RCimT: Some stuff I missed while I was down and out

In the wake of Scio11, I was sick. Very sick. Two different kinds of sicknesses with different incubation periods and symptoms. My immune system is shot all to hell, and I strongly suspect I’m becoming allergic to my cats, which would explain my sinus problems for the past year and a half, and my sudden downturn in ability to fend off any sniggering little monocellular malcontent that happens by. Got an allergy test eventually – at least, that’s what the doctor tells me, though I’ve not yet heard from the local allergist to actually make an appointment. Meanwhile, work’s been pretty much insane, so I haven’t had nearly as much time to blog as I’d like. So, I had a hell of a lot of tabs in my to-blog-about queue, and now’s as good a time to dump and run as any.

Apparently there’s 1023 protests going on this weekend all over Canada. Given my current state of health, maybe going out in public and overdosing on homeopathic remedies to protest the fact that they’re selling sugar and water is a good idea. I could drink homeopathic echinacea or something.

This is nothing short of awesome. A Dreamworks storyboard artist blogs some of his storyboard brainstorms, and in his latest, he turned Carl Sagan and his Spaceship of the Imagination into something like an interstellar woo Star Destroyer.

The Onion covers the recent Republican repeal of the bill to destroy an asteroid that’s going to hit Earth, sending a strong message of rebuke to Obama and his administration’s big spending ways.

Gawker publishes a handy guide to all the right-wing nonsense that’s being spouted by the usual suspects lately. Great if you need to catch up on your conspiracy theories and you don’t have Fox News.

There’s a row going on right now between Canadian consumers and ISPs — the ISPs have been pushing to move to usage-based billing (to squeeze more blood from a stone, and simultaneously kill competitor Netflix in the video streaming market), and a grassroots effort called OpenMedia.ca has gained enough momentum that politicians are actually forced to overturn at least one decision by the CRTC that would prevent small competitors from offering unlimited usage plans. I may have more to blog about this later. You should probably sign the petition, and visit the website, if you haven’t already.

I hate Ayn Rand and her self-centered, pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps (regardless of your lot in life) philosophies. Just saying. So I had to smile when I found out she received Medicare benefits — under an assumed name no less.

I also missed more and better proof that Ratzinger covered up pedophilic abuse. Wow. Seriously.

Reuters reports US government officials admitting privately that the Wikileaks leaks aren’t actually that damaging. Yet they keep beating the wardrum for Assange’s hide, even though lawyers pretty much admit Wikileaks broke no US laws.

The Tea Party is apparently demanding sanitized history, asking that textbooks cover up slavery and the extermination of the natives, because they “make past leaders look like hypocrites”. No… shit.

And finally, this past CES had two pieces of exciting news that add up to one very important and excellent piece of news. That one very important and excellent piece of news is that Microsoft’s computer hegemony is cracking. Significantly.

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RCimT: Some stuff I missed while I was down and out
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