cobolhacker.com

Gosh, whoever would have thought that would happen?! The CBC wouldn’t let me post this comment… not surprised.

Violence I don’t agree with, but it could be that some of these protesters are angry about the order of the world and are lashing out the only way they can – at civil authority. Here are some of the reasons why they might be angry:

- I’ll bet that ‘working dinner’ last night at the summit had fantastic food. Good wine too. What $100, $150 per seat? That’s well more than most Canadians spend a week on food. And free drinks for 10,000 journalists. The tab on that would feed the homeless in Toronto for a month.

- What did they decide yesterday? 1) Iran and North Korea are being bad. 2) Deficit spending is not a good idea. 2 billion and that’s all you can come up with? Not terribly productive.

- Greedy American banks messed up the world economy and now millions are underemployed, including me.

- Austerity. For whom exactly? The rich never seem affected by these plans.

- Auto sector bailouts, financial sector bailouts. These dudes make so much money, yet still need public bailouts? Where’s my bailout?

- A former MP was caught driving drunk with cocaine in his pocket and they dropped the charges. If that was you or me, we’d be behind bars right now.

- Even though the Gulf is wrecked, U.S. court overturns decision to ban new offshore drilling because… I guess money trumps the environment.

- Much of a major city brought to a standstill, not just because of protests, but because of thousands of cops marching around asking to see people’s papers. Oh and a big fence.

- They spend $2 million on a pavilion to simulate Muskoka when they just could have gone there. WTF.

- $56 billion deficit, prorogued governments, draconian copyright laws, and general bullshitting and fucking around. People haven’t forgotten these things, Steve.

- Billions wasted in a war in a foreign land, only to find the Americans are prospecting it for gold.

Maybe people are angry because governments are letting us all down. And here’s the thing, I like to think of myself as a smart guy, but I cannot for the life of me think of a way to fix the current order of the world, short of violence. Historically, rebellion has been the only effective way to stand up to governments who no longer represent the people’s interests.

My bank raised my interest rates today. Our contract lets them do this. I don’t owe them all that much money but it’s the principle of the thing. Interest rates are at an all time low. Bank profits are at an all time high. You’re making solid money, why do you need to make more?

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/12697/64833?RS_show_page=0

It’s long, but an interesting read I stumbled upon a while ago, and it sums up nicely why I’m really starting to hate banks, financial institutions, insurance companies and large corporations in general. There seems to be no boundaries to their greed. And not just greed on behalf of the shareholders, a personal greed, enriching tiny groups of executives who seem get larger and larger bonuses the more adept they are at ripping people off.

Ah well, the All Whites just got booted from the World Cup. Still, they forced Italy, Slovakia and Paraguay down to draws (and Italy got booted too, good riddance). Not too shabby for a national team who many felt shouldn’t be at the tournament. Oceania can play football after all, who knew huh?

Sadly, I’m going to have to find another team to cheer for.

There are a lot of Italian football fans asking themselves some hard questions about the performance about their squad today.

New Zealand, like Canada, is considered a pipsqueak when it comes to the beautiful game and by any account the Italians should have kicked their asses. But they didn’t. The Kiwis held it down to 1-1 draw, just like they did with Slovakia.

New Zealand tipped the ball into the Italian goal just seven minutes into the game. The only goal the Italians could figure out how to pull off was on a penalty kick (boo). From there on in, the Italians attacked them wildly, but could never figure out how to get it in the net, the NZ defence was that awesome, particularly their goalie.

Italy are the reigning World Cup champs and the Kiwis made them look like chumps. England is a lost cause, Germany is weak, the French team is falling apart… I think I just found a footie team to cheer for.

I really can’t remember where I originally found this, but I found it lurking on the desktop of my computer.

It’s a chart from a study to determine the typical content of a Twitter post. It also occurred to me that it is a way for gauge the efficiency of a tweet.

Pointless babble, spam and self-promotion are utterly useless as is conversational (as you or I are likely not part of the conversation). Most news on Twitter is garnered from major news sources, or generated by major news sources, and since a tweet is only 140 characters long, very little additional opinion and analysis can be attached to it. So I’d have to say that news is useless too. That leaves pass-along value which one might be interested in, but at least 99 percent of that is just duplication of the same stuff.

Of that 0.09% of all the tweets that potentially are useful, only 5% are probably something you are interested in. Of that, only a quarter are in a language you speak. Thus, 0.00125% of Twitter has any value to anyone, at any given time. Admittedly, that’s still 55,000 posts per day. In reality, I’d be surprised if a Twitter user actually benefited from more than 5 posts in a day. That’s subjective, I know, but there’s only so many times you need to know what Ashton Kutcher had for lunch before it becomes old news.

This is just back of the napkin calculation so your mileage will may vary and to be fair, this is probably true for blogs too. But it does give you an idea of just how much noise is out there.

Nothing says ‘freedom’ like a big tall fence running through your town. That can’t be convenient.

The tin-foil hat types have been going on about Afghanistan for years. The U.S. is there so a pipeline can be built, there is gold in them there hills, etc, etc…

I’d taken a contrary view, seeing the mission there as noble, an extension of peacekeeping, fighting bad guys, trying to help oppressed people out of the shit. NATO, in particular Canada, has no particular economic interest in the place, so how could our intentions be evil? When it was announced we would take a very muscular role there I thought, “that’s bold.” Going to be expensive, but if other nations where people are oppressed see NATO as a force for good, then it would be worth it. I steadfastly support the troops.

As it turns out the hatters were right. The Americans have been doing geological surveys for years. There is at least a trillion dollars of mineral wealth on Afghani lands. Maybe the soldiers on the ground still think it’s noble, but for where I’m sitting, it would seem the whole point of Afghanistan is to make the place more secure so it can be harvested for its resources.

We all know how that will go. American corporations will offer to employ the locals, set up shop, provide security in return for a sweet deal on the goods. This is always what happens to third world nations. Basically they are sacrificing lives and causing misery right now so some rich assholes can make more money tomorrow.

You were right all along guys, it was all about the money.

If Canada is really the peacekeeping nation we say we are we need to walk off this job. Not in 2011, like now. A true peacekeeper – a real hero – doesn’t fight for money, power, influence or greed. If America wants to fight for greed she can do it alone.

BRING THE TROOPS HOME NOW.

Up goes the fence!

Doesn’t it strike you as odd that whenever the G20 decides to have a meeting they must spend zillions of dollars on security because of all the protests? Could it be that people are angry about something?

Maybe politicians should be asking people what’s up instead of totally and completely fencing them off. Check out this quotation:

We do know there are those groups who do not want to communicate their plans to us and it’s those groups that will most likely be on the streets rather than in the designated speech area.
-Constable Wendy Drummond, of the G8/G20 Integrated Security Unit

1. Since when are protesters supposed to communicate their plans to police?
2. Since when are protesters supposed to do their protesting in a “designated speech area”?

“Designated speech area” sounds more like a “world leaders don’t care to listen to you area” or a “tactically bad location so the cops can tear gas the shit out of you area” or a “pen where we can herd you like the sheep you are area”.

The last time I checked, we live in a free country with little amenities like freedom of speech, mobility, that kind of thing. I guess those things don’t matter much when the G20 is in town. Never mind the fact they are holding the thing in Toronto, the stupidest venue from a security standpoint. Why is it again that we let these people run the Earth? Oh right, we have no choice.

The CN Tower will be fenced in and closed. The CBC building, I believe is inside that fence. The thing reminds me of the Berlin wall. Wonder if they are going to put razor wire on top and really go for that “Freedom in the West” look.

http://www.cbc.ca/politics/story/2010/06/07/cp-bottled-messages-pmo-afghanistan.html

I’m not sure why any one is surprised by this. The current government is all about the information control. Very tight lipped.

This is the same government which told Environment Canada not to talk to the press for heaven’s sake. Why would they do that? These are meteorologist nerds, what politics can they possibly influence?

Then you think. They talk about global climate change. Talk of this makes people start to think about the oil patch in Alberta and all the destruction it causes. People get mad about that. Alberta is the seat of power of this party. Power is everything to the Conservatives and that to me stinks of money. I don’t know how or why, but dollars, influence, wealth, power or whatever seems to constantly move their hand and not for the public good. Is Bill C-32 for the common good? The HST? Prorogation? What exactly has this government ever done for the common good?

For a dude who claims to be a evangelical Christian, Mr. Harper seems to make a surprising number of amoral decisions. Is he even making the decisions? I’d love to ask him about it one day – do you think I ever will? Not a chance. Information control.

When I moved out the shop looked like this:

Which is pretty much how it looked when I moved in.  That was more than 10 years ago.  In 2008 I moved the shop upstairs and left the place, which was tough.  Spent a lot of time there, lot of memories in there.  A couple of years later this old location, after having served as a Blankets for Canada drop site, was actually rented by a proper tenant.  They gutted it and went for broke:

Not too shabby, huh?  More or less the same angle, shot with the same camera in the same natural light.

It is the Small-Mart, dedicated to selling retro knickknacks, accouterments and stuff like that; general mercantile like so many places used to do in the 50’s. Its interesting products are an excellent compliment to Quark Soup, the vendor in front, which specializes in selling unusual and eccentric educational toys. You can also purchase high-quality footwear at White-Balmer Shoes next door. It’s like a hat-trick of shopping awesomeness, and that’s just our building. The entire block is full of shops and cafés.

As the building manager, I’m happy to have carried out one of my jobs (rent the property).  But for me personally, I am happy too.  It no longer looks like my old shop, doesn’t smell like it, doesn’t feel like it.  That chapter can be finally closed in my life, I can move on and dwell in the new shop without having to worry about the ex downstairs.