The Cadman affair

Prime Minister Stephen Harper took the unprecedented step of suing the Liberal Party of Canada for libel over statements made by the party on its website. After the release of a taped interview with Harper from 2005, Liberals began accusing the Conservative party in general, and Harper in particular, of bribery with respect to Cadman …

… works in Absurd and Ironic ways …

The more I look at the world, the more I think God must have a supreme sense of the absurd, and an edge of irony sharper than the sharpest razor. As my year end post for 2006, I wrote an entry on the absurdity of some of the major news events of the year, but absurdity and irony pop up in more mundane places as well …

Mounties always get their man

The title words for this post have taken on a stark new meaning in recent times in Canada. I’ve been trying to write about the Robert Dziekanski incident from Vancouver International Airport in October for a week or so now …

Upgrades …

The new version of Wordpress, the software that powers the main version of this blog and many others, was released yesterday, and I took the opportunity today to upgrade to the latest and greatest. If the blog was offline for you for a bit, thats probably the reason, but I must say its a very quick and painless process that involves very little disruption in access …

50 years of space @ GeeksAreSexy.net

Today marks the 50th anniversary of one of the most significant events of the 20th century. Technology never exists in a vacuum … no matter what technical advancement we think of, there are always social, political, and ideological currents swirling around it as well as the technical currents …

Meditations on betrayal

This past Wednesday (Sept 26, 2007), the US House of Representatives voted to condemn Moveon.org because of an ad they ran in the New York Times. The Senate had also voted to condemn move on the previous week, so its now clear that all three branches of the US government …

The parody sweet spot …

There is a point at which parody becomes sublime, when it is so well done, so accurately portrayed, that it is indistinguishable from the real thing. It is at this most sublime moment that parody transcends the notion of a “joke” to truly show us something fundamental about our beliefs and the contradictions inherent therein. [...]

Dollar value

One of the common themes of my life, as far as Canadian news stories are concerned, has been the comparison of value between Canadian and American currency. From the first time I can remember being aware of “current events” the low value of the Canadian dollar compared to the American one has been a story. [...]

When comedy goes too far …

Everybody loves a joke … well, except when they don’t. In all honesty, its hard to believe that the people who came up with this idea truly didn’t see the potential for chaos and problems. In today’s world, its very hard to imagine anyone thinking that security personnel guarding a major international conference will have [...]

A call to violence

I stumbled across an interesting article this morning over at the War Room at Salon, that highlights the differences between the left wing and right wing elements in the US right now as far as rhetoric is concerned. Tim Grieve found a clip from a recent Ted Nugent show that is very interesting. As most [...]