stephen harper is afraid of king kong

Stephen Harper, the leader of the Conservative Party, has a new proposal to help cities deal with giant escaped primates: army units for Canadian cities. These "territorial defence units", ready for an urban emergency such as a huge ape rampaging through downtown Winnipeg, would also be available for foreign operations.

The idea came to the charismatic right-winger after he brought his children to see King Kong, the new blockbuster hit from director Peter Jackson. The movie, which features an enormous gorilla wreaking havoc on New York City, scared Harper into a realization:

"It could happen to us," he told reporters outside the theatre. "Any one of Canada's enterprising young movie directors could travel to an island inhabited by monsters, find a big, dangerous monkey, and bring him back here. I don't want my son held in the leathery grip of an overgrown chimp as he scales the 12-story Provincial Legislature building in Regina."

Harper also promised that, if he were elected, he would act immediately to push anti-gay-cowboy legislation through the House of Commons.

image ads coming to google

I have a rule with web advertising: If it flashes, moves, pops-up, pops-under, makes noise or even clashes with a site's color scheme, it finds itself AdBlocked. That means that pretty much the only ads that get through to my browser are Google's text-based, context-sensitive ads. They're also the only ads I've ever clicked - sometimes, if I'm looking for product info, the ads are more informative than the search results.

Sadly, it looks like this may change. This looks like a bad move to me. The reason I use Google is because it's simple, it's slick, and it's fast. If it starts beeping and flashing and taking 2 minutes to load, I'm blocking the ads or finding another search engine. Maybe MSN Search. I gotta hand it to Microsoft on this one: they don't get many things right, but these search results prove their engine is working flawlessly.

Update: Google responds to the controversy (link).

and i'm... back in the game

Whew.... That was a long, hellish exam period. Let this be a lesson to you, kids: don't try to take six technical courses and direct a play in the same term. Can you spell "brain aneurism?" Good try. Now cross your fingers for passing...

On a related note, I now hate VIA with a blinding, flaming passion. Oh, and U-haul can come too. Yesterday, I was moving from Waterloo to Bolton and then coming home to Ottawa. Here was the plan:

• 10:00: Rent U-haul, pack my stuff, drive to Bolton.


• 1:00: Arrive in Bolton, unpack, drive to Toronto.


• 3:00 - 4:30ish: Arrive in Toronto, return U-haul, take train to Kingston.


• 6:00 - 7:30ish: Arrive in Kingston to meet my sister after her exam in order to drink forties of St Ide's (we're a classy pair) and catch a ride back with her to Ottawa the following day.

Here's what actually happened:

• 11:30: Get the U-haul rented after a late city bus and spending over 45 minutes talking to "the new guy", trying to make it clear that I wanted a small, one-way rental. End up with 14' moving truck.


• 1:30: Finally depart from Waterloo.


• 3:00: Arrive in Bolton after stressful, granny-like driving with no rearview mirror and big honking blind spots. Will I crush a civic when I change lanes? I don't know! I guess I'll just have to signal, wait 10 seconds and find out!


• 4:00: Landlady makes it clear that under no circumstances may I have mail sent to "her house", which just happens to house me in a basement bachelor suite. For an exorbitant rent. This necessitates stopping at the post office to set up a PO box.


• 4:30: Depart Bolton, head into stressful, granny-like driving through Toronto rush-hour traffic.


• 6:30: Pull into U-haul depot, after missing it twice due to it being completely hidden from view behind an overpass, and spending 15 minutes jockeying a 14' truck at a gas station.


• 6:45: Pull into U-haul depot for the second time, after a faulty gas gauge results in the tank still not reading "full" even though I caused it to overflow during the second gas station-jockeying escapade.


• 7:30: Arrive at union station to find that there is no train to Kingston until 10PM. Begin reading The Life of Pi.


• 11:20: Train begins to move after the "problems with the electrical system" have been worked out. VIA extends heartfelt apology in a bored voice over the static-filled intercom.


• 1:00: Train stops again, this time in Oshawa, this time due to a freight train using the tracks. Can only laugh hysterically as another heartfelt apology and an offer to credit 50% of the ticket price towards our next trip with VIA is issued by the same bored, static-filled voice.


• 2:20: Finally arrive in Kingston. Almost finished the novel I started over 6 hours ago. Have irrational urge to torture small animals.

On the upside, The Life of Pi is an excellent read.

iran's new president

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected President of Iran in June of this year. Since then, his many accomplishments include:

• Saying that Israel was a "tumor" that should be "wiped off the map" (link)
  
• Denying the holocaust (link)
• Banning "Western music" from state-run TV and radio stations (link)
  

The BBC has an interesting profile of Mahmoud here. Aside from making a few headlines, though, it turns out Mahmoud might not be all that much of a problem - at least according to this article from the Guardian. Reports of a planned attack by Israel on Iran have surfaced; others have said such a thing is unlikely to happen.

on eavesdropping

There has been a mess of stories coming out of the States these past few days about Bush and his supposed authorization of the NSA to illegally spy on people. The basic idea is that he authorized wiretaps and other eavesdropping methods on people in America, which would normally require court approval in the form of a warrant. Democrats and Republicans alike are calling for a probe, which is supposed to happen early next year.

Almost on the same day we get this story about a kid from the University of Massachussets getting visited by federal agents, at his parents' house, because he borrowed a copy of Mao Tse-Tung's "Little Red Book". He used it to write a paper on Communism. It's these kinds of stories, I suppose, that made the senate block an extension of the Patriot Act.

(Edit: Or maybe that didn't happen, says Boing Boing.)

Up here in Canada, we don't have a Patriot Act. But some are arguing that our anti-terrorism legislation could allow the Canadian Security Establishment to perform the same types of (formerly?) illegal activities.

the chronic-what?-cles of narnia

Head on over and watch this video from SNL. It's funny.

Via Waxy Links.

he was wrong, but he'd do it again in a second

I love this story about Bush "taking responsibility" for his decision to invade Iraq. The gist? The intelligence was wrong, but it was still a great idea, and he'd gladly do the whole preemptive thing again.

Whew! For a second there I thought he was actually going to admit some kind of mistake or something. My favourite quote:

"In an age of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, if we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long."

Maybe this one could use a few helpful edits:

"In an age of terrorism [with no links to the countries we want to invade] and weapons of mass destruction [which didn't exist in the first place], if we wait for threats to fully materialize [which might never happen], we will have waited too long [because we won't have any excuse to invade them]."

That's better. Here's the article.

internet to the rescue

Have you ever read Optimus Crime? Even once? If so, you may have some valuable files sitting in your browser's cache. Poor old OC lost a bunch of images when their hosting company started sucking. Go on over and help 'em out, if you can.

globe and mail has rss feeds, digs firefox

The Globe and Mail gets two gold stars today. I somehow only just now realized they have RSS feeds in eight different headings, as well as one for each of their columnists! (I'm sure Optimus already subscribes to the Leah MacLaren feed.) The second gold star comes from their glowing review of Firefox:

"Free, full-featured browser (Windows, Macintosh and Linux) with a built-in news reader. More secure, flexible, easier to use than Internet Explorer. Highly recommended by many independent experts." [their italics, not mine]

I'm going to have to rip one of their stars in half, though, for the ridiculous "Terms and Conditions" you're supposedly agreeing to just by downloading a feed. Oh well.

the war on christmas

Noted jackass Bill O'Reilly and his friends at Fox have been stirring things up by reporting on "The War On Christmas", as mentioned a few times on recent Daily Show episodes (1, 2, 3). Turns out most of their claims are utter garbage. Not surprising, but this swearword-laden rant is still hilarious and pretty accurate. An excerpt:

"...Pat Buchanan has joined the hype-a-thon of the supposed Attack on Christmas, too. Or, as he put it, 'What we’re witnessing here are hate crimes against Christianity.' Sorry? We’re not so hot on paying for an inflatable camel for your goddamn nativity scene and suddenly we’re Slobodan fucking Milosevic? F*** you. Get some goddamn perspective, you little pr***. When they start hunting Christians in the streets, it’ll be time to start yelling 'Hate crime.' And no, it won’t count when they start chasing you with the torches. That’ll be called 'The Most Wonderful Time of the Year.' "

I've edited out the swearwords, because they tend to make Jared cry.

a.k.a. my christmas list

A trio of Canadian music bloggers (Greg of Are You Familiar?, Jay Watts of Goldkicks, and Stuart Berman of Eye Magazine) have put together this list of The Alternative List of Canadian Bands By A Few of The Other Canadian Bloggers. I confess I don't know what the list is an alternative to, but it's still excellent. Certainly a lot more hopeful than those lists of the best bands in America.

and by cool, i mean totally sweet

This game is pretty fun: The Way of the Ninja. I found it on Good Experience's list of fun flash games.

Don't forget to also go check out the wonderful new game Samorost 2, sequel to the almost-as-good Samorost.

torrents vs television

BTSeasonPass is a site where you can easily create an account to track all the latest torrents from your favourite tv shows. I only use it for Family Guy episodes, but it seems to have a lot of good stuff. There are already more than ten torrents for last week's show.

To download torrents, of course, all you need is the very simple and free BitTorrent downloader.

sideshow beast

Apparently Kelsey Grammer (aka Frasier, aka Sideshow Bob) is playing The Beast in the new X-Men movie. Sure, Beast is supposed to be all intellectual and everything, but he's also supposed to be something of a beast. Penny Arcade had something to say about how easy it'll be for people not to think of Frasier in blue make-up. You can watch the trailer here.

how many people have ever lived?

That is exactly the question that occurred to me the other day, for reasons which will remain unexplained. Turns out the internet has a few answers. At least one of them uses the same methodology a friend of mine had come up with (with some more accurate numbers). By both official-looking estimates I saw, there have been about 100 billion human births in the past five hundred to one million years (yes, the number does not change a lot if you double the time span). That puts the current world population at about 6% of the total.

Here's a link to a pretty official-looking article, which uses UN numbers. For the more mathematically inclined, here is a page about how a guy named Keyfitz went about calculating the number.

local boys make it big

Following closely on the heels of Montreal's recent success at the International Scrabble Festival (see previous post), a relatively unknown up-and-coming local band is once again giving our fair city something to be proud of: The Arcade Fire are nominated for two Grammys this year. They're up against Beck, Death Cab, Franz Ferdinand and the White Stripes in the "Best Alternative Album" category, and that song they did for Six Feet Under is nominated for "Best Song Written For Motion Picture, Television Or Other Visual Media".

In case you missed it here a while back, here's the song in question.

Arcade Fire - Cold Wind [2.9 MB mp3]

To be fair, you can also buy the soundtrack or the 7" (with a cover of "Brazil").

mars rovers turn 1

Today is either the first or almost-second anniversary of NASA's Opportunity rover's arrival on mars - depending on which planet you base your calendar on. The rover has been on the Red Planet for 687 earth days, or one martian year. The second rover, Spirit, hit the same landmark 3 weeks ago. Their original missions were each scheduled for 90 days.

The rovers represent a giant leap forward in data gathering for planetary science. Among their discoveries include soil and atmospheric composition data, establishing a geological history for Mars, and most importantly finding numerous indicators that liquid water once flowed there - lots of it.

almost demolished

This video of an unsuccessful building demolition is great.

• 1.7 MB Quicktime Link
• Coral Cache Mirror

Via Boing Boing.

keeping madness at bay by mercilessly learning everything in sight

Dear readers, you are witnessing a result of what is known on campuses (campi?) around the world as "Hell". Official title: Final Exam Period. Studious students all, us SFB contributors will not be posting very often for the next two or three weeks.

What better time to point out once again the wonder of RSS feeds? Using something like Google Reader, or Firefox's built-in RSS reader, or (my personal favourite) Feedreader, you can easily subscribe to Small Flightless Bird's RSS Feed. Instead of checking this site compulsively, let one of these totally free programs tell you when there's a new post. It's that easy!