Down With Christmas Carols

The Christmas shopping season has arrived and with it one of my least favourite things: Christmas Carols.

In truth, I don't mind them in moderation. The problem is that for the ENTIRE month of December (and in some places the entire month of January!) it is impossible to escape them! You get in your car and they're on the radio. You go in to the mall and they're on the speakers. Every single store you enter is blaring them non-stop. They're even playing 24/7 at the gym. Yes, THE GYM! Imagine trying to deadlift 300 lbs to Silent Night. Not exactly the most motivating anthem! Even when you think you're free after locking yourself in your house with all radios and televisions turned off, you're really not. Noooo. People will actually come to your house, uninvited, and sing on your front steps! ARGH!

What do I want for christmas? A pair of these!

Drug Bust, or Boom?

On the same day that Winnipeg Police make their largest-ever drug bust, comes a report from the CATO Institute about the failure of the US War on Drugs.

Although the report uses US data, the situation is very similar in Canada. Police departments across the nation spend endless amounts of money and time making drug busts, yet availability contiues to rise and prices continue to fall.

Let's also remember perhaps the biggest drug contradiction in Canada: medical marijuana. Medical marijuana is legal in Canada, provided you obtain your drugs from the government. The problem? Users complain the government pushed drug is poor quality, expensive, and in short supply. This while there is a perfectly suitable, and significantly cheaper, supply on the free market.

The message? It's bad to be a drug dealer unless you're the government, and it's bad to use drugs unless you get them from the government. Why not kill two birds with one stone: decriminalize marijuana and get the government out of the drug dealing business.

Yellow Arrow

I saw this really neat concept on The Screen Savers today: Yellow Arrow.

Basically, you get these yellow arrows with a unique number on them. You stick the arrow somewhere in the world pointing to something significant to you: the corner store, a lamp post, in the mall, etc. Then you send a short text message about what the arrow is pointing at to Yellow Arrow's central server. Anyone who comes across the arrow can then send a text message containing the unique number on the arrow to the server and get back the message you put in.

It's a novel idea with an endless number of possibilities. Kinda like a hyperlink in real life!

The arrows can be ordered off the website for $0.60 per sticker. Of course, it helps to live in a city with more than three buildings downtown and more than a handful of interesting locations. ;)

Tool / A Perfect Circle News

Some Tool / A Perfect Circle news:

• Maynard James Keenan has teemed up with Flea, Brad Wilk, Tom Morello, Pete Yorn, Johnny Polonsky and Serj Tankian to perform U2's "Where Streets Have No Name" on the CD/DVD Axis Of Justice: Concert Series Volume 1


• A Perfect Circle have released a new CD titled eMOTIVe and a new DVD titled aMOTION


• The first single from eMOTIVe is a remake of John Lennon's Imagine. The band has also created an updated video to accompany the song, which Maynard discusses on the APC website.

God Bless the USA

Another industrialized nation has fallen victim to junk science. Looks like the United States is the last bastion of reason when it comes to climate change, or maybe they're just doing the right thing for the wrong reason.

Nineteen Eighty?

Be prepared to be interrogated by the high school sales clerk the next time you buy Sudafed. The Manitoba Government has asked retail employees to help it catch crystal meth cooks.

This seems to be trend nowadays: recruiting regular, everyday people to snitch on their fellow citizens. There's photo radar which forces the owner of a vehicle to track down, charge, and collect from the speeding driver, and a short while ago I got a notice from Manitoba Hydro to be on the lookout for houses in my neighbourhood with "bright lights", a "concealed meter", or a "beware of dog sign". They recommended that I rat said neighbour out to the Police since they might be running a marijuana grow operation.

What ever happened to the police policing? This all reminds me of 1984. Are we getting closer? Scary stuff.

Corporate Cattle

I've begun to look at my life in a different light. Is this it? Is this all there is? The same routine day after day. Wake up, eat breakfast, get ready for work, drive to work, work, drive home, make dinner, watch TV, go to bed, rinse, and repeat.

At work we trod minute after minute through the drudgery of corporate compliance. Every few months we're herded into corporate boardrooms like cattle to mindlessly stare at slide after slide of propaganda, pausing occasionally to applaud like sheep the fact that the board of directors made millions of more dollars off our backs. Like a bunch of corporate lackeys we are utterly dillusional and completely ignorant of reality. The reality that our only purpose is to get the CEO another beach house.

I don't know what's worse, the reality, or the fact that so many people simply accept it.

Surely, there must be more.

Spam & Spyware

The first people to be convicted of felony spamming charges were sentenced to nine years in prison. In honour of this precedent setting event I thought I would provide a list of my recommended anti-spyware programs. (Yeah I know, spyware and spam are different, but they're both annoying!)

Spybot - Search & Destroy (Free)
PestPatrol (Free Evaluation)
SpywareBlaster (Free)
AVG Anti-Virus (Free)
Ad Muncher (Free)
Sygate Personal Firewall (Free)

IT Security Resources

So I've decided that I want to delve in to the realm of IT security. But where to begin? If anyone out there has some good recommendations in regards to books and/or training let me know!

Common Sense Recommendation Missing

The jury in the Geronimo Fobister inquest has returned a list of 20 recommendations. The major recommendation is for Ontario police officers to attend mandatory aboriginal cultural-awareness training. There was no recommendation that convicted felons not escape from jail and not point guns at police.

Friends Getting Favors

I'm super short on time so here's a couple of quick hitters for today to hopefully get this thing started.

First off, in case you don't own a TV, it's now official, John Bush won the election. No, that's not a typo. As Richard Epstein put it in Reason Magazine, "It’s just two members of the same statist party fighting over whose friends will get favors."

Speaking of statist parties. Canada's own statist party, the federal Liberals have decided to enter the baby raising business along with the provinces. The Canadian Union of Public Employees is quoted in the Winnipeg Free Press as saying, "Canada will go from patchwork to excellence if all levels of government work together to create a public, non-profit child-care system." So parents can now look forward to lineups and long waiting lists for child-care as well as health-care. Wonderful.

Someone please tell me how it's fair for parents to confiscate the income of non-parents in order to pay someone else to raise their children so they can go to work and make more money.

Oh yeah, I forgot, friends getting favors.