calvin and hobbes, again

Last week I found this site that had all the Calvin and Hobbes strips ever made. As could be expected, it seems to have been shutdown pretty quickly. But hey, someone has the exact same site up somewhere else! Go read a bunch before it gets burned too!

on canada and missile defence

Ok, I've been meaning to do a post on all the latest developments in the ongoing will-they-or-won't-they saga of Canada's possible involvement in Bush's missile defence shield for a while now. And what better context to do so than at noon on a Saturday with a whiskey sour hangover, when you somehow manage to write sentences as abominable as that first one?

(If you're on the main page and want to read the rest of this post, just go ahead and click here.)

Small Flightless Bird has explained at length what's wrong with the program - with the fundamental ideas behind the program, in fact, so I won't go into it here. What we haven't gone into is this whole deal with Bush asking Canada to be involved, because there was never much to report. Prime Minister Paul Martin had expressed support for the program before being elected, but once in office he would never give a straight answer to a straightforward question: will Canada sign up?

Then Bush visited. I was there to shout things and express my general displeasure; meanwhile, Bush was exasperated by Martin's silly preoccupation with "democracy", and made a speech in Halifax the next day saying, seemingly out of nowhere, that he expected Canada to be involved in missile defence. But Martin still managed to avoid making a clear statement about whether or not Canada would be involved.

Finally, this past week, Martin's pick for the next Canadian ambassador to the U.S. made a brief statement to the press that Canada was already "part of" the program. He was referring to a deal made in August of last year to allow Norad to share information with the people running the missile defence program. This claim, as echoed by opposition leader Stephen Harper, was the one that forced Martin to show his hand - on Thursday, the PM flatly stated that Canada would not be a part of missile defence. This was pretty good news, but it also raised some interesting questions.

The first, for me, was: what did everyone mean by "sign on"? The term itself makes it sound as if Bush just wanted Martin's autograph. And the Norad agreement certainly seemed ominous. But John Ibbitson put it into perspective in the Globe and Mail on Wednesday:

"The Americans wanted an open declaration that Canada supports missile defence as a joint effort. They wanted some form of Canadian participation, not only in the NORAD command structure, but in the actual decision making. In effect, they wanted a Canadian in the room, cheering them on, if they had to try to shoot down a missile."

Another issue that arose concerned Canada's sovereignty. We here in Canada are always going nuts about our sovereignty when it comes to dealing with the States. Most Canadians these days want nothing to do with Bush or his programs, but we've also had a long-standing fear of getting sucked too far into American politics, of becoming another state. So even a lot of people who didn't like the idea of missile defence wanted Martin to sign on to it, just to ensure that we'd have a voice at the table when decisions were being made. Others, including NDP leader Jack Layton and BQ leader Gilles Duceppe) say that the only table Canada should sit at is the disarmament table (to paraphrase Layton himself).

But what Canada will gain from refusing to participate [fully] in missile defence is not easy to guess. In fact, Martin didn't do all that much: he said Canada would not participate, but then tossed out some gems such as these:

"Let me be clear: we respect the right of the United States to defend itself and its people."

To be honest, that wasn't all that clear. By not giving a strong reason for refusing to participate, Martin is losing a chance to make an actual point to Bush: his program sucks, it's unfeasible, it doesn't work, it's dangerous, etc. Those are the kinds of things that people who oppose missile defence want the President to hear, and they're the kinds of things that would make the international community take notice of Canada and its independence.

Which brings me to maybe the most important point in all of this: Paul Martin has clearly been paralyzed by having a minority government. That crazy old fiscal conservative who was once Finance Minister has been reduced to Mr. Dithers, not by the pressures of "Canada's top job" (as the Economist put it) but by his lack of seats in Parliament. That's why, aside from the gay marriage thing (which has really just been tying up Chretien's loose ends), Martin hasn't done much so far other than present an unspectacular budget. If he had a majority government, I bet he'd have signed on to missile defence months ago.

So Martin gets to appease a bunch of voters and two of the other parties while simultaneously giving verbal support to missile defence and lending the program Norad capabilities. It's win-win! And, as evidenced by the budget, you can bet that these kinds of scenarios will keep playing out until the next election.

hi mom

hardcore!

It's ok everybody, I'm not dead, I just hadn't reconnected the internet since I got home from being out of town. I'm sorry to keep you waiting - good thing Jared's been picking up the slack. I saw owls.

Anyway, you can stream 15 REM music videos over at iFilm, which, if nothing else, will remind you of how Michael Stipe used to have hair. Not all of them are all that great, but I like Man on the Moon. And Imitation of Life was neat but you kinda need to see it in hi-res to know why.

calvin and hobbes

According to del.icio.us, this link is making the rounds. But Calvin and Hobbes has long been one of my favourite comic strips, so I couldn't resist pointing out that Keshik Labs has posted every episode ever of Bill Watterson's wonderful work, which you can and should read.

And if you like them, as Waxy so graciously pointed out, why not go pre-order the new Complete Calvin & Hobbes collection?

Update: Looks like the site has been taken down, as I'd expected. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted.

bush's uncle profiting off iraq contracts

Well, it looks like Halliburton wasn't the only contractor in Iraq with questionable ties to the Bush administration. William "Uncle Bucky" Bush (H.W.'s brother, W.'s uncle) joined the board of directors for Engineered Support Systems Inc. (ESSI) eight months before Dubya took office, and ESSI's profits have soared since the invasion of Iraq, due partly to millions of dollars of government contracts there. These war profits included a $48.8-million no-bid, sole-source contract to "refurbish military trailers".

"Last week, Defense Department officials disclosed that ESSI contracts issued in 2002 with a cumulative value of $158 million had been referred to the Pentagon inspector general's office for investigation. The contracts were supervised by a former Defense official who was sentenced to prison for improperly aiding another contractor, Boeing Co."

Link to LA Times article.

pave the earth

It would appear that I'm about ten-and-a-half years late on this (save your breath, Optimus), but this guy has come up with a good idea to solve all of the Earth's pesky uneven bits: pave the whole dang thing.

Link to alt.pave.the.earth FAQ.

hugo chavez in the crosshairs

Hugo Chavez, the president of Venezuela, claims the U.S. is trying to kill him. The friendly left-winger (see photo - he's the smiling guy) has come under increasing pressure from the States for being too good to poor people, which is "causing instability" in Latin America. Plus the Venezuelans have a bunch of oil, which is not at all a factor in this in any way whatsoever.

Link to BBC article; link to Chavez Wikipedia entry.

gonzo funeral

As journalists declare the death of gonzo journalism, Hunter S. Thompson's remains will be cremated and "blasted from a cannon across his sprawling ranch in Woody Creek, Colo.", according to the Boston Globe.

Some tributes (kinda) I've come across: fafblog, decadent west, boingboing, goats, patches, overcompensating

arcade fire music video

Bradley's Almanac has graciously shared the new Arcade Fire music video. It's made with live footage and set to the studio version of 'Wake Up'.

Arcade Fire - Wake Up (22 Mb, .mov)

See also: Small Flightless Bird's Arcade Fire media roundup (link)

hunter s. thompson

From an AP article, filed an hour ago:

"ASPEN, Colo. - Hunter S. Thompson, the hard-living writer who inserted himself into his accounts of America's underbelly and popularized a first-person form of journalism in books such as "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," has committed suicide.

Thompson was found dead Sunday in his Aspen-area home of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound, sheriff's officials said. He was 67."

Articles: AP, BBC, LA Times, Reuters, CBC

a flash game

Yes, things slow down around here when I'm out of town. They'll be back to normal by Thursday maybe. In the meantime, I'm not going to post about the New York Times article about taped conversations with G.W. Bush from before he was president, or about Nepal's celebration of Democracy Day which involved cutting off telephone lines and arresting protesters, or about how Jeff Gannon seems to have known about the Iraq war four hours before it was announced.

Instead, here's a flash game involving a bouncing ball.

video of paul martin's speech on bill c-38

Here's a video of Prime Minister Paul Martin's good speech on the subject of Bill C-38 (the same sex marriage bill) in the House of Commons. It's got a lot of content from the bill itself, plus some arguments against a referendum and such. Too much clapping, though.

Link to government site with video options.

some headlines

In the news today*:

• Oldest fossil 'rabbit' unearthed: BBC reports that a 55 million-year-old rabbit-like creature has been unearthed in Mongolia. I don't know, usually these kinds of stories aren't that interesting to me, but something about ancient rabbits struck my fancy.
• Canadian PM called 'Mr Dithers' by The Economist: I didn't feel like actually reading the article, but the name seemed pretty funny. It seems like Paul Martin is kind of an unnoticeable Prime Minister so far. But after a quick glance I don't think the article mentions the whole paralyzed-by-a-minority-government situation, which is probably the reason he's not acting like the crazy old fiscal conservative he used to be. (related CBC article)
  
• Vatican offers exorcism lessons: In addition to breakdancing, the Pope has also become concerned of late with the growing number of small girls who can spin their heads all the way around.
  

* or yesterday

breakin' it holy-styles

Oops, I forgot to post anything today (technically, yesterday). Well, here's someone break-dancing for the Pope. This actually happened.



And: Video! Via the Daily Show, kinda.

kings of leon

I'm taking a break from studying for a Classical Mechanics midterm to tell you about something on the internet, so I'll thank you to excuse my brevity. Over at VH1.com, you can stream all twelve songs of Kings of Leon's new album, Aha Shake Heartbreak. I especially liked track 10, "4 Kicks".

Via Stereogum.

i think we are just out of waldorfs

The actual hotel from the old BBC comedy Fawlty Towers has been sold for £1.5m. Apparently, the original owner of the hotel was the inspiration for John Cleese's character, Basil Fawlty:

Cleese, who stayed at the hotel with the Monty Python team in 1971, described [Donald] Sinclair as "the most wonderfully rude man I have ever met".

Sinclair, who died in 1981, is said to have thrown Eric Idle's suitcase out of the window "in case it contained a bomb" and complained about Terry Gilliam's table manners.

Link to Guardian article; via Boing Boing.

missile defence fails... again

The latest missile defence system test has failed. Just like last month, the billions of dollars spent on this project were unable to get the missile to even launch from its silo.

Man, I hate this stupid idea so bad.

Previously: January's failed test; Powell on the weaponization of space; Bush on Canada's involvement.

go ahead and boil some lobsters

According to a new study from Norway, "the lobster capital of the world" (...not really though), lobsters probably do not have the capacity to feel pain. People in Maine are jubilant about this news, because they eat a lot of lobsters there and have always felt bad about the whole boiling-them-alive thing.

Meanwhile, a giant lobster is shown attacking a fisherman yesterday in Shediac, New Brunswick.

happy kyoto protocol day eve

Let's all sing a Kyoto Protocol Day Eve carol, and hang our traditional Kyoto Protocol Day Eve fake smog clouds from the ceilings!

Seriously though, the Kyoto protocol comes into effect tomorrow for the countries that signed it (i.e. basically everybody except the U.S. and Australia). Good news, certainly, but most people who know enough about climate change to be all good and freaked out about it agree that it is only a small step in the right direction.

Not to be outdone by all those countries legally binding themselves to a decrease in greenhouse gas emissions, the U.S. has been drilling for oil like crazy since Bush took office.

feed change

If you're subscribing to the Small Flightless Bird XML feed, the address has changed. Switch on over to the new feed now, and you'll never miss another post - we guarantee it^TM.

american visits toronto, dislikes french words on potato chip bags

a.k.a. "croustilles"

Bob, whose blog is, and I quote, "poop", has documented his experiences visiting Canada*.

"...with the exception of a sign in a clothing store that read, 'American $1 = only $1.20 Canadian Ha Ha Ha' I didn't come across anything that I would deem anti-American. I realized, though, that if any country wants to hate us Canada has a good reason to.

...Canada rocks. Despite their overuse of the letter 'u' and the French words on their bags of potato chips, I think it's a pretty cool place."

*Actually, he was only in Toronto, which is basically America Lite.

gay marriage bill in the house of commons soon

The Canadians for Equal Marriage group has put out a call for help. Bill C-38, which would legalize gay marriage in Canada, is heading to the House of Commons, and those of us in favour need to make sure the MPs know how we feel. CEM has a handy site where you can take about three seconds to send a form email on the subject to all MPs - if you're in Canada, why not head over there now? Link! (Actually, I guess Americans have something to say on it too.)

Previously: Bill C-38, Harper 1, Harper 2, Supreme Court, Discussion.

hiv versus cancer

Apparently, some scientists in the States have found a "harmless" version of the HIV virus that seeks out and destroys cancerous cells.

"In the laboratory, the scientists took HIV and removed the parts of the virus that causes disease. They then stripped off the virus' outer coat and redressed it with the outer suit of another virus. The new outer coat instead directed HIV to hunt down molecules present on cancer cells."

Link to BBC article.

del.icio.us

Everyone's going crazy about del.icio.us, an online "social bookmarks" community thing where everyone posts their bookmarks and looks at other people's links and such. I don't use it, because I think it's geared toward people who have hundreds of websites bookmarked and people who for some reason want to actually increase their time spent on the internet. Don't ask me what that's about.

That said, the del.icio.us/popular page lists things that bunches of people have linked to recently, and you may find something interesting there.

omg, wtf? lol

Hey Americans! Quick, hurry up to stop this crazy "Real ID Act". It is a bill that would allow the Secretary of Homeland Security to break any law he or she sees fit to break, as long as she or he is working to keep Mexicans out. Specifically, Section 102(c) of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 would read:

“(c) Waiver. —

(1) In general. — Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the Secretary of Homeland Security shall have the authority to waive, and shall waive, all laws such Secretary, in such Secretary’s sole discretion, determines necessary to ensure expeditious construction of the barriers and roads under this section.

(2) No judicial review. — Notwithstanding any other provision of law (statutory or nonstatutory), no court shall have jurisdiction —

• (A) to hear any cause or claim arising from any action undertaken, or any decision made, by the Secretary of Homeland Security pursuant to paragraph (1); or
• (B) to order compensatory, declaratory, injunctive, equitable, or any other relief for damage alleged to arise from any such action or decision.”

It got voted for by Congress and will move from there to the Senate! You have to do something!

Link to OMB Watch article; Via Fafblog.

"stuffing $2 million worth of crisp bills into his gunnysack"

The spoils of war, paid to some guy for
some reason... I don't know, this was a
while back maybe.

Turns out that some U.S. officials in "postwar" (mid-peace) Iraq just went around making cash payments from the back of a pickup truck, according to a recent AP article. And you thought this was a post about male strippers! Boy, were you wrong.

"Because the country lacked a functioning banking system, contractors and Iraqi ministry officials were paid with bills taken from a basement vault in one of Saddam Hussein's palaces."

Much of this cash has, of course, been impossible to track.

"...An inspector general's report that concluded the occupying authority transferred nearly $9 billion to Iraqi government ministries without any financial controls. The money was designated for financing humanitarian needs, economic reconstruction, repair of facilities, disarmament and civil administration, but the authority had no way to verify that it went for those purposes, the audit said."

Link to AP article.

iran war seems frighteningly possible

Having successfully established peace and democracy in Iraq, the U.S. seems to be setting its sights on Iran, which is geographically close to Iraq and has a similar name. Jared already put things into visual perspective here a while back, but now the rhetoric is flying back and forth between the Iranian and American governments at a frightening pace. Lately:

• "The Bush administration has been flying surveillance drones over Iran for nearly a year to seek evidence of nuclear weapons programs and detect weaknesses in air defenses, according to three U.S. officials with detailed knowledge of the secret effort." (link to Washington Post article)
  
• "Iran warned the United States on Sunday not to attack its nuclear facilities and said talks with Europe might produce a deal to defuse the dispute over its alleged covert ambitions to build atomic weapons." (link to Reuters article)

Meanwhile, North Korea has admitted to actually having nuclear weapons (link), but their lack of oil reserves has made deposing Kim Jong-il a less important initiative for the States.

giants to tackle viagra spam ring

I've stolen the headline directly from BBC, because this Boing Boing post made me laugh:

"I know what this BBC News headline really means. But when I read it, my brain fills with visions of overly large persons hurling their bodies toward a circular form comprised of erectile dysfunction pills and canned meat product."

Link to article; link to Boing Boing post.

what do they got - a lot of sand? we got a hot crustacean band!

Three five-star underwater hotels are currently under construction - in the Bahamas, the United Arab Emirates, and Belize. For $1500 a night, you can stay in a room on the ocean floor; the facility is entered through a tunnel and the interior air pressure is kept at the same level as the surface of the earth. From their site:

"About 60% of the exterior surface of the suite is transparent acrylic making the undersea views panoramic. Outside of the sitting area of each suite will be a private artificial reef that will be the home for unique varieties of marine life. Each suite will also have its own underwater lights controllable from an inside switch and an external fish feeder as well. Guests will be able to push a button and feed the fish outside."

Link to Poseidon project home page; via BoingBoing.

arthur miller dies, aged 89

From the AP story:

"A lot of my work goes to the center of where we belong — if there is any root to life — because nowadays the family is broken up, and people don't live in the same place for very long," Miller said in a 1988 interview. "Dislocation, maybe, is part of our uneasiness. It implants the feeling that nothing is really permanent."

Link to article.

it's in the budget, now you have to let me do it

A funny thing about Bush's terrible new budget, discussed earlier:

"The budget includes over a billion dollars in revenue from drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), even though Congress hasn't authorized such drilling and has rejected President Bush's proposal to open ANWR to oil exploration for the last four years. ...[It also] excludes all funding for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and the administration's $2 trillion Social Security package."

Quoted from The Progress Report; via The Regular; link to related Reuters article.

mp3: summer at shatter creek

I can't stop listening to this song. It's a preview track from a new album by a band called Summer at Shatter Creek (homepage), to be released in March but available for order now from Badman.

Summer at Shatter Creek - Your Ever Changing Moods (mp3)

(via Bradley's Almanac)

spin and nyt agree: montreal is good

Following up on Spin Magazine's recent article proclaiming Montreal the next big thing in... uh... cities, I suppose, the New York Times has concurred. The three-page article gets the general idea right (despite a couple questionable claims), and manages to wait a whole three paragraphs before mentioning the Arcade Fire.

Link to NY Times article (free registration required, or use "smallflightless" as username and password)

humans cloned*

* Verb tense in post title may be misleading or completely inaccurate.

Those miscreants who cloned that sheep named "Dolly" a while back have obtained a cloning license applicable to human cells and tissues. Specifically, they're not allowed to clone babies:

"...clone cells from patients with the disease [that they're studying], derive stem cells from the resulting embryo, make them develop into nerve cells and compare their evolution to that of cells derived from healthy embryos."

Link to AP article.

scooping optimus crime, continued

Yesterday, our "pals" over at Optimus Crime finally decided to tell everyone about the upcoming Wooden Stars tour. The only problem was that Small Flightless Bird had scooped them on this story by a stunning five days. After I called them on it, a bitter hot-journalistic-leads war was started, with you the reader caught in the non-metaphorical crossfire. Well, O.C., watch in horror at the new low to which S.M.B. is willing to stoop in this deadly battle: fake news!

• Bush fires Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, and Gonzales, hires Dennis Kucinich, Ralph Nader, David Suzuki, and Noam Chomsky (link)
• Britney Spears admits to orchestrating "captured Special Ops Cody" hoax (link)
• Google announces new plan to convert world's population into a searchable database of living bodies (link)
• Kim Jong-il signs with Merge Records, releases solo album backed by Arcade Fire (link)
  
• 2005 Oscar ceremony cancelled due to "lack of public interest in overblown, meaningless ceremonies" (link)
• Reunited Pink Floyd opening for Wooden Stars on their new tour (link)

C'est à vous, Optimus.

google launches map service

Google has launched a beta version of an awesome new map service named, appropriately enough, Google Maps. As with so many of Google's thousand-fold new initiatives, Google Maps is better than any similar service out there that I know of. It features smooth scrolling, a clean interface, and (of course) a simplified search feature. I certainly don't see myself going back to Mapquest anytime soon.

halliburton's sweet deal

The New York Times reports that Cheney's old pals at Halliburton will receive tens of millions of dollars from the US government that usually would have been held back.

"In the rush that followed the American invasion of 2003, KBR [a Halliburton subsidiary] started work without the detailed agreements on scope and reasonable costs that are normally required, and it handed in nearly $2 billion in invoices that Pentagon auditors said lacked proper backup. Under federal rules, the government usually protects its interest in such cases by paying no more than 85 percent of invoices until costs are fully accounted for."

Link to NY Times article (free registration required, or use "smallflightless" as username and password)

wigu returns ...kind of

What a bumpy virtual ride it's been lately for readers of the popular webcomic formerly known as Wigu. It started, as Jared so investigatory-journalistically discovered, with When I Grow Up, which morphed into Wigu in 2002. Wigu told the story of a little title-character boy and his family. Creator Jeff Rowland started a separate diary-comic last year called Overcompensating, and soon afterward announced the end of Wigu.

A new Rowland strip, TV Network Channel, started early this year, but lost 4000 readers during its 3-week run. So now, out of nowhere, the strip you'll see at wigu.com is Magical Adventures... In SPACE, a Wigu spin-off starring the characters of child Wigu's favourite cartoon. Yes, Topato Potato returns as the magical flying poisonous space potato, and he's joined by his good friends Sheriff Pony and the Princess. Also, he is made of poison!

kazaa is tracking your downloads

In a bizarre new plot twist, the copyright-related court case against p2p network Kazaa has illuminated the fact that the company has been logging the IP addresses for all searches and downloads. I confess that I'm not sure exactly what implications this has, but it is certainly creepy. Link to Slashdot post; via the Regular.

indonesia versus pda's

Indonesia is set to bring its laws closer to those of other Muslim states with a proposed new penal code which would bring penalties for adultery, kissing in public, and pre-marital cohabitation.

"Kissing in public is a crime if the people around are not happy and lodge a complaint. But if they think it's all right, then no action will be taken," [Justice ministry official Abdul Gani Abdullah] told the AFP news agency. "The same goes with cohabitation. If neighbours think the presence of an unmarried couple living together is a nuisance, they can report to police."

I suspect that quote was translated into English, but I still think the "nuisance" bit was pretty funny. Link to BBC article.

bonnes nouvelles pour les québécois et québécoises

The CBC reports today that a new deal may end the painfully long-running Société des alcools du Québec (SAQ) strike. That means, for us here in la belle province, we may soon be able to drink something other than the eleven dollar wines and Fin du monde¹ fourties sold at the dépanneur² down the street.

Link to CBC article.

1 - Fin du monde: A brand of triple-fermented Quebec beer whose name means "The End of the World".
2 - dépanneur: French for "convenience store", usually shortened to "dep". Should only be patronized if SAQs are closed.

bush creates $427 billion deficit, cuts wrong programs to fix it

Let's just make this clear: when Bush took office in 2001, he inherited a surplus. Now, the U.S. budget deficit is sitting at a cool 427 billion dollars. A 9/11-related recession could be partly to blame, but another major problem could be that the war in Iraq alone costs America 4.7 billion dollars per month. Then there were his incredibly expensive tax cuts, which have cost trillions since 2001.

So, the U.S. spends about half of its total budget on the military each year, almost as much as the rest of the world's military spending combined. But when Bush sits down to figure out where to cut money from his budget, where do you think he looks? You guessed it: agriculture and food stamp programs!

"President Bush will propose a 2006 budget Monday that, despite record spending of about $2.5 trillion, will call for billions of dollars in cuts that will touch people on food stamps and farmers on price supports, children under Medicaid and adults in public housing."

Link to LA Times article quoted above; link, link, link to some references.

rob schneider fights back

On January 26th, Patrick Goldstein wrote in the LA Times that Hollywood movie studios are no longer trying to win awards, but are instead pumping out money-making sequels. He mentioned the upcoming Deuce Bigalow sequel as a prime example, calling the original "a film that was sadly overlooked at Oscar time because apparently nobody had the foresight to invent a category for Best Running Penis Joke Delivered by a Third-Rate Comic."

Well, Rob "Deuce Bigalow" Schneider, in a fit of rage, just went right out and bought a full-page attack ad. It read, in part,

"Maybe, Mr. Goldstein, you didn’t win a Pulitzer Prize because they haven’t invented a category for 'Best Third-Rate, Unfunny Pompous Reporter, Who’s Never Been Acknowledged By His Peers!' "

We'll just have to wait and see whether Goldstein puts out a TV commercial with the phrase, "No, you're the untalented one, times infinity!"

Link to Defamer post with full text of Scheider's ad; link to Goldstein's original article (sub. required); via Waxy.

finding the god particle

Cern's upcoming hunt for the God Particle is kinda old news for physicists, but since most people who read this aren't physicists, I thought I'd bring it up anyway. A Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is being built at Cern in Geneva. The LHC, once complete, will be the largest particle collider ever, and may be capable of generating the energies needed to produce a particle whose existence has only been theorized: the Higgs Boson, or God Particle. The reverential name is due to the fact that should this particle actually exist, it would tie together the current model of particle physics (the Standard Model), acting as the force carrier particle for the gravitational force.

Construction of the LHC is scheduled to be finished in 2007. Link to a non-physicist-friendly BBC article on the subject; link to the Cern homepage.

daily show on wal-mart

Yes, you can get streaming Daily Show clips every day (ironically enough) from the Comedy Central site. But if that's not enough for you, why not head over to On Lisa Rein's Radar? Heck, she's got archived .mov clips from as far back as March of 2004, and they won't crash your browser. She recently posted Jon's take on Wal-Mart's exemplary worker treatment. It is funny. Here's the link.

wooden stars on tour

This is old news, and if you live in Toronto or Hamilton and didn't hear about this, it's too late for you. I'm sorry. But hey, the Wooden Stars are playing together again. You can see them play at Babylon in Ottawa on the 19th of February, at the Grad Club in Kingston on the 25th, or here in Montreal on the 26th (at L'Hemisphere Gauche).

video of arcade fire on conan

Will and Richard in a tussle

This is mostly for Ed's benefit: video of the Arcade Fire's performance of Laïka on last night's Conan O'Brien, captured graciously by Aeroplane from the arcadefire.net forums and tracked down via Bradley's Almanac. And I promise I'll shut up about these guys for a while.

Link to Bradley's Almanac post with the video for download (two paragraphs down).

text of bill c-38

Found, strangely enough, through boingboing: full text of Bill C-38, the same-sex marriage bill just introduced in the Canadian House of Commons. It's a good read - quite succinct and written in mostly plain English. Link to bill on the Library of Parliament site.

bush plans republican dominance

Click for larger image.

Check out this creepy L.A. Times article (link). It explains how pretty much all of Bush's current plans will, aside from their supposed benefits, cut off funding to the Democrats and are hoped to create a new generation of young Republican voters. Some examples:

• GOP strategists hope Social Security reform would foster a new "investment class" that would vote Republican.
• Tort reform (an effort to "limit jury awards in lawsuits against doctors and businesses") would deprive trial lawyers of some of their funding. Trial lawyers are the "financial muscle" behind the Democratic party.
• Free trade undermines trade unions, who are also big Democrat supporters.

Link to full article. Via Wonkette.

arcade fire on conan tonight

As mentioned, the Arcade Fire will be playing on Late Night with Conan O'Brien tonight (Tuesday, Feb. 1st) at 12:30. You should probably watch it. (Link to NBC schedule) Update: video available here.

condoleezza rice news

Following the exploits of the new Secretary of State on her hilarious misadventures through the world of U.S. politics:

• Rice named "Gun Rights Defender of the Month" for January (link). I'm so sick of being passed up for this award, after my years of hard work and dedication to the cause.
• Rice backs Palestinian statehood (link). She also believes that Palestinians have a "traditional constitutional right to carry guns."