And by TRUE, I mean FALSE
Life in the People's Republic of Canada.
2004-09-30
Aw hell...
Well, the National Post just can't seem to keep a good thing going. One day it's defiantly using the word "terrorist" when talking about...uh...terrorists. The next, it's letting Colby Cosh go...I think Colby won all our hearts with this story. If you're too damn busy to read it, at least read the closing line:
When the world was young, and the government took 20% of your paycheque and gave you services that worked, you might be willing to remain what economists call "rationally ignorant" about the details. Now maybe 40% of that cheque vanishes, your mother's coughing blood in the hallway of the nearest ER, and your country has no army. And here comes the guy from the CBC telling you that his expense account should be a state secret. No sale, comrade.
2004-09-29
Fit to Print
Can I ask a question?Hat tip: Allah
What the hell does the press think it's doing?
Allah points out that this is set against the background portrayed in "Unholy Alliance" - that the Left has made common cause with radical Islam.
2004-09-28
Is it a Web Comic ye be needin'?
Look no further: Penny Arcade.PA covers the world of video games for virtually all platforms (PC, Xbox, PS2, Gamecube, GBA, etc.). If you're not into the games, you'll be surprised at how funny...this...all...can...be. Well, it's not all video games - I enjoyed their take on spyware, for example.
Gabe & Tycho organized a bit of a charity toy drive around last Christmas and wound up scoring "almost $200,000 in toys and cash," from Penny Arcade readers. The booty was donated to the Seattle Children's Hospital, I believe. Some people think this is grandstanding. Well, here...read the post. Is that a joke? I mean, I'm as cynical as the next guy, but come on...
Stalincare
The Freeway To Serfdom is one of my regular stops. It's the hip, young face of libertarianism! Proprietor Jay Jardine's favourite topics include Canada's sorry socialized medicine system (Stalincare) and the CBC (see: Memo to the Castro Bootlicking Corporation for an example of his excellent work in this area).Today's message goes out to Ontario Health Minister George Smitherman. Apparently an evil American for-profit company called "Life Line" is running mobile testing clinics. For $200 they'll whip out some doppler radar ultrasound machine to have a look at the state of your clogged arteries. Well, according to Mr. Smitherman, this will not stand! Read up. Is this what Canada's about? The answer is: yes.
So Amazon.com is getting into the search engine portal business with a9.com
I've always been impressed with Amazon. Their site sets the standard for online shopping. I'm sticking with the Google toolbar at home, but I've switched my work PC over to the A9 toolbar. I'll report my experiences with A9 here in the coming days. Stay tuned...
I've always been impressed with Amazon. Their site sets the standard for online shopping. I'm sticking with the Google toolbar at home, but I've switched my work PC over to the A9 toolbar. I'll report my experiences with A9 here in the coming days. Stay tuned...
Unfortunate Whale Speared by Cruise Ship
Damn "U.S. cruise ship!" Actually, I think it's registered in the Bahamas...
I used the Blog This button from the Google toolbar to enter this post. Interesting. Not sure if I can use it without going back to edit things, but I like the idea.
2004-09-26
Smoking
It seems the more I quit, the less the withdrawal bothers me. The last time I quit, I used Nicorette to handle the cravings - there was quite an ad blitz for the stuff last winter/spring and a friend of mine had successfully quit using it, so I gave it a shot. It worked as well as cold-turkey. I can't say if it's any better. I'm going cold turkey right now and I'm not running after my wife with knives or even losing my temper that much. Ironically, the fact that I don't find quitting that difficult is one of the things that leads me back to smoking. "Well, I'll just quit again. No problem!" The problem is deciding to quit, not the actual quitting.
Tomorrow will be the true test. Work always provides unique stresses, and I have smoking friends there. The slippery-slope back to addiction always starts at work. One after lunch leads to one at every break leads to me buying a pack.
Lost...
I don't watch a whole lot of network TV, but Lost looks pretty interesting right off the hop. I'm morbidly attracted to anything with a plane crash scene. If you saw the premiere of Lost, right at the beginning when the plane has crashed but one of the engines is still running - that sound gave me the creeps. Anyway, it'll be on my list of shows I attempt to catch this year.
2004-09-25
Steyn
Mark Steyn is always worth reading:Given his frequent boasts that he knows how to reach out to America's allies, it's remarkable how often he feels the need to insult them: Britain, Australia, and now free Iraq. But, because this pampered cipher has floundered for 18 months to find any rationale for his candidacy other than his indestructible belief in his own indispensability, Kerry finds himself a month before the election with no platform to run on other than American defeat.Read the whole thing
You might just want to visit his site and read everything...
In General...
Ah, the numbers may be sequential, but the thoughts may be a random mess.1) I'm quitting smoking, again. I've tried this before and I'm just generally messed-up for the first 48-72 hours after I quit. Just like the sad cycle of international response to genocide, I have my own stages of quitting: (1) 72 hours of physical adjustment (2) mellowing out (there, that wasn't so bad, was it?) (3) "just one smoke" (4) constant borrowing of cigarettes from friends (5) buying my own pack (at which point, I'm officially a smoker again).
2) I saw "Shaun of the Dead" last night. You should see this movie.
3) I have another cold - my third since July. It came on fast, so hopefully it will run its course and be gone just as quick. Colds these days seem to pack more punch than they used to: is it my aging immune system or a sign of coming viral apocalypse?
4) Ray Bradbury's short story, "A Sound of Thunder" is apparently the basis of an upcoming movie with the same name. The trailer looks good up until about halfway through, when apparently it departs from the original story and strikes off in a bold new Hollywoodish direction...Read the original story and check out the trailer and you'll see what I mean.
You may recognize the main theme of "A Sound of Thunder" from the Simpsons episode where Homer has that wacky time-traveling toaster.
The United Nations
From "Another Triumph for the U.N." by David Brooks in today's New York Times:Every time there is an ongoing atrocity, we watch the world community go through the same series of stages: (1) shock and concern (2) gathering resolve (3) fruitless negotiation (4) pathetic inaction (5) shame and humiliation (6) steadfast vows to never let this happen again.Via Instapundit
The "never again" always comes. But still, we have all agreed, this sad cycle is better than having some impromptu coalition of nations actually go in "unilaterally" and do something. That would lack legitimacy! Strain alliances! Menace international law! Threaten the multilateral ideal!
2004-09-23
Blogroll Revisited
Since 10:49am yesterday morning, I've been consumed with a single burning desire: to put together a blogroll for this site. I'm still no closer to actually creating such a thing, but I'm going to start posting a few of the blogs I visit daily. Maybe a little anecdote about the blog, maybe a description. Man, it'll be better than a blogroll! So let's, uh, roll:Colby Cosh - This was the first real blog I visited. Colby is always informative and his insight into Canadian issues is pretty shrewd. He's a freelance journalist now - his columns appear weekly in the National Post and, as I put it once to him in an email, he don't never fail to not entertain, no. His site is still the first blog I hit every day. Did I mention he also blogs about hockey occasionally? Plus he's witty to boot. This is but one example of his brilliance. And Colby begat...
Instapundit - In January of 2003, I read one of Cosh's postings comparing the traffic he gets from being listed on the Instapundit blogroll and the GlennReynolds.com blogroll (Glenn's MSNBC blog) and I had absolutely no clue that Glenn Reynolds and Instapundit were related in some way. Well, it turns out they are. Instapundit is mostly brief commentary and a jumping off point to other destinations of interest - and I like Glenn's nose for news. Aside from teaching law at the University of Tennessee and running two blogs and writing columns for Tech Central Station and God-knows-who-else, he still reads his readers' emails - at least the two emails I've ever sent him. This is actually number three on my daily list of blogs-to-visit. Because Instapundit begat...
The Bleat - James Lileks (pronounced Lie-lex) pounds out an entry Monday through Friday. James is one of the funniest authors I've ever read. Whether he's relating a story about visiting Target with his daughter Gnat or shredding some lefty moonbat, he's always amusing. And the whole Lileks.com site is bursting with content - the Gallery of Regrettable Food, Big Little Books, the Dorcus Collection (all under "The Institute of Official Cheer") - This alone justifies the Internet. Non-stop fun. Number 2 on my daily visit list.
Well, that's my Top 3. I hope they don't get all touchy about their rank, should they ever read this. A friend of mine met Raymond E. Feist on Compuserve about 10 years ago and made the mistake of telling him "You're my fifth favourite Fantasy/Sci-Fi author, after Tolkein, Asimov, Adams, etc. [note: I'm making up this list, but I'm sure Tolkein was #1]. " Anyway, Ray seemed all offended after that.
After those 3, my blog reading isn't so strangled by regimen. I'll add more to this list over the next couple of days.
FahrenHYPE 9/11
Apparently there are now some questions being raised as to the validity of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11. First Rather, now this? What's the world coming to? Well, check out the trailer.Thanks to Instapundit -> JunkYardBlog
2004-09-22
A Thorough Fisking
Here's an example of a thorough "fisking." One day, perhaps I'll fisk something on these very pages.Praise Allah for the link.
Blogroll
Did you know that the National Post has a blog? How'd I miss this one? (via Colby Cosh).Duty calls, so I must keep this short - a blogroll will be appearing shortly on the side menu here. I can't say whether it will be today, tomorrow or even this week, but it's coming. Gird your loins!
2004-09-21
Obligatory Rathergate Posting
I suppose I should mention Rathergate. Or "Danron" if you prefer. Well, here are my thoughts:
- I'm beginning to feel some fatigue over this story. I don't know how Glenn Reynolds, et al, can keep it up. I'm not sure if this has helped or hurt either candidate - keeping John Kerry out of Americans' faces for a couple of weeks certainly isn't going to hurt him, and Bush looked pretty good back in his TANG days.
- A catchy name to sum up a story really helps: "Danron" and "Rathergate" sure beat the pants off of "That-thing-with-Dan-Rather-and-those-fake-memos-about-Bush's-National-Guard-service." I guess that's Marketing 101, eh?
- Some of the anti-Bush folks are deriding the "blogger triumphalism" that the right wing blogs are feeling about this whole thing. Gloating's never cool, but in this case, I fall in with the folks who beleive we're seeing something important happening here.
- "Nothing is easier than self-deceit. For what each man wishes, that he also believes to be true." - Demosthenes. In this case, what an entire news organization wishes, but that shouldn't really come as a surprise to anyone. Blogs have long been pointing out that the media often have the storyline predetermined and will ignore inconvenient facts that don't fit with whatever they've got in mind (and emphasize facts that support their story). And of course, Demosthenes made his case almost 2,400 years ago...
That's just great...
So, I start this blog in the wee hours of Monday morning.Dateline: Tuesday
That seals it! Pass the Prozac, Celexa, Wellbutrin...whatever you got. I'm not picky.
The President of the United States of America
I've always found US politics much more interesting than Canadian politics. Not that we don't have our interesting political intrigues here in Canada...It's hard to keep up with all the latest polls and national polls don't always mean a whole lot since the US's electoral college makes voting results in individual states more important.
tripias.com's State by State 2004 offers a compendium of state by state polls across the US, organized into a nice red and blue map to show you the predicted picture if the election were held today ("today" being the day the individual polls were taken). As of this writing it's predicting a Bush victory (331 to 207 electoral college votes - 270 are needed to win).
If you want to try out some scenarios, check out Opinion Journal's Electoral College Calculator. There are a few pre-defined historical scenarios: 1984's battle between Republican incumbent Ronald Reagan and Minnesota's Democratic candidade Walter Mondale. Electoral whup-ass! Ouch...
Awful dark in here...
Back when the Web was relatively new, I whipped up a couple of sites for personal use. I tried to apply some consistency to the pages - something that was sorely lacking on many sites at the time. Using frames was one of the questionable design decisions I made. Other than that, I think they'd stand up today as examples of fairly good design compared against the other sites of the time.One 'rule' of Web design came to me from Web Pages that Suck - sites with a black background and colour scheme are pretentious. So I'm not sure why I chose the black theme here. I think it's going to change soon. Not because it's prententious - more because it's depressing. I can see a lot of angry screeds with this grey-text-on-black-background theme. And that's not what I'm about, is it?
2004-09-20
Just a Note...
The site url is "random-numbers.blogspot.com" but there won't be a whole lot in the way of numerics or mathematics here.
The name of the site is "And by TRUE, I mean FALSE," which is a quote from a Simpsons episode:
"Hello. I'm Leonard Nimoy. The following tale of alien encounters is true. And by true, I mean false. It's all lies. But they're entertaining lies. And in the end, isn't that the real truth? The answer is: No."
Finally
Well, today's been a hell of a day.Apparently I can't VPN to get my work email from home. I'm not sure what's wrong with work Webmail, but count me pissed-off.
So I drive down to the office at Midnight. Apparently I'm no longer allowed to log in at 12:14am on a Monday morning. Hmmm...I must have missed that memo. Well, that's only 45 minutes wasted driving around in the middle of the night.
Back at home in the dark, I make my way silently to the bedroom to tell my wife I'm back from the office. BOOM! I snap off about half my big toenail on a Goddamn suitcase my wife left in the middle of the hallway to "remind" me to take it downstairs.
Now I'm running around the house swearing. My toe's bleeding like a stuck pig. I can't do the work I need to have done for tomorrow ("Well maybe you should've thought about starting before midnight on Monday." Yeah, yeah, stfu). Seems like as good a time as any to set up a blog...
