Friday, April 27, 2007
PC Design Contest 2007
These are the winners, my favourite is the third one. Brenda would never be able to claim the monitor takes up too much space again. ;)
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Let me know when I have beaten this horse enough
Harvard University published a paper on media bias during the Israel-Hezbollah War last year. The full name of the article is The Israeli-Hezbollah War of 2006: The Media as a Weapon in Asymmetrical Conflict
.
This is the abstract from it:
Based on content analysis of global media and interviews with many diplomats and journalists, this paper describes the trajectory of the media from objective observer to fiery advocate, becoming in fact a weapon of modern warfare. The paper also shows how an open society, Israel, is victimized by its own openness and how a closed sect, Hezbollah, can retain almost total control of the daily message of journalism and propaganda.
If you want some analysis, you can always go to World Politics Watch
By gum! I was right, there was a disproportional reporting towards Hezbollah...
.
This is the abstract from it:
Based on content analysis of global media and interviews with many diplomats and journalists, this paper describes the trajectory of the media from objective observer to fiery advocate, becoming in fact a weapon of modern warfare. The paper also shows how an open society, Israel, is victimized by its own openness and how a closed sect, Hezbollah, can retain almost total control of the daily message of journalism and propaganda.
If you want some analysis, you can always go to World Politics Watch
By gum! I was right, there was a disproportional reporting towards Hezbollah...
Monday, April 23, 2007
The X-Ray Project
X-Rays of the victims of terrorist suicide bombings. Let me know which ones are Jewish and which are Muslim.
There is a soundtrack, so you may want to turn the sound down if you are at work.
There is a soundtrack, so you may want to turn the sound down if you are at work.
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
Vimy Ridge and Afghanistan, where did we go wrong?
I was thinking about Vimy Ridge this weekend, it being the 90th anniversary of Canada’s “coming of age”. My thoughts were how Canada has changed since then. In 1917 over thirty five hundred men died over a period of 4 days to take Vimy. The reason was to stop the expansionistic and imperialistic designs of Germany. Now, we are in the modern world, and we have had about fifty soldiers die stopping the expansionistic tendencies of a terror group in Afghanistan. The reason we as Canadians can notice fifty deaths is for one reason, we have been sheltered by the United States, moan and complain about the Americans all you want, but they have been doing the heavy lifting for us, and their soldier’s deaths in Afghanistan, Iraq (in 91), Somalia and Kosovo are just as much for us as it is for them. Now that Canada has to do the heavy lifting, there is a question that many Canadians keep asking: are we peacekeepers or peacemakers?
The answer to this depends on how you view the rest of the world. If you see the world as full of people that need help getting along, we should be peacekeepers, but if you see the world full of people that need help to survive or to remove tyranny, we need to be peace makers.
We are in Afghanistan to help the Afghanis people build a country, they need to be helped to remove both the Taliban and Al Qaeda, they need to be shown that gross corruption is not the way that a government should operate, they need our help to show them that their religion is not a religion of extremists but a religion that allows women to fulfill their potential. They need this and we need this.
The world cannot be safe until people understand that there is no room for extremists in religion, be it Christian, Muslim or Judaic. Everyone’s life is precious, from the Canadians sitting at home complaining about hockey to the Palestinian sitting in his shack wishing he did not have a bunch of terrorism minded crooks running his government. The day that every Canadian understands these truths will never come, because they only see part of the world and believe that there is a way to negotiate with extremists. I call it appeasement, you only need to review history to see how well that policy works.
If we consider the deaths of the fifty soldiers in Afghanistan to be wasted, then perhaps we have come of age and retreated back into the sullenness and isolationistic tendencies of adolescence.
I will discuss how the EU (except the United Kingdom) are not willing to do any of the work but are willing to sit on the sidelines and criticise the efforts of the US and it’s allies, but that is for a later discussion.
The answer to this depends on how you view the rest of the world. If you see the world as full of people that need help getting along, we should be peacekeepers, but if you see the world full of people that need help to survive or to remove tyranny, we need to be peace makers.
We are in Afghanistan to help the Afghanis people build a country, they need to be helped to remove both the Taliban and Al Qaeda, they need to be shown that gross corruption is not the way that a government should operate, they need our help to show them that their religion is not a religion of extremists but a religion that allows women to fulfill their potential. They need this and we need this.
The world cannot be safe until people understand that there is no room for extremists in religion, be it Christian, Muslim or Judaic. Everyone’s life is precious, from the Canadians sitting at home complaining about hockey to the Palestinian sitting in his shack wishing he did not have a bunch of terrorism minded crooks running his government. The day that every Canadian understands these truths will never come, because they only see part of the world and believe that there is a way to negotiate with extremists. I call it appeasement, you only need to review history to see how well that policy works.
If we consider the deaths of the fifty soldiers in Afghanistan to be wasted, then perhaps we have come of age and retreated back into the sullenness and isolationistic tendencies of adolescence.
I will discuss how the EU (except the United Kingdom) are not willing to do any of the work but are willing to sit on the sidelines and criticise the efforts of the US and it’s allies, but that is for a later discussion.
Wednesday, April 04, 2007
The streets of this nation are full of men having fag sex!
Wouldn't you love to be around these people?
About 9 minutes....
Salute to a brave and modest nation
By Kevin Myers
The Daily Telegraph, London, April 21, 2002
UNTIL the deaths last week of four Canadian soldiers accidentally killed by a US warplane in Afghanistan, probably almost no one outside their home country had been aware that Canadian troops were deployed in the region. And as always, Canada will now bury its dead, just as the rest of the world as always will forget its sacrifice, just as it always forgets nearly everything Canada ever does.
It seems that Canada's historic mission is to come to the selfless aid both of its friends and of complete strangers, and then, once the crisis is over, to be well and truly ignored. Canada is the perpetual wallflower that stands on the edge of the hall, waiting for someone to come and ask her for a dance. A fire breaks out, she risks life and limb to rescue her fellow dance-goers, and suffers serious injuries. But when the hall is repaired and the dancing resumes, there is Canada, the wallflower still, while those she once helped glamorously cavort across the floor, blithely neglecting her yet again.
That is the price which Canada pays for sharing the North American Continent with the US, and for being a selfless friend of Britain in two global conflicts. For much of the 20th century, Canada was torn in two different directions: it seemed to be a part of the old world, yet had an address in the new one, and that divided identity ensured that it never fully got the gratitude it deserved.
Yet its purely voluntary contribution to the cause of freedom in two world wars was perhaps the greatest of any democracy. Almost 10 per cent of Canada's entire population of seven million people served in the armed forces during the First World War, and nearly 60,000 died. The great Allied victories of 1918 were spearheaded by Canadian troops, perhaps the most capable soldiers in the entire British order of battle.
Canada was repaid for its enormous sacrifice by downright neglect, its unique contribution to victory being absorbed into the popular memory as somehow or other the work of the "British". The Second World War provided a re-run. The Canadian navy began the war with a half dozen vessels, and ended up policing nearly half of the Atlantic against U-boat attack. More than 120 Canadian warships participated in the Normandy landings, during which 15,000 Canadian soldiers went ashore on D-Day alone. Canada finished the war with the third largest navy and the fourth largest air force in the world. The world thanked Canada with the same sublime indifference as it had the previous time. Canadian participation in the war was acknowledged in film only if it was necessary to give an American actor a part in a campaign which the US had clearly not participated - a touching scrupulousness which, of course, Hollywood has since abandoned, as it has any notion of a separate Canadian identity.
So it is a general rule that actors and film-makers arriving in Hollywood keep their nationality - unless, that is, they are Canadian. Thus Mary Pickford, Walter Huston, Donald Sutherland, Michael J Fox, William Shatner, Norman Jewison, David Cronenberg and Dan Aykroyd have in the popular perception become American, and Christopher Plummer British. It is as if in the very act of becoming famous, a Canadian ceases to be Canadian, unless she is Margaret Atwood, who is as unshakeably Canadian as a moose, or Celine Dion, for whom Canada has proved quite unable to find any takers. Moreover, Canada is every bit as querulously alert to the achievements of its sons and daughters as the rest of the world is completely unaware of them. The Canadians proudly say of themselves - and are unheard by anyone else - that 1 per cent of the world's population has provided 10 per cent of the world's peace-keeping forces. Canadian soldiers in the past half century have been the greatest peace-keepers on earth - in 39 missions on UN mandates, and six on non-UN peace-keeping duties, from Vietnam to East Timor, from Sinai to Bosnia.
Yet the only foreign engagement which has entered the popular non-Canadian imagination was the sorry affair in Somalia, in which out-of-control paratroopers murdered two Somali infiltrators. Their regiment was then disbanded in disgrace - a uniquely Canadian act of self-abasement for which, naturally, the Canadians received no international credit.
So who today in the US knows about the stoic and selfless friendship its northern neighbour has given it in Afghanistan? Rather like Cyrano de Bergerac, Canada repeatedly does honourable things for honourable motives, but instead of being thanked for it, it remains something of a figure of fun. It is the Canadian way, for which Canadians should be proud, yet such honour comes at a high cost.
This weekend four shrouds, red with blood and maple leaf, head homewards; and four more grieving Canadian families know that cost all too tragically well.
The Daily Telegraph, London, April 21, 2002
UNTIL the deaths last week of four Canadian soldiers accidentally killed by a US warplane in Afghanistan, probably almost no one outside their home country had been aware that Canadian troops were deployed in the region. And as always, Canada will now bury its dead, just as the rest of the world as always will forget its sacrifice, just as it always forgets nearly everything Canada ever does.
It seems that Canada's historic mission is to come to the selfless aid both of its friends and of complete strangers, and then, once the crisis is over, to be well and truly ignored. Canada is the perpetual wallflower that stands on the edge of the hall, waiting for someone to come and ask her for a dance. A fire breaks out, she risks life and limb to rescue her fellow dance-goers, and suffers serious injuries. But when the hall is repaired and the dancing resumes, there is Canada, the wallflower still, while those she once helped glamorously cavort across the floor, blithely neglecting her yet again.
That is the price which Canada pays for sharing the North American Continent with the US, and for being a selfless friend of Britain in two global conflicts. For much of the 20th century, Canada was torn in two different directions: it seemed to be a part of the old world, yet had an address in the new one, and that divided identity ensured that it never fully got the gratitude it deserved.
Yet its purely voluntary contribution to the cause of freedom in two world wars was perhaps the greatest of any democracy. Almost 10 per cent of Canada's entire population of seven million people served in the armed forces during the First World War, and nearly 60,000 died. The great Allied victories of 1918 were spearheaded by Canadian troops, perhaps the most capable soldiers in the entire British order of battle.
Canada was repaid for its enormous sacrifice by downright neglect, its unique contribution to victory being absorbed into the popular memory as somehow or other the work of the "British". The Second World War provided a re-run. The Canadian navy began the war with a half dozen vessels, and ended up policing nearly half of the Atlantic against U-boat attack. More than 120 Canadian warships participated in the Normandy landings, during which 15,000 Canadian soldiers went ashore on D-Day alone. Canada finished the war with the third largest navy and the fourth largest air force in the world. The world thanked Canada with the same sublime indifference as it had the previous time. Canadian participation in the war was acknowledged in film only if it was necessary to give an American actor a part in a campaign which the US had clearly not participated - a touching scrupulousness which, of course, Hollywood has since abandoned, as it has any notion of a separate Canadian identity.
So it is a general rule that actors and film-makers arriving in Hollywood keep their nationality - unless, that is, they are Canadian. Thus Mary Pickford, Walter Huston, Donald Sutherland, Michael J Fox, William Shatner, Norman Jewison, David Cronenberg and Dan Aykroyd have in the popular perception become American, and Christopher Plummer British. It is as if in the very act of becoming famous, a Canadian ceases to be Canadian, unless she is Margaret Atwood, who is as unshakeably Canadian as a moose, or Celine Dion, for whom Canada has proved quite unable to find any takers. Moreover, Canada is every bit as querulously alert to the achievements of its sons and daughters as the rest of the world is completely unaware of them. The Canadians proudly say of themselves - and are unheard by anyone else - that 1 per cent of the world's population has provided 10 per cent of the world's peace-keeping forces. Canadian soldiers in the past half century have been the greatest peace-keepers on earth - in 39 missions on UN mandates, and six on non-UN peace-keeping duties, from Vietnam to East Timor, from Sinai to Bosnia.
Yet the only foreign engagement which has entered the popular non-Canadian imagination was the sorry affair in Somalia, in which out-of-control paratroopers murdered two Somali infiltrators. Their regiment was then disbanded in disgrace - a uniquely Canadian act of self-abasement for which, naturally, the Canadians received no international credit.
So who today in the US knows about the stoic and selfless friendship its northern neighbour has given it in Afghanistan? Rather like Cyrano de Bergerac, Canada repeatedly does honourable things for honourable motives, but instead of being thanked for it, it remains something of a figure of fun. It is the Canadian way, for which Canadians should be proud, yet such honour comes at a high cost.
This weekend four shrouds, red with blood and maple leaf, head homewards; and four more grieving Canadian families know that cost all too tragically well.
Sunday, April 01, 2007
I would like to think this is a joke
Schools are dropping the Holocaust from history lessons to avoid offending Muslim pupils, a Government backed study has revealed. It found some teachers are reluctant to cover the atrocity for fear of upsetting students whose beliefs include Holocaust denial.
There is also resistance to tackling the 11th century Crusades - where Christians fought Muslim armies for control of Jerusalem - because lessons often contradict what is taught in local mosques. ...
The study looked into ‘emotive and controversial’ history teaching in primary and secondary schools. It found some teachers are dropping courses covering the Holocaust at the earliest opportunity over fears Muslim pupils might express anti-Semitic and anti-Israel reactions in class.
The researchers gave the example of a secondary school in an unnamed northern city, which dropped the Holocaust as a subject for GCSE coursework.
The report said teachers feared confronting ‘anti-Semitic sentiment and Holocaust denial among some Muslim pupils’.
Sadly, fear of Islamo-Terrorists is forcing schools in the UK to stop teaching history.
How did this fear get so widespread, is it because Europe (well the EU in particular) is falling into line with these people? We all know that Muslims are the fastest growing group in Europe, but not all Muslims are terrorists, and it is our job to stand before these people and stop them. When I see the way Europe is treating this group I think back to how a small group of nutjobs in the Roman Catholic Church that ran roughshod over people in the 15th century.
I wonder if I can create a religion that will be allowed to change what actually happened?
There is also resistance to tackling the 11th century Crusades - where Christians fought Muslim armies for control of Jerusalem - because lessons often contradict what is taught in local mosques. ...
The study looked into ‘emotive and controversial’ history teaching in primary and secondary schools. It found some teachers are dropping courses covering the Holocaust at the earliest opportunity over fears Muslim pupils might express anti-Semitic and anti-Israel reactions in class.
The researchers gave the example of a secondary school in an unnamed northern city, which dropped the Holocaust as a subject for GCSE coursework.
The report said teachers feared confronting ‘anti-Semitic sentiment and Holocaust denial among some Muslim pupils’.
Sadly, fear of Islamo-Terrorists is forcing schools in the UK to stop teaching history.
How did this fear get so widespread, is it because Europe (well the EU in particular) is falling into line with these people? We all know that Muslims are the fastest growing group in Europe, but not all Muslims are terrorists, and it is our job to stand before these people and stop them. When I see the way Europe is treating this group I think back to how a small group of nutjobs in the Roman Catholic Church that ran roughshod over people in the 15th century.
I wonder if I can create a religion that will be allowed to change what actually happened?
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