haha, Newt may have to go to bed without any SOPA

What's Newt Gingrich's stand on PIPA and SOPA? Anybody think it will change after being sued by Survivor for his illegal use of "Eye of the Tiger"?

Probably not...

-DIrtyKID©

Move over SOPA & PIPA, now there's OPEN & ACTA

OPEN: "Online Protection and ENforcement of digital trade"

not open as in 'source', or open as in 'out in the', or open as in '____-door policy' but rather OPEN as in 'a locked door you do not have a key for'
synonyms: see CLOSED
antonyms: see OPEN

ACTA: "Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement"
as in 'the guy with who's only skill is feigning emotions and remembering when and what he's been told to say who will have to sell his million dollar cliff-side manor with 30 acres of private beach because you gave away his movie'
BEWILDERED: "Bureaucrats Enacting Wickedly Illegal Laws Designed to End our Rights Entirely under media Darkness"
as in 'what the hell?! and I can't actually think of anything more meaningful to say than that...'

What are we Con$erving?

EI financing agency spends millions doing nothing CBC News has reported that a 'Steering Committee' created by 'The Harper Government™ ' has been doing what bureaucrats do best: spending money while not actually doing anything. Created in 2008, the committee was mandated to:

• Determine what annual deductions should be charged to workers 
• which has been artificially capped by 'The Harper Government™' every year since 2008
• Invest any surplus in the EI fund
• The EI fund has run a deficit every year since, because there was a rate cap in place

All of this has cost over 3 million dollars in 3 years, add to that: they are planning to move to a bigger office this year to "improve the corporate culture". The place has 3 employees, one of whom is part-time, what kind of corporate culture are they looking for?!!

So, the dispute is over then?

Whether or not Iran is making nuclear weapons is now 'beyond dispute', or at least it is beyond Canadian politicians to dispute. Prime Minister Stephen Harper said so in a recent interview. I am glad that the interviewer (Peter Mansbridge) chose to point out how similar to Iraq this sounds, and how Harper fumbles to answer. I find it more interesting still the way he changes the subject to religious extremism, and, of course, fear... No substance: no quotes from Iran cited, no data proving WMDs, no dates of International Atomic Energy Commission reports (he does drop that name, though I assume he means Agency, rather than Commission, maybe he means the UNAEC United Nations Atomic Energy Commission. Wait, so really he did not actually drop a name at all...).

SOPA? PIPA? Stopa talking while you're ahead!

I just caught wind of a new name calling, finger pointing effort from the MPAA...

I do not understand how anybody could have balls this big... The MPAA and RIAA wrote SOPA and PIPA and now have the nerve to accuse wikipedia and others?

SOPA? PIPA? Stopa the Madness!

I've determined that this black background is about the best I can do to support the 'blackout the web' protest against SOPA and PIPA. It is unfortunate, but short of dedicating a couple of days to build my own custom 'blogger' template, this black background was the only thing that was adjustable within the confines of this template.

Now, where to begin when I've already covered this topic several times? I don't think I am going to get that involved this time because Cracked magazine has done it for me... Maybe I will, at some future time, break down how the bill itself proposes to break the internet by failing to understand how it actually works, and maybe I won't.

-DIrtyKID©

PS: I have plagiarized this signature on every blog post since the 1st one because I am too lazy to remember which letters I have capitalized

Vive le Québec Libre®

The province of Quebec has asked it's population if it would like to become it's own country, not once, but twice thus far in my lifetime, founding a statement that I use frequently 'No, means no (except in Quebec)'. Mostly we answer no due to the image of the language police being given the highest authority in law enforcement and think we want no part in that kind of genocide. However I realize a much larger flaw with their image of a Québec libre: they wish to continue to use of Canadian currency.

It's never really sat right with me because it sounds like moving out of your parents house but still requesting an allowance.

The Science of lies V: "there's a pill™ for that..."

Have you ever wondered: 'why are all our kids on Ritalin these days?', or 'how is it that every second commercial on the idiot box seems to list symptoms that are clear signs that YOU are depressed?'. Me too. Funny enough there is an answer for that. You see the big pharma companies decided that putting the message in medical journals and other periodicals which doctors frequently read just wasn't driving enough sales. So without even a slight modification to the sales pitch, they began to advertise to us directly, except, they have never sent us any of the 'safety reports', 'case studies', or any other 'clinical results' for the meds they want us to ask for by name.

Doubt

There are a few irrefutable facts in the universe; if I am holding a pencil in one hand, and a pencil in the other hand, I am holding two pencils; if I drop one pencil not only will I be holding one pencil, but the other will fall to the floor. These are irrefutable facts: Mathematics and other rudimentary sciences do not bend to fit a false pretense. Beyond these basics (as well as a few others I have chosen not to illustrate for time's sake), all other facts I've been told and forced to memorize are questionable at best.

Do I fear the true nature of the universe for all my doubt? No.

The Science of Lies IV: "...and now a word from our censors"

I read an interesting point in an article the other day. But believing nothing, as I usually do, I decided to dig into it a bit myself. Part of this is to do web searches, and refine those searches with an eye to seeing who cites the same information. I find it very odd when 'refining' my search actually eliminates the results I was looking for. So it is not only our media that is censored, our quest to find alternate media sources appears to be censored as well. So revealing 'computer science' lies.

The Science of Lies III: "Trust me, I'm an Expert™"

Experts™ are, admittedly, a fairly rare breed.

It takes years of honing a trade or field of research into some tangible and provable result, that someone of conscience, who cares enough about their reputation, would stake their life's work on. Conveniently, most news outfits seem to have a large list of all the experts in any related catastrophe, and usually they are available for interviews only seconds into the reporting of some such event. Fancy that...

The Science of Lies II: "the grass is greener..."

My anger boils over with much less input than required to drive massive energy output, and it's winter here in Canada, so one might call that a sort of Cold Fusion, if only we could find a way to bottle it... And as green® an energy as that would be (occasional methane production aside), the idea predates the notion of Climate Change­™, and is thus not actually included in the grand scheme of pushing the green agenda, or carbon taxes, or Carbon default swaps.

Wait, what?

This sounds even more odd now that it is committed to readable words...The Green Agenda™ has been busy cramming vast moneys into Solar and Wind energy like the now defunct Solyndra and Evergreen Solar and their solar panels, or wind turbines that are not only unreliable at best, but they appear to fail and collapse during high winds?!!! But because 'cold fusion' was 'debunked' by scientists who's interests seemed to lie in the billions of dollars needed to build hadron colliders, or recreate the extreme heat conditions that exist within the sun, cold fusion does not deserve a penny nor even so much as an honorable mention in the footnotes?

The Science of Lies

This story is an old one, over 20 year old, in fact. In the mid to late 80's, while in school, an English teacher of mine assigned the class to turn in a report on a current event or news item. The next morning while I read the paper, an event that has never been part of my normal routine, I stumbled into something larger in it's implications than the article was given space for: Pons and Fleischmann announced the existence of their technology to the world.

 I reported on this breaking story with great enthusiasm. I made sure to incorporate all the reasons Cold Fusion would be the greatest invention, potentially since the wheel or fire, but certainly since the dawn of electricity. Granted, I understood this still had to go through proper scientific review, and even stated that in my report.

The unbearable lightness of being (wealthy)

The CBC has determined that the average Canadian CEO will have earned the average Canadian's salary by noon today.

That is where we can distinguish the difference between the 1% and the 99%. It is rather sickening to think that some scabby rich person will have already earned my salary by (or possibly even before) lunch today... It might still be worse: they could spend twice what I've earned by lunch today on 'lunch' today, and then even claim it as a business expense. And I am willing to bet that my salary increase will be under inflation this year, why? Because it has not matched nor exceeded inflation in any year since the turning of the millennium, that's over a decade folks! Yet, CEO's and the über-rich have seen salary increases of 27% last year, while they had to tighten our belts.