Video Game Skills

The following is an 11 minute movie which shows somebody beating super mario 3... thats right, the entire game. His jumping sequences are mind-boggling, I'd be happy just to pass the levels.

Blasphemy

Many people were upset when Calvin and Hobbes went off the air, so to speak. One enterprising individual had a bright idea though...

Hi! My name is Michael. You can call me Mike for short. I am a big fan of your books. I read the ad in the paper. I was pretty sad, but I got over it. Oh, I was wondering if I could take over but I would need instructions to draw the characters. IF you say yes, Calvin and Hobbes will continue but it will be a little different. If you say No than you don't even know what will happen. Bye!

Yup, the guy who won't even allow a picture of Calvin to be printed on a Tshirt is going to let someone take over the strip. Some people just choose not to think.

Middle East Quotes

An interesting website that contains quotations from various arab political figures over the years. I'll list some of the better ones here:

"You do not represent Palestine as much as we do. Never forget this one point: There is no such thing as a Palestinian People, there is no Palestinian entity, there is only Syria. You are an integral part of the Syrian people, Palestine is an integral part of Syria. Therefore it is we, the Syrian authorities, who are the true representatives of the Palestinian people."
Syrian President Hafez Assad to PLO leader Yassir Arafat.

The boldface in the above is my own emphasis...

And of course, at the bottom of that page, one of my favourite quotes of all time from Golda Meir

"We can forgive the Arabs for killing our children. We cannot forgive them for forcing us to kill their children.... We will only have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us."
- Golda Meir

Censorship?

A Palestinian rally planned for the weekend inside the OISE at U of T was cancelled by the administration. In particular, it seems that the "basis of unity" that all participants were expected to sign on to was "exclusionary" and therefore not appropriate to a University campus.

Surprisingly, I agree.

I have always argued that people have a right to free speech that cannot be violated under anything but the most dire of circumstances. However, there is a hidden obligation that comes along with the right to free speech. In order to be allowed to say whatever you want, you must not infringe upon the rights of others to do the same.

That said, if someone wants to use private space (eg. a rented banquet hall) and wishes to exclude dissenting voices from the gathering, that is their right. However, a university is on the borderline between public and private space, and if you use public space to disseminate a message, you have an obligation to allow other people to use that space to promote their message in a nondestructive fashion as well.

I believe that forcing people who wish to attend a public conference to limit their speech rights as a price of admission is wrong. The conference was an infringement on free speech rights, and while it appears that the University is stifling speech, I happen to think that the opposite is true.

(Story from Segacs)

Save the dogs!



I found a great website that proves that you can get people to sign almost any petition. One petition of note was a plea to save the poor cats and dogs from the restaurants of South Korea.

Perhaps I'll start a petition to save the pigs, who after all are generally considered to be smarter and more intelligent than dogs.

(Maqui has not been allowed to read this post)

Sweet Poker



For those who haven't heard yet, I just won $100 in a poker tournament, yay me! Thanks to Paul for giving me the invite!

The alcohol industry fights back!



Big Alcohol has been feeling a little edgy lately. Its old friend and ally Big Tobacco is on the run and the unquenchable marijuana monster is rising up from the deeps to take its place. Meanwhile, groups like MADD are seeking to put a big dent in alcohol sales, moves that could potentially cost the industry millions of dollars.

So, what can the poor alcohol companies do? That's right, they come up with their own statistics! Deftly shifting between "rates" and "overall numbers", they try to prove their case, namely that since the rate of deaths attributable to alcohol has declined, there isn't really a problem.

Most amusing to me is to hear that only 12,000 or so deaths were directly tied in to drunk driving. Of course thats double the total number of deaths in aviation history, including the 9/11 events, but... as Budweiser would have us believe, its all relative.

Blaming the victim



An editorial in the gulf news gives a classic arab spin on the recent bombings in Istanbul. (Emphasis is mine)

In the immediate aftermath of this horror directed at two synagogues in Istanbul, however, it is important to reflect on a statement by Amr Moussa, the Arab League's Secretary-General. While taking a stand that attacks against civilians was unacceptable, Moussa made it clear to Israel that it was inciting terrorism through its contempt for international resolutions.

It reminds me of the classic rape defense, along the lines of "she deserved it because she was dressing in a provocative manner." Sure, we all know that the bombings are bad, but c'mon, the jews had it coming. I mean, they're building an illegal wall!

Some Americans are going to be slightly unhappy

Old News, but still...



I don't have a problem with a given store deciding which products they choose to sell. However, once an organization achieves something approaching a monopoly over its service, then its sales practices deserve some scrutiny.

In particular, it seems that, among other things, WalMart no longer sells copies of the 3 most popular men's magazines.

the company's standards and the magazines' content have not changed, but the firm has been under pressure from Christian groups in the past for its sale of certain magazines.

There are a couple of problems with this that I can think of:

1. Hypocracy: Maxim is hit, but Cosmopolitan which is substantially more explicit is not bothered. Its the standard anti-male bias, but it still annoys me.


2. Small town censorship: Walmart enters small towns and drives its competition out of business. I live in a big city, so if Walmart doesn't sell Maxim, I can still get it somewhere else. However, if I lived in Gananoque or some other backwater area, this corporate decision has effectively censored the magazine in the area


3. Imposition of religious values: I get pretty offended by the ubiquitous christmas music that starts playing 2 hours after Halloween ends. Do I have the right to impose my view on others?

I don't necessarily believe that it is incumbent upon Walmart to change its policies, I think that it is more important for consumers to take a stand against Walmart and demonstrate that this type of censorship is unacceptable. I used to boycott Walmart a few years ago, but they changed many of their more objectionable policies, so I ended the boycott. From now on though, I'm not buying any magazines from there, I don't care if its 25% off the cover price.

Plagarism



I got the link to the microsoft video from Bill Amend, creator of foxtrot, who actually maintains a good portion of his web site! The news page is particularly interesting. Foxtrot is definately the best active comic strip. It will never be Calvin and Hobbes, but sometimes I despair that nobody will ever equal the bar set by that gem.

I figured, if he is making his own page, at the very least he deserves credit for a link I stole from him...

This is why I could never be a corporate bigwig



I've seen this video before, but its worth showing it again (about 1.5 megs or so I think). Steve Balmer of Microsoft fame is dancing around the stage and pumping up audiences. If I was in the audience, I would have chucked a tomato into his corpulent face.

A Student Union Corrupt? Never!



A little blurb from the CSU Periodical Financial Report: (This is written by the current VP Financial)

I spent far too much time this year dealing with a stack of cheques left over from last year's administration that were far too shifty for my liking. Totalling several thousand dollars, these cheques were rather frighteningly created on the last three days of the previous administration's mandate, most unsigned. Many were donations to outside groups from the 2002-03 financial committee, however had no documentation or resolutions attached.

Whenever I say that there isn't much corruption in Canada, I often forget about our Universities. Silly me. While Concordia is of course reknown for this type of crap, other universities are not immune. When a student council is only elected for one year and has almost no chance of being re-elected the following year, then they are not responsible to their voters in any way. Its a bad system.

Butter vs. Margarine



I got a cute forwarded message in the email today about how margarine was the biggest disaster to hit the food chain since baby formula. The full text of the message was, interestingly, easily found at snopes.

Now, I'm hardly the biggest fan of margarine at all, and I have no doubt that in many ways butter is substantially healthier. I think that most of the anti-butter backlash was due to people trying to avoid fatty foods in any way possible. Also, when push comes to shove, butter really tastes a lot better and that is the primary consideration in much of my food consumption decisions at the moment.

But... that said, this was the funny line from the message:

And here is the most disturbing fact......

Margarine is but one molecule from being PLASTIC..... (This fact alone was enough to have me avoiding margarine for life and anything else that is hydrogenated, this means hydrogen is added changing the molecular structure of the food.)

Sheesh, what a crock. Water is but one molecule away from being bleach. Well, thats not totally true, water is but one atom away from being bleach, which I suspect is even "worse" according to the original author. This is why some science education needs to be mandatory in high school, otherwise people blindly believe any stupid thing they read.

I apologize for being remiss in adding new entries over the weekend. I was working on my website instead, and made a bunch of changes:

• Fixed the "page slipping off to the right" look


• Synchronized backgrounds


• Completely revamped the photo area of the website


• Finally made the frames page the main page, no more silly clicking on the frames link!

As a warning, while the thumbnails are small, the pictures they link to are huge. I will deal with that at some point this week, but I don't have time to do it now.

Anyhow, please leave a comment and tell me how you think the site looks!

On the American abortion front



Abortion is back in the news with the banning of partial birth abortions, followed today by a bunch of judges putting a block on the enforcement of the ban.

Federal judges in three U.S. states blocked the government on Thursday from prosecuting almost all doctors for performing an abortion procedure banned under a law just signed by President Bush.

I'm of two minds on this situation. From a moral standpoint, as someone who supports limited instances of post-natal abortion, I obviously don't have much of a problem with partial birth abortions. However, from a practical standpoint, I think there are some benefits to a ban on partial birth abortions.

When anti-abortion nuts try to argue their position, they often use examples of partial birth abortions. For the unaligned individuals, the graphics and context of a partial birth abortion can be very disturbing. When abortion is presented in a black or white format (eg. "If you are not against abortion or you are in favour of PBA's") some people may drift towards the anti-abortion camp. This is unfortunate.

Sometimes, sacrifices must be made for the greater good. I don't think think that pro-choice activists should make much of a stand against PBA's, its a harder fight to win. Make the stand on more stable ground where there is more broad-based public support in favour of abortion. By outlawing PBA's, the antiabortionists are losing one of the most potent tools in their arsenal, and that can't be a bad thing.

One last thing needs to be clarified. Most pro-choice people are aware that PBA's represent only a small fraction of abortions performed each year, and in most cases PBA's are done for health as opposed to birth control reasons. However, the anti abortion activists don't ever bring up those points in their brochures, and they never will.

Are PBA's morally defensible? Definately. But in the current political climate, appropriate ground should be chosen to do battle. We are fighting on the turf chosen by our enemies, and we risk losing too much for a small gain.

Regarding that poll in the EU that says Israel is the greatest threat to worldpeace.


One quote can summarize the message this poll gives:

The Simon Wiesenthal Center, a U.S.-based Jewish rights group, said the survey "shows that anti-Semitism is deeply embedded within European society" and said Israel should draw the only conclusion possible and exclude the European Union and its members from any future Middle East peace process.

I agree completely.

Is Israel Dangerous?



There is a reluctance to go to Israel these days due to the perceived risk of getting killed by a wayward suicide bomber. Statistics are difficult to come by, I started by looking at the homocide rates. I found a study that gave the rates averaged over the last few decades. (Its a pdf file, table is on the third page). Summarized we have:

• USA: 7.88


• Canada: 1.88


• Bulgaria: 2.73


• Israel: 1.26

Ok, so in a normal year, going off to Israel will probably result in you being less likely to get murdered. Going to states, by the numbers at least, appears to be suicidal. No summer camp in Vermont for my kids!

But, now we have the dangerous Intifada times, so we need to adjust our figures a bit... The first step is to find out how many people have been killed by the suicide bombers. From September 2000 to May 5, 2002 there were 319 civilian deaths. Thats about 213 murders per year.

Now we need to find the Israeli population, which is about 6 million people. So, an extra 213 deaths in a population of 6 million translates into an extra 3.54 murders per year (per hundred thousand). Therefore, the revised list looks like:

• USA: 7.88


• Canada: 1.88


• Bulgaria: 2.73


• Israel: 4.80

Ok, so while it seems that you are more likely to get murdered in Israel than in Canada, its still safer than going to the states. Just for comparison's sake, the average mortality rate in Canada (due to all causes) is around 660 per hundred thousand according to statscan.

Final summary (all stats in number per hundred thousand):

• Murder rate in USA: 7.88


• Murder rate in Israel (including suicide bombings): 4.80


• Death rate in Canada: 660.00