Scientific Idiocy

Keith at Minority of One skewers National Post columnist Bruce Garvey for his junk science front page article in the National Post



OOOOO! Scary!



That's it.
That's all?

I've been reading other bloggers who've been latching on to this "wobble change" as some kind of dangerous portent of bad things-a-coming. Nothing like vacuous minds joining the stampede of stupidity...

Repent, Sinner!

Junk science in the hands of the terminally hyperbolic can be dangerous to your intelligence.



Read the whole thing.

So It Begins

When questioned as to why she had to kiss the boy full on the lips in front of everybody at our little post-Christmas dinner party, my three year old daughter had this to say:

"I can do whatever I WANT to! He's VERY pretty!"

Time to stock up on the bulk Extra-Strength Aspirin the next time I go to Costco. I think I'm going to need it...

The money is fundamentally useless...

I never knew that Northern Ireland had its own special bank notes.

A well planned heist, executed with brutal planning and efficiency, essentially ruined by its own excessive success. I guess in the 21st century, cash is no longer King.

I used to threaten to do this...

but realized that it's a big waste of time.

B.C. man files complaint against women-only gym


Emphasis mine

How 'bout a woman's choice to work out in peace and quiet without a bunch of pervs ogling them up and down as they stairmaster themselves up and down, up and down, up and down...sorry, got lost there for a moment...Why do you think I agree that they should have seperate clubs if they want? It's a business niche and has nothing to do with my neck aching, sorry again...Nothing to do with anti-male bullshit...yeah, that's the ticket!

The guy's just being an ass, although the club should've anticipated this and got together with a co-ed or men's gym to cross-market so that time-wasting lawsuits like this don't get the light of day. A club that discriminates for a legitimate reason shouldn't be hostage to frivolous lawsuits.

Poor wittle guy had his feewings hurt by big bad nasty feminazi-corp. Sue Sue Sue!

Red Ensign Standard #11

Babbling Brooks does the Red Ensign Brigade proud with the eleventh edition. Go see.

I'm in it, but there are definitely much better articles than mine over there.

Canada

create your own personalized map of Canada
or write about it on the open travel guide


Shamelessly stolen from the Tiger in Winter. I've been within every one of those provinces except Nova Scotia this year.

Giving Money to Stupid People

A local situation, I'm witholding the details because I'm curious about the ideas behind the situation, not the exact situation itself.

A family has a fire, which is traumatic, but no one was hurt or killed - they did lose all their possessions in the fire, though. So, you say, lucky break; all they lost was stuff...Insurance will replace that, right? Well...they didn't have content insurance. And it turns out that the cause of the fire were their 12 and 13 year old kids that were smoking and were too stupid to keep track of where they were leaving their lit cigarettes.

So, an expensive lesson for the family and the normal appeals for donations go out. I am approached to give money to this family and I say no. It's my choice to say no. I'm a family man who has a family to support. My charitable donations have been limited to at the most three causes that I actually believe in.

Said canvasser calls me cruel and heartless, and hopes that I'm never in the situation this family is in - then I'd understand.

Now, let me get this straight: because I don't give my hard-earned cash to help this family replace their things I am somehow a bastard. Because I'm giving my money to charities that actually save lives, rather than people who are too dumb to get content insurance, I'm still judged as unfeeling if I don't reach into my pocket to give it away to anyone that asks...

Charity begins at home, they'll say. But one of the defining characteristics of charity is that it proceeds at the option of the giver. I find it presumptuous of canvassers to judge me based on my rejection of their oh-so-subtle heartstring manipulations:

"Their Christmas is ruined!" - well my relatives were able to ruin many of my Christmases. I lived. Why should I have to be shamed into some Santa role to people I don't even know or care about?

I don't know. Maybe I'm starting to understand Ebenezer Scrooge better - "Humbug, a poor excuse for picking a mans pocket every 25th of December."

Motion Sick

Halo 2 is making me motion sick. But I can't stop playing...

I actually find myself feeling paranoid about peering around corners in my house when the lights are off, wondering if some damn bad ass alien is waiting to chop me in two with a Covenant Energy Sword.
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Dogs and Cats Living Together

Now that the genie's been uncorked on same sex marriage some people want to stuff the damn genie back into the bottle and heave the bottle into the sea, never to be heard from again.



I'll bet he does. In the harsh private light of the polling booth most people won't have to be the pc posers that they have to be in public, and the gay marriage vote would fail, which is why this is going through the courts instead...

Blah blah blah. I'm struggling to determine if I care. The main problem I see is the whole freedom of religion issue. If a clergyman decides that because of religious grounds that can't marry two men or two women what's going to happen then? Will the happy young couple accept this and move on to a church that will marry them? Or will the activists swoop down on the Lord's house like Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction? Oh, of course as Canadians, we'll be seen to be settling our disputes reasonably, like bankrupting the churches by taking away their tax-exempt status if they refuse to "abide by the law."

Think it won't happen?



Yes, but I'm fear-mongering, aren't I?



And CTV made a movie of the week portraying the epic struggle involved in going to a school dance.

So some rights are more important than others. If we are to take the Marc Hall incident as an example, gay rights now trump freedom of religion in Canada. Is that progressive? Is that what was in mind when Canada is praised as some kind of progressive utopia? I don't know, but I've always believed that someone's freedom stops when it starts to infringe on another's.

Or as someone once said to me: "Your right to throw a punch ends at the tip of my nose."

There are going to be a lot of bloody noses coming up while the country is distracted from the current governments corruption, arrogance and incompetence.

Memories

Back in the good old days I had an office, with my computer facing me so that none of the interlopers that came through the door could see what was on my screen. My window backed on to an atrium that allowed me to look down upon anyone that happened to be eating lunch at the time. Being on the second floor I was also able to look across the atrium into the offices on the other side of the building...It appeared to be a call centre, but for what I didn't know. All I knew was that there were no less than three (THREE!) young ladies over there that ranked in the goddess category, which explained the appearance of the techies and the marketing guys every few hours at my door...That place was what we thought the call centre of certain naughty phone numbers should look like.

Blogging wasn't around back then, but that office would've been perfect for it.

I miss that now that I live in a cubicle with my computer screen facing every damned yahoo that walks in the room, stifling the creative process. I actually have to blog on my own time now...