Canada

Is this really how to make money while quitting smoking?

Jason Thibeault, , , , 4 Comments

Over the past several months, a radio spot has been running pretty frequently about a website, My5K.ca, where you could sign up to get $5000 just for graduating from high school smoke-free. Between the cynic and the skeptic in me, a great battle raged, between whether a) this was possible to judge fairly, and b) whether this was even a good idea, trying to incentivize the mere act of being a non-smoker. Only recently did I start digging around to find out what this whole program is about.

It seems this program is Canada wide, as the registered charity that’s administering it, the R.E.W.A.R.D.S Foundation (acronym: Rewarding Everyone Who Acts Responsibly and Doesn’t Smoke, I kid you not), operates out of British Columbia. The radio spot had left me with the impression that this was a government run initiative, and frankly, to offer a straight $5000 to anyone graduating smoke-free would be ludicrous on its face, especially if it was done Canada-wide, so I assumed it was local. It seems the ad left me with several false impressions, not the least of which being that all you had to do was graduate smoke-free.
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Is this really how to make money while quitting smoking?
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To the polls!

Jason Thibeault, , , , 17 Comments

Rodney MacDonald’s Tory government will ask the LG to send Nova Scotia back to the polls, possibly on June 9th. This comes after the NDP and Liberals said “no way” to a proposed amendment to our budget laws where, in order to balance the provincial budget, the Conservatives actually wanted to miss two years of debt repayment. They couldn’t write a balanced budget, so they wanted to rewrite the laws so what they had planned, counts. This is like rewriting the rules of marbles after taking your shot, boys. No takebacks, no do-overs.

I’d love to vote NDP and flip our government if the local community would go for it (assuming all other districts remained the same), however our local area is pretty solidly behind Brison, the Liberal candidate, and frankly, he’s doing a pretty decent job of representing our area thus far. Hopefully enough people will be upset by this stunt that one seat will flip NDP (or even Liberal, or Independent) to change our house makeup — it’s 21 Conservative, 20 NDP, 7 Liberal, and 1 independent (and by independent, we mean ex conservative shunned by the party after he was convicted of leaving the scene of an accident).

On a related note, our area is more sickeningly religious than I’d thought. In the past week I have seen two distinct SUVs trolling around, one with two bumper stickers, “CSI: Christ Saves Individuals”, and “in case of rapture this vehicle will be unmanned”; and another whose license plate reads “RU4GIVIN” — either RU4GIVEN was taken, or they’re asking if we’re pro-gifting. Let’s not even mention the various signs on various churches asking such retardery as, “Do you think you’re worth dying for? Christ did!” I’ve noticed (and I’m sure I’m not the only one to notice this) that there’s a disturbing correlation between religiosity, scientific antipathy, and affiliation with the Conservative Party. I’m not saying you have to be religious to be Conservative, or Conservative to be religious, but it seems to go hand in hand around here. Uncanny, no?

To the polls!

And even by your numbers, we aren’t that bad!

Jason Thibeault2 Comments

Wow. When I wrote my screed about intellectual property last week, I had no idea that Canada is being unfairly targeted:

Canada comes in at 32%.  The remaining countries (no rates are listed for Algeria, Israel, or Venezuela):

Country BSA Claimed Piracy Rate
Argentina 75%
Chile 66%
India 66%
Indonesia 86%
Pakistan 85%
China 79%
Russia 70%
Thailand 76%

Not only is Canada not even remotely close to any other country on the list, it has the lowest software piracy rate of any of the 46 countries in the entire Special 301 Report.

And this is ignoring the fact that the claims made by the BSA are afterward subject to dispute — this is merely the raw percentage of claims! The article goes on to describe all the ways we prosecute people infringing on imaginary property. So not only are we paying a levy on every blank media sold (whether you’re a pirate or not!), we’re much less guilty of these “crimes” than these other countries that infringe with impunity. So, why is Canada being targeted? Could it have something to do with the festering trade dispute over lumber, and the various attempts to “secure” (read: close) the US-Canadian border over the years, ever since America went all paranoid-schizophrenic over 9/11?

And even by your numbers, we aren’t that bad!

I don’t believe in Imaginary Property (IP)

Jason Thibeault, 3 Comments

Canada’s been placed on the US’ copyright blacklist due to our ongoing resistance to implement new DMCA-alike laws to appease the RIAA / MPAA. The Obama administration is apparently upset that Harper keeps promising to enact new laws to protect an outmoded and archaic business model, yet not delivering. Join the club on that one — he ain’t exactly a paragon of virtue to us neither, Jack.

We signed the WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) Internet treaties in 1997, much to my chagrin. Presently, we already pay a ridiculously high levy on every piece of blank media (CDs, DVDs, cassette tapes, regardless of what’s going on them, doesn’t matter), a tithe that goes directly to the CRIA, Canada’s answer to the RIAA. Now, at the very least as of my trip to Georgia last year, the States has declared they reserve the rights to search and sieze all counterfeit or copyright-infringing media without warrant at the border, including the contents of your laptop or iPod. I wasn’t searched, but if I had known this before my trip, I wouldn’t have brought my work laptop with me, for fear that it booting to Linux would make me an enemy of the state for not paying the Microsoft Tax, or a terrorism suspect for using a “hacker operating system”, or something else overreactionary and horrifying.

One way or another, the whole concept of copyright has to change, and soon, before these laws turn “piracy”, the act of copying some data without depriving the original user of their copy, from mere copyright infringement, into criminal activity.

I don’t believe in Imaginary Property (IP)

How long do I have to speak freely?

Jason Thibeault, , ,

Boy oh boy, I just can’t wait til it’s illegal to blaspheme here in Canada! Between the UN attempting to pass a measure pushed by Islamic countries to “combat blasphemy”, Ireland including blasphemy in a defamation law, and a seemingly dead Canadian law just waiting to be resurrected (perhaps three days from now?), it’s only a matter of time before some of the less rationally inclined reactivate that law and they come for me. I’ll be in stocks before you know it!

I wonder. What if I proclaimed my love for science as a religion, and any attempt to stifle scientific progress on the basis of other peoples’ false religions to be blasphemy? Would I then be protected?

I also wonder what’s gotten into me today. Suddenly I’m a blogging machine!

How long do I have to speak freely?

‘Religious apologetics’ infects Vancouver Sun

Jason Thibeault, , , ,

My rage meter just pegged on reading an article on the Vancouver Sun’s online version, entitled ‘Scientism’ infects Darwinian debates.   I don’t even know where to start. Perhaps once I’m off work and have more time, I will fully debunk this, but it boils down to, “people who think that the act of studying nature to discover its secrets is the only true way to find out more about nature, are just as wrapped up in their faith as people who use really old books and make wild guesses about nature”.

Pro tip for you creationist apologizers — science is a self-correcting meritocracy based on the evidential study of reality, where the bad theories get knocked out and replaced with better ones all the time, and if you find that this reality conflicts with your personal world view, then your personal world view is the one that’s wrong. You put the two ideas on a scale, one with heaps of evidence and the other with nothing but faith, and guess which one weighs more?

Update: Phil Plait is much more eloquent than I am. As usual. He also directly attacks the angle that the Sun article brings up, that science isn’t as good as imagination, by pointing out that without imagination, science is nothing more than a bunch of useless facts.

In the meantime, I’m starting to feel like I’m repeating myself ad nauseum into the ether. Though I know I have a handful regular readers, the site metrics tell me so, I’m not getting a lot of regular commenters, and I’m starting to think it’s my subject matter. Either you folks all agree with me (and I know at least a few of you who are regular readers do not), or you don’t want to take the bait and get into an actual debate on this subject matter. Why? I’m not that scary, am I? I really do just want to spark debate with you, which I absolutely relish not only as a means of getting to know you better, but also to force us both to suss out our personal belief systems as much as possible.

The funny thing is, when the political race in the States was nearing its crescendo, and I was posting stuff that wasn’t exactly controversial (e.g. annoyance at the media’s soft-gloving John McBombeverything), people were more willing to comment. I guess people really do believe that you’re allowed to discuss one another’s political viewpoints but not one another’s religious beliefs. I really just want to encourage you all to view religious belief as something that can be discussed along the same lines as politics.

Frankly, I’m starting to suspect that the fact that your religious beliefs make up the core of your personhood, inclines you all to turn away from any challenges to those beliefs just in case they shake the foundation of those beliefs. It’s why I’m willing to not simply close the browser window and ignore articles like the one I mentioned in this post, even though that would do my blood pressure many favours — my core belief system is that the universe is comprehensible, and the only way to gain understanding of the rules by which it plays is by applying the scientific method, so when someone suggests that people like myself are guilty of “scientism”, I have to post something about it. I can’t let the challenge go unanswered. So why are you?

Hell. If I was just looking for attention, I’d post more random Youtube videos. Those seem to get comments regularly. Or, another sure-fire way to get more comments is, I’d just mention the LHC and have one of the most prolific internet trolls in recent memory return. Then maybe I could debate him properly this time (if such is possible with that type of debater, who hits you with fifty references to poorly thought out pseudoscience in hopes that you can’t adequately answer every last one of them — the “shit and wall” debating method), instead of simply calling him on his games and shutting him out with an “all other planets are yours but this one”.

‘Religious apologetics’ infects Vancouver Sun

As though you didn’t have enough reason to hate Fox News

Jason Thibeault3 Comments

US: “Hey Canada, I know we got ourselves involved in a huge war in Afghanistan, and we appreciate your help these past three years, but President Chimpy wants to go invade Iraq for some reason; do you mind spotting us some more soldiers for a while? You know, in light of that whole NATO agreement.”

Canada: “Well shit, didn’t think it’d work that way, we kind of figured NATO meant if anyplace in North America got invaded, we’d cowboy up… but okay. I realize Afghanistan is a big, important war, and stopping the Taliban and possibly getting Bin Laden is pretty urgent. We’ll do it.”

US: “Great! Oh, and by “a few soldiers”, we mean “most of them”, ‘coz we’re going to pull most of our guys out and shove them into Iraq. Yeronyerown! Later losers!”

Four years later, we’re still caught in the most violent regions of the quagmire Bush started way the hell back in 2001, fresh bodies returning from the meat grinder daily, and Canada declares that once we’re done with the Afghanistan mission in 2011, we’re going to have to go into a rebuild phase (bringing our army home and rebuilding after having expended so much life and money on a fruitless cause), declaring a one-year moratorium on operations outside the country. Reasonable enough after ten damned years, right? But what do we get from the asshats at Red Eye? Scorn and threats of annexation. As though bringing all our army home and rebuilding makes us LESS able to defend our territory.

Think about this, Americans. We might not be able to hold our own against an army funded by almost twice the money invested in all the rest of the armies of the whole world combined, but even a pacifist like me would pick up a chainsaw and fuck a couple invaders up before letting myself get subjugated. Ultimately, you’d be minting brand new freedom fighters (read: “terrorists”) out of every hoser and maple syrup sucker up in the Great White North. You’d win, eventually, sure. You have unmanned drones and trillions of dollars of money borrowed from China to crush us with. But karma’s a bitch, and Canada’s really popular in international circles.

As though you didn’t have enough reason to hate Fox News

Our Science Minister believes in MAGIC!?

Jason Thibeault, , , ,

Yet another post about the nexus of religion and science. You’d think I’d get tired of this stuff, but this one hits really close to home, and my rage meter is probably my biggest blogging driver.

Gary Goodyear, Canada’s Minister of State for Science and Technology, apparently can’t bring himself to accept that science always trumps faith when the two come into opposition. When asked about whether or not he believed in evolution, he refused to answer on the grounds that as a Christian, he felt the question was religious and he didn’t want to discuss religion.

Update: Shoulda read all my RSS feeds before posting, because Phil Plait already covered this loon, and the “clarification” he made on CTV today. However, I agree wholeheartedly with Phil when he says:

I’m calling shenanigans on him. Why? Because 1) he should have answered it in the first place — if, by his reasoning, the question was irrelevant yesterday, it still is today, and 2) it is an extremely relevant question, given that he was couching his answers yesterday in religious terms.

The rest of this post, everything below the fold, stands unaltered by this update, because I believe this is little more than backpedalling in the face of a public outcry. The question asked is ONLY a religious question if you think evolution is incompatible with your religious beliefs. Period. End update.

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Our Science Minister believes in MAGIC!?

Nice quiet weekend, for a change

Jason Thibeault, 3 Comments

Jodi and I spent a nice quiet weekend for the first time in recent memory — no big projects, no major interruptions from work, just finally putting No More Heroes to bed (what a twisted plot it has, video game or not!), then watching Heroes (right after No More Heroes, the irony isn’t lost on me) and a great documentary miniseries called Miracle Planet.  We also had a full, homemade, roasted chicken meal, complete with stuffing and my first successful stab at making gravy, though I used far too much gravy browning and it came out looking approximately like molasses.  Tasted fine though.

Work is still work.  I’m still taking on more responsibility than I should by rights have to.  I’ve been told a new guy was offered the position for the other centre, but he has to put in his notice at his current place of employ, and even then I’ll likely have to train him up when he takes the position properly.  So I’m not out of the tunnel, but I can see the light at the end.  Here’s to hoping the light isn’t a train (which I guess in this metaphor would mean that they’ll have hired four complete wrecks in a row for the IT position in that centre, and I’ll just end up being tapped for even longer).

I’ve made a deal with Jodi, that she’s to read the Dune series if I promise to read the Belgariad series.  On reading the first few pages, I really hope she’s right about it picking up and not being as low-fantasy as it seems right now.

We haven’t gotten voter registration cards yet, likely due to our moving recently.  Tomorrow’s the deadline on calling Elections Canada — and I damn well want to vote this year more than any previous, so I’m going to make a point of taking time out of my usually-busy Monday to exercise my duty as a citizen and flex my electoral muscle.  Which is hopefully better defined than my other muscles.  I can’t bring myself to rage about the economic meltdown, but I will point you to this article at the Great Orange Satan and tell you that were I offered the $200,000 to give up on the $0-or-$1,000,000 suitcase, per the Deal or No Deal reference, I’d take the $200,000 in a heartbeat.  Not an instant of hesitation.  Call me a pragmatist.  And a populist, because I’m definitely that too.

If you haven’t gotten your voter registration yet, call Elections Canada first thing tomorrow at 1-800-463-6868 and do your part.  And yes, this does matter, so get informed, and vote.  If we all end up in the poorhouse or fighting over scraps of food and the last of the unpolluted water in some freaky Mad Max scenario, all because the uninformed electorate was swayed by commercials wherein puffins poop on politicians, then I’ll be the first to blame you.  Right before I roundhouse kick you and take your moldy cheese.  Fucker.

Nice quiet weekend, for a change

I want a Famous Person to endorse ME, doggone it!

Jason Thibeault18 Comments

Wow, famous people really really like Sarah Palin, by golly!  They managed to get the quote right from Peggy Noonan, ostensibly a famous person by virtue of being a former Reagan speechwriter (and therefore Republican, and therefore wholly unbiased), but one of two things happened here — they made the ad before anyone said it, and sent it around to see who’d be willing to put it in their wholly unbiased review the next day, or they were unwilling to actually look at the byline when they made the ad pulling the quote from Noonan’s review.  Possibility A sounds a hell of a lot more likely, honestly.  Meaning they’re manipulating those press-members that are in the tank for them, and they let it slip.  Wink wink, dontchaknow.

This is just too hilarious to let them live down.  Spread this around!

In the meantime, the Canadian debate was a bit of a let-down.  While everyone was dogpiling on Harper for his horrid policies, his personality being a fully owned subsidiary of the Republican party, etc., it seems as though Harper actually came off as being the level-headed one according to the press, and everyone else just seemed to be, well, dogpiling him.  Layton also came off as a bit of a one-trick pony, harping on big oil and Bush, no matter how absolutely correct he was.  I kept hoping for any of the charges against Harper to resonate with the audience, but if it happened, I didn’t see it.  I ought to put up a poll on who won the Canadian debate, except for the fact that my sample size is, at my last count, a total of 10 readers, and thus not really representative.

Oh well, at least Biden schooled Palin and her inability to answer simple questions without referring to her talking-points cards.  That’s good news anyway.

I want a Famous Person to endorse ME, doggone it!