's probably closer to 100% -- especially as the New York Times is reporting that more and more international-to-international communications is flowing across American based telecommunications infrastructure.

Spying is good. Without oversight, it's bad. Part of that oversight should be metrics to assess whether the price freedom is paying for catching the bad guys is actually worth it. For all the spying that the Americans have been doing, I'd hope that someone is looking at their success rates and determining if it's all worth it. Maybe it is. Maybe it's not.

Do They Know It's Christmas?

Northern Kenya has been living with a three-month drought that has already taken the lives of people and livestock. Northern Kenya is an arid and hard place to live in, bordering with Ethiopia and Somalia -- it's also the poorest part of a nation that has one of the strongest economy in East Africa. With the arrival of the Christmas season, the attention of the nation has been turned to north, and criticism has been thrown at a government that has shown little compassion for the poor and dying -- until now that is. In a speech on Christmas eve, the Kenyan president has promised $40M in aid to the north, and has made an appeal to the international community to provide what aid they can.

Meanwhile, the world is set to wish Zambia a bad new year, as the UN has received no donations to fund food-aid for Zambian refugees in 2006. The refugees, fleeing from war torn neighbours of Zambia, have no where to go, and there is no long term hope for them unless the civil wars that rage in Angola and the Congo are brought to an end. Since there is no concerted effort by the international community to end the fighting, hope really is lost. Without food-aid for the refugees, hell will get a lot worse in Zambia. The UN is warning of starvation leading to deaths, as well as an upsurge of disease such as HIV/AIDS, as women and girls sell their bodies for food.

Well, tonight thank God it's them instead of you.

Top 10 Science Breakthroughs of 2005

Science magazine has published their top 10 science breakthroughs of 2005. Here it is as stolen from BBC News:

1. Winner: Evolution in action [PDF]. Genome sequencing and painstaking field observations shed light on the intricacies of how evolution works. (Related: Is the "Big Bang" in Animal Evolution Real? [PDF])
2. Runner up [PDF]: Planetary blitz. Europe's Huygens probe touched down on Saturn's moon Titan in January. It was joined by a fleet of other explorers, including Nasa's Deep Impact, which smashed a hole in a comet.
3. In bloom. Molecular biologists pinned down several of the molecular cues responsible for spring's vibrant burst of colour.
4. Neutron stars. Satellites and ground telescopes shed light on the violent behaviour of neutron stars; city-sized corpses of stars that pack matter into an extreme state.
5. Miswiring the brain. Researchers gained clues about the mechanisms of disorders such as schizophrenia, dyslexia and Tourrete's syndrome.
6. Complicated Earth. Comparisons of rocks from Earth and outer space forced scientists to scrap long-held views of how our planet formed.
7. Protein portrait. Scientists got their best look yet at the molecular structure of a voltage-gated potassium channel.
8. Change of climate. More evidence implicating human activities in global warming was presented, the magazine said. (Related: Tiny Bubbles Tell All [PDF])
9. Systems biology. Molecular biologists are looking to engineering in order to understand the behaviour of complex systems.
10. Bienvenue Iter. After 18 months of wrangling, the $12bn International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (Iter) got a home: Cadarache in France.

It's ironic to see evolution take the top honours, especially since 2005 has also been the year it came vehement attacks from the ignoramus-religious-creationist-unintelligent-design-freaks. Breakthroughs in 2005 reconfirms -- as if it was needed -- evolution as the foundation for biology. Much of the new findings was from genetic studies that showed how, at the fundamental biological level, life changes over time. It was exciting times for biological science.

Top 10 Weirdest Case Mods

fosfor gadgets has a year end list of the top weirdest case mods out there. Just when your old beige PC isn't good enough for you -- and you've got a bit of spare time on your hands .... The top 10 in reverse order: 10) The Microwave PC, 9) The Wallcrawler, 8) The WMD (my fave, pictured below), 7) The R2D2 PC, 6) The Lego Mac, 5) The Cyberpumpkin, 4) The Y2K Bug, 3) The Gingerbread PC, 2) The Toilet PC, and ... drum roll please, 1) The Miss Kanna PC (a PC built into a lifesized manga doll. Definitely some weird stuff!

"Pope delights crowds with Santa look ..."

... and scares the shit out of the rest of the world that actually have eyeballs connected to their brains. I'm not sure if the poopy-one was actually trying to pull off the Santa look by donning the camauro -- but I'm sure the similarities must have dawned on at least one of the sparks at the Vatican. The only problem is, the poopy-one stunk as Santa. Santa is a jolly fellow. Poop Benny looks like the Grinch.

Hats off to Eric over at The Panic Blog for bringing this one to my attention.

Stardust 06-01-15

NASA's Stardust spacecraft is set to return to Earth on January 15, 2006. Stardust has travelled 2.88 billion miles on its trip to Comet Wild. Along the way, it not only took samples of Comet Wild, but also of interstellar dust. Stardust itself won't land on Earth, but will instead drop its sample return capsule, which will brake its descent using parachutes and land in Utah, at the US Army's Dugway Proving Ground.

Juniper Sues

What do you do when anonymous users on the internet bad mouth you? Well, if you're a company like Juniper, you do the very, very stupid thing of suing. Yes, in the old world, defamation meant you sue. You could get away with silencing your critics because critical thought and their publication did not exist in a democracy. Forget it, there was no fair and unbiased media. Oh, but how the world change. Of all the companies in the world, you'd think Juniper would have this figured out. They, after all, help move the internet traffic around the world. You'd think they'd know all about the new world we now find ourselves in. In this new world, gagging your critics is the response of the guilty -- regardless of what the truth is. Trying to silence critics on a democratic medium like the internet just means handing more ammunition to your critics. Even if you win, you lose. Before you know it, there will be a groundswell of supporters for your critics. No matter what you do, the underdog will be championed. The little guy in this case will win the moral victory. If you think your critics are wrong, challenge them with words -- haul out the propaganda machine -- just don't try to hit them over the head.

Shame on you Juniper. I now believe your critics, and you've already lost the moral battle.

Google + AOL

Google has beaten Microsoft to the punch in tieing a small knot with AOL. Both Google and Microsoft have been sniffing around AOL for sometime, eyeing it's lucrative user base and advertisement business. Google has been a long time AOL partner -- quite a percentage of their revenue from AOL. Google acknowledged AOL's value to them this week by sinking $1B into AOL and agreeing to take a 5% stake in the company. Part of the new relationship calls for a lot of integration between AOL and Google's offerings.

King Kong

I was out with the crew from work tonight to add my few cents to Peter Jackson's coffers for his latest offering, King Kong. This outing of Kong was an amazing adventure film. It had monsters -- big monsters -- just about everything was big, except the people running from them. It had action -- more than just the big monsters chasing people -- there were monster fights. There was also the requisite humour, pulled off by Jackson, even in the scenes where you were at the edge of your seat. The first 30-minutes of the movie moved slowly -- but when it started moving, Jackson didn't give you excuses to blink. It was a heart-thumping 3-hour ride.

Best of all however, it was a love story. King Kong has always been a love story, although it has been reduced many times to a monster flick by those without the storytelling talent. In the versions of King Kong I've seen, I don't think any filmmaker came as close to Jackson's version, in getting Kong to express so much -- to communicate so much, and so well with the audience, without speaking. After you've taken away all the effects, the roller-coaster ride -- you will have left the love story, and Kong saying so much with his eyes, his expressions and his body language. At the end of the movie -- and there is no surprise with the ending of this movie -- you will be moved to tears, even though you knew what was coming. It was a great movie, and will certainly bear repeat viewing.

EnviroPublishing

I was reading the latest issue of idea&s: the arts & science review from UofT, when I came across the following on the inside cover:

Printed on Mohawk Options: the paper is made from 100% post-consumer reclaimed fibre, uses process chlorine-free pulp and is manufactured entirely with wind-generated electricity. It is certified in accordance with the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC).

So, how come more publications can't take advantage of paper and publishing like this?

Dust Devil

Dust Devil surprised me. I expected the standard fare in horror movies, it turned out that Dust Devil wasn't just a horror movie. It was a bit mystical, a bit fantasy -- and yes, a bit horror too, but don't let that distract you. The movie is set in South Africa, although some scenes were shot in Namibia. It follows Inspector Ben Mukurob, played by Zakes Mokae, who's tracking a serial killer through the desert towards the western coast and the sea. As Mukurob investigates, the case becomes more and more mysterious. The murders seem to be ritualistic in nature -- and murders of the pattern he's seeing have been recorded for since the early 20th century. The killer, played by Robert Burke, has been stalking his latest victim, Wendy Robinson, played by Chelsea Field, across the desert. Wendy is running from her husband and when she encounters the Dust Devil, she takes him to be a nice guy -- until she finds his collection of fingers from his former victims. The scene is then set for the showdown between Mukurob, the Dust Devil and Wendy.

Behind the horror, the movie also provided social commentary on racism in South Africa. The uneasy coexistence of the races gave the movie a quiet, but powerful tension. It charged different scenes with a disturbing undercurrent that at times was more unsettling than what the Dust Devil was doing. Mukurob is a black inspector with white officers under him -- yet his position of authority grants him nothing in their eyes. When he stops two corporals from beating a black, handcuffed witness in a jail cell, you could read what wasn't being said. They knew that if the Inspector was white, there would be no problem. You could also see them deliberating whether they should attack him too. In one scene, Wendy's car is stuck. She gets help from a black man to push it -- and she takes off. Once she could move, she didn't stick around to give him the chance to take advantage of a white woman. Wendy's husband, a former soldier in the South African army, is beaten mercilessly for appearing by mistake in an all black bar, instead of going in on the all white side of the bar. Mukurob is even told by a shaman, played by John Matshikiza, that he needs to stop being a white man in order to fight the Dust Devil -- he needs to start being a (black) man in order to understand the spirit world.

The cinematography is superb. There is long stretches of empty roads with the desert on either side -- desolate and barren. Sand is everywhere, dry with a melancholy personality -- sculpting the landscape with a sad beauty. There is one scene where Wendy and the Dust Devil are at the precipice, overlooking the sinuous Fish River Canyon (second largest after the Grand Canyon) -- the Dust Devil describes it as being made by some god that crawled into the world. It is a primordial and awe inspiring land. The tone and imagery of the desert is dreamlike -- which the movie plays with a lot. What is real and unreal doesn't matter -- only possibilities do. The ghosts from the characters past haunt their present, as if looking for some conclusion, appearing in their dreams to haunt the present with guilt. Similarly, the abandoned and dying towns that the Dust Devil visits are almost characters in their own right -- their ghosts almost palpable in the movie. It all works -- the desert landscape; the towns abandoned or falling into economic ruin; the sand that is everywhere; the decay of the social condition; and the story of the Dust Devil. It all comes alive with sad and eerie beauty.

If you're looking for something a little scary, a little haunting, check out Dust Devil. Chances are, you won't be disappointed.

Stoop and Scoop

My wife and I went for a short walk in a neighbourhood park this afternoon. I wanted to take some pictures, but it wasn't quite the day for winter photography. What we did find however, were a lot of dogs, out walking with their owners. Two groups we ran into, had dogs racing up to us for some attention, then racing back away from us. They were having fun. We also saw a lot of evidence that other dogs had been in the park since the last snow fall. Yellow stained snow, dog shit interrupting the white blanket of snow -- and stupid owners that decided to "stoop and scoop" -- but then, they hung their disgusting shopping bags from the branches of the trees in the park.

Dogs I can forgive. They're just being dogs. But the dog owners in the park today .... WTF's wrong with you people?! Since you seem to lack common sense, are you also illiterate? Can't you read the fucking signs?! (And leash your dogs before they hurt someone or themselves.)

Duh ...

Just how stupid is your average consumer? They would be if they don't find this advertisement a little insulting. My wife found it in the Toronto Star today. Not sure which genius came up with it, but they should hauled out and flogged publicly.

Sophie Germain

Sophie Germain (1776-1831) is considered one of the world's greatest mathematicians -- she studied math at a time when it was considered a man's profession, and French society did everything it could to discourage her research. She was well respected and acknowledged by Carl Friedrich Gauss and Joseph-Louis Lagrange -- the latter taking her on as a student. Some of her most important contributions to mathematics was in searching for a proof for Fermat's Last Theorm and creating a mathematical explanation for observed elasticity behaviour found in Chladni figures. Germain spent her lifetime on the periphery of mathematics and science, never fully accepted, never fully attaining the level of training she wished to have and never taken seriously. Her final work on elasticity was ignored and not published until it was found nearly 50-years after her death. Germain died of breast cancer, and her death certificate listed her as a property holder -- not a mathematician or scientist.

2004 XR190

First observed in December of 2004, 2004-XR190 is a newly discovered Kuiper Belt Object (KBO) that is just plain weird. It lies way out there, around 52-62 AU from the Sun -- but has what appears to be a complete circular orbit with a 47-degree inclination from solar plane. This means that it spends only 2% of its orbit in the solar plane, where most surveys for KBOs are done. Ideas have been dropped to explain the large eccentricity of the orbit, but none that are sticking.

Tolls on the Internet

Try this concept on for size. In order for you to surf to Yahoo's rich media site, or Google's highly efficient search engine, a fee is added to your broadband monthly invoice -- or your ISP delivers a bill to Yahoo and Google -- or worse than those two scenarios, your broadband provider makes a deal with a media or search service, opens the tap their sites, while throttling back the pipe to the competition. Why, after all, should the ISPs allow unrestricted use of their networks, when they can make more money with restricted access?

It would be akin to taking your bandwidth hostage, and that's exactly what some of the new economy internet services fear, as pointed out in this BusinessWeek article. The broadband service providers deny they're even thinking about this -- but do you really believe them? Get ready for the end of the free for all on the internet. Coming soon will be a fragmented internet, where you will have to pay for speedy, unrestricted access.

When Love Comes to Town

Tonight Toronto got its first big snow fall for the winter. It's still snowing out there, and weather people are having their moment. They're experiencing nothing less than rapture at being the centre of predicting the end of the world. The drive -- which I hardly ever do, unless I need the car at work -- was slow, coming home. I plugged the "pee-three" player into the car stereo and randomly selected a tune.

U2's When Love Comes to Town (Live from the Kingdom Mix) came deliriously through the speakers at me -- and for the seven minutes and twenty-nine seconds it played, I was the one in rapture. I suppose you need to be U2 fan. And if you haven't heard this version, I suppose you haven't been picking up the CD singles, because this track was included on one of them.

Take a listen to a low sample rip of it: When Love Comes to Town (Live from the Kingdom Mix). This version features the vocals of BB King and Little Richard, as well as the boys from U2.

Chimps vs. Humans

The NY Times is reporting on a recent study that pitted human children against chimps to figure out how we learn. Chimps were put through their paces to open an opaque box to get to food in a previous study. They were shown the steps they needed to take to open a door in the box. The steps included unnecessary steps. Surprisingly, when the chimps were given the same routine with transparent boxes, they saw that the unnecessary steps did nothing, so they skipped them and went straight for the prize. When those experiments were repeated with children, they imitated what they were taught even when they could reason that some steps were irrelevant.

Does this make chimps smarter thank kids? Not necessarily. It does tell us a few things about cognitive processes however. Chimps focus on their goal, while children are hardwired to learn by imitation. Probably goes some length in explaining why it's hard to change something that's been learned, no matter how logical it is to make the change.

Related reading:

• Causal knowledge and imitation/emulation switching in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and children (Homo sapiens) [PDF] -- Horner & Whiten, Journal of Animal Cognition.

Food Aid

Here's a question for you ... Do you think we're actually helping people at the brink of famine by sending them emergency aid? If you really think about it, it starts to get downright confusing. We can't help trying to be heroes -- or at least, give ourselves that pat on the back for doing a good deed -- especially if it was just easy to pull off. But when it comes to real heroic efforts, do we just cave at the required effort? Again, the answer you might get when you really think about it, might surprise you.

In the short term, yes, we make a difference. There are starving mouths that needs feeding. Children, the elderly and the sick and poor. Without food they are the first to die off. In the long term, they need to live to sustain a society. Yes, saving lives is good in the short term too -- and that's why we do it. We need to keep doing it. But we also need to do the real heroic stuff. Sending food is easy. Making sure that in the long term, we don't need to keep sending food -- that's the challenge. We need to be able to provide help for countries on the brink to recover, and sustain an independence in provisioning the basics to their population. A country can be poor, but can also be self-sustaining. We don't tackle these challenges however.

Why?

Our attention span for one. We move from one disaster to another, pulling people back just in the nick of time, then move on. We're also not motivated economically to help anyone but ourselves in the short term. The only thing that causes us to swoop in when there is a disaster, is the few humanitarians amongst us that just won't shut up -- and perhaps a little guilt we feel from time to time. We don't think long term, because if we did, we'd realize that giving people help so they can sustain themselves in the long term is actually good for us economically. Put simply: if they could feed themselves, we could stop sending food for free to them; if they could feed themselves, they'd be more productive; if they were more productive, maybe they'd generate some meager income; and if they had money, we could sell them stuff they don't really want. The great circle of capitalist life! Hooray to globalization! It would be nice if we could also stop them from being distracted with the need to keep killing themselves so they wouldn't screw with the great capitalist plan.

Unfortunately, we appear to be too dumb to grasp that giving them the means to sustain themselves will eventually open their wallets to us. It would seem to me that that would be a great motivator to base tenet that really drives us: greed. It seems however that greed is also a double edge sword. Short term greed. Ever wonder about the amount of money tied up in delivering the food to those on the brink of famine? It takes a lot of money to get aid to where it is needed each year. So why would those with a vested interest in making money delivering short term fixes want to see sustaining happen?

Related reading:

• Malawi food experts question emergency aid system - from Reuters.
  
• Dependency and humanitarian relief: a critical analysis - from the Humanitarian Policy Group.
  
• UN World Food Programme reports of Food Aid.
  
• Hunger and the Globalized System of Trade and Food Production - from the Global Policy Forum.
  
• US Food Aid: Time to Get it Right [PDF].

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

We actually made it out as a family to see The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, tonight. Although that wasn't the plan. We were going to catch it later this month, and see the Harry Potter movie tonight, but due to a mix up, The Chronicles of Narnia presented itself instead.

The movie is not LOTR -- although it may be a junior. It was made for a younger audience, but a great story is a great story, and the movie brought it to life very well. The actors pulled off their parts without a problem -- especially Georgie Henley (10-years old), who played Lucy, and Tilda Swinton, who played the White Witch. The effects were tremendous -- so good, that they were seamlessly integrated into the movie. All around, this is a great film -- worth the price at the theatre, and will bear repeated watching.

Happy Tail Ale

Happy Tail Ale. The site describes it as:

Non-alcoholic and non-carbonated, our Happy Tail Ale is the ultimate liquid refreshment for your best friend. Our brew is made with choice malted barley and filtered water, featuring all-natural beef flavorings. Plus, it's fortified with Glucosamine and Vitamin E!

What is it? It's beer for dogs. I kid you not!

Windows Live Local

Microsoft isn't sitting idly by and letting Google eat their breakfast, lunch or dinner -- they're fighting back in true Microsoft fashion -- copying the competition and building on what's already out there. Windows Live Local is Microsoft's version of Google Local, which provides localized information via their map and search engines. Check them out and decide which best serves you.

Google Transit

Another Google Labs product has made it to prime time, in beta. Google Transit proposes to give you transit trip planning information to help you get from point A to B. The site gives you departure and arrival times; estimated time for walking; and does a cost comparison between taking the public transit and driving. Current beta version only seems to have Portland, Oregon information, but I expect that Google will provide more cities as Google Transit proves itself.

Google: any information, anywhere, at any time. Way cool!

The People Under the Stairs

Wes Craven's the People Under the Stairs is a classic horror flick from one of the masters. It's horror, with a touch of humour added, making it all the more entertaining. It's not a serious movie by any means. Brandon Quintin Adams stars as Fool, a kid with a sick mom, living in a run down apartment building in a neighbourhood left behind by success. His family is about to be evicted because they've missed a monthly payment, and Fool needs money -- so he agrees to a plan with Leroy, played by Ving Rhames, to rob the family that owns his apartment building. That's when things go wrong. The family that owns his building are way, way out there.

To start with, it's a brother and sister, who refer to each other as Mom and Dad -- played by Wendy Robie and Everett McGill. They have a child living with them, Alice -- played by A.J. Langer -- that they had kidnapped because Mom wanted a child. They beat and torture her -- never letting her out of the house -- never letting her have friends. Alice lives in fear. When Fool and Leroy breaks into the house, they get a lot more than they bargain for. For starters, Mom and Dad return home early, and Fool and Leroy can find no way out. They house is totally secured. All windows are bolted, locked and secured from the outside. Not to prevent people from entering, but to prevent people from leaving. What follows is a mad chase through the house -- first by the dog that has a craving for human flesh, then by Dad, dressed in leather outfit and firing a shotgun. Leroy falls, but Fool manages to escape with a little help from Alice and her friend, Roach, played by Sean Whalen.

It seems that Alice isn't the only one trapped in the house. Mom and Dad, and whoever before them, have been kidnapping children and when they misbehave, dumping them in the basement to fend for themselves -- feeding them the flesh of hapless victims that made the mistake to knock on their door. Roach escaped from the basement, but since the house is secure, can't escape the house, so he roams the passageways between the walls. He leads Fool and Alice away from Mom and Dad -- but no for long, as the hunt is on. Mom finally figures out that Alice has been a bad girl, and gives the blood thirsty Dad free reign to punish her -- the only ones in his way are Fool and Roach. Can they fend off an crazy and angry Dad? Can they survive the dog that has tasted human flesh? Can they find a way out of the house before they too fall victims to the madness of Mom and Dad?

Like I said, the movie is an entertaining horror -- with slapstick humour that will make you laugh despite yourself. The actors pull off their roles very well. McGill is great with bloodthirsty madness. Adams and Langer are amazing for young actors -- they were 12 and 17 when the movie was filmed. Wes Craven kept the film at a good frenetic pace. His "Mom and Dad" characters are freaky. Overall, the film was great, and worthy for a Friday, late night watching with a big bowl of popcorn.

International Criminal Court to Probe Darfur

The UN refers to Darfur, Sudan, as one of the worse humanitarian crises on the planet, with a high number of murders, mass rapes and other crimes. This past March, the UN Security Council directed prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Moreno Ocampo, to investigate allegations. The UN handed over evidence and directed Ocampo to suspects. Unfortunately, Ocampo has not been able to interview witnesses inside Sudan, and has had to rely on witnesses that have escaped the country. Further, he doesn't think he has the ability to protect witnesses that come forward, especially since some of the suspects are within Sudan's government and military. There seems to be little hope for the ICC to make inroads into the atrocities being committed in Durfur.

It is interesting to note that the ICC, created in 1998 by the Rome Treaty, has only been ratified by 100 countries so far. It was specifically created as a permanent global war crimes tribunal to try individuals for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity committed after July 1, 2002. One of the holdouts for ratification is the United States, which specifically opposes the International Criminal Court because it could be used to try US soldiers who have committed crimes in war zones where the US military operates. Further, the US has been busy trying to sign pacts with other nations to shield its citizens from being prosecuted by the ICC for crimes.

Related reading:

• Entrenching Impunity: Government Responsibility for International Crimes in Darfur -- by the Human Rights Watch

Windows Live Mail

Microsoft's big push into web services is coming under the "Live" banner. One of the big offerings will be the Hotmail replacement, being built from the ground up using AJAX. You can sign up to give it a test run if you already have a Hotmail account. To get a sneak peek at what's to come, check out the blog associated with the product. Microsoft is about to turn Outlook into a web-based email service, and in the process are adopting some pretty non-standard standards.

The Pods Have It

My "pee-three" player is stuck in my car, so I only listen to it when I'm driving around. Recently, here's what came blasting from my car speakers ... all random of course.

• Lowest of the Low -- Salesmen, Cheats and Liars
• REM -- It's the End of the World As We Know It
• Eddie Grant -- Electric Avenue
• Band Aid -- Do They Know It's Christmas
• Concrete Blonde -- God is a Bullet
• Siouxsie and the Banshees -- The Passenger
• The Kinks -- Come Dancing
• Technotronic -- Pump up the Jam (Remix)
• U2 -- Mysterious Ways (Massive Attack Mix)
• U2 -- Numb (Gimme Some More) (Dignity Mix)
• MC 900 Ft. Jesus -- The City Sleeps
• Paul Hardcastle -- 19
• Leftfield -- A Final Hit
• Doors -- Light My Fire
• The Art of Noise -- Catwalk
• The Fifth Element -- Lucia di Lammermoor
• Guns 'n' Roses -- Paradise City
• Prince -- U Got the Look
• Clash -- Rock the Casbah

Domino

I'm tired from a long day, so I'm dispensing with any further thinking tonight. Hence a movie review -- of sorts. I saw Domino a while back when it first hit the theatres, with the guys from work. It's based on a true story -- sort of. I'm too lazy to do any research to tell you what that really means. But that hardly matters -- in fact there isn't much that really matters in this movie. It's all about Keira Knightley, playing the real life Domino Harvey, and kicking butt, giving attitude and not a damn about much else.

The movie is a cross between a music video and not-so-good-rips of ultraviolent movies such as Snatch and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. On the surface, it had the potential. It certainly had attitude. It also had Mickey Rourke, Edgar Ramirez, Delroy Lindo, Christopher Walken, and a small role by Lucy Liu. Unfortunately, there was Tony Scott -- the director. He didn't realize the potential of the story, and shot the entire movie stylized as a music video. It was like a movie for people who suffer from ADD. Everything was blam! -- in your face. It was so stylized, it distracted from the movie -- stopping if from being a great movie, and making it so-so.

My recommendation: catch it on DVD, on the small screen, so you don't get a headache.

The Handgun Conundrum

This post is in response to Glyn Evans' post on the Liberal party's proposal to ban handguns in Canada. You just know he was going to get some fiery response to that post. Well, this isn't going to be one of them.

In my humble opinion, if someone really wanted to kill someone, having a gun in hand or not, wouldn't stop them. They'd kill anyway. Crimes also happen, and will continue to happen without guns. People committing random acts of violence as the whim strikes them will happen with or without guns. The whole gun debate has become politicized and the politicians are simply using the topic for their advantage. Politicians should be shot for that.

What it really comes down to is gun owners. You're a bunch of scary people to us non-gun owners. Quite simply because you have the ability to blow our brains right out of our heads -- and we kinda like our brains just where it is. It's an irrational fear. We should fear your pickup trucks and SUVs, because you could simply flatten us as well -- but we kinda understand them. We just don't understand guns -- so it scares us.

So, to combat this irrational fear, I propose the following. Take your non-gun owner friends for outings, where they can socialize with you and your gun. Get them to understand your need to enjoy this aspect of our freedom. Kill something with them. Bond. Build the trust, defuse the fear. Put a gun in their hand, and take the lead.

Muslims Against Condoms

Gaaaa! Where do these people get their logic?! In Chennai, India, one of India's worst hit state with HIV/AIDS, the Tamil Nadu government, along with India's National AIDS Control Organization, plans on installing 500 condom dispensing machines -- increasing the rollout with additional 1,000 more later. You would think this investment in their future would be welcome by the populace, but you would be so far from the truth. The Muslim groups within the Tamil Nadu state are up in arms. They feel that condoms would degrade women and corrupt the young by promoting sex outside marriage in the younger generation. WTF? Are these stupid old people (and the young sheep that follow) aware that the younger generation is already doing that? Why do they think unmarried people are being infected?

Conservatism is going to be the death of us all.

Smart Rock

I received the following via email. Thanks DH.

Troll

Troll was surprisingly not a bad movie. It was made in the mid-1980s and suffered from what looks like a low budget. What made it OK was the story -- a pretty good fantasy story. In a small apartment building, a troll, Torok, is slowly taking over the different units by transforming their owners into trolls and their units into parts of the troll kingdom. He only has three days to complete his deed, and if successful, the troll kingdom will burst forth from the building and take over the world.

Torok starts by kidnapping young Wendy, from the family that had just moved into the building, and taking her place. Jenny Beck gave a great performance as Wendy -- especially when she acted as Wendy-Torok. That kid can growl. As Torok transforms the apartments and people in them -- one of which was Sonny Bono (which was fun to watch) and the other, Julia Louis-Dreyfus (who was turned into some kind of forest sprite?) -- Jenny's brother, Harry Potter Jr. (yup), is the only one who seems to know something strange is going on. Harry eventually gets help from Eunice St. Clair, a witch, who lives in one of the apartments, to fight off the trolls and save his sister.

Even though the effects were primitive -- and costumes bad -- the acting was pretty good, and delivered the story. I wish I can say Troll II was just as good -- but it was crap. There was no story; the effects were worse than the first movie; the acting was shit; and I just wished all the characters would be killed off so the movie would end early.

Aeon Flux

I have to open up this little post with an admission -- I've never seen Aeon Flux, the animated series. So I didn't have the fan baggage when I went with the guys recently to see Aeon Flux the movie -- not that the baggage would have helped. The movie was just crap.

Let me start with the story. I can suspend belief -- but when faced with the load of crap that was passed as a story in this movie, no amount of suspension could have gotten my belief off the ground. I managed to get past the plausibility of the premise, but then the love story, the good guy versus the bad guy bit ... I just couldn't get over it. The lines fed to the actors were so bad that I cringed every time they opened their lips to talk. Then there was the lack of action. The characters spent a lot of time in the movie running. Yes, I understand that it is one city that is left standing after the end of the world -- but didn't anybody use even a bicycle? That sure would have helped rather than watch Charlize Theron try to run. The fight sequences were equally pathetic. This is the future -- and while Sophie Okonedo's Sithandra had cool feet -- it just wasn't enough. The rest of the action was just conventional. I wasn't expecting the fight sequences from the Matrix, but some tom-foolery-kung-fooery was expected. The last and most unfortunate absentee from the movie was effects. Maybe the moviemakers were trying to keep the effects subtle. Maybe they thought they could overwhelm us by underwhelming us ... or maybe director Karyn Kusama doesn't know what to do with special effects. Don't know what the lame excuse was, but it resulted in what has to be the most invisible use of special effects for a SciFi movie ever.

The only good thing I can say about the movie is the poster. It looks cool. Everything else sucks. I wouldn't waste money on it -- not even as a rental. Download it, watch as much as you can bear, then delete the crap off your machine.

Richard Pryor is Dead

Richard Pryor died of a heartattack this morning after being rushed to the hospital from his home. His website seems to be having troubles ... but, it used to welcome visitors with, "I ain't dead yet, M***********!!'' I hope they don't change it. Wherever he is now, I'm sure the place just got a whole lot more interesting.

The Nuclear Option

The Ontario Power Authority has published the Supply Mix Advice Report that recommends energy plans for Ontario in the next 20-years. The report is quite large -- over 1,000 pages. If you're interested, but aren't up for the torture, refer to the summary.

The report assumes that conservation activities will save energy over the next 20-years, but also predicts increased energy demands due to economic and population growth in the province. The net effective is about 0.9% increase in energy demands per year for the next 20-years.

A bunch of assumptions went into the planning. It is most likely wrong, but that hardly matters. It makes predictions, and whether we choose to accept them or not, the hard facts are that we need to do something now, as tomorrow is coming. Continuing to use fossil fuels is not an option. Importing electricity is not such a desirable option either, as the infrastructure will need to be laid, and, really, we should be self-sufficient. Renewable resources is definitely a good option, and should be pushed hard -- even if it costs a little more in the short term. Of course, you don't want energy costs to strangle the economy either, as the net effect would be a vicious circle that loops back to prevent further investment in renewable energy technologies. Then there is the nuclear option. Already, a slew of groups have gotten their underwears in a knot and launched salvos against this option. Some of their thinking is moronic and just wrong. Other concerns are quite valid, but not enough to dismiss the nuclear option.

Our current nuclear capacity is going to be in for an overhaul in the next 20-years as existing plants reach the end of their lifespan. That is great news, because nuclear technologies have progressed since those plants were first built. Canada has a good nuclear program, as evidenced by our winning international bids to build reactors in other countries. It's about time that we replace the existing reactors with newer, safer, cheaper and less complex plants. We can't continue to grow and maintain the lifestyle we're used to, solely by conservation and using renewable energy. (Not that renewable energy doesn't have its own problems -- it does -- nothing really comes for free.) The nuclear option is a viable option. Yes, there are drawbacks, and with the commitment to nuclear energy in Ontario, we should also be looking at ensuring some of those drawbacks -- such as storage of nuclear waste, find answers.

pearLyrics

pearLyrics was a freeware Mac app that downloaded the lyrics of MP3s being played from publicly available websites. Was. It was, because Warner/Chappell sent the author of the app a cease and desist letter, because he was infringing on their copyright by ... hmm ... this is where I got lost. For what? For finding the lyrics of the songs online and displaying them on a user's computer? Any browser + search engine combination does exactly the same thing! Just when will corporations realize that they're taking this whole ownership thing a bit too far?

Infoporn

I was asked about this word -- is it rude? No, not really -- but, to quote the Buddha, "We are what we think." So, those who think it rude ... and then check out the PseudoDictionary, that says:

infoporn - Thorough, comprehensive information about a meaningless subject.

Life before the Pod People

Randomly breaking through my "pee-three" player:

• Offspring -- Why Don't You Get a Job
  
• Soul 2 Soul -- Back to Life
  
• Gallon Drunk -- Ruby
  
• My Life with the Thrill Kill Cult -- After the Flesh
  
• Rob Base & DJ EZ Rock -- It Takes Two
  
• Ace of Base -- Beautiful Life
  
• (Unknown Maori Singer) -- Haere Ra
  
• The Proclaimers -- I Would Walk 500 Miles
  
• Prince -- Sign O the Times
  
• Nirvana -- All Apologies
  
• Concrete Blonde -- The Sky is a Poisonus Garden (Live)
  
• David Bowie -- Space Oddity
  
• Sinéad O'Connor -- I Want Your (Hands on Me)
  
• U2 -- Out of Control (Live)
  
• Madness -- One Step Beyond
  
• Cameo -- Word Up
  
• Murray Head -- One Night in Bangkok

Buddha Rising

The latest issue of National Geographic magazine carries an article that takes a look at Buddhism around the world. Originally from what is now Nepal, Buddhism was founded by prince Siddhartha Gautama, who sought to ease suffering he saw in the world. He spent a lot of time in meditation that finally resulted in his four noble truths -- and the eightfold path that leads to a life of wisdom. Buddha never intended his philosophy to become a religion -- and today, it's the fifth largest religion in the world -- he taught that each individual should experience things for themselves, and find their own truth. In fact, Buddha encouraged a challenge to authority.

It is fascinating then to look at the current state of Buddhism in the world, and its latest resurgence. From 500 BC to today, the movement has come a long way, and survived many attacks. For a philosophy that espouses non-violence, it didn't really need to rely on conquering and subjugating of populations to grow its ranks. It welcome and embraces people of all cultures and religions -- not requiring you to convert, as it isn't a religion itself.

Hope in Hell

Humanitarian aid currently tackles some of the worse crisis in the world, from New Orleans to Uganda. Yet, as effective as governments, the UN and NGOs are at delivering aid, they are also at times totally ineffective. Lack of financial muscle, targeted donations, the ever shifting focus of the media from one disaster to another, and simply the lack of caring for our fellow humans, all contribute to escalating disasters around the world. National Geographic takes a look at a few recent disasters: the US Gulf Coast hurricane flooding; South-East Asia tsunami; the earthquake of Bam, Iran; war torn Afghanistan; and the armed insurgency of northern Uganda. There are stories of hope within the hell, helplessness and frustration of aid workers -- ordinary people, in extraordinary jobs, bringing a little hope and respite.

We've all heard the stories of official inaction in New Orleans. The American Red Cross was ordered to stay out of New Orleans by Homeland Security during the initial days of the disaster -- and the government bureaucrats held back on professional aid workers and aid shipments while they discussed how best to deploy them. All this from the country that just several months ago, responded to the call for help from South-East Asian countries, with a massive humanitarian effort. During those early days in New Orleans however the best came out of some people.

"On Friday afternoon [Sept. 2nd] a late-model Chrysler barreled around the corner from Julia Street and headed south on Convention Center Boulevard. It jerked to a stop in front of the building, and a young man with cornrow braids wearing a giant T-shirt and baggy jeans stepped out. A young woman who rode in with him threw open the trunk, which was filled with crates of orange drink. As people from the crowd swarmed the car, she shouted that the delivery was specifically for women with young children."

There are heroes, but the world sometimes does little to help them. Sometimes the world forgets, and humanitarian aid arrives too late, or just never gets where it should go. Promises are made when a disaster is on the international stage, but when the attention wanes, so are the promises forgotten. $131M was promised for earthquake relief in Iran, but only about $17M actually made it. There was overwhelming initial response from the world to the tsunami disaster in South-East Asia -- so much so, that the professional humanitarian organizations found themselves competing and being distracted, by amateurs. Even the Scientologists showed up. The media made the tsunami the biggest thing happening in the world. Makes you wonder if some of the 'volunteers' were there to help those in need, or to feel good about themselves. The HIV/AIDS pandemic takes as much life as the tsunami every three weeks -- but where's the outpouring of help?

"Dr. Kees Rietveld, a veteran humanitarian health worker remarked, 'Somehow, people just seem to accept that Africans are starving or getting killed. It's no big deal. But when you have blond Swedish children or a Czech fashion model swept away by some tidal wave, that's a totally different matter.'"

At the same time as the world is doing little to help those providing humanitarian aid, so too is getting worse for aid workers on the ground. They've become targets in the countries they operate in. In Afghanistan, Iraq and various parts of Africa, it has become acceptable to take aid workers hostage or kill them. They've become targets, and as a result, it is worse for the civilians stuck in hell. Take northern Uganda, where the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) has been waging a 19 year insurgency to topple the government in order to establish strict Christian rule. At night, the LRA sneaks into villages to kill, mutilate and kidnap children to serve as slaves and fighters. NGM tells the horrifying story of a little boy, Dick.

" 'I could hear them come into the village. There was a lot of shouting. They came to our hut and pointed guns at us. We were very scared.' The men forced him and six other boys, including his brother, to loot the trading post. 'We put everything on our backs. They beat us and pushed us into the bush. Then we had to walk.'
 Once in the bush, the boys were distributed as personal slaves or soldiers to the commanders. As for the captured girls, they were offered to individual rebels as soldiers, sex slaves, or wives. Those who would not obey, or who cried, were beaten; some were killed.
 Dick received basic military training and was often forced to watch civilians being tortured and murdered. Sometimes he and the other boys had to stab or bludgeon people to death; otherwise, they too would be killed. 'Then we had to drink their blood,' he said, fidgeting with his fingers. 'They made us drink so that we became part of the dead people. This way we all killed.' "

The stories are horrifying, yet how many in the world know about Dick or the other children like him in Uganda? Why don't we want to know? Why aren't we helping? Why aren't we doing something about this? Unfortunately, it's politics and short term gain. There is no romance in the setting about to make long term changes for the better. So hell continues.

X-Men 3

Whet your appetites fanboys and fangirls ... look what's coming atcha in May 2006!

Kelsey Grammer as the Beast.


Ben Foster as Angel.

Uh-oh

At 1,667ft and 700,000 tonnes, the Taipei 101 building in Taiwan, is the world's tallest building -- and maybe the heaviest. It has given the Taiwanese bragging rights -- but may also be causing a collective, "uh-oh" just about now. Apparently, the building is so heavy, that its downward pressure may have reopened an ancient earthquake fault, that has resulted in more earthquakes. Other experts doubt that conclusion, but it makes you wonder about some of the other man-made schemes that are inadvertently messing with the planet.

Hubble Mosaic of the Crab Nebula

NASA and ESA has released this image of the Crab Nebula -- a six-light-year-wide, and expanding at 1,000 km per second, remnant of a star that went supernova. The neutron star at the nebula's centre, the Crab Pulsar, is about 10 km in diameter and rotates at 30 times per second. The event was recorded by Chinese and Arabian astronomers in 1054 -- being visible in the sky during the day for almost a month.

Simply spectacular.

Image from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope.


The Crab Nebula: Composite Image from Hubble in the Optical and Chandra in the X-Ray -- released in 2002.

For the Pod People

Randomly blasting from my "pee-three" player tonight on my trip to get my daughter from school, were:

1. Daniel Lanois - Still Water
   I was first introduced to Daniel Lanois via U2, as I believed he either produced, or were involved with some of their 'rock' albums. He's Canadian, if you don't know. Larry Mullen and Adam Clayton contributed drums and bass to this song.
   
2. Rage Against the Machine - Darkness (of Greed)
   I found this song, and Rage Against the Machine via the Crow soundtrack. The Crow had some awesome songs on the soundtrack, with groups such as The Cure, Machines of Loving Grace, Stone Temple Pilots, Nine Inch Nails, Violent Femmes, Rollins Band, and The Jesus and Mary Chain lending songs to the cause.
   
3. M - Pop Music
   I only know about M because U2 used "Pop Music" as the anthem for their Pop tour. It's a catchy pop tune.
   
4. Prince - Darling Nikki
   Let's face it, the boy is a perv. But he makes it art!
   
5. U2 - Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me
   I'm a BIG U2 fan. So, I purchased the Batman soundtrack just for this song. The video for the track can be found on Wopvideos.
   
6. Fine Young Cannibals - She Drives Me Crazy
   Yes, I like the FYC. Interesting note, lead singer Roland Lee Gift also starred in the really cool, and somewhat perverted movie, "Sammy and Rosie Get Laid."
   
7. Ministry - Corrosion

Yes, believe it or not, I used to listen to Ministry. Still like a few of their tracks, even though I've now relaxed a little.

Lenford "Steve" Harvey

Third world nations are right next door to us, although many of us fail to notice them. One such country is Jamaica. Jamaica is a great tourist destination for affluent North Americans, but also quite the backwards country. It is a country with one of the highest murder rates in the world -- 1,383 killed so far in 2005. It is also a country where homosexuality is illegal, and gay men in particular, face hate crimes and harassment from police. Gay men are still blamed for the transmission of HIV, although two thirds of HIV transmission is through heterosexual contact. Not the kind of place I'd like to go and spend my tourist dollars.

Lenford "Steve" Harvey, a leader in Jamaica's AIDS community, who ran Jamaican AIDS Support for Life -- and is openly gay, was shot dead on the eve of World AIDS Day. Four gunmen broke into his home, stole some cash, tied up two of his housemates, and drove off with him. His body was found later with gunshot wounds to his head and back. Steve Harvey could have stayed in the closet -- he knew the risks of being openly gay. He also knew the risks of working with homosexuals and HIV/AIDS victims. He did his work despite those risks, and paid with his life for his integrity.

Internet is Bad for You!

The New York Times has an article internet addiction. Estimates put internet addiction at around 10% of total surfers -- many of whom go online to further other addictions -- or already have other problems, and seek the internet out for the escape it provides. I don't know about all of this -- I believe there are people out there who are obsessives. An obsession is neither a good thing or a bad thing -- it's what you do with it. If you let your obsession take over your life to the detriment of everything else, then that could be bad. Or could it? There are obsessions where people sacrifice of themselves for non-selfish reasons. That could be good. I know that personally, I'm an information junkie -- and the internet is one way of satisfying that craving, although not the only way. I find that I crave other media as well.

What is your obsession? How do you satisfy it? And have you sought help?

Cartoon by Randy Glasbergen.

Coming to a Podcast Near You

Randomly screaming out of my "pee-three" player tonight:

1. Daara J - Boomrang
   
2. Pink Floyd - Learning to Fly
   
3. Rammstein - Du Hast
   
4. The Immortals - Theme from Mortal Combat
   
5. Talking Heads - Burning Down the House (Live)
   
6. U2 - Discotheque (Hexedecimal Mix)
   
7. Guns 'n' Roses - Live and Let Die
   
8. Microchip League - New York, New York
   
9. U2 - Lemon (Perfecto Mix)
   
10. The Cure - Love Song
    
11. Deep Forest - Deep Forest
    
12. Tragically Hip - New Orleans is Sinking (Killer Whale version)
    
13. Shaggy - Hope
    
14. Machines of Loving Grace - Golgotha Tenement Blues

Day After Tomorrow

Researchers at the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton, UK, have found a 30% reduction in warm currents that carry water north from the Gulf Stream. This finding has been long predicted as a possible consequence of global warming, and predictions have further warned that such an outcome could plunge Europe into a mini-ice age. The researchers are unsure if their findings suggest a short-term change, or if this is a trend that will continue for the long-term.

Meanwhile, at the UN Climate Change Conference in Montreal, Australia and the United States remain unconvinced that global warming is actually happening, and don't see the need to ratify the Kyoto Protocol.

Related reading:

• Ocean Slides -- visual guides to ocean circulation.
  
• Temperature of the Gulf Stream -- from NASA's Visible Earth site.
  

The Gulf Stream, courtesy of NASA.

Are you a Victim of Technoism?

Walter Derzko writes on his blog about "technoism." What is "technoism?" It's defined as a "suppressed skepticism and blind compliance with regards to the technology revolution in our lives." A self-assessment [PDF], to determine if you're a victim of technoism was created by Beverly J. Davis at Purdue University in 2003.

Google Watching

Google's market cap is over US$120B, with its stock trading at over US$400/share. All this from revenues of around US$6B. That explosive growth, coupled with a culture that values brilliance, has made Google the envy of techdom -- as well as earned it the disdain from everyone who has felt the brunt of its arrogance. With the money and clout it has, many are expecting acquisitions to drive its growth -- but Google has thus far avoided big purchases. It has stuck with trawling for small outfits that have yet to hit market with a product -- to some degree, sticking with pure engineering shops, so it can easily transition them into the fold. Google is a place where engineers rule, and the suits are second class citizens. BusinessWeek has a nice summary of fat-cat Google, and just how Page & Brin may be thinking.

Related reading:

• Google's 2004 Annual Report [PDF] -- sourced from of all places, Yahoo!

Stop AIDS. Keep the Promise.

Today, Dec. 1st, is World AIDS Day. It's a day set aside to build awareness of HIV/AIDS -- to show support for those who you may know, or not know, that are dying from the disease; to give hope; to hopefully reiterate the message that AIDS is still out there, looking for more victims, and we need to focus on developing a cure. In the short term, there is education and prevention. As millions continue to die, we must continue to show support and give hope.

Do your bit -- whatever you can. Spread the word, prod your government to fund more research and show a bit of support.

Related links:

• AVERT -- an international AIDS charity.
  
• UNAIDS -- UN site focusing on HIV/AIDS.
  
• World AIDS Campaign

Exuberance

Check out some really cool photographs by Matt Jalbert. I especially like the panoramas. Something I will try to do in the future. [Thanks for the link Darren.]