Archive: Posts from November, 2004
November 30th, 2004, 8 Comments »
I haven’t seen any footage of today’s protest in Ottawa. Apparently it was largely peaceful, but marred (as these vents so often are) by an aggressive and idiotic few:
Police officers in riot gear pushed back a thick crowd of anti-war activists, some of whom were shouting at the security forces and trying to jostle them with the sticks of their placards. At least three protesters were pushed down onto the ground and arrested as CBC Newsworld television cameras recorded the action.
Some police in riot gear could be seen pulling on gas masks, suggesting that they were ready to release gas to control the crowd.
Hasn’t the last 100 years demonstrated that violent protest is a fool’s errand? Think of history’s most effective protests–they were all non-violent. I’m not talking about rebellion or revolution here–I’m talking about a mob getting hostile and destructive. As we’ve seen everywhere on the globe, hostile and destructive mobs get put down, whereas peaceful ones are effective.
I’m reminded of the overblown pepper-spray incident at the APEC conference at UBC in 1997. The event was mismanaged, and the police and government deserve the blame. However, I’ve seen the footage from the front lines. The demonstrators were pushing their way through a roadblock, and the police acted correctly. The lesson? In a democracy, violence is an ineffective method of rendering social change.
8 Comments »
November 30th, 2004, No Comments »
I just sent the following letter to The Georgia Straight, in response to this column:
While I’m no champion of our provincial government, I wanted to write and take issue with Bill Tieleman’s statistic-laden column. As I’m sure you know, statistics can be bent to any point of view, and Mr. Tieleman warps his beyond recognition. To pick a couple of examples:
Read more…
No Comments »
November 30th, 2004, 1 Comment »
The CBC reports that one of Canada’s most important writers, Pierre Berton, has passed away at the age of 84:
Berton, who wrote 50 books, was known for compelling, readable histories like 1970′s ‘The National Dream ‘ and 1971′s ‘The Last Spike’. He died Tuesday afternoon from heart failure.
Here’s a great video interview from 1975 (with an extremely surly and prim Mary Lou Finlay). His voice is remarkably familiar to me. In addition to being an excellent broadcaster, novelist and historian, he was always up for a bit of fun.
1 Comment »
November 30th, 2004, 11 Comments »
A quick follow-up as I’ve discussed the contest on a few occasions. Last night the CBC announced, to no one’s suprise, that Tommy Douglas was named the Greatest Canadian. Terry Fox came second, with Trudeau third.
I attribute Douglas’s victory to two factors: an aggressive campaign by the NDP and CBC demographics. I can’t find the stats anymore, but the CBC was displaying voter choices by age group. The majority of people under 50 had Terry Fox first, while those over 50 chose Douglas.
It’s ironic that Fox, who never sought the limelight, is beaten by a politician whose party rallies support for him. My vote still goes to Fox, whose purity of purpose and action raises him above any politician.
11 Comments »
November 30th, 2004, 5 Comments »
Typically, when a musician or actor tries to keep a tour or ‘from the set’ diary online, it doesn’t last very long. They stop for the same reasons anybody does–they’re busy, they’re lazy or the online diary just doesn’t do it for them. I first read David Byrne and Zach Braff’s weblogs some months ago, and wondered about their longevity. I’m pleased to see that they’re still up and running. In particular, I admire Byrne’s honesty. Here he talks about nerves before giving a presentation at a gallery function:
I was really nervous. I sat with Hurwitz a bit before I went on, I was dressed in a black suit and tie so as to both blend in with the art collectors, museum directors and corporate CEOs and to play the part of the “expert” during my talk.
I was also worried because a man on my right, an author, had never heard of Power point. Maybe the CEO had underlings to do their Powerpoint and the artists in the room would never have had any contact with it, as I didn’t until a few years ago.
There are plenty of other exceptions, of course. The Cowboy Junkies have kept tour diaries online since 1999. And didn’t Sir Ian McKellen keep fairly extensive diaries from The Lord of the Rings? Regardless, he (or his letter-answering assistant) has infinite patience for stupid questions.
5 Comments »
November 30th, 2004, 1 Comment »
Because my sister tells me that there’s been too much talk of stuff that my step-mother doesn’t understand.
- Remarkable
panorama photography from Veterans, Armistice and Remembrance Day events
around the world. Thanks, WorldChanging.
- The
6-minute trailer for the extended Return of the King DVD. The new version
includes 50 minutes of new footage, bringing the entire extended trilogy to
nearly 12 hours of cinema. Via Slashdot,
where a commenter notes that the extended version offers "20 extra minutes
of carrying Frodo".
- Buy the new version of "Do They Know It’s Christmas?" and then
destroy it on camera.
I never could quite figure out why the British were so obsessed with the Christmas
single phenomenon, but that’s for another post.
- Via Nerdfilter,
here are some
screenshots from the forthcoming The Matrix Online game. I’ve tried
to get into MMPORG twice, and failed both times, so I’m not going to give
this one a try. The Matrix Online could become like Second
Life, where characters can create worlds within worlds. And I wonder,
do you play both inside and outside the Matrix?
- Some nice photography
in a nifty Flash wrapper. Thanks, juniorbonner.
- Today’s Monty
made me laugh out-loud. Of course, this sort of thing wouldn’t happen if Robotman
was still around.
1 Comment »
November 29th, 2004, 4 Comments »
Whenever I hear about projects to flood spammers’ servers and bring down their sites, I think it’s a good idea. I was interested in Lycos Europe’s new screensaver, which follows in footsteps of SETI@Home, offering a distributed solution to a common problem:
Internet portal Lycos has made a screensaver that endlessly requests data from sites that sell the goods and services mentioned in spam e-mail. Lycos hopes it will make the monthly bandwidth bills of spammers soar by keeping their servers running flat out.
Sign me up. Not yet, apparently, as they’re launching only in Europe. I hope Lycos is extremely zealous about ensuring that only spammers’ sites get hit by these distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks. The Register notes that these types of attacks are illegal (presumably) in the US. I also recently read about Project Honeypot (which sounded to me like the title of some softcore porn film). They’ve got a different take on distributed spam fighting.
UPDATE: As far as I can tell, there are no actual geographical restrictions on this screensaver. It only uses 3.4 MB of upload bandwidth a day–a trickle for the average broadband user.
UPDATE #2: In a predictable irony, the Lycos site has been unavailable for at least a couple of hours. Is it getting DDOS’d by the spammers, or by its own success?
4 Comments »
November 29th, 2004, 2 Comments »
Sometimes I find the coolest photos via my Flickr RSS feeds. Today, however, I discovered a weblog by an American from the Bible belt who recently moved to Vancouver (his photos are here). I really dig hearing foreigners talk about my hometown, so I was pleased to find his Vancouver glossary. Here are a couple entries:
Starbucks: How you know you’ve reached the end of a block. If someone tells you to meet them at the Starbucks at the corner of Robson and Thurlow, be sure to ask which side of the street.
parkade: Neither a butter replacement nor a place to find a vintage Pac-Man game, it’s the building where you can pay to park your car.
homo milk: Whole milk (homogenized milk). Straight people are welcome to drink it, too.
There’s an addendum here, and also an amusing, rambling entry on his trip through immigration and into the city for the first time: “The floating gas station concept still really messes with my head”.
2 Comments »