Take the red pill

How's this for a sub-culture: Freeganism

2007-02-15T08:21:00.000-08:00

Freeganism is a total boycott of an economic system.As freegans we forage
instead of buying to avoid being wasteful consumers ourselves.Perhaps the
most notorious freegan strategy is what is commonly called "urban
foraging" or "dumpster diving". This technique involves rummaging through
the garbage of retailers, residences, offices, and other facilities for
useful goods. Rather, we use other methods of transportation including
trainhopping, hitchhiking, walking, skating, and biking.

http://freegan.info/

A new way to live-Modern Design

2007-02-14T12:50:00.000-08:00

I was checking out a web site (http://www.loftcube.net/main.html) using a nifty browser toolbar app. from Stumbleupon.com. It selects web sites randomly based on personalized preferences you select. For example; architecture,books, counterculure, atheist/agnostic, blues music, liberal politics and food/cooking.

The LoftCube is an interesting modern loft design concept originating in Berlin. The idea is a rooftop temporary,minimalistic, domicile approximately 40 square meters. Think geodesic domes of the 1960's but with modern design. It's placed on top of the building of your choice using a freight helicopter or construction crane. You just need a rooftop to rent. And, it can be moved city to city.

This might be the perfect thing in case water levels rise due to global warming.

David Beauroy’s Tasting Notes – January 6th Vintages Release

2007-01-05T12:20:00.001-08:00

David Beauroy’s Tasting Notes – January 6th Vintages Release

$10-15 RANGE

WHITES

Miguel Torres Viña Esmeralda 2005, Spain – DO Catalunya, $11.95, p.7

A lovely blend of Moscatel (85%) and Gewurtz (15%). Clean and fresh with floral, basil, rosewater and honeyed notes. Slightly off-dry, long length and a crisp finish. Enjoy this terrific value with Prosciutto Melon.

Montez Champalimaud Paço de Teixeiro, Vinho Branco 2005, Portugal – Vinho Regional Minho, +21469, $12.95, p.28

Lots of kiwi, grapefruit, tropical fruit and floral notes here. Dry with a juicy peach-flavoured burst on the palate, medium body and a refreshing finish. Outstanding value from Portugal!

La Chablisienne Saint-Bris Sauvignon Blanc 2005, France-Burgundy, +641753, $15.95, p.9

Pale straw with crisp note of grapefruit and hints of cactus/aloe. Medium body with a pleasant salty citrus taste and a fine finish. Have it with Oysters.

REDS

Reine Didon Pinot Noir Grand Cru 2003, Tunisia – AOC Mornag, +8946, $12.95, p.26

Impressive stuff! In a blind tasting it would be picked as a French Pinot. Beautiful notes of strawberry and raspberry on the nose and palate. Dry, rich and medium body. Fantastic value!

Quinta de Camarate 2004, Portugal – Terras do Sado, +357962, $14.95, p.5

Wonderful! Deep ruby with lush ripe cherry, plum, and blueberry layers. Full and round and delicious. Great value!

$15-25 RANGE

WHITES

Waimea Estates Chardonnay 2003, New Zealand – Nelson, South Island, +650242, $18.95, p.25

Bright gold with tempting notes of lime cordial, butterscotch and smoke. Smooth and with a slightly viscous texture, med-full body and long length.

REDS

Guenoc Petite Syrah 2004, USA – California, +19935, $16.95, p.21

Deep purple/black with an attractive mix of figs, prunes, blue and blackberries, and cocoa. Dry, full and finely balanced. Great value from California!

Kilikanoon Blocks Road Cabernet Sauvignon 2003, Australia – Clare Valley SA, +5199, 16.95, p.24

Dense and inky! Fantastic with notes of cassis, prune and smoke, followed by spicy mince tart flavours on the palate. A wine that commands your attention!

$25+

Vicchiomaggio La Prima Chianti Classico Riserva 2003, Italy – DOCG Tuscany, +682062, $34.95, p.28

Superb! Truly in fine form for maximum pleasure now! Dry, full and elegant. Lots of classic Chianti scents of plum, cinnamon, berries and cherry! Hard to go wrong with this!

Sherry & Scotch

Gonzàlez Byass Nutty Solera Oloroso, Spain – DO Jerez, +355204, $11.95, p.7

Pretty amber colour with clear notes of candied fruit and zest, raisins, fresh dates, marmalade and roasted almonds. Medium dry and soft with brilliant aroma replays on the palate. Have it on its own or with some good blue cheese.

Ardbeg 10 Years Old The Ultimate Single Islay Malt, Scotland, +560474, $74.95, p.19

Extraordinary! If you are a fan of the smoky and peaty style of Islay, then this will be a treat! So complex and layered that it feels as though you are tasting 2 or 3 different Malts. Full of candied fruit, toffee, smoke, citrus, pear, spring blossoms and more smoke! And there does not seem to be a finish...!

Wild Predictions for a Wired 2007

2007-01-02T13:44:00.001-08:00

Here are some predictions for 2007:

* Google Stock Hits $1,000 per Share

* Internet Traffic Doubles ...

to 5,000 petabits per day by the end of 2007. And 80 percent of it is peer-to-peer file sharing, mostly Skype video and BitTorrent.

* BitTorrent on TiVo

Speaking of, digital video recorders get BitTorrent baked in, bringing internet video to the living room.

* Spam Doubles

No-brainer -- but no one cares because we're all using IM, especially at work.

* Second Life Ends a Life

Skullduggery in Second Life -- probably digital adultery -- ends in a real-life murder.

* Year o' the Laptop

Half of all new computers sold in 2007 will be laptops and 20 percent of those will be Apple's MacBooks.

* Print to Web

A major newspaper gives up printing on paper to publish exclusively online.

* Semel Says 'Sayonara'

Yahoo CEO Terry Semel discovers he wants to spend more time with his family.

* Apple Goes Apple

The entire Beatles catalog is licensed exclusively to iTunes for a year.

* HD-DVD Wins

HD-DVD is the clear winner over Blu-ray in the DVD format wars. Oh yeah, and the PS3 is a bust.

* Implantable Contact Lenses

Synthetic corneas will be approved by the Food and Drug Administration, allowing the shortsighted to have artificial contact lenses transplanted right into their eyes. No more popping out!

* Digg Becomes the New Friendster

Digg holds out for a big payday but ends up like Friendster (i.e., no friends).

* No More Dads

Artificial gametes made from female eggs are sold over the internet, making fathers biologically irrelevant.

* PaedoSpace

Sex offenders start their own social networking service. It's popular on Capitol Hill.

* Life on Mars

One of the Mars rovers lasts another year on the red planet (making it four years total). The other plunges into a crater.

* Greenland Becomes Green

As the ice melts, Greenland becomes literally green.

* Raelians Need Not Apply

A human embryo is cloned for real.

* First AT&T, Then Google

A whistle-blower reveals that the National Security Agency has been wiretapping Google for some time.

* Google Goes G-Man

Google gives up search queries to the feds. Likely scenario: The FBI asks who's been searching for terms like "dirty bomb" and Google hands over all the IP addresses.

* Don't Don't Be Evil

Google drops "Don't be evil" as its corporate mantra. Evil has its justifications, but no one likes a hypocrite.

* DNA Database for Athletes

To stamp out doping, the Olympic Committee orders all athletes to submit DNA samples to a global database, which matches blood found in doping forensics to cheats. Forensics include needles, tubes, bags of blood and skin cells on stacks of 100-euro notes seized at doping clinics.

* Online Sitcom Picked Up by Network

Encouraged by the news, the internet becomes home to 5,000 clones of Friends, shot by friends using their friends but unwatched even by their friends.

* They're Watching You

Congress passes a law requiring internet service providers to keep logs of all web traffic and e-mail for three years.

* NYT Goes Free

The New York Times opens its archives from behind the paid firewall, realizing it's more lucrative to be the internet's paper of record than charging readers for individual stories. Thankfully, Thomas Friedman's clichés and mixed metaphors remain behind the pay firewall for at least two weeks.

* MySpace Spaces Out

MySpace splinters as teens head for niche sites. New services that control profiles across multiple social networking sites begin to take off.

David Beauroy’s Tasting Notes – December 9th Vintages Release

2006-12-19T12:29:00.000-08:00

‘Tis the season for warming/comfort red wines and bubbly. Tomorrow’s release is the last one scheduled for 2006. I will be back with more tasting notes in 2007. Take good care and enjoy!

$15-25 RANGE

REDS

Herencia Remondo La Montesa Rioja Crianza 2003, Spain-DO Rioja, +674572, $21.95, p.34

A really tasty mouthful! Clean berry notes with exotic spices in the background on the nose. Dry and balanced with medium body, silky tannins, and long length (the 13.5% alcohol adds some heat too). Terrific value from Rioja!

$25+

REDS

Lindhorst Statement 2003, South Africa – WO Coastal Region, +5108, $27.95, p.28

An interesting and unusual blend of Shiraz (52%), Merlot (44%), and a touch of Cab. Sauvignon (4%). The result is a lush combination of raspberry, Danish butter cookies, and marzipan on the nose. Dry and med-full bodied, with a soft texture and medium length. Superb now!

Katnook Estate Cabernet Sauvignon 2003, Australia-Coonawarra, +590471, $29.95, p.26

Katnook Estate has done it again! (I was very keen on their 2001 Merlot that came out in August). This Cab. Sauv. is well structured and delicious with an irresistible mix of blackberries, cedar, and spice. Truly a classic Coonawarra Cab.!

Domaine de la Solitude Châteauneuf-Du-Pape 2004, France-AC CdP, +984419, $37.95, p.30

Bold flavours of currants and black cherries make up this very complex and meaty wine. A little closed on the nose with some fruit and subtle dabs of lavender present. Dry with a smooth texture, good balancing acidity, med-full-bodied, good length and a good dose of alcohol (14.5%)! Good value!

Jean-Claude Boisset Gevrey-Chambertin 2002, France-AC Burgundy, +6916, $51.95, p.29

2002 was a fabulous vintage in Burgundy and this wine is good evidence of that. Clear scents of cherry, strawberry, beetroot, some earthiness and spices. On the palate it’s dry, medium-bodied with good complexity and length.

Charles Allexant Premier Cru Beaune Bressandes 2003, France-AC Burgundy, +6783, $56.95, p.29

Inky with juicy cherry and raspberry, and hints of vanilla and freshly turned earth folded in. Dry and soft with very pleasant strawberry jam notes on the palate, med-full bodied, beautifully balanced, and long length. A great match for game!

Champagne, Sparkling

Charles Heidsieck Brut Réserve Champagne, France-AC Champagne, +653634, $54.95, p.8

A fabulous non-vintage Champagne! Nice notes of toast, coffee, and nuts. Crisp and clean with a rich and full-bodied taste. Outstanding Value!

Taittinger Brut Millésimé Champagne 1999, France-AC Champagne, +989905, $69.95, p.7

Looking for some Vintage Champagne? 1999 was a very good year in the region. This one is complex and delicious! Notes of brioche, butter, nuts, pears and apples. It is medium to full-bodied, with a long finish.

Nino Franco Prosecco di Valdobbiadene Brut, Italy-DOC Prosecco, +349662, $16.95, p. 12 (375ml bottle, +738161, $10.95)

Start your evening with this splendid Prosecco! Elegantly balanced notes of pears, limes and spring flowers! A perfect aperitif!

Gloria Ferrer Blanc De Blancs Sparkling Wine 2003, USA-California, +914648, $26.95, p.13

Fantastic value! Full of tasty citrus, floral, biscuity and yeasty notes. Thick and creamy mousse with a silky texture. Very well balanced and refreshing. Simply wonderful!

Dessert Wine

Ruffino Serelle Vin Santo Del Chianti 2000, Italy-DOC Tuscany, +1008, $18.95, p.21

Attractive pale amber hue with layers of honey, almonds and caramel on the nose. Classic Vin Santo, medium sweet wit lively acidity to balance it out. Ready to drink with Tiramisù or dunked biscotti.

Open Lettter to comments on Bombippy.com

2006-12-18T08:52:00.000-08:00

First, I want to address Michael Crichton’s book, State of Fear. State of Fear is a piece of garbage. Not only does it take liberties with the information it chooses to publish, it tries to sound intellectual but also it comes off as defensive. Who cares if it has footnotes and quotes research? Anyone can manufacture so-called truth if that is his or her aim. Look at the Bush War in Iraq. The book is a Hollywood film script cum PR stunt.

Anyone claiming that Global Warming is false is denying the irrefutable truth. It's on par with denying the holocaust.

Reading State of Fear reminds me of countless discussions I’ve had with neo-con Bush lovers who verbally attack with emotion versus saying anything well thought out or supported by fact.

Denying the facts provided in the Inconvenient Truth just because a Democrat is presenting them is pathetic. Just go back to watching your NFL football and drinking Budweiser. Rather I should say go back to sticking your head in the ground and wishing for a return to the good ole days when Bush stole office.

Like Gore says in the film. If you throw, a frog into boiling water, the frog will leap out. However, if you put a frog in warm water and slowly turn the heat up the frog will remain complacent and boil to death. To all those denier’s of the facts and/or truth keep complacent, keep on consuming at the ridiculous rate you already are, focus on your selfishness and keep on polluting.

What do you care you will not be alive to live in the world you leave behind.

www.bombippy.com

Livebait.tv/Episode 7--DJ Champion

2006-12-08T11:43:00.000-08:00

We interview Max Morin aka DJ Champion who has been making waves ever since the release of his first album Chill’ em all, released in 2004. Chill’ em all is a unique concoction of rockin’ guitars, techno beats, incredible vocals and contagious melodies.

Chill’ em all, built a following over time, with rock radio currently playing the single “No Heaven” (featuring vocalist Betty Bonifassi). It has sold more than 40,000 copies to date and won a number of awards.

http://www.livebait.tv/episode/007.html

Toronto FC 2007 Season

2006-11-17T12:28:00.000-08:00

We'll be there!

We own seats 18 and 19, row 11, section 221. These are near the home team supporters section, about 1 third of the way up and 8 seats in from the middle aisle in 221 at the south-west of the stadium (so the sun is always behind you for optimum viewing).

If you want tickets you can get them here.

http://toronto.fc.mlsnet.com/t280/tickets/

Toronto FC and MLS expansion draft

2006-11-17T12:27:00.000-08:00

Serioux heads up TFC list
Nov. 17, 2006. 02:45 PM
THESTAR.COM STAFF-CANADIAN PRESS

Choosing players from six eastern and four western conference teams, Toronto FC claimed 10 players out of Friday's MLS expansion draft. Toronto starts play next season in the MLS. Here's the list of players that go on the roster alongside first signee Jim Brennan:

1. Paulo Nagamura (Los Angeles Galaxy). 23-year-old midfielder has played two seasons with Galaxy, Brazil native.
2. Danny O'Rourke (New York Red Bulls). 23-year-old former all-American midfielder coming off his first MLS season.
3. Jose Cancela (New England Revolution). 30-year-old Uruguayan forward/midfielder.
4. Adrian Serioux (Houston Dynamo) 27-year-old defender from Scarborough was lone Canadian left available in draft.
5. Nate Jaqua (Chicago Fire). 25-year-old forward scored eight goals for Fire last year, but may be headed to Europe or traded to another MLS team.
6. Rod Dyachenko (D.C. United). 23-year-old midfielder coming off his first season with MLS big club.
7. Jason Kreis (Real Salt Lake). 33-year-old forward is MLS's leading all-time goal scorer with 108 goals in 301 matches.
8. Tim Regan (Chivas USA). 25-year-old defender with three MLS seasons under his belt.
9. Ritchie Kotschau (Columbus Crew). Veteran defender and sometime U.S. international is heading into his 10th MLS season.
10. Will Hesmer (Kansas City Wizards). 24-year-old goalkeeper has only three MLS starts to his credit.

The newcomers join Brennan, a 29-year-old midfielder from Newmarket, Ont., who became Toronto FC’s first player when he signed a multi-year deal with the club in September.

Johnston said he’ll announce the signing of four Canadian international players next week.

Music: Champion

2006-11-17T12:01:00.000-08:00

It's always nice to catch a band right before lift off. Champion is one of those bands.

They have been making waves ever since the release of Chill Em All in 2004, for which they won the Album of the Year award in the electronic-techno music category at the 2005 ADISQ.

Chill Em All (2004) is a unique mix of DJ inspired beats, incredible vocals and four rockin guitars.

Their new album "The Remix Album" was released recently. The album is nomiated for a CASBY award for favorite new single for "No Heaven".

Champion plays Lee's Palace Friday November 24th at 8pm. Don't miss it.

Ian speaks at CaseCamp 3.0

2006-11-13T08:05:00.000-08:00

http://cloudseeding.blogspot.com/search/label/ThinData

Mundaka Big

2006-11-01T20:21:00.001-08:00

Livebait.tv-Episode 2

2006-10-27T12:56:00.001-07:00

Livebait.tv-Episode 1

2006-10-13T13:41:00.000-07:00

Get this video and more at MySpace.com

Wolf a victim of hit-and-run

2006-10-06T12:54:00.000-07:00

Last weekend we went to a birthday party in Collingwood for a friend's two year old son. On the way we stopped at Old Navy and bought Wolf some new cowboy boots. They were a little big but perfect for his cowboy halloween costume. You can see him wearing them in the above picture.

After I put on his boots and did my best to stuff his pants into them, he ran away up the drive way. I was standing talking to someone and out of the corner of my eye I watched an accident about to happen, and I was helpless to stop it because I was too far away. It was like watching the whole event in slow motion.

Wolf was running up the driveway towards the oncoming electric cart that you can see in the other picture.

Wolf runs with his body tilted forward, on an angle, with his head down.

I don't know if he was even aware that the cart was heading towards him. The two girls driving the cart noticed him at the last minute, taking their foot off the gas the the cart stopped abruptly right in front of him. He wasn't thrown across the hood but instead the cart stop exactly in front of him pinning his new cowboy boots under their tires. The slight bump he recieved pushed him backwards, popping him right out of his boots. He fell backwards on the driveway, banging his head.

It gave him a good scare and he started balling. The boots stayed under the front tire. Everyone was alright but you had to see it. It was really funny.

Marc Cuban Is Waiting for YouTube to Get Sued

2006-09-28T11:34:00.001-07:00

He Also Wants You to Stop Being Cheap and Make Hi-Def Ads Already
By Abbey Klaassen

Published: September 28, 2006

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Marc Cuban was his usual opinionated and effusive self when he addressed an early-morning crowd at the TV Week Spotlight event during Advertising Week. Take his view on YouTube, which is that the video-sharing site made it big "because they had no problem with copyright laws. ... The minute YouTube gets sold there's going to be a deep pocket that gets sued."

The oft-opinionated Marc Cuban was grilled by the audience -- and he returned the favor.

Click fraud: Teens' fault
YouTube, however, wasn't the only target on his hit list. What's his take on click fraud? It's the fault of teens who can "set up a blog, get Google AdWords on it and get all your friends to click on it. So what if you make $50 or $100 -- that's better than what dad gives you for allowance. Now imagine that's going on around the world ... it's just too easy."

On viewing a standard-definition ad on a high-definition TV: "It screams 'Hey, I'm a cheap advertiser! Change the channel!'"

TV Week Publisher Chuck Ross, who conducted the Q&A, said the excuse he hears for creating standard-definition ads is that HDTVs have not yet reached critical mass. "But YouTube [has]?" interrupted Mr. Cuban. "A million people watching three-minute clips of Lonelygirl is critical mass?"

The HD ad scenario
He compared the move from analog to hi-def to radio's move from AM to FM frequencies and said not every channel will be able to make the jump to hi-def by 2009, when every TV sold will be HD. He questioned whether advertisers thought about the ramifications of such a scenario.

"Almost every TV sold in 2007 is hi-def and more [will be high def] in 2008 and they all will be in 2009 -- and, by the way, standard def looks worse in an HDTV," he said. "Are you doing long-term ad deals without knowing whether you're going to be in the AM ghetto?"

The morning session was nothing if not interactive. Several times Mr. Cuban or Mr. Ross addressed questions to the audience, asking them who owned HDTVs, how many had seen a standard-definition ad on an HD set and who had watched the first three seconds of a YouTube video before turning it off.

Battle with cinema owners
One member of the audience asked about resistance Mr. Cuban has gotten from cinema owners on his plan to release movies at the box office, on cable and on DVD within the same window. Mr. Cuban's idea is that theater owners could sell the DVD at the theater and get a cut of DVD revenues. Mr. Cuban defended the plan and said if movie theaters can't compete with the couch, "what business are you in?" He said Landmark, a chain of theaters he owns, is in the "date business ... we're the answer to cabin fever."

He conceded that moving to such a condensed release window could cause a reduction in the number of cinemas, but "it'd be a stronger business because of multiple revenue streams."

Bill Maher Discussion about Jesus Camp

2006-09-28T11:29:00.000-07:00

"Tea Partay," a music video by Prep-Unit

2006-09-25T12:53:00.000-07:00

STS-115 Object Briefing

2006-09-22T03:54:00.001-07:00

2006-09-20T13:26:00.001-07:00

Technorati Profile

Are the wheels coming off The Walrus?

2006-09-20T05:52:00.000-07:00

An flame war has begun between the Ken Alexander, the founder of the Walrus magazine and someone who calls themselves annonymous;

http://canadianmags.blogspot.com/2006/09/are-wheels-coming-off-walrus.html

Who could "annonymous" be, a former employee, someone in the industry, or just a shit disturber?

The last post made by annonymous reads,

Anonymous said...

If Ken alexander is not the cowardly guy he may actuallybe then he ought to realize that falling on his sword for the sake of his magazine is the best move he could make. is he open to that possibility, if it turned out that this would be best thing possible? Or is being the walrus editor publisher president of the board, the board, most of the senior staff , the only jobs he can get?

Original LonelyGirl 15 videos on You Tube

2006-09-20T04:30:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=lonelygirl15

The Lonelygirl That Really Wasn’t

2006-09-20T04:26:00.000-07:00

The Lonelygirl That Really Wasn’t

2006-09-20T04:25:00.000-07:00

By VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN and TOM ZELLER Jr.
A nearly four-month-old Internet drama in which the cryptic video musings of a fresh-faced teenager became the obsession of millions of devotees — themselves divided over the very authenticity of the videos, or who was behind them or why — appears to be in its final act.

The woman who plays Lonelygirl15 on the video-sharing site YouTube.com has been identified as Jessica Rose, a 20-ish resident of New Zealand and Los Angeles and a graduate of the New York Film Academy. And the whole project appears to be the early serialized version of what eventually will become a movie.

Matt Foremski, the 18-year-old son of Tom Foremski, a reporter for the blog Silicon Valley Watcher, was the first to disinter a trove of photographs of the familiar-looking actress, who portrayed the character named Bree in the videos. The episodes suggested Bree was the home-schooled daughter of strictly religious parents who was able to find the time to upload video blogs of her innermost thoughts.

The discovery and the swift and subsequent revelation of other details surrounding the perpetrators of the videos and the fake fan site that accompanied it are bringing to an end one of the Internet’s more elaborately constructed mysteries. The fans’ disbelief in Lonelygirl15 was not willingly suspended, but rather teased and toyed with. Whether they will embrace the project as a new narrative form, condemn it or simply walk away remains to be seen.

The masterminds of the Lonelygirl15 videos are Ramesh Flinders, a screenwriter and filmmaker from Marin County, Calif., and Miles Beckett, a doctor turned filmmaker. The high quality of the videos caused many users to suspect a script and production crew, but Bree’s bedroom scenes were shot in Mr. Flinders’s home, in his actual bedroom, typically using nothing more than a Logitech QuickCam, a Web camera that retails for about $150.

Together with Grant Steinfeld, a software engineer in San Francisco, Mr. Flinders contrived to produce and distribute the videos to pique maximum curiosity about them.

The photographs of the actress, which made it clear that Ms. Rose has been playing Bree in the videos, were cached on Google.

“We were all under N.D.A.’s” Mr. Steinfeld said, referring to non-disclosure agreements the cast — and their friends — were asked to sign to preserve the mystery of Lonelygirl15. “They had a lawyer involved,” he said. “My first impression was like, wow, can this be legitimate? Is this ethical? I was very concerned about that in the beginning.”

But after he came to understand the project, Mr. Steinfeld said, he came to believe that something truly novel was at hand. “They were like the new Marshall McLuhan.”

Mr. Flinders and Mr. Beckett obscured their location by sending e-mail messages as Bree from various Internet computer addresses, including the address of Creative Artists Agency, the Beverly Hills talent agency where the team is now represented. Amanda Solomon Goodfried, an assistant at the agency, is believed to have helped Mr. Flinders and Mr. Beckett conceal their identities. Moreover, Ms. Goodfried’s father-in-law, Kenneth Goodfried, a lawyer in Encino, filed to trademark “Lonelygirl15” in August.

The story of how Mr. Flinders, Mr. Beckett and Ms. Rose were discovered in spite of their efforts to hide, and prolong the mystery, sheds light on the nature of online wiki-style investigations and manhunts. When Mr. Steinfeld’s dummy site, which had been set up before the first Lonelygirl15 video was even posted, struck users as suspicious and unsupervised — Mr. Steinfeld says he grew tired of running it, and dropped out of the project — fans set up their own site devoted to Lonelygirl15, which soon attracted more than a thousand members.

Both sites drew contributions from novelists, journalists, academics, day traders, lawyers, bloggers, filmmakers, video game designers, students, housewives, bored youngsters and experts on religion and botany. In the cacophony of conjecture, analysis, close-readings, jokes, insults, and distractions, good information sometimes surfaced.

Last month, a Lonelygirl15 fan discovered and posted a trademark application by Mr. Goodfried, which seemed to prove that the videos, which presented themselves as nothing but a video diary, were at least in part a commercial venture. Then, last week, three tech-savvy fans, working together, set up a sting on the e-mail being used by “Bree”; the operation revealed to them the I.P. address of Creative Artists Agency.

On the strength of this information, Mr. Foremski was confident he could find some trace of Bree on the Internet. He was sure that any participant in a semiprofessional production like Lonelygirl15 would have posted pictures somewhere. Sure enough, they had.

Mr. Steinfeld, on learning that Mr. Flinders and Mr. Beckett had been found out, offered his photographs of Ms. Rose as proof of his involvement in the Lonelygirl15 videos. He had been hired to take the pictures on the set at the start of shooting.

The series, which Mr. Flinders and Mr. Beckett plan to continue on a site overseen by them, may play differently with fans now that they know for sure that Bree is an actress. Part of the appeal of the series was that the serious-minded, literate Bree offered an unbeatable fantasy: a beautiful girl who techy guys had something in common with.

On learning that Ms. Rose was an actress whose interests, unlike the scientific and religious issues that fascinated Bree, ran to parties and posing, one fan wrote, “Very cute, but she’s really not into Feynmann and Jared Diamond! (I’m heart-broken ...But a wonderful actress, had me fooled into thinking she was a geek like me.)”

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Murmur

2006-09-19T11:10:00.000-07:00

[murmur] is an archival audio project that collects and curates stories set in specific Toronto locations, told by Torontonians themselves. At each of these locations, a [murmur] sign with a telephone number and location code marks where stories are available. By using a mobile phone, users are able to listen to the story of that place while engaging in the physical experience of being there. Some stories suggest that the listener walk around, following a certain path through a place, while others allow a person to wander with both their feet and their gaze.

[murmur] believes interesting things don't just happen at the Rogers Centre and Nathan Phillips Square -- the city is full of stories, and some of them happen in parking lots and bungalows, diners and front lawns. The smallest, greyest or most nondescript building can be transformed by the stories that live in it. Once heard, these stories can change the way people think about that place and the city at large. These are the stories that make up Toronto's identity, but they're kept inside of the heads of the people who live here. [murmur] brings that important archive out onto the streets, for all to hear and experience, and is always looking for new stories to add to it's existing locations.

[murmur] was first established in Toronto's Kensington Market in 2003. That same year projects were launched in Vancouver's Chinatown and along St. Laurent Boulevard in Montreal. In 2004 [murmur] spread north from Kensington to the Annex neighbourhood and also established a site at The Drake Hotel. This year [murmur] will, as part of the City of Toronto's " Culture Capital" program, collect stories along Spadina from Bloor down to Queens Quay and will launch in October 2005.

[murmur] was initially developed with the assistance of the Canadian Film Centre, Habitat New Media Lab.

http://murmurtoronto.ca/

MySpace Page

2006-09-14T10:19:00.000-07:00

http://www.myspace.com/42917418

Entourage--The Greatest Show on TV

2006-08-29T12:10:00.000-07:00

Who won an Emmy® for Outstanding Supporting Actor In A Comedy Series? If you said Jeremy Piven better know as super agent Ari Gold you are correct.

Check out this promo for season three.

http://www.hbo.com/entourage/ariinterview/

There are also podcasts for the show on iTunes.

Numa Numa video

2006-08-29T11:58:00.000-07:00

Economist podcasts

2006-08-28T11:57:00.001-07:00

Are you up to speed with the current state of the internet? The Economist magazine has a multi part series about the internet on Apple iTunes. I recommend listening to the following podcasts.

1. From Gutenberg to Mcluhan to What's Next
2. Wide world of wikis
3. The Long Tail: the demand for everything
4. Blogs as leading indicators

MySpace The Movie

2006-08-28T04:39:00.000-07:00

Web Guitar Wizard Revealed at Last

2006-08-28T04:36:00.000-07:00

Bullfrog Power--Make the switch to Green

2006-07-06T12:42:00.000-07:00

Bullfrog Power is a new kind of electricity company – the first all-green electricity retailer in Ontario. Bullfrog Power is the only electricity retailer in Ontario that buys power exclusively from wind and low-impact hydro generators who meet or exceed the federal government's EcoLogoM standard for renewable electricity.

Choosing green power is an easy way for Ontarians to help create a healthier environment for their children, their communities and future generations.

Join now, it's easy.

www.bullfrogpower.com

Before & After Story -- Email Redesign Increases Loyalty Plan

2006-06-29T13:02:00.000-07:00

SUMMARY
Aeroplan, Canada's enormous consumer loyalty club, is a coalition of more than 100 travel, retail and financial services brands.

Millions of Canadians are already members -- and 50,000-60,000 new members join each month. But hardly any of them clicked through on Aeroplan's member emails.

Discover how Aeroplan's email design team ripped their welcome messages and monthly newsletters apart, and then put them back together again for increased results:

CHALLENGE
Every month in hotel lobbies, travel agencies and hundreds of retail locations across Canada, thousands of consumers sign up to join the Aeroplan loyalty club.

In the past, the club had mailed out new member packets, including a member card and four-page benefits brochure. The goal was to maximize "activation" converting new sign-ups as into members who used their club benefits actively.

Unfortunately, only about 40% of new sign-ups ever activated their memberships. And, on average, they took about 14 months to do so. Plus, the cost of the new member packets was rising.

Naturally, the marketing team wondered if they could save money and speed activation time by switching to email. The printed packets with cards would then only be sent to retail sign-ups who proved they were truly interested by jumping through the additional hoop of confirming their registration online.

Great idea, but Aeroplan's other email campaigns such as monthly newsletters and e-statements suffered from lackluster open and clickthrough rates.

"Our objective was to increase member activation by 10 percentage points for 2005 -- all the while growing our member base," says Marketing VP Paul Gilbert. How could the team possibly meet that aggressive goal with a communication channel that wasn't working all that well for them to begin with?

CAMPAIGN

First, the team reviewed their current email templates to try to figure out what was wrong with them. Originally designed by a direct (postal) mail firm, the creative (link to samples below) looked absolutely lovely ... when you printed it out.

But, viewing the email on-screen was another matter. Typeface was small, copy was long, paragraphs were dense (a typical e-statement letter started with a nine-line-long paragraph) and clickthrough weren't glaringly obvious, especially above the fold.

Critical -- the team decided to keep all brand creative elements in place. The goal was not to change the look of the email so much as it was to make the email far, far easier to skim over and clickthrough. So, although changes to copy and layout were radical, to recipients the changes felt subtle. (Idea -- click on our Creative Samples link below and print out before-and-after copies to see for yourself.)

Also, they decided against launching a redesign all at once. Instead, the team ran A/B tests for three months to portions of the list to make sure the redesign worked better than the control prior to rolling it out.

In the end, five of the biggest design changes were:

- Slightly bigger typeface.

- Shorter copy. Long letters were replaced with a series of headlined topics with summaries and hotlinks.

- More click links above the fold.

- More HTML graphics to click on.

- Commanding click link wording, i.e. "Start planning your rewards now.”

After determining which email templates and design rules worked best, the team launched two revamps:

Revamp #1. Welcome emails

In the past, new members received a single welcome email explaining their printed packet was in the mail. However, now the welcome email had to carry a far heavier load of convincing new sign-ups to register online in order qualify to get their printed packet.

So, the team expanded the single email to a series of five emails sent every week for five weeks. To encourage fast activation, the first message featured a virtual member card that was personalized with the recipient's name. Recipients were asked to print the email and cut their card out for use until their new plastic card arrived. "Start accumulating miles today."

The benefits copy in the following four messages was carefully adapted from the four pages of original direct mail brochure. Why not just send everything at once? Well, too much content can depress email results. Plus, multiple touches equals better conversion rates.

Revamp #2. Monthly newsletters & statements

Aeroplan had been sending out two monthly emails to members -- a transactional statement message plus a member newsletter. Research data indicates most consumers don't mind getting marketing information such as offers in transactional emails. Plus, personalized transactional emails typically get a far higher open rate than more generic marketing newsletters.

So the team decided to use the power of e-statements to improve newsletter reading. They combined the two emails into a single monthly send that included both elements.

RESULTS
Since the new email Welcome series launched in September 2005, Aeroplan hit their target of raising activations by 10 percentage points. So, relying almost solely on email rather than printed member packets as an initial conversion tool worked gangbusters.

Unique clickthroughs on the first email in the new welcome series were 63.9% higher than the original welcome email had had. Plus, some new members clicked more than once -- the non-unique click rate leapt by 95.6%.

The virtual card was very popular -- 20% of recipients clicked on it.

The following weekly emails also helped boost responses. The average new member used their club membership for the first time 25% more quickly than they had in the past.

Clickthroughs also increased for the revised monthly member e-statement/newsletter combo. 20% more recipients clicked to Aeroplan's Web site and 19.7% more recipients clicked on links to coalition member's Web sites to view members-only promotions.

Last but not least, Gilbert is very happy with the corresponding lift in online member registrations driven by email. “The profiles are critical to our whole strategy. The profile gives us geographical data and allows us to link member activity to what is going on with the Web site. Once they fill out a profile, they move from a generic home page to a personalized page. This is very important because it’s the first step in a long-term strategy to personalize all member touch points.”

Useful links related to this article:
Creative samples from Aeroplan’s email activation and estatement series
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/cs/aeroplan/study.html

Thindata, the Canadian agency that developed the new welcome email and activation sequence
http://www.thindata.com/

SurfAid Analytics, which provided tagging technology to track and measure behavior
http://www.coremetrics.com/technology/surfaid.html

Aeroplan
http://www.aeroplan.com/

SINGLE MALT SCOTCH TASTE & BUY EVENT

2006-06-28T10:52:00.000-07:00

I had the pleasure of attending the even with my Dad as our father days gift. Our host was Scotch expert Evan Thomson Cattanach guided us through a sensory journey to some of Scotland’s most esteemed whisky houses in this nosing of the following exceptional, age-designated, cask strength Single Malts:

Banff 21 Years Old Highland Single Malt
Rosebank 22 Years Old Lowland Single Malt
Port Ellen 25 Years Old Islay Single Malt
Caol Ila 25 Years Old Islay Single Malt
Talisker 25 Years Old Highland Single Malt
Inchgower 27 Years Old Highland Single Malt

Here are a few things I learned about Scotch.
1. You don't stick your nose in the glass like you do with wine. You place the glass under your nose and gently swirl the Scotch around the glass to allow the fragrence to disapate.
2. Mix only a cap full of water to a dram of Scotch ex. water bottle cap.
3. Store bottles in a dark place.
4. All Scotch contains the same four fundamental components. What's makes each Scotch unique is the local water they use and the size of the still.
5. There's no such thing as a "double" malt

Subscribe to the Walrus Magazine

2006-06-16T08:17:00.000-07:00

Subscribe to the Walrus. The Walrus wins 13 Gold Medals, 3 Silver Medals, Best New Magazine Writer and 34 Honourable Mentions at the 2006 National Magazine Awards!

https://cornerstonewebmedia.com/CPS/subscription/magazines/walrus1/subform.aspx

Ticket-shyster-Is A Monopoly Good?

2006-06-15T12:35:00.000-07:00

You know what else bothers me is Ticketmaster.

Take the latest Radiohead show at the Hummingbird Centre on Wednesday June 7 and Thursday June 8. The tickets went on sale via ticketmaster at 10am a few Saturday's ago. My wife and I had two laptops setup for the different days on the page where you purchased the tickets from Ticketmatster. We were on the site from 9:30am. At 10am we clicked to purchase tickets, the site said that tickets were no available for either date. This really pissed me off since I had been waiting to see them again. The next annoyance was that I went to eBay to look for tickets and they were available for $500 per ticket. It seems like many people just bought tickets to profit from them on eBay.

What about their real fans? Let's look an example of a band who RESPECTS their fans, WILCO. If you registered on the Wilco site for their newsletter, you were allowed to purchase advance tickets 24 hours before they went on sale at Ticket-shyster. As a result, we have third row seats to see arguably one of the best live performance bands out their today.

Therefore, there's more to the problem then bands touring too much. In fact, I think they could do more shows. The key is to remove the non-fans and scalpers who are out just to make a buck. The true, loyal fans are being screwed.

PS. I think tickets prices are outrageous. I can't remember the last band I paid over $100 to see. I don't even think Radiohead tickets were over $100.

However, if you want an old-school live music experience look for bands playing at the Mod Club. The club holds about 500-700 people max. Many great bands have played there such as The Streets, Wilco, and Josh Rouse. Forget seeing the Rolling Stones at ACC for $150. You will have a much better time seeing a lesser known or up-and-coming band at The Mod Club.

[Music]

Watching the 2006 World Cup on your PC

2006-06-14T13:08:00.000-07:00

World Cup live on your PC in 5 easy steps

For those of you stuck at the office without a TV, you can watch all the games and check the upcoming schedule, too. If you have technical problems with TVU, see the gHacks forum discussion. Don't email me with questions; I won't be able to answer you because of my schedule.

1) DOWNLOAD

Download the TVU player. It's tricky to find the link and get past their anti-robot system that makes you wait and then type stuff, but hang in there. It'll take about 2 minutes. Note the file is named "tuv" but the player is named TVU.

http://rapidshare.de/files/22635869/tuv.rar.html

2) INSTALL

If your PC doesn't know what to do with an RAR file, install WinRAR and use it to unpack the RAR archive file tuv.rar.

http://www.rarlab.com/rar_file.htm

3) LAUNCH

Install and launch the TVU player.

4) WATCH!

TVU has a channel selector on its left-hand side. Double click (and wait patiently) to watch a channel. ESPN2, ABC, CCTV-1 and CCTV-5 carry most of the games among them. Sometimes only one network carries a game; sometimes its on three as is the Saudi Arabia v Tunisia match I'm watching as I type. I find I like the Chinese-language commentators because I can ignore the words and listen to the sound of the crowd and the emotion in the announcer's voice.

5) MATCH SCHEDULE

Get the schedule. Once you've got TVU working, go to footballstreaming.info and endure the complicated signup process that subjects you to noisy Flash ads and requires you to submit a first post ("USA! USA!") to prove you're a human before you can read the real forums.

Below is the URL for this week's schedule. Times are in BST, British Summer Time, which is GMT+1. In the US, subtract 5 hours for Eastern and 8 for Pacific time.

http://www.footballstreaming.info/forums/viewtopic.php?t=806

USA v Italy is Saturday at 3pm EDT, on ABC only.

TECH QUESTIONS?

Don't email me! gHacks has a running thread on TVU problems. The most common problem is "Player cannot be initialized," which seems to be caused by the video being blocked by an office network firewall or proxy. They're still looking for a workaround last time I checked.

MAC USERS You can supposedly run TVU on Virtual PC, but I haven't tried it. Macworld is trolling for a better way.

Bar/Restaurant Picks: Foundation Room, Toronto

2006-06-14T07:59:00.000-07:00

The Foundation Room opened recently offering Front Street residents a unique tapas experience a la Morrocan style.

http://www.foundationroom.ca/

Previously a part of C'est What, the Foundation Room is in the former live music space, it's now designed like a Morrocan souk. Dimly lit by beautiful glass Morrocan latterns, we lounge on wine velvet couches with oversized stuffed pillows browsing a tantilizing tapas menu priced between $5-$13 per item. Morroccan ambient music plays in the background. The knee high tables are populated by 30 something condo hipsters from the surrounding St.Lawrence Market area.

We order the Hand thrown squash dumplings in a sage cream sauce and Kashkaval cheese;Organic leaves and seedlings;toasted pine nuts, pomegranate seeds,shallot vinegrette; and the Lamb Rack with pomegranate pistachio crust,mint and apricot glaze.

The food is excellent. The Rack of Lamb is succulent, juicy, and tasty. The serving includes three large chops. The salad dressing lightly soaks the leaves delivering a citrus tinge that impresses us. The dumplings remind me of gnocchi. The flavour is delicious light, and creamy.We are impressed.

Food and drinks costs $60 that includes two glasses of wine and three bottles of beer.

[Food and Drink]

The drive that's not on Get Going Canada.ca

2006-06-11T16:05:00.000-07:00

Rose and I wanted to get out of town on Saturday. We only had the afternoon so we didn't want to go to far away. It was gorgeous out, sunny and windy making it around fifteen degrees.

We decided to go to the Kawartha's to look for cottages. Trying to find anything in Muskoka is out of range right now. But if we could find anything under 200K even it’s a fixer upper that's fine.

We wanted to investigate places like Balsam Lake, Sturgeon, and Buckhorn. We drove out of town on 404 or DVP north to Newmarket. Turning off on Davis drive and turning right driving east we are trying to hook up with 48 north. Highway 48 is a really great drive. We used to take it all the time as an alternative to going on Highway 11 to cottage country. It's a mellow drive, something throw the Easy Rider soundtrack on for, because it’s a one-lane highway. I like the scenic way rather than the super highway.

We connect up with Highway 12 and a short dogleg takes us onto Highway 48 into cottage country. The road winds through forest and bogs. We don't see any lakes for a while. Then we enter Kirkfield. It looks like a very inviting little village. There's a B&B called the Kirkfield Inn with a restaurant. I love towns like this. I think we were grooving to Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde at this point. We could see a river wind through town. The buildings were old. Red brick and country stores. I imagine owing a cottage in the area and taking friends to the Kirkland Inn pub. I am regular. The best of all worlds. A watering whole that rivals anything in the city and a short car ride to the cottage. We like to go on Friday night to celebrate the coming of the weekend.

We are starting to get hungry. I think we imagined going to Bobcaygeon (like the hip song) for lunch. But we couldn't wait. Coboconk was our stop. There was a pub, slips my mind right now. It seems like Ceasers is the big drink. Families up from the city and locals slug back mason jars of the drinks. I'm torn I don't whether to order a Caesar or a beer. I settle for a beer. Rose and I have burgers. The sun soaks us as we enjoy the meal. Wolf eating his grill cheese sandwich.

Done with lunch we continue to look for cottages. Rose suggests getting off the highway and trying Balsam Lake Drive. We haven't seen any lakes yet so we figured this would take us to one.

Snaking along a tiny paved road we come up on the lake. There's some hardware bought for sale signs for some waterfront lots. We stop and take down the numbers. Balsam Lake is part of the Trent-Severn canal system. That means there are lots of boats going through the channel at high speeds but the upside is there’s an inter-connected lake system leading to Lake Ontario and Georgian Bay for boating. Balsam Lake is a big lake too not much smaller than Couchiching. We left a message for the agent. When she called us back we found out the lots were 300K each for 159ft of waterfront and 300ft deep. Not in our price range. It’s a nice area though.

We stopped for ice cream in Fenlon Falls. Kawartha Dairy ice cream is legendary. The road continues east towards Bobcaygeon. It hugs the side of Sturgeon Lake for most of the drive. It gets confusing driving though Bobcaygeon. I’m suddenly on a back street nowhere near the highway. Then a highway appears in front of me but not the one I was on. Not long before I am heading the right direction again on 36.

We turn south at Buckhorn and drive along the lock system. The river seems narrow. There are many dams and locks channel the water. Then we pass Trent University. It seems way out of town. Nice looking campus.

The drive back to Toronto is along a super highway. The speed limit is 110 Km. We are back at our house in an hour.

It’s a great 4-5 hour tour if you want to take an adventure on a Saturday afternoon.

[Travel]

Talking to Myself

2006-06-08T07:14:00.000-07:00

Blogs really have democratized the web.

I remember back in the 1990's if I wanted to post something I would have to convince friends with web programming expertise to help me. Sometimes I had to pay for it.

Today blog’s are so common everyone seems to have one. There’s no cost to start one and it’s based on your available time. The irony is that everyone thinks they have a destination where friends and netizens visit daily. This most likely isn’t the case but we convince ourselves anyway.

Since it’s your own soapbox to stand on, you can say just about anything. I don’t even know who’s reading my blog. I have no idea why you would read my blog.

In the past few weeks, I’ve attended marketing conferences where the presenters have promised their presentation in exchange for visiting their blogs. Most of their blogs are focused on industry specific discussions.

When I started my blog, I started writing marketing focused articles. A friend posted a comment stating that I was excessively serious and should talking about things near and dear to me. I took her advice and I’ve been writing completely subjective information ever since, relevant only to me.

I think the moral of the story is not to take yourself too seriously. Nevertheless, many people do, based on reading their blogs. Just because blogs are, a free venue for expressing your opinions doesn’t make it interesting or factual. The tone of many blogs is to be an authority on particular subject. It seems a little like posing to me. The information is usually pedestrian, borrowed, and commonplace across most industry journals.

Just because you posted it on your blog doesn’t mean that you discovered it. It’s probably posted on a hundred more blogs.

Just have fun nobody’s listening anyway. They’re all too busy writing their own blogs.

Da Vinci Code leads to Canada

2006-06-05T12:25:00.000-07:00

Part 1

In 1999, I was tree planting in Burns Lake, in northern BC. A friend of mine bought a book called HOLY BLOOD,HOLY GRAIL from the Seven Eleven. It proclaimed to be a New York Times Best seller and highly controversial. It was the first time I had heard of the grail myth tied to something real.

I never forgot the cover and searched for it over the coming years. However, the book seemed to disappear. I heard that the RC church blacklisted the book (to be confirmed). Did this cause enough backlash to get it pulled by the publisher?

In 1993, it resurfaced. I bought it and read with interest. This began my Grail Quest.

HOLY BLOOD AND HOLY GRAIL recounts a discovery of secret documents by a parishioner named Berenger Sauniere in the tiny French village named Rennes-le-chateau. These documents apparently unveiled the following mystery.

-Is it possible that Christ did not die on the cross?
-Is it possible that Jesus was married, a father, and this bloodline still exists?
-Is it possible that parchments found in the South of France a century ago reveal one of the best-kept secrets in the Christendom?
-Is it possible that these parchments contain the very heart of the mystery of the Holy Grail?

The book does a great job providing historical perspective on this mystery. Many points are conjecture and lack real evidence. However, the story is cohesive enough to be believable.

Stay Tuned for how this relates to Canada...

Note of Interest:
On April 7, 2006 the copyright-infringement claim by Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, who said Brown's blockbuster plagiarized their 1982 book, "Holy Blood, Holy Grail was rejected by a British judge. They claimed that U.S. author Dan Brown stole the ideas of two historians to produce his hugely popular novel, "The Da Vinci Code.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe/04/07/uk.davinci.court/index.html

[Movies]

Two degrees from terrorist plot

2006-06-04T06:10:00.000-07:00

I awoke this morning to a headline in the New York Times that read,"17 HELD IN PLOT TO BOMB SITES IN ONTARIO."

Wait a minute, the New York Times. I would expect this story to come from the US or UK but Canada. Before I let you read it, it says that one of their targets was the Toronto Star building. The ThinData office was located on the 12th floor of the Toronto Star building until March 27th, 2006.

17 HELD IN PLOT TO BOMB SITES IN ONTARIO
----------------------------------------
By IAN AUSTEN and DAVID JOHNSTON
Published: June 4, 2006

OTTAWA, June 3 — Seventeen Canadian residents were arrested and charged with plotting to attack targets in southern Ontario with crude but powerful fertilizer bombs, the Canadian authorities said Saturday.
Skip to next paragraph
Enlarge this Image
Steve Russell/Toronto Star, via Associated Press

A police officer stood guard in Pickering, Ontario, on Friday.
The New York Times

The police announced the arrests yesterday in Toronto.

The arrests represented one of the largest counterterrorism sweeps in North America since the attacks of September 2001. American officials said that the plot did not involve any targets in the United States, but added that the full dimension of the plan for attacks was unknown.

At a news conference in Toronto, police and intelligence officials said they had been monitoring the group for some time and moved in to make the arrests on Friday after the group arranged to take delivery of three tons of ammonium nitrate, a fertilizer that can be made into an explosive when combined with fuel oil.

"It was their intent to use it for a terrorist attack," said Mike McDonell, a Royal Canadian Mounted Police assistant commissioner. He said that by comparison the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, which killed 168 people, was carried out "with only one ton of ammonium nitrate."

The 17 men were mainly of South Asian descent and most were in their teens or early 20's. One of the men was 30 years old and the oldest was 43 years old, police officials said. None of them had any known affiliation with Al Qaeda.

"They represent the broad strata of our society," Mr. McDonell said. "Some are students, some are employed, some are unemployed."

The Canadian police declined to identify specific targets, though they did dismiss reports in the news media that Toronto's subway system was on the list. The Toronto Star, citing an unidentified source, said the group had a list that included the Parliament Buildings in Ottawa as well as the Toronto branch office of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. At the news conference, officials emphasized that the targets were all in Canada.

In the United States, the arrests reignited fears among American counterterrorism officials about the porous northern border even as the Bush administration and lawmakers have focused attention in recent weeks about hardening the southern border in an effort to stanch the flow of illegal immigrants. Since the arrest of Ahmed Ressam in December 1999 as he tried to smuggle explosive chemicals into Washington State in a plot to strike targets that included the Los Angeles international airport, authorities have expressed fears that extremists could use Canada as a platform to make attacks inside the United States.

The arrests came at the end of a week of furious debate over federal spending for domestic security, with officials in cities like New York and Washington bitterly criticizing Michael Chertoff, the secretary of homeland security, for not allocating more money to cities thought likely to remain high on the terrorist target list for Al Qaeda and other extremist groups.

The men accused in Canada operated what the police called training camps for its members. At their news conference, the police displayed at least one pistol, electronics components, military fatigues, army-style boots and two-way radios they said were used at the camps, although they would not disclose their locations.

The Toronto Star reported that in 2004 the intelligence agency began monitoring Internet exchanges, some of which were encrypted. According to the newspaper, the training in camps took place north of Toronto. Members of the group, according to that account, often visited a popular Canadian chain of doughnut shops to wash up following their training sessions.

Counterterrorism officials said that interviews with suspects would provide greater clarity about the nature of the plot, but they said that the men had taken a significant step, moving beyond the planning stage, toward acquiring a large quantity of potentially explosive fertilizer.

It was not clear whether the group ever had possession of the chemicals, or whether authorities may have had a role in arranging for the shipment or transporting the material.

A police spokeswoman, Cpl. Michele Paradis, asked whether the group had actually had the three tons of chemicals in their possession, and if the police had "seized" it, replied: "That's difficult to answer. They made arrangements to have it delivered and they took delivery."

American officials said that White House officials and counterterrorism agencies had been briefed on the case, and of the coming arrests, in recent days.

Russ Knocke, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, said, "We are coordinating very closely with our Canadian counterparts." He said Mr. Chertoff spoke early Saturday with Stockwell Day, the Canadian minister of public safety, but added, "We have not made any adjustment to our security posture along the northern border."

Ian Austen reported from Ottawa for this article, and David Johnston from Washington. Chris Mason contributed reporting from Ontario and Robert Pear from Washington.

Chris Carder featured in MarketingSherpa

2006-05-31T18:24:00.000-07:00

Chris Carder is quoted in MarketingSherpa, the leading marketing authority and researcher.

SPECIAL REPORT: How to Market to Canadians Online – Advice, Data, Legal Info and Useful Hotlinks
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/sample.cfm?ident=27474

[ThinData]

Perspective

2006-05-26T10:44:00.000-07:00

A friend from work, Joseph Cooper, sent me a link to a t-shirt on CafePress. I bought the t-shirt.

It's good to have someone to keep everything in perspective. Hey I can laugh at myself.

Lucky

2006-05-19T08:00:00.000-07:00

I might be exposing myself as a complete idiot by telling you about this, however, I woke up yesterday morning to discover that my driver’s license was suspended. What’s even funnier is how it happened in the first place.

January 19, 2006
--------------------
I was driving home in January along Queen’s Quay. As I rounded the bend to just before Lakeshore Blvd, I noticed to late a police officer with radar. I looked down and I was doing 70km in a 50km zone. Caught!

The police officer told me I was speeding and asked for my registration. I looked in the glove compartment for it but I didn’t have it. Now it occurred to me that I hadn’t received it. Ouch. Therefore, I didn’t have the proper registration. Ding a $115 charge. In addition, a $100 ticket for speeding. He was pretty cool though, he said that I had a clean record and if I went to the Ministry of Transportation in the next 24 hours and got my registration, he would wave the charge at the court hearing. Therefore, that’s what I did.

I waited for the court date to arrive by mail. I waited…but nothing came. I wonder if the mail was thrown out.

March 16 2006
--------------
Receives Notice of Fine and Due Date for tickets. However, it says complete this portion with your payment in enclosed envelope with no court date mentioned. Well this isn’t what I want to do. I want to go to court so I’m thinking, I guess I am not supposed to respond and this will mean I want to go to court. I think that’s what the police officer instructed me to do.

May 17 2006
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We are in Montreal for the CMA convention. We arrive at the airport for our 8pm flight back to Toronto. It’s 6pm. When we enter our itinerary number into the kiosk, it instructs us to see the agent. Every kiosk told us to the same so it’s not the kiosk. I walk over the line up to see an agent. The agent tells me that all flight to Toronto have been cancelled because there are thunderstorms. If lightening is coming down around the run way it’s common practice to stop all flights. Therefore, we can’t get home until tomorrow. We’ve already spent four days in Montreal and it was time to go home. I said to Wayne and John lets get a rental car and go home tonight they were in favour. We went to Avis, Hertz, National, the only rental with a one-way car to Toronto was Thrifty. It costs $400 to get a car back to Toronto. It’s a deal. It would cost as much to stay over for another night.

We get to Toronto airport at 12am and home to bed by 1:30am.

May 18 2006
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I wake up, look through the mail, and there’s a letter from the Ministry of Transportation, Notice of Suspension of Driver’s License. That means I just drove back from Montreal with a suspended license. Ouch. That’s lucky I wasn’t pulled over.

I went to the Ministry first thing. They directed me to go to the Ontario Court of Justice to register for an Affidavit in Support of a Request for Reopening. My license was suspended because I had not paid my fine, which explains the March 16 letter. Therefore, what I was actually doing was pleading for a new court date.

Since I had, only 4.5 hours sleep the night before I was really crusty. I had to fill out a very detailed five page document in duplicate for the offences. It was so long that when they called my number I was only half way through filling it out. They told me to come back to the window when I was finished and I could cut the lineup. When I came back, the woman who made the promise had gone on a break. I had to wait again to get to speak to someone.

The next step was to meet with the magistrate and plead my case. After waiting for 20 minutes, I was called into the magistrate’s office. He turned a tape recorder on a asked me some questions.

Magistrate: Why didn’t you pay your tickets?
Ian: I wanted a court hearing.

Magistrate: Why didn’t you appear for trial to dispute the charges?
Ian: I was doing only 5 km over the speed limit. I don’t have many traffic offences so I wasn’t sure what to do. The officer told me by not responding that I would be sent a court date
Magistrate: Do you know how fast you were driving. You were doing 70km in a 50 zone. The officer wouldn’t have told you that. You are supposed to read the back of the Offence Notice. It tells you what to do to get a court hearing.

He had me. I wasn’t even sure how fast I was driving.

But much to my surprise...

Magistrate: You will receive a new court date notice in the mail in 6-8 weeks. Don’t miss it this time.

I asked at the information counter how long it would take to get the suspension off my license. They said it would take about 4 hours to remove it from the police records.

Imagine if I had been pulled over for speeding on the way back from Montreal the night before.

ABC Plunges 'Lost' Viewers Into Global Interactive Mystery

2006-05-11T13:17:00.000-07:00

http://www.thehansofoundation.org/

Fans of ABC's Lost are about to find a slew of compelling reasons to pay extra close attention to the smash hit drama—even after the current season ends. The show's creative team, including co-creator Damon Lindelof and executive producer Carlton Cuse, have engineered a sprawling interactive challenge to keep viewers immersed in the Lost universe during the hiatus between the end of Season Two and the start of Season Three. Officially dubbed "The Lost Experience," the globe-spanning game will incorporate multiple media platforms (including online and television) and feature a distinct storyline outside the plot currently unfolding on TV's most mysterious deserted island. "A lot of people have speculated about what's going on on the island," says Mike Benson, ABC Entertainment's senior vice president of marketing and one of the project's masterminds. "Why are these people are here? Are they in purgatory? Is it all just one big coincidence? We want to make sure that we're creating that same sort of experience that people get from the show—and we're hoping that people start to speculate about what this story is that we're trying to tell."

That speculation has already begun, especially regarding the first of a series of clues set to be revealed within the episode airing tonight in the U.S. (the episode aired yesterday in the U.K. and will be seen tomorrow in Australia). Early rumors indicated the first clue would come during a commercial break in the form of a toll-free number, while a press release issued yesterday by the fictional Hanso Foundation called attention to the company's website (along the lines of the amazingly authentic Oceanic Airlines website launched at the end of Season One) and an ad breaking during tonight's broadcast. "I will tell you this: there's more than one clue," teases Benson. "There's more than one thing that could give you some insight that will start the experience."

As for how all the clues will eventually fit together? "Think of it as a huge jigsaw puzzle," says Benson. "We've broken up the puzzle into many pieces, and there are no duplicative pieces anywhere. So you might find something in Australia, you might find something in the U.K., you may find something here in the U.S.—but it will all be different. The idea is to create a big community of people sharing the clues and content they find, discovering what others have found and trying to put this mystery together." And while getting viewers to stick around for commercials wasn't one of the primary goals, Benson acknowledges the seeding of clues in random locations may help reverse some of the anti-commercial sentiment of today's television viewers. "As the idea and the experience has developed, we actually believe that we've come up with a concept that makes this a little Tivo proof," says Benson. "If you just scan through the commercial breaks, you might miss something very important. And in fact, you will."

The endeavor may bear some similarities to alternate reality games like 2001's "The Beast" (which promoted the movie A.I.), though ABC believes "The Lost Experience" will take the notion of fan immersion even further. "While a movie studio might create something that is specifically about the film itself, this is really a parallel storyline," says Benson. "So if you're a fan of Lost, going through this experience might actually answer questions or shed more light on things that have happened reaching back to Season One, or could look ahead and inform you about Season Three and beyond. But because it's a separate storyline, you don't have to have watched Lost in order to get into the experience." Still, longtime fans can expect to see some crossover between the experience and the show in the future, possibly in the form of familiar faces. "The whole experience is designed to bring some new characters in—and if the plan works as we hope it will, some of these characters may show up in future episodes," reveals Benson.

No matter how much of the mystery finds its way into the TV series, "The Lost Experience" itself will be solved by the time Season Three rolls around. "There is a beginning and a middle and an end to this experience," says Benson. "But if it all goes well, we will definitely do it again."

[tv]

Movenpick Wicked Thai Chicken Soup

2006-05-11T09:17:00.000-07:00

I want to let you know about an inexpensive and incredible soup from Movenpick called Wicked Thai Soup. I've had it at Loblaws Queen's Quay and St.Clair Centre. They probably have it at any Loblaws with a Movenpick.

It's one of the best soups I've ever had. Sounds crazy but try it for yourself. At the St.Clair Centre Loblaws it sold out in under an hour.

Wolf turns One

2006-05-08T04:45:00.000-07:00

It's a scary thought, Wolf turned one on Saturday May 6,2006.

I went to a party store to buy balloons.While I waited for them to inflate them, I walked the floor looking for other stuff. I came across some buttons to celebrate birthdays for turning 40,50,and 60. The buttons read "Aged to Perfection" or "40's the new 30". I immediately thought about our friend who turn's 40 next weekend. I turn 37 this year.

Time passes so quickly. It seems like only yesterday that we had Wolf at Mt. Sinai Hospital. I remember being a little scared but so excited that he was finally born. There's always something to worry about, every step of the way. At least that's what you think when it's your first time.

I remember one time he had the flu. He just finished eating dinner. He was in his excer-saucer watching Tele-tubbies when he spewed barf across the living room like in the Excorcist. We tought he eat something poisonous when we weren't looking. He continued to puke and moan. We called tele-health and they asked us basic questions to find out what was the problem. He didn't have a temperature close but not over. The nurse managed to calm us down and to ensure us that what he had was not life threatening. He finally fell asleep from fatigued. The weekend was pretty rough but by Monday morning he was alright.

In the first year you adapt and adjust to this focus in your life. You become selfless. It's one of the proudest and best moments I've had in my life. It just gets better.

Having a child is one of the joys of being human. It become the reason for everything that you do. I'm thankful that we can share this experience with great friends who are experiencing the same thing.

Thank you for this gift.

Dependency on oil

2006-04-25T08:57:00.000-07:00

It was a surprise to hear George W Bush say,” Our addiction to oil is a matter of national security concern." This is the first time I've heard him acknowledge the United States dependency on oil is a problem.

The initial reason for the US invasion of Iraq was to remove Saddam because he was producing WMD.

This leaves the question, what was the primary reason for the invasion? Was it to create a democracy in the Middle East, create employment and profit for the military industrial complex at home or to control the world's second largest oil supply?

I'm interested in your opinion.

Goodbye Canadian Tire Guy

2006-03-30T13:36:00.000-08:00

Goodbye Canadian Tire Guy
By DAVID MENZIES

Many have mocked him in his passing, but the multi-tastking, condescending handyman was, like it or not, us

Canadian Tire Guy, the multi-tasking, condescending handyman who wowed us over most of the last decade with his vast selection of power tools and his propensity to remain calm no matter how daunting the job, passed away earlier this month. He was assassinated by the venerable mass-merchandiser he lovingly pitched for after it was decided that Canadian Tire needed to go with "something new, something fresh, something different."

Canadian Tire Guy is mourned by his long-neglected wife, Canadian Tire Gal, a soccer mom without equal. Under trying circumstances, she maintained the façade of domestic bliss while married to Canadian Tire Guy. Yet, for those who knew her, Canadian Tire Gal was consumed with a smouldering, albeit unanswered passion, a hint of which could be gleaned by gazing into her beckoning bedroom eyes. So it was that she would sometimes be spotted in Canadian Tire ads gleefully riding her trusty Ski-Doo.

Ostensibly, the snowmobiling trek was meant to demonstrate another whiz-bang MotoMaster product. But in reality, thanks to straddling a vibrating vehicle boasting an 800-cc, 4-stroke engine, Canadian Tire Gal was able to adroitly satiate a certain constant craving-a craving that all too often went unanswered by Canadian Tire Guy. Alas, so obsessed was Canadian Tire Guy with his Mastercraft tools that he never did find the time to visit an Adults Only Video store to purchase the kind of tools Canadian Tire Gal so dearly craved. Yet, Canadian Tire Guy knew how to unplug a toilet and fix a flat, and that skill set made him endearing.

Canadian Tire Guy will also be missed by his son, Bobby. Striving to be a laudable role model, Canadian Tire Guy always gave Bobby a mint condition Canadian Tire catalogue hot off the press. He taught his child well, preaching that anything he wanted in life could easily be found in aisles 5 through 10 at Canadian Tire. And he cautioned young Bobby to resist the siren call of flashy Yankee retail harlots like Home Depot. Bobby tried acquiescing, but with the advent of puberty, he found himself drawn to other catalogues, such as those from The Bay and Sears, which offered several pages devoted to women's brassieres. Bobby remains consumed with guilt.

Canadian Tire Guy will also be missed by his neighbours, a collection of self-confessed mechanical morons presumably living under the Witness Protection Program (Canadian Tire Guy's address remains a mystery, although it is known that a Canadian Tire store is located conveniently nearby). While always grateful for Canadian Tire Guy's tireless advice, some neighbours came to resent the Mr. Know-It-All smugness that came with it. Yet, now that Canadian Tire Guy has passed away, the neighbours ponder how they will cope next time Ma Nature flexes her muscles. Who will inform them of the MotoMaster Precise Fit Teflon Windshield Wipers? Who will steer them in the direction of the Oskar 3-in-1 Snow Brush? Disaster looms!

Agreed, there are some charlatans who are rejoicing that Canadian Tire Guy is dead. He will not be mourned by Canada's hairstylists: his hair and beard were always perfectly trimmed, thanks, of course, to various Mastercraft gardening tools that adroitly doubled as barber equipment.

The manufacturers of automobiles will not miss Canadian Tire Guy, either, given that he single-handedly taught a nation of commuters how to extend the lives of their beleaguered beaters.

But most will indeed mourn his passing. This includes a legion of Internet bloggers who wished Canadian Tire Guy mortal harm. Now that their wish has been granted, these bloggers suddenly find themselves without meaning in life; they are now akin to a legion of Lex Luthors living in a Metropolis devoid of Superman.

He will be missed, too, by a vast array of Ottawa-based bureaucrats and social engineers. Indeed, Canada's version of Ned Flanders-a tool belt-equipped wuss-was the perfect mascot for a country that has become emasculated. Alas, I speak of the true north strong and free, a place where Police Forces are now called "Police Services"; a nation in which the physical testing standards for female Armed Forces recruits are purposefully watered down in an attempt to make our army a little less kick-ass and a lot more gender-equal. I could go on.

Oh, Canada. Oh, Canadian Tire Guy. You shall be dearly missed.

DAVID MENZIES is a Toronto writer. His "Consumer Guy" column appears every two weeks.

ThinData Wins Prestigious International Award

2006-03-30T06:53:00.000-08:00

Aeroplan email campaign wins IAC Best of Show – Email Message Campaign

Toronto, Ontario – Month xx, 2006 – ThinData, one of North America’s top email marketing companies, announced today that its Aeroplan Activation Sequence email campaign has won Best of Show Internet Advertising Competition award from the Web Marketing Association. Other winners of the tenth annual awards include Disney and Kellogg’s.

“It feels great to be recognized for this outstanding email program. The best of ThinData’s strategic, creative and technical services came together on this project,” says Ian Giles, Director Client Strategy for ThinData. “The Aeroplan Activation Sequence showcases the holistic approach we’re able to offer to our clients. We are honoured to have Aeroplan as a client and look forward to bringing their e-communication programs to even greater heights in 2006.”

The Aeroplan Activation Sequence email campaign that ThinData devised for Aeroplan is a suite of “induction” emails for new Aeroplan members, geared to educate new Aeroplan members, cultivate activity and program loyalty. After implementing ThinData campaign, Aeroplan realized the following improvements: unique click-through rates increased by 57%, to 5.9%, up from 3.7% previously and unique open rates increased by 31.5%, to 35.9%, up from 27.3% previously.

The IAC awards are held annually to honor excellence in online advertising and to recognize the individuals and organizations responsible for the best in Internet marketing. The IAC Awards are the first and only industry-based advertising award competition dedicated exclusively to online advertising. The Competition web site with a complete list of winners is located at www.IACAward.org

Competing with top advertising agencies worldwide against 6 core judging criteria including Creative and Copywriting, this win confirms ThinData as a growing force in full-service online marketing.

Rene Godbout, Director of Marketing for Aeroplan commented, “The redesign of Aeroplan’s Activation Sequence emails permits us to better engage new members at the early stage of their relationship with the Aeroplan program. We are thrilled that our program has received this award.”

[ThinData]

Why should you care about Blogging?

2006-03-30T04:12:00.000-08:00

Have you ever heard of the "long tail" concept? Let me attempt to paraphrase it.

If you use the analogy of a book store, they have limited space so they can only hold 30,000 to 40,000 books. Therefore, they are likely to stock only the most popular titles or top sellers. However, Amazon doesn't have this physical restriction because there's no bricks and motar stores. They actually make more money with the niche books then they do on best sellers. As a vitual book store they can afford to do it. The point is that servicing a niche market can be very profitable.

If you look at media today and plot it on a graph you would have a declining line starting high and falling to the right. The Top shows like Lost or 24 would dominate the top part of the graph and as you move right or into lesser known shows the eye balls decline. The popular shows are few in number and as you move right there more and more shows that aren't as popular. It also speaks to what people consider to be important moving to less important.

However, applying the concept of the "long tail" concept to media communications the show on the right is justifiably just as important as the popular show on the left. Imagine that the little guy on the right is someone with a personal blog talking about what they ate for breakfast or their cat. You might say well it's not for me. Now imagine that one day this guy comes up with the most profound idea ever for this point in time. This information gets shared virally throughout the world and this little blog becomes the most signifigant traffic on the web this day. It shoots up to the level of the most popular shows on the left. It might not sustain the attention of veiwers over the long term. It's an example of a one hit wonder. However, if you step back and look at all these one hit wonders, over time you,and add them up, you start to see how important all of them are to the media landscape. With the power of the interenet you can see how someone can go from being relatively unknown to best known site over night.

See this clip for more info:

http://www.rocketboom.com/vlog/archives/2006/03/rb_06_mar_16.html

Cyclist plunges to his death after losing control on Mississauga Bridge

2006-03-30T03:45:00.000-08:00

Mississauga cyclist killed in freak accident

Mar. 29, 2006. 01:56 PM

CURTIS RUSH

STAFF REPORTER THESTAR.COM

A 46-year-old cyclist has been killed after falling off a bridge over the Credit River this morning, Peel Regional Police say.

The cyclist was going over a bridge on Burnhamthorpe Rd. W., about a kilometre west of Creditview Rd., in Mississauga when he lost control, tumbled over the barrier and fell 150 feet to his death.

Early reports indicate the cyclist sideswiped a pole, jarring the rider and causing him to lose control. The cyclist couldn't regain his equilibrium and toppled over the barrier.

"He lost control of the bike somehow," Const. Kathy Weylie said. "He then toppled over the side. He was on the sidewalk, on the north side heading westbound."

The river is only about two feet deep at the point where the cyclist fell.

Police have not released the victim's identity until next of kin have been notified.

The Nice Agency.com

2006-03-24T11:06:00.000-08:00

We all know most agency management treats its employees like idiotic children and, while most employees may truly be idiotic, pampered, over-paid children, it's still humorous when an agency head pulls out the ruler and lays down the gauntlet like a Kindergarten teacher. Today, we're informed Toronto-based agency Henderson Bas President Dawna Henderson was displeased the assigned group didn't properly organized the agency's monthly Round Up, an agency wide cleaning event, and took matters into her own hands in the form of a stern email. There are rules, damn it and "this is not a joke!" The kicker in all of this? The agency's URL: theniceagency.com. Read on...

Subject: Spring Time Round -UP
Date: Thu, 23 Mar 2006 09:12:30 -0500
From: Dawna Henderson
To: yyz@theniceagency.com

The agenda for today's Round Up has changed

Because the assigned team failed to coordinate this month's Round Up - and we don't want to waste the time that has been allocated - everyone will be required to participate in henderson bas spring cleaning.

Beginning at 4pm, each of you will be responsible for cleaning your individual pod (just not moving stuff around) and making sure the area around your desk is neat & tidy. Once your area is perfectly clean and organized, you will each be required to participate in office cleaning. Tech and creative will be responsible for the kitchen which includes the fridge and above the sink cupboards. The PMs and AMs will be responsible for cleaning the down stairs coat closet and making sure every single screen & keyboard in the building is cleaned.

Once you are finished cleaning your pod and assigned areas, please come and find me as I would like to make sure the office is cleaned to my standards.

To this month's Round Up team instead of buying snacks and drinks for the group, you will be required to purchase the following cleaning supplies before 4pm today - paper towels, Fantastik, Pledge for electronics, J-cloths, and computer screen wipes (@ Grand & Toy). This is not an option.

If anyone has any problems with this, please be sure to thank this month's Round Up team. Do not come and whine to me.

Rules: This is not a joke.
1. all computers must be turned off from 4:00PM- 5:30PM
2. no calls are to be taken
3. attendance is mandatory
4. everyone's shred box must be emptied
5. no one can leave until the offices are clean
6. no smoke or coffee breaks

dawna
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Agency Makes Joke Out of Nasty Internal Email
On Friday, an internal email about office cleaning from the President of Toronto-based Henderson Bas was leaked to us and has, as of Saturday afternoon, spawned 57 comments. Most, it seems, from former agency employees. The email, which you can read here along with the comments, reads like a displeased parent blasting her children after returning from a vacation to find the house trashed. Now, everyone has emotions and, at times, everyone says something they wished they hadn't. Perhaps that's the case here or perhaps it is, as the clear majority of commenters claim, a true representation of affairs inside the agency.

Whether a fair representation or not, we have to hand it to Henderson Bas President Dawna Henderson, sender of the email, for her attempt at injecting a bit of humor into the email leak. If you visit the agency's site now, you will be met with the message, "Please Come Back Later. We're Busy Cleaning," a t-shirt offer and a read "As Seen on Adrants" logo. Some have labeled the stunt a lame attempt to brush off what many say is indicative of an agency with some serious internal issues. Others have said Dawna is a great business person and this is just a smart move to show a sense of humor about an email that could have come from any agency head.

On the other hand, we're told the person who leaked the email has been fired. Clearly, there's not a forgiving sense of humor in that move. Based on the comments and emails we received, we're inclined to believe life inside Henderson Bas is pretty intense. In fact, the issue appears to be so hot one person went out a created a CafePress store selling items emblazoned with not so nice statements about the agency.

We, ourselves, have worked in an agency run by a tyrant and have witnessed, first hand, how a dictator-like agency president can, even while guiding the agency to success, turn employees into slump-shouldered yes men who have given up all hope of having an individual thought unless it's exactly what the president said the day before. Of course, we were fired from that shop soon after raising our voice to the man and, to be fair, doing a shitty job because we were too busy getting Adrants and another project off the ground. So, we don't really have the right to complain too much but these occurrences indicate just how much an agency's top dog can effect employees. Some leaders instill the desire to do great things. Others fill you with dread at the thought of spending one more hour inside the agency's doors. Hopefully, throughout your career, you get more of the former and less of the latter. Thankfully, we did.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PR Disaster As Viral Opportunity?
Posted by Ken Schafer on March 25, 2006.
Related to Interactive Agencies, Public Relations, Viral Marketing, Web Sites

There are 0 comments on this entry. Add your own.

Did April Fools’ come a week early this year? Something very odd is going on over at henderson bas this weekend.

Their home page has been replaced by this:

The page title has been changed from “henderson bas - the nice agency” to “henderson bas - the cleanest agency in Canada” (the company’s url is theniceagency.com).

What’s going on here?

All of this seems to spring from Adrants’ publication of a purported “all hands” e-mail from the agency’s President, Dawna Henderson (One Degree Profile). Adrants Friday afternoon post called The Nice Agency Isn’t So Nice goes for the jugular, reprinting the full e-mail and then standing back as the comments flood in.

I’m not going to republish the supposed e-mail here but you may want to go read it to see what all the fuss is about. In particular, look at the vitriol flowing in the comments to the post.

I can’t imagine that this e-mail was planted at Adrants as a hoax by henderson bas - it just makes them look too bad. Part of me thought the “leaked e-mail” and the “humorous corporate response” looked a bit too much like a PR stunt but if that is the case it has gone horribly wrong in my mind. I can’t believe there could be a reason to inflict something like this on your company intentionally.

So if we assume their home page is an attempt at damage control by making light of what’s going on at Adrants I’m not sure it is successful. My guess is lots of people (certainly most clients and potential clients of henderson bas) wouldn’t have caught wind of this. Now they’ve nicely drawn attention to the whole mess. Heck I’m writing about it and now a few thousand more people know that not everyone thinks Henderson Bas is the Nice Agency!

Finally, someone has done a nice job of taking this to the next level by starting a CafePress Shop selling commemorative shirts, hats, aprons, and wall clocks (as pictured here).

nikesoccer.ca

2006-03-23T18:22:00.000-08:00

Drop what your're doing right now and goto www.nikesoccer.ca The World Cup is coming and this site gets you psyched. There's definitely something Euro bout the site. I really liked the host of the webisodes. And, the documentary about kids in different cities in Brazil trying to make the big time show is electrifying. Kudo's to Nike this is a work of art. I can't wait til August.

Angelenos and New Yorkers hunted by 'assassins'

2006-03-23T13:46:00.000-08:00

Not being Mike Wallace or part of a contingent of paparazzi, I usually don't hide in bushes or dark stairways to ambush people. But that's exactly where I was a few days ago -- and, oh yeah, on the roof of someone's apartment, too.

We're doing a story on these amateur "assassins," who hide out looking to "kill" their target. Sounds violent, but it's actually part of an elaborate game called "StreetWars: Killer." Think paintball, but played with water guns. And not in some arena, but on the streets of Los Angeles or New York City.

Some 200 people are given a list of targets to kill -- and when I say "kill," I mean shoot with a water gun or hit with a water balloon. So you've got your list. But at the same time, you are on someone else's list. So while you're out there looking for your targets, someone else is looking for you. All you get to start is a picture, a name, some basic info. The players Google each other, look through records, and do all kinds of other stuff to find out where their targets work and play.

We were assigned to "Agent Tuna," a 20-something woman living in Hollywood. We scheduled the interview days earlier and called when we were on our way, but when I knocked on her door, she was so paranoid she wouldn't let us in for 5 minutes, not until we proved we were with CNN and not trying to set her up.

Pretty soon we were on the road, driving by her targets' homes. We were literally crouching in bushes, crawling on the ground, waiting for these people to come home.

I thought this game was silly at first, but after a few hours, I started to feel paranoid too. I was looking around, watching my back, getting nervous about getting found out. Then I would get excited when cars pulled up, thinking it might be our -- or rather, her -- target.

At one point, we climbed up a lady's balcony to hop over to the roof. Later that night, we crouched in a dark stairwell for hours, after "Agent Tuna" got a lead that her target was on her way home.

I asked her: Do you realize how ridiculous we seem sitting here in some alley on a Thursday night? She said she asks herself that question all the time, but the adrenaline rush is so incredible she keeps coming back for more. I found this out for myself.

Just as we were packing to leave, "Agent Tuna's" target finally came home. But she missed. And then she missed her second one too. We waited hours in that dark stairway for her third to arrive. Just when it looked like the night would be a bust, targets two and three ambushed her. Number three got away, but "Agent Tuna" recorded her first "kill" when she blasted target two. Now all she has to do is get the other ones...and watch her own back.

Posted By Chris Lawrence, CNN Correspondent:

Web site: http://www.streetwars.net/

A Day in the Life with a iPod

2006-03-22T04:02:00.000-08:00

Last weekend we bought a new 30GB Video iPod. What's the difference you ask, between the 15GB iPod I have. Well there's a big difference. Let's start with the colour screen which is signifgantly bigger then the previous generation. It can hold up to 7,500 songs, 15,000 photos and 75 hours of video.

What can you do with this thing? Let me take you on a tour of a Day in the Life with my new iPod. After sync'ig all my music in now have approximately 3,300 songs. I've also uploaded photos using iPhoto. This gives me around 2,000 pictures. Now whenever anyone asks me if I have any pictures of Wolf I can show them.

One of the most exciting things to do with your iPod today is Podcasting. My favorite VBlog, Rocketboom just set up on iTunes . Rocketboom is a daily Video Blog originating from New York City. It covers the latest in online news with a range of stories on tech trends/innovations, flash mobs, art, trade shows, and web sites. It's pretty professionally produced for a low budget show. I heard about reading the NY Times last year.

If you loved the BBC version of "The Office" you won't want to miss The Ricky Gervais Show. The first twelve episodes were free. Ricky Gervais and Steve Merchant, the writers of the Office explore the mind of Karl Pilkington. This is one of the funniest shows you will ever hear. Karl is priceless. He freely offers his opinion on things and even shares his diary online for fans to explore. This is not to be missed.

I also consider myself to be a bit of a music officinado. I love that iTunes provides many avenues for discovering new music. CBC Radio 3 Podcast is fantastic. If you want to discover indie music before it gets big this is a great resource. KEPX Song of the Day is interesting. This San Fran station plays a new song each day. I bought the self-titled album from Common Market based on listening to this podcast.

I'm back!

2006-03-20T10:58:00.000-08:00

Wow time flies. I haven't posted anything since January 19th. Since I last wrote we went to Jamaica for a family vacation.

I want to tell you about our cab ride to the resort. With all the gun violence in Toronto I felt inundated with news about another meaningless killing. That was until we landed in Jamaica. We took a cab from Montego Bay to Ocho Rios. Between sets of reggae music the news came on. It was one killing after another. The one piece that stands out described an accident where someone tried to hitch ride on a truck by jumping on it as it drove by. The person accidentally slipped and fell under the wheel which crushed his head like an over-ripe mellon. The radio announcer told the story like it was a common occurance. To me it was a montage of deaths with no particular importance. By the sound of it, we are lucky living here.

Vote 2006 Riding Talk

2006-01-19T12:43:00.000-08:00

Here are some good posts on CBC.ca by Canadians about the 2006 vote.

Just some pull quotes to get you started;

..."could you find out why that great hero of the poor and downtrodden, Jack Layton, scammed low income housing for himself and Olivia Chow when they earned six figures, and used a private clinic for a hernia operation while he tells us that such places will destroy medicare?"

Stephen Harper's Address to Ultra-Right-Wing American Think Tank
December 15, 2005

Conservative Leader Stephen Harper delivered a speech in Montreal to a secret ultra-right-wing American think tank, the Council for National Policy (CNP), in which he denounced Canada as a “Northern welfare state in the worst sense of the term.”

“Your country, and particularly your conservative movement is a light and an inspiration to people in this country and across the world,” Harper told the American audience in his June speech.

Yesterday, a spokesperson for Mr. Harper tried to excuse this piece of his history, saying it was intended to be “tongue-in-cheek.” This is simply not credible, given the serious topic and the audience he addressed.

Mr. Harper’s speech, billed as a discussion of “Developments in Canada’s Political System,” not only disparaged every major political party, but also universal medicare, women’s rights, the unemployed and francophone Canadians.

The speech begins with a diagnosis of Canada as a “welfare state in the worst sense of the term, and very proud of it.” Mr. Harper then turns to the jobless, who he says the audience should not feel bad for, since “they don’t feel bad about it themselves, as long as they’re receiving generous social assistance and unemployment insurance.”

Harper then goes on to describe Canada as “basically an English-speaking country . . . not a bilingual country. It is a country with two languages. And there is a big difference.”

Next on the agenda are Canada’s political parties. He describes the NDP as “a branch of the Canadian Labour Congress and” the Bloc Quebecois as an “ethnic separatist party.”

He then talks about some of the policies of the Liberal government, saying it introduced “a constitutional package which they put to a national referendum. The package included distinct society status for Quebec and some other changes, including some that would just horrify you, putting universal Medicare in our constitution and feminist rights and a whole bunch of other things.”

This is very serious. These are the words and views of a man who aspires to be Prime Minister of Canada in 40 days. And this is the way he describes our country to a gathering of Americans.

Even more alarming is that Mr. Harper’s comments were never meant to be made public. They were made to a secret ultra-right organization composed of U.S. conservative leaders, financiers and religious right activists. Founded in 1981 by three Texas conservative millionaires, the group meets three times annually with council meetings closed to the public and off-limits to the media.

Other speakers who have addressed the CNP include televangelist Jerry Falwell , who spoke on Christian conservatism on Aug. 25, 2004; U.S. Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld; former U.S. Attorney general John Ashcroft; Founder of Focus on the Family James Dobson, who spoke on abortion in February 1998; and Reagan-era Secretary of Defence Casper Weinberger, who spoke on national defence under Bill Clinton in January, 1999.

Stephen Harper’s words reveal a deep contempt for the Canadian political system and Canadian values, such as universal medicare. In this campaign, Canadians have seen a very different Stephen Harper. The question is: which one will govern if elected Prime Minister?

http://forums.cbc.ca/ridings/2005/11/147.html

Astounding LOST theory

2006-01-12T11:58:00.000-08:00

Our heroes never actually crashed; they are the future of mankind - the survivors of a cataclysmic polar event of which they are unaware; they are on the island to survive, procreate and repopulate the Earth. They are unaware of this plan which is sustained by a sophisticated collective consciousness and a group of scientists using electromagnetic power, and psychological techniques of reward and punishment.

Read more here:

http://www.4815162342.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3377

What would Jesus Do!

2006-01-12T11:30:00.000-08:00

I got a pink "Answer Me Jesus" crazy eight ball statue for Christmas.

The box reads,

The Lord works in mysterious ways and now he will speak to you through this inspired plastic likeness. Hip and holy it possess the power to amuse and offend. Never again will you wonder WHAT WOULD JESUS DO when you hold the answer in the palm of your hand. Fun and funny, this Answer Me Jesus is a blessed way to declare your faith or add a touch of holiness to any decor. Not intended for use by the closed minded.

http://www.answermejesus.com/index.asp

Since I'm no Gonzo journalist I thought it would be fun to get his take on topics about the 2006 election.

Q: Do you think Harper would make a good Prime Minister?

A: Believe

Q: Do you think Martin will pay for his sins and those of his party?

A: No Chance in Hell

Well that's all for today. Come back tomorrow for more Answer me Jesus.

Flickr Online Photo Album

2006-01-09T08:54:00.000-08:00

I want to share my photos with you on a cool site called Flickr.

Signing up for Flickr is free, and takes less than a minute. Just click here:

http://www.flickr.com/welcome/1002836/528627/

See you there!

rosedale398

The Ricky Gervais Show Podcast

2006-01-07T11:33:00.000-08:00

Ricky Steve and Karl spend a half hour talking about different current news topics. A hillarious show where they talk topics such as the spirit of giving a goat to a needy african family for Christmas, or going on the Virgin inter-galatic flight.

Get it today from iTunes Podcasts

A fabulous Blog posting on the power of fear

2006-01-05T10:17:00.000-08:00

Attacking Bush's only weapon: Fear

by Glenn Greenwald

Among those who now recognize that the Bush Administration has not just deliberately and repeatedly broken the law, but is literally claiming that George Bush has the “wartime” power to continue to break the law, there is a growing impatience to move to the next step – to take action to ensure that there are serious consequences from Bush’s brazen law-breaking. But in order for that to happen, Bush opponents must finally overcome the one weapon which has protected George Bush again and again: fear. Fear of terrorism is what the Administration has successfully inflamed and exploited for four years in order to justify its most extreme and even illegal actions undertaken in the name of fighting terrorism.

Without pause, the Administration has sought to make Americans as frightened as possible about terrorism and has used that fear to justify its actions with regard to almost every issue. Here is Dick Cheney, just yesterday, proudly defending the Administration’s illegal NSA program by arguing that Bush’s warrantless eavesdropping on Americans, like everything else the Administration does, is justified by fear of terrorists:

As we get farther away from September 11th, some in Washington are yielding to the temptation to downplay the ongoing threat to our country, and to back away from the business at hand. . .

The enemy that struck on 9/11 is weakened and fractured yet it is still lethal and trying to hit us again. Either we are serious about fighting this war or we are not. And as long as George W. Bush is President of the United States, we are serious -- and we will not let down our guard.

As always, Cheney urgently warns Americans not to let our fear of terrorism diminish. George Bush has also been fueling these flames of fear in almost every speech he’s given since September 11, 2001. Here he is in a quite typical speech delivered on October 6, 2005, transparently attempting to whip up as much fear as possible in order to bolster support for our ongoing occupation of Iraq:

We know the vision of the radicals because they've openly stated it -- in videos, and audiotapes, and letters, and declarations, and websites. . . . Their tactic to meet this goal has been consistent for a quarter-century: They hit us, and expect us to run. They want us to repeat the sad history of Beirut in 1983, and Mogadishu in 1993 -- only this time on a larger scale, with greater consequences.

"The militants believe that controlling one country will rally the Muslim masses, enabling them to overthrow all moderate governments in the region, and establish a radical Islamic empire that spans from Spain to Indonesia. With greater economic and military and political power, the terrorists would be able to advance their stated agenda: to develop weapons of mass destruction, to destroy Israel, to intimidate Europe, to assault the American people, and to blackmail our government into isolation."

"Our enemy is utterly committed. As Zarqawi has vowed, 'We will either achieve victory over the human race or we will pass to the eternal life.' And the civilized world knows very well that other fanatics in history, from Hitler to Stalin to Pol Pot, consumed whole nations in war and genocide before leaving the stage of history.

"The murderous ideology of the Islamic radicals is the great challenge of our new century. Yet, in many ways, this fight resembles the struggle against communism in the last century. . . .

With the rise of a deadly enemy and the unfolding of a global ideological struggle, our time in history will be remembered for new challenges and unprecedented dangers.

Islamic terrorists here, as always, are depicted as omnipotent villains with quite attainable dreams of world domination, genocide, and the obliteration of the United States. They are trying to take over the world and murder us all. And this is not merely a threat we face. It is much more than that. It is the predominant issue facing the United States -- more important than all others. Everything pales in comparison to fighting off this danger. We face not merely a danger, but, in Bush’s words, an "unprecedented danger" -- the worst, scariest, most threatening danger ever.

And literally for four years, this is what Americans have heard over and over and over from their Government – that we face a mortal and incomparably powerful enemy on the precipice of destroying us, and only the most extreme measures taken by our Government can save us. We are a nation engaged in a War of Civilizations whose very existence is in imminent jeopardy. All of those plans for the future, dreams for your children, career aspirations, life goals – it’s all subordinate, it’s all for naught, unless, first and foremost, we stand loyally behind George Bush as he invokes extreme and unprecedented measures necessary to protect us from this extreme and unprecedented threat.

It is that deeply irrational, fear-driven view of the world which has to be undermined in order to make headway in convincing Americans that this Administration is engaged in intolerable excesses and abuses of its power. The argument which needs to be made is the one that we have seen starting to arise in the blogosphere and elsewhere: that living in irrational fear of terrorists and sacrificing our liberties and all of our other national goals in their name is the approach of hysterics and cowards, not of a strong, courageous and resolute nation.

Several weeks ago, Digby wrote a widely-discussed post describing how Bush followers are driven by their all-consuming and pitifully child-like fears of terrorists, leading them to consent to any measures taken by George Bush as long as he promises to save them. And this weekend, Kos wrote a similar post, in which he contrasted the classic and previously defining American bravery of Patrick Henry with the frightened Bush followers who beg the Government to restrict their liberties in exchange for saving them from the terrorists.

If the blogospheric reaction of Bush supporters is any indication, this argument is as politically potent as it is self-evidently true. Kos’s post provoked shrieking seizures among the tough-guy, blindly loyal Bush followers -- the ones who revealingly give themselves play name like Rocket and Captain and who never tire of touting their own toughness. In response to Kos’s post, they squealed and they yelled and they called him all kinds of names – they did everything but refute the argument.

And notably, in their anger, there was none of that smug bravado or all-too-familiar attacks on the courage of Bush opponents, because with this plainly accurate depiction, they stand revealed as being driven by nothing other than limitless, irrational fear. They are scared and they want to continue to implant their extreme fear into our national policies and onto our national character.

There is no more important goal than exposing and undermining the cowardly and exaggerated fear which lies at the core of the Bush agenda. If, as has been the case, we are bullied into starting from the tacit premise that Islamic terrorism is a unique and unprecedented evil which threatens our very existence -- rather than one of many challenges which we must calmly face and overcome -- then it is a foregone conclusion that whoever advocates the most extreme “anti-terrorist” measures, no matter how excessive and regardless of whether they comport with legal niceties, will prevail.

If that fear-mongering premise is left unchallenged – if we are too afraid to dispute the premise that Islamic terrorism is the “unprecedented” existential threat to the United States which, at any moment, is likely to cause our cities to be in flames and our children to be glowing with radiation and therefore must outweigh every other issue and concern – then we will lose that debate every time, which is what has been happening.

After all, if it really were the case that Islamic terrorism constituted the sort of imminent, civilization-ending threat which the Administration has spent the last four years drumming into everyone’s head, then it would be extremely difficult to gin up much outrage over an eavesdropping program, warrants or not. When one’s very survival is at stake and is in imminent danger, what will matter is being protected from that danger. Everything else will pale in importance, and there will be extreme gratitude towards those who seek to save you, even if they break a few abstract rules to do it.

What must be emphasized is that one can protect against the threat of terrorism with courage, calm and resolve – the attributes which have always defined our nation as it has confronted other threats. Hysteria and fear-mongering are the opposite of strength. The strong remain rational and unafraid.

In a rational world, the basic principle of risk is that it equals impact times probability: "In professional risk assessments, risk combines the probability of a negative event occurring with how harmful that event would be." But the Administration has spent four years urging Americans to ignore that way of thinking and instead assent to any Government measure, no matter the costs or comparative harms, as long as they are pursued in the name of fighting this Ultimate Evil.

In fact, it is now essentially prohibited in good company to even raise the prospect that the threat of terrorism is exaggerated. It is an inviolable piety that there is no such thing as overstating the terrorism risk. One is compelled to genuflect to, and tremble before, the paramounce of this Ultimate Threat upon pain of being cast aside as some sort of anti-American, terrorist-loving loon.

During the 2004 election, John Kerry accidentally stumbled in his clumsy and half-hearted way towards challenging this fear-mongering when he told The New York Times Sunday Magazine: ‘’We have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they’re a nuisance." That provoked the predictable outraged and pious braying that Democrats are unserious about the Terrorist Threat and too weak to protect our children from this unparalleled menace. And as happens almost always when Bush opponents express a view that meets with some initial disapproval, all sorts of apologetic backtracking and retraction ensued, and that topic has been basically off-limits since.

But this is a message which Americans are clearly ready to hear, if there are people willing to deliver it. We are four years away from September 11 and, despite the dire warnings of the Bush Administration, people in rural Kansas and suburban Georgia and everywhere else are beginning to realize that on the list of problems and threats which endanger their children and impede their dreams, the potential of an attack by Islamic terrorists is not anywhere near the top of that list. We are not engulfed by the Civil War or fighting World War II. And it is past time to bolster that growing recognition by pointing out over and over that the Bush Administration’s insistence that we live in never-ending fear and panic of terrorists is the opposite of the American virtues of strength and courage in the face of threats.

And it's a message which Americans can understand. Most people know individuals in their lives who live in this type of irrational, all-consuming fear on the micro-level – people who are scared before they are anything else, pathologically risk-averse, always hiding and exerting excess caution lest something go wrong. In its more extreme version, that sort of fear manifests as a life-destroying mental disorder. It is a pitiful image, and such people typically achieve very little. They cannot, because their fear is paralyzing.

The Bush Administration has been trying for four years to reduce this country to a collective version of that affliction. And it is hard to imagine what a nation which is fueled by such fear can accomplish. Hysteria and paranoia have never been the American national character, but along with the founding principles of our Republic, the Bush Administration has been attempting to change that, too.

The Administration has managed to get away with the Orwellian depiction of fear as being the hallmark of courage, and conversely, depicting a rational and calm approach as being a mark of cowardice. They were aided in this effort by a terrified national media and a national political elite who live in Washington, DC and New York and were so petrified of further attacks that they were easily whipped into a state of passive, uncritical compliance in exchange for promises of protection. But we are far away from the emotional shock of September 11, and the power of that Fear weapon is breaking down.

In order to persuade the population that George Bush must not be allowed to claim the powers of a King, literally including the power to break the law, Bush opponents must attack that fear as the by-product of weakness and cowardice which it is. A strong nation does not give up its freedoms or sacrifice its national character in the name of fear and panic. But that is what George Bush has spent the last four years urging the country to do, and it is what he is counting on -- it is the only chance he has -- for having this NSA law-breaking scandal join the litany of other scandals which have meekly and inconsequentially faded away in a cloud of manufactured fear.

Previously Posted on: http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_01_01_digbysblog_archive.html#113646831083371214

Kiefer Sutherland's Drunken Rampage

2006-01-04T09:28:00.000-08:00

20-FLOORED
AND IF YOU THINK YOU MADE A FOOL OF YOURSELF LAST NIGHT.. Boozed-up 24 star Keifer flat out in hotel lobby after wrecking Xmas tree on 7-hour bender with pals
By Michael Duffy And Emily Miller

NO it didn't take 24 hours...seven was more than enough for Hollywood hellraiser Kiefer Sutherland.

Movie heart-throb Kiefer, 39, who stars in the hit thriller series 24, was laid flat-out on his back on the floor of a hotel lobby after a marathon booze bender with pals.

Moments earlier Sunday Mirror reporters watched in amazement as he charged into a 12ft Christmas tree, sending it crashing to the floor. The party was finally called off at 5.30am by hotel security - when guests starting arriving for BREAKFAST.

Our reporters met up with Kiefer on Thursday evening at London's trendy Borderline club for a gig by rock singer Rocco Deluca, who he's managing.

Kiefer - son of Hollywood great Donald Sutherland - took a shine to our girl Emily when he literally bumped into her at the show. He apologised, saying: "I'm so sorry, so, so, sorry."

Later our reporters joined him and his crew at the modest, £79-per-night Strand Palace Hotel in the West End... where the drinking REALLY began.

He and his band ordered in tray after tray of whisky, beer, gin and wine - all on the star's bill.

Filled with a little too much festive spirit, Kiefer pulled Emily towards him to show off his latest tattoo - a string of mystic symbols on the inside of his forearm.

"Sit down and take a look," he slurred. "It says 'I trust you to kill me'. It's the name of Rocco's new album. To me that also means 'F**k you' - there's a lot of disrespect bound up in it."

At 2am bar staff refused to serve any more alcohol. Undaunted, Kiefer persuaded management to let them loose in the lobby.

He ordered yet more booze on room service, then staggered around the entrance hall, entertaining pals with a bizarre, flailing breakdancing routine.

It was then that a huge Christmas tree caught his eye.

"I hate that f***ing Christmas tree," he declared. "The tree HAS to come down."

Kiefer warned staff: "I'm smashing it - can I pay for it?"

A staff member replied: "I'm absolutely sure you can, sir."

The Lost Boys star - famously ditched by Julia Roberts five days before their wedding in 1991 - then hurled himself into the Norwegian Spruce, sending baubles and lights crashing to the ground. Pulling pine needles out of his hair and t-shirt, he said to a hotel employee: "Ooh sorry about that...you're so cool. This f***ing hotel rocks."

A friend then tried to coax swaying Kiefer to go to bed...but he made a beeline for our team.

Tears welling in his eyes, he revealed how disappointed he was at the half-hearted applause for his band earlier in the evening. "It was b****cks," he said. We've played in a lot of other places and they were going nuts for this sh*t.

"In this world you have to share something with the f***ing band."

Still up for some banter, he lurched up to Australian-born reporter Michael Duffy, shaking him violently by the hand.

He repeatedly addressed him as "You f***ing Aussie c**t". He kissed Michael's close-shaven head before grabbing Emily's hand and stroking her shoulder.

"Oh don't go, don't go," begged Kiefer, now single after splitting from his long-term lover, artist Catherine Bisson, last year. "I've got a crush on you."

When she declined his advances, he stumbled along the halls of the hotel's eighth floor - before eventually finding the door that fitted his key and calling it a night.

michael.duffy@sunday mirror.co.uk

Art-David Wojnarowicz

2005-12-30T10:50:00.001-08:00

David Wojnarowicz was born in Red Bank, New Jersey in 1954. The product of an extremely difficult childhood brought on by an abusive family life and an emerging sense of his own homosexuality, Wojnarowicz dropped out of high school and was living on the streets by the age of sixteen. He turned to hustling in Times Square. After hitchhiking many times across the U.S. and living for several months in San Francisco and Paris, he settled in New York's East Village in 1978.

"I have never had what could be described as an ART EDUCATION.I am not even sure what an ART EDUCATION is."

Many of Wojnarowicz' works incorporate outsider experiences drawn from his personal history and from stories he heard from the people he met in bus stations and truck stops while hitchhiking. By the late 1970s he had, in his own words, "started developing ideas of making and preserving an authentic version of history in the form of images/writings/objects that would contest state-supported forms of 'history.'" In such diverse works as Sounds in the Distance (1982), a collection of monologues from "people who lived and worked in the streets" and The Weight of the Earth, Part I & II (1988), an arrangement of black-and-white photographs taken during his travels and life in New York, Wojnarowicz continually returned to the personal voices of individuals stigmatized by society.

A member of the first wave of East Village artists, Wojnarowicz began showing his work during the early 1980s in such now-legendary spaces as Civilian Warfare, Club 57, Gracie Mansion, Fashion Moda, and the Limbo Lounge. He gained prominence through his inclusion in the 1985 Whitney Biennial, and was soon showing in numerous museum and gallery exhibitions throughout the United States, Europe and Latin America.

"All my life I've made things that are like fragmented mirrors of what I perceive to be the world. As far as I'm concerned the fact that in 1990 the human body is still a taboo subject is unbelievably ridiculous. What exactly is so frightening about the human body?"

In the late 1980s, after he was diagnosed with AIDS, Wojnarowicz' art took on a sharply political edge, and soon he was entangled in highly public debates about medical research and funding, morality and censorship in the arts, and the legal rights of artists. Wojnarowicz challenged the nature of pubic arts funding at the National Endowment for the Arts, and initiated litigation against the American Family Association of Tupelo, Mississippi, an anti-pornography political action group that Wojnarowicz accused of misrepresenting his art and damaging his reputation. He won the lawsuit.

Wojnarowicz died of AIDS-related illness in New York City in 1992, at the age of 37. He is the author of five books. His artwork is in numerous private and public collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

"Bottom line, if people don't say what they believe, those ideas and feelings get lost. If they are lost often enough, those ideas and feelings never return."

Claudia Dey on cover of NOW 2005 Year in Review

2005-12-30T09:19:00.000-08:00

Wow is it ever great to see your friends recognized in the media.

Claudia Dey was included as one of the photos on the cover of NOW 2005 Year in Review. She was voted #1 in NOW's Top 10 Theatre Shows for 2005. Claudia Dey and Trout Stanley reeled in the the big prize.

Don't you think this is going a little to far

2005-12-30T09:16:00.000-08:00

Justice Dept. Probing Domestic Spying Leak

WASHINGTON Dec 30, 2005 — The Justice Department has opened an investigation into the leak of classified information about President Bush's secret domestic spying program, Justice officials said Friday.

The officials, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the probe, said the inquiry will focus on disclosures to The New York Times about warrantless surveillance conducted by the National Security Agency since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

The Times revealed the existence of the program two weeks ago in a front-page story that acknowledged the news had been withheld from publication for a year, partly at the request of the administration and partly because the newspaper wanted more time to confirm various aspects of the program.

The story unleashed a firestorm of criticism of the administration. Some critics accused the president of breaking the law by authorizing intercepts of conversations without prior court approval or oversight of people inside the United States and abroad who had suspected ties to al-Qaida or its affiliates.

The surveillance program, which Bush acknowledged authorizing, bypassed a nearly 30-year-old secret court established to oversee highly sensitive investigations involving espionage and terrorism.

Administration officials insisted that Bush has the power to conduct the warrantless surveillance under the Constitution's war powers provision. They also argued that Congress gave Bush the power to conduct such a secret program when it authorized the use of military force against terrorism in a resolution adopted within days of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The Justice Department's investigation was being initiated after the agency received a request for the probe from the NSA.

The administration's legal interpretation of the president's powers allowed the government to avoid requirements under the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

The act established procedures that an 11-member court used in 2004 to oversee nearly 1,800 government applications for secret surveillance or searches of foreigners and U.S. citizens suspected of terrorism or espionage.

Spread the Word: WHY WE FIGHT

2005-12-29T12:59:00.000-08:00

WHY WE FIGHT
Eugene Jarecki, USA, 2005
Wednesday 23 March 2005 10pm-11.40pm; 2.10am-3.50am

What are the forces that shape and propel American militarism? This award-winning film provides an inside look at the anatomy of the American war machine

Why We Fight is the title of a series of propaganda films that Frank Capra began making in 1942, with the aim of encouraging the American war effort against Nazism. Director Eugene Jarecki (The Trials of Henry Kissinger) has used the films as a commentary on the contemporary obsession of the American elite with military power.

He also harks back to a speech by President Eisenhower, who, just before he left office, referred to the "military-industrial complex". Eisenhower was worried that too much intelligence, and too much business acumen in America, had become focussed on the production of unnecessary weapons systems.

Since Eisenhower's time, everything has become much worse, as Eugene Jarecki describes it. The war in Iraq was made possible by a new range of weapons systems: a bomb called the "bunker buster" was dropped by stealth bombers on the first night of the conflict.

Is American foreign policy dominated by the idea of military supremacy? Has the military become too important in American life? Jarecki's shrewd and intelligent polemic would seem to give an affirmative answer to each of these questions.

Coming in January 2006

Neo-conservatives must be removed

2005-12-28T11:40:00.000-08:00

The reason I write this piece is that I am furious. What I deplore is the mind-set in people that America can do no wrong. That whatever the US does is good, just, and benefits the rest of the World.

I’m not afraid to state my opinion. I believe the facts; that no Weapons of Mass Destruction were found in Iraq that the War in Iraq is completely unjustified, that there is NO connection between 9/11, Al Qaeda, and Iraq, that the war is about oil. The whole thing is a lie in order to pursue the neo-conservative agenda of “A New Pearl Harbor”. Even so, a majority of American’s and sympathizers refuse to accept the facts.

I had dinner with a couple of friends in 2004. She was republican and he was Democrat. The conversation drifted towards Bush’s decision to invade Iraq. I wanted to know why she supported the war in Iraq and the Bush administration. She pushed the same propaganda voiced by the White House.

Question: Why is it justified for the US to invade Iraq?
Answer: Because Saddam is a dictator who must be removed. He tortures and kills people. Do you think that’s right?
Question: But there are lot’s of dictators who should be removed. Why Saddam and why now?
Answer: Because he is building Weapons of Mass Destruction and has links with Al Qaeda?

Remember this was in 2004 three years after the attack.

Nevertheless, this has been discredited. Why are Americans and other sympathizers unwilling to accept the facts? When pushed they get there backs up and turn up the emotional attacks such as do you support terrorism, or dictators. Are you against freedom?

I recently had a conversation with a close family member about the neo-conservative agenda for global domination. The conversation turned towards the Iraq War.

When I said that the facts speak for themselves that no WMD were found in Iraq she said how do you know they weren’t moved to Syria.

Having a conversation like this makes my brain hurt. Regardless of facts, they challenge you based on emotion, rhetoric and falsities. There’s nothing to back up what they are saying except propaganda from the White House. Do they realize who is running the White House? If you haven’t figured it out by now, let me tell you, the neo-conservatives.

Neo-conservative doctrine:

The threat posed by US terrorism to the security of nations and individuals was outlined in prophetic detail in a document written more than two years ago and disclosed only recently. What was needed for America to dominate much of humanity and the world’s resources, it said, was “some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor”. The attacks of 11 September 2001 provided the “new Pearl Harbor”, described as “the opportunity of ages”. The extremists who have since exploited 11 September come from the era of Ronald Reagan, when far-right groups and “think-tanks” were established to avenge the American “defeat” in Vietnam. In the 1990s, there was an added agenda: to justify the denial of a “peace dividend” following the cold war. The Project for the New American Century was formed, along with the American Enterprise Institute, the Hudson Institute and others that have since merged the ambitions of the Reagan administration with those of the current Bush regime.

One of George W Bush’s “thinkers” is Richard Perle. I interviewed Perle when he was advising Reagan; and when he spoke about “total war”, I mistakenly dismissed him as mad. He recently used the term again in describing America’s “war on terror”. “No stages,” he said. “This is total war. We are fighting a variety of enemies. There are lots of them out there. All this talk about first we are going to do Afghanistan, then we will do Iraq... this is entirely the wrong way to go about it. If we just let our vision of the world go forth, and we embrace it entirely and we don’t try to piece together clever diplomacy, but just wage a total war... our children will sing great songs about us years from now.”

Perle is one of the founders of the Project for the New American Century, the PNAC. Other founders include Dick Cheney, now vice-president, Donald Rumsfeld, defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, deputy defence secretary, I Lewis Libby, Cheney’s chief of staff, William J Bennett, Reagan’s education secretary, and Zalmay Khalilzad, Bush’s ambassador to Afghanistan. These are the modern chartists of American terrorism. The PNAC’s seminal report, Rebuilding America’s Defences: strategy, forces and resources for a new century, was a blueprint of American aims in all but name. Two years ago it recommended an increase in arms-spending by $48bn so that Washington could “fight and win multiple, simultaneous major theatre wars”. This has happened. It said the United States should develop “bunker-buster” nuclear weapons and make “star wars” a national priority. This is happening. It said that, in the event of Bush taking power, Iraq should be a target. And so it is.
As for Iraq’s alleged “weapons of mass destruction”, these were dismissed, in so many words, as a convenient excuse, which it is. “While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification,” it says, “the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.” How has this grand strategy been implemented? A series of articles in the Washington Post, co-authored by Bob Woodward of Watergate fame and based on long interviews with senior members of the Bush administration, reveals how 11 September was manipulated.

On the morning of 12 September 2001, without any evidence of who the hijackers were, Rumsfeld demanded that the US attack Iraq. According to Woodward, Rumsfeld told a cabinet meeting that Iraq should be “a principal target of the first round in the war against terrorism”. Iraq was temporarily spared only because Colin Powell, the secretary of state, persuaded Bush that “public opinion has to be prepared before a move against Iraq is possible”. Afghanistan was chosen as the softer option. If Jonathan Steele’s estimate in the Guardian is correct, some 20,000 people in Afghanistan paid the price of this debate with their lives.

Time and again, 11 September is described as an “opportunity”. In last April’s New Yorker, the investigative reporter Nicholas Lemann wrote that Bush’s most senior adviser, Condoleezza Rice, told him she had called together senior members of the National Security Council and asked them “to think about ‘how do you capitalise on these opportunities’”, which she compared with those of “1945 to 1947”: the start of the cold war. Since 11 September, America has established bases at the gateways to all the major sources of fossil fuels, especially central Asia. The Unocal oil company is to build a pipeline across Afghanistan. Bush has scrapped the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gas emissions, the war crimes provisions of the International Criminal Court and the anti-ballistic missile treaty. He has said he will use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states “if necessary”. Under cover of propaganda about Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction, the Bush regime is developing new weapons of mass destruction that undermine international treaties on biological and chemical warfare.

In the Los Angeles Times, the military analyst William Arkin describes a secret army set up by Donald Rumsfeld, similar to those run by Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger and which Congress outlawed. This “super-intelligence support activity” will bring together the “CIA and military covert action, information warfare, and deception”. According to a classified document prepared for Rumsfeld, the new organisation, known by its Orwellian moniker as the Proactive Pre-emptive Operations Group, or P2OG, will provoke terrorist attacks which would then require “counter-attack” by the United States on countries “harbouring the terrorists”.

In other words, innocent people will be killed by the United States. This is reminiscent of Operation Northwoods, the plan put to President Kennedy by his military chiefs for a phoney terrorist campaign - complete with bombings, hijackings, plane crashes and dead Americans - as justification for an invasion of Cuba. Kennedy rejected it. He was assassinated a few months later. Now Rumsfeld has resurrected Northwoods, but with resources undreamt of in 1963 and with no global rival to invite caution. You have to keep reminding yourself this is not fantasy: that truly dangerous men, such as Perle and Rumsfeld and Cheney, have power. The thread running through their ruminations is the importance of the media: “the prioritised task of bringing on board journalists of repute to accept our position”.
“Our position” is code for lying. Certainly, as a journalist, I have never known official lying to be more pervasive than today. We may laugh at the vacuities in Tony Blair’s “Iraq dossier” and Jack Straw’s inept lie that Iraq has developed a nuclear bomb (which his minions rushed to “explain”). But the more insidious lies, justifying an unprovoked attack on Iraq and linking it to would-be terrorists who are said to lurk in every Tube station, are routinely channelled as news. They are not news; they are black propaganda.

This corruption makes journalists and broadcasters mere ventriloquists’ dummies. An attack on a nation of 22 million suffering people is discussed by liberal commentators as if it were a subject at an academic seminar, at which pieces can be pushed around a map, as the old imperialists used to do.

The issue for these humanitarians is not primarily the brutality of modern imperial domination, but how “bad” Saddam Hussein is. There is no admission that their decision to join the war party further seals the fate of perhaps thousands of innocent Iraqis condemned to wait on America’s international death row. Their doublethink will not work. You cannot support murderous piracy in the name of humanitarianism. Moreover, the extremes of American fundamentalism that we now face have been staring at us for too long for those of good heart and sense not to recognise them.

This is only meant to provide background. I encourage you to learn more through movies such as Syriana, Why We Fight, Farhenite 9/11, and The Power of Nightmares.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/4202741.stm

I am inclined to voice my opinion and stand up for what I believe in. If I can’t stop it, at least I can condemn it.

What this Canadian Election needs is Gonzo journalism

2005-12-23T06:42:00.000-08:00

While listening to the debates, and reading Canadian media I think we need more Gonzo Journalism.

First, let me begin by defining Gonzo journalism.

Gonzo journalism
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Gonzo journalism is a journalistic style, most famously used by Hunter S. Thompson. The term gonzo was first applied to Thompson's writing in 1970 by Bill Cardoso, a Boston Globe reporter who claimed the word had originated with the Irish in South Boston to describe the last man standing at the end of an all-night drinking marathon. Central to gonzo journalism is the notion that journalism can be more truthful without strict observance of traditional rules of factual reportage. The best work in the genre is characterized by a novelistic twist added to reportage, with usual standards of accuracy subordinated to catching the mood of a place or event. The reporter and the quest for information are central, with other considerations taking a back seat.

Gonzo journalism is an extension of the New Journalism championed by Tom Wolfe, Lester Bangs, and George Plimpton. "I don't get any satisfaction out of the old traditional journalist's view—'I just covered the story. I just gave it a balanced view,'" Thompson said in an interview for Atlantic Unbound. "Objective journalism is one of the main reasons American politics has been allowed to be so corrupt for so long. You can't be objective about Nixon. How can you be objective about Clinton?"

In Thompson's work, there is frequently a distorted viewpoint brought on by the author's consumption of drugs and alcohol (usually recorded in the article for posterity), but gonzo journalism is not about using drugs and alcohol. It has been said that it can and may have been used to support drug and alcohol usage with the premise of writing about an experience.

In literary terms, "gonzo" has been described by Douglas Brinkley as requiring virtually no re-writing, frequently employing scribbled notes, transcribed interviews, and verbatim telephone conversations. Other writers whose work may be categorized as "gonzo" include P. J. O'Rourke, and James Corkern. Some of the precursors to gonzo can be found in the writings of Kurt Vonnegut.

What is up with the Canadian press. Don't they know that nobody cares about this election. They take the campaign WAY to seriously.

Let's take a step back for a moment. Why are we having this election? It has to do with POWER. Some parties have it other parties want it. The minority parties are striking while the iron is hot. If they don't act now they miss their window of opportunity.

But how will this play out. My prediction is that the results will be more or less the same given a seat here a seat there.

During debates candidates never answer the question. Instead they turned every question into an attack on the Liberals. That doesn't tell me anything about where they stand.

We've got to do something. This is getting out of control. Am I the only one who feels this way? I don't think so, I heard the questions Canadians asked the candidates during the debates. We're not stupid.

In respect for Hunter S. Thompson would somebody do their goddamn job. What would Hunter say about this current situtation. Hunter S. Thompson aided with copious amounts of LSD, ether, adrenochrome, marijuana and other drugs would say "paper" or "plastic". Are these candidates for real. I have to pinch myself, is this really happening?

Canadians just weathered a decade of wasteful, corrupt, dishonest Liberal swines gorging themselves at the trough. The joke is on us, the Liberals lead the polls. What are we...STUPID. This is up there with the type of stupidity that gets people killed. It's worthy of a Darwin Award.

We are too busy debating whether Todd Bertuzzi or Shane Doan should make the Canadian Olympic team. It's like an Opium den around here. People lie around smoking these great big pipes drowing their everyday worries thorugh intoxication.

I'm ressurecting the ghost of Hunter S. Thompson to shake people out of this coma.

WAKE UP!! DO SOMETHING BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE!!

Do you want to live through another 10 years of sedation.

TAKE THE RED PILL

2005-12-22T07:45:00.000-08:00

Ian at the office 1 Yonge Street

Rose saves 77-year-old disabled woman at ATM

2005-12-21T06:46:00.000-08:00

In the parlance of the cops, he’s the lowest of the low.

Toronto Police have arrested a 42-year-old Toronto resident, after a 77-year-old disabled woman who uses an electric scooter to stay mobile was robbed.

Investigators say it happened on Tuesday morning in the Front and Jarvis area when the victim was taking out money from an A.T.M.

As she concentrated on finishing her transaction, a man appeared from behind her and grabbed her cash and credit cards.

But the feisty senior refused to give them up easily, struggling with her assailant to keep hold of her possessions.

That’s when cops allege this already disgusting crime got even nastier. They say the robber pushed the woman and her scooter over, leaving her lying on the cold ground, as he made his escape.

But he didn’t get far.

An alert citizen and some cops in the area saw him on the run and tracked him down, with the desperate desperado allegedly assaulting a police officer in the process of being arrested.

Fortunately, this story has at least a partial happy ending – despite her frightening experience, the victim suffered only minor bumps and bruises and got all her money back.

Larry MacKenzie of Toronto is charged with robbery and assault. He has a date with a judge in College Park Courts on Wednesday.

--Rose is the alert citizen.

Best Ads for 2005

2005-12-20T08:49:00.000-08:00

This Bud Light campaign is awesome. It's good for some laughs.

http://www.budlight.com/TedFerguson/teds_videos.html#

Best Online Advertising Campaigns of 2005

2005-12-20T08:03:00.000-08:00

FedEx, even an MBA can do it
http://www.relaxiwillmanage.com/

BUDDY LEE
http://www.buddyleeguidancecounselor.com/

Playboy, behind the scenes
http://podcast.playboy.co.uk/cueCards/cueCards.html

Opel Astra, man's best friend
http://www.brandrepublic.com/sectors/advertising/creative/advertisement/19573/astra/

Axe Ravenstock
http://www.eatmail.tv/_ravenstoke

Alto, for tall people
http://www.altoclothing.com/ad.php

Where are they now: Blues Golie Patrick Lalime

2005-12-19T18:51:00.000-08:00

Blues goaltender Lalime clears waivers, assigned to Peoria
BluesNet - When the season started, the Blues felt that they had finally solidified their situation in goal with the acquisition of Patrick Lalime. Instead, less than halfway through his first season in St. Louis, the Blues placed Lalime on waivers, giving teams a free shot at acquiring him. Lalime was not claimed in the 24 hour period that he was available and was assigned to the Peoria Riverman, the Blues' AHL minor league affiliate.

Movie to See: Terry Gilliam ,LOST IN LA MANCHA

2005-12-16T03:30:00.000-08:00

Terry Gilliam is 64. He has directed a series of hit and misses over his thirty-year career such as Monty Python's Life of Brian, Time Bandits, Brazil, 12 Monkeys, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and the recent Brothers Grimm. He has had to fight for almost every film he's made.

BRAZIL a sci-fi cult classic about an Orwellian dystopia future features Robert Di Nero as a rebel plumber. The studio in America hated it. They wanted to change the editing. However, a couple of friends who were LA critics started to show it around clandestinely. At the LA critics awards it received Best Film and Best Director.

BRAZIL is necessary see film of Gilliam's but that's not what I wanted to tell you about. LOST IN LA MANCHA is a movie documenting everything that went wrong leading up to the studio canceling the Johnny Depp project about Don Quixote. The film was a 32 million project three year in production before it collapsed. Gilliam got into a legal nightmare to win the script back. Moreover, he intends to complete the project in the future.

What fascinates me about Gilliam is that he perseveres. He's fought studios on more than one occasion to get his films released the way he made them. In the end, most of his movies have flopped at the box office. A US audience doesn’t really get his movies.

If you haven't watch, any of his movies you should check them out. The closest example I can give of a director like him would be Tim Burton.

A partial list of Gilliam films;

JABBERWOCKY--1977
MONTY PYTHONS LIFE OF BRIAN--1979
TIME BANDITS--1981
BRAZIL---1985
12 MONKEYS--1995
FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS--1998
LOST IN LA MANCHA--2002
THE BROTHERS GRIMM--2005

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000416/

Books to Read-Diary, Chuck Palahniuk

2005-12-14T12:38:00.000-08:00

With a first page that captures the reader hook, line and sinker, Palahniuk (Choke; Lullaby) plunges into the odd predicament of Waytansea Island resident and ex-art student Misty Marie Kleinman, whose husband, Peter, lies comatose in a hospital bed after a suicide attempt. Rooms in summer houses on the mainland that Peter has remodeled start to mysteriously disappear-"The man calling from Long Beach, he says his bathroom is missing"-and Misty, with the help of graphologist Angel Delaporte, discovers that crude and prophetic messages are scrawled across the walls and furniture of the blocked-off chambers. In her new world, where every day is "another longest day of the year," Misty suffers from mysterious physical ailments, which only go away while she is drawing or painting. Her doctor, 12-year-old daughter and mother-in-law, instead of worrying about her health, press her to paint more and more, hinting that her art will save exclusive Waytansea Island from being overrun by tourists. In the meantime, Misty is finding secret messages written under tables and in library books from past island artists issuing bold but vague warnings. With new and changing versions of reality at every turn, the theme of the "tortured artist" is taken to a new level and "everything is important. Every detail. We just don't know why, yet." The novel is something of a departure for Palahniuk, who eschews his blighted urban settings for a sinister resort island, but his catchy, jarring prose, cryptic pronouncements and baroque flights of imagination are instantly recognizable, and his sharp, bizarre meditations on the artistic process make this twisted tale one of his most memorable works to date.

Books to Read-Lullaby, Chuck Palahniuk

2005-12-14T11:51:00.000-08:00

The consequences of media saturation are the basis for an urban nightmare in Lullaby, Chuck Palahniuk's darkly comic and often dazzling thriller. Assigned to write a series of feature articles investigating SIDS, troubled newspaper reporter Carl Streator begins to notice a pattern among the cases he encounters: each child was read the same poem prior to his or her death. His research and a tip from a necrophilic paramedic lead him to Helen Hoover Boyle, a real estate agent who sells "distressed" (demonized) homes, assured of their instant turnover. Boyle and Streator have both lost children to "crib death," and she confirms Streator's suspicions: the poem is an ancient lullaby or "culling song" that is lethal if spoken--or even thought--in a victim's direction. The misanthropic Streator, now armed with a deadly and uncontrollably catchy tune, goes on a minor killing spree until he recognizes his crimes and the song's devastating potential. Lullaby then turns into something of a road trip narrative, with Streator, Boyle, her empty-headed Wiccan secretary Mona, and Mona's vigilante boyfriend Oyster setting out across the U.S. to track down and destroy all copies of the poem.

-Amazon.com

Name that Dead tune

2005-12-13T11:41:00.000-08:00

The answer, Uncle John's Band

2005-12-13T06:57:00.000-08:00

Wolf & Clause 2005

Name that Dead tune

2005-11-15T08:51:00.000-08:00

What song are these lyrics from:

Ain't no time to hate,
barely time to wait

Sony Spyware Draws Lawsuits

2005-11-14T17:39:00.000-08:00

California consumers have filed a class-action suit against music giant Sony BMG over its anti-piracy software on CDs.
November 10, 2005

Consumers in California have filed a class-action lawsuit against record company Sony BMG, charging their computers have been harmed by anti-piracy software on Sony BMG CDs.

More>http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=14414&hed=Sony+Spyware+Draws+Lawsuits

Bush attacks critics of his strategy in IRAQ

2005-11-11T11:38:00.000-08:00

I read the headline, “Bush Forcefully Attacks Critics of His Strategy in Iraq", in the New York Times today.

“President Bush lashed out today at critics of his Iraq policy, accusing them of trying to rewrite history about the decision to go to war and saying their criticism is undercutting American forces in battle."

The president said in a Veterans Day speech in Pennsylvania.

"The stakes in the global war on terror are too high, and the national interest is too important for politicians to throw out false charges,"

What are the American national interests in Iraq? This is difficult for me to understand. We've heard that these interests to be removing Saddam because he was working on Weapons of Mass Destruction, that's been disqualified. There was also supposed to be a link between Saddam and Al Qaeda. Although that’s never been proven. It was also supposed to be a proactive removal of terrorist elements sprouting up around the world.

Why hasn't the American media delved deeper into this investigation? Why are they so intimidated by the White House? Why haven't they looked into the involvement of National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice or Vice President Dick Cheney? Why haven't they looked into the directing of foreign policy by Wolfowitz and Pearl and their neo-conservative Washington-based organization known as the Project for the New American Century (PNAC)?

There is now enough evidence to show the Bush administration did fabricate the war on IRAQ. How will this go down in history? Will the truth ever make it into the mainstream?

Just one more thing? Here is a alternative theory about 9-11 that Jay Kerr (Bombippy.com) sent me.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2023320890224991194&q=loose+change

LOST--Secret Site

2005-11-05T11:45:00.000-08:00

A fan thought they saw a secret message in a Mr.Clucks logo that pointed to Jack's untimely death. Go to www.mrclucks.com and click on the icon in the bottom right hand corner.This will take you to another page. Check out the links.

Toronto PhotoBlog

2005-11-04T03:26:00.000-08:00

http://thenarrative.net/

The Narrative Photoblog
Matt O’Sullivan’s photoblog is unbelievable. He may well be the best photojournalist in the city, and he is only working for himself and us viewers. If any of the dailies had some sense, they’d hire him to just roam around the town snapping Toronto images.

2005-10-31T11:57:00.001-08:00

Wolf 6 months

2005-10-31T11:57:00.000-08:00

Wolf at 5 months

Album Review-Grateful Dead Europe 72

2005-10-30T14:31:00.000-08:00

http://www.carlaz.com/reviews/music/gdead-europe72.html

2005-10-17T17:20:00.000-07:00

Catskills, New York October 2005

CONCERT REVIEW: INTERPOL LIVE at KOOL HAUS

2005-09-29T05:00:00.000-07:00

The one good thing I can say about the KoolHaus is that no matter where you stand, there's a good view. It's not ideal for someone under 5'10" but for the tall people it was a good show.

I can't help but compare Interpol to seeing Franz Ferdinand at the Docks. It's a good way to evaluate current bands in concert. There's a strange commonality between new indy bands. They don't stray far from the studio version. They are pretty stiff on stage. And, it starts to get repetitive when you hear it for two hours. Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of Interpol. But I left feeling like I didn't really need to see that. I admit I was even bored 50% through once they had played all my favorites from ANTICS. There wasn't any range in the performance. Daniel Kessler (a guitarist and vocalist) voice doesn't change vocal ranges so the music sounds templated. The crowd sucked too. They were in the age range when you should be rockin out ie. early twenties but they were dead, barely bobbing their heads.

I know many people criticize big, commercial concerts, like Jack Johnson, but for a guy that has a limited range and style he kept my attention for two hours. And, that crowd belted out the lyrics like and anthem on almost every song.

It will be interesting to hear their next album to see if they deviate from the Interpol sound to dabble in something else. I call it the "Strokes Syndrome".

Jack Johnson plays the Molson Amphetheatre

2005-09-18T05:06:00.000-07:00

It was billed as the last show of Jack Johnson's "In Between Dreams" tour. Johnson announces to the Toronto audience " Why do you think I chose to have our last show here in Toronto?". Responding with a roar the crowd soaks it up singing along, sharing every word.

He starts out with "Banana Pancakes", easing us into what feels like sleeping in for the morning. Continuing with other well-known tracks from the album. Other notable songs like; Staple it Together,Never Knowing, Siting, Waiting, Wishing were interspersed with the lyrics such as Led Zepplin's "Ramble On". His voiced doesn't stray from the studio sound. And, Johnson isn't one of those performers, like Bono, who flail's all over the stage inches from the crowd. He's a street busker who plays to a larger audience without loosing the intimacy of this experience.

In the second hour Johnson turns to favorites from his second last album "On and On" like; Times Like These, The Horizon Has Been Defeated, Traffic in the Sky.

The encore consists of inviting all the band and roadies on stage while playing "Good People".

The 2.5 hour performance delivered everything the crowd was expecting. Serving up all the gems we have got use to while Sitting, Waiting, Wishing on docks this summer in cottage country. As the harvest moon rises overhead its' the close to another summer that fades into the horizon for another year.

Neil Young & Crazy Horse-Ragged Glory

2005-09-17T13:17:00.000-07:00

The album as a whole lasts over 63 minutes and it only has 10 songs. The sound is the strongest with respect to the other Neil Young projects. Drawing on his remarkable song writing skills and "close to distorition" guitar playing he delivers one of his most solid studio albums.

Album available on iTunes for $9.99

Ranking: 5/5

2005-09-17T13:16:00.000-07:00

Delta New York to the World wall mural 34th & 8th

2005-09-15T14:10:00.000-07:00

Wall mural close-up

2005-09-15T14:09:00.000-07:00

34th & 8th, NYC, Delta Airlines "NY to the World" wall Mural

MUST READ: The flagging empire

2005-09-10T05:40:00.000-07:00

By PAUL WILLIAM ROBERTS
Saturday, September 10, 2005 Updated at 2:07 AM EDT
From Saturday's Globe and Mail

All the television pictures from New Orleans of water with people and houses under it certainly captured the world's attention. What the world attended to, however, wasn't so much the feeble efforts to relieve the city as the startling and unfamiliar sight of, as one of my Iraqi e-pen pals puts it, "so much terrible poverty in a country so much rich."
Many of the people being winched off rooftops did not even own television sets, let alone cars or telephones, so it is hardly surprising they had made no plans to escape until their shacks were under 20 feet of water.
Another Iraqi pen pal was disturbed by the sight of the looters: "Some I see, they look not much human, like wild men." Some were also cops.
But, as a rehabilitated looter myself — I was in Baghdad two years ago when it fell to the invading Americans — I am in no position to judge a little petty pilfering, particularly when the perps have just lost everything they owned.
All in all, the general feeling I derived from these ripples of Arab thought was that, in terms of peeling the veneer of society back to reveal what lurks beneath the codes of law and those who enforce them, the Iraqi capital comported itself a good deal better than New Orleans did.
At least under Saddam Hussein, everyone knew the government lied to them about everything all the time, and also that the media were merely a wing of the regime. Americans may just be waking up to a similar realization, since, thus far at least, no one has told them just how disastrous this disaster is going to be for the nation. You can always tell when the neocons are rattled by some event: They accuse anyone discussing the corporate or government role in it of playing politics with human tragedy. This, of course, is not something they would ever do.
An Egyptian friend of mine was stunned at the inadequacy of the U.S. government's immediate response to the flooding: "They have no trouble sending their armies to the outer reaches of the globe to invade or bomb, so why is it so hard to get help to their own people?" Poor as it is, he added, his country would have thrown all it had into the rescue of its citizens.
Of course, being a military dictatorship, Egypt also would have found this a lot easier to do. But the fact remains that members of the U.S. Congress knew all about the disaster potential in New Orleans, so why didn't someone push the issue harder?

Clearly, in the Rumsfeldian system, the flooding of New Orleans was a "known known." CNN's "meteorologists" may not have realized the real danger lay in the sea surge after the storm — they concluded the city was safe the moment the winds had passed. But an article in the October, 2001, issue of Scientific American described the city as "a disaster waiting to happen."
According to writer Mark Fischetti, "scientists at Louisiana State University, who have modelled hundreds of possible storm tracks on advanced computers, predict that more than 100,000 people could die."
What were the chances that a hurricane strong enough to wreak such havoc would actually occur in the New Orleans area? Better than good, a question of "when," not "if," various authorities told Mr. Fischetti. Therefore, all the more puzzling to Scientific American was the most unscientific response this incipient crisis had received from America's rulers: "Thus far, however, Washington has turned down appeals for substantial aid."
And by October, 2001, the government wasn't about to change its mind. The horror inflicted upon New York City and Washington four years ago tomorrow had pretty much guaranteed that for quite some time "substantial aid" would be going to something unscientific, though very American: the War on Terror and vengeance for 9/11.
In hindsight, the $14-billion price tag on the plan that had been drawn up for saving Louisiana's coastline and the Mississippi's delta now must look like a bargain to a Congress that has agreed to $50-billion in aid alone. It is safe to say that relocating more than a million people, along with the loss of the nation's largest port, and the other economic consequences from Hurricane Katrina will bankrupt the United States.
Or would, if anyone dared to call in the country's debts, which now exceed any number of dollars one can write meaningfully — particularly since no one seems to know just what a trillion is anyway. It's a known unknown. The unknown part is what happens to a nation that owes this much money: No other one has ever racked up such a tab.
Even so, in the eyes of the world, the emperor stands naked. Monday's issue of London's The Independent noted: "We could be witnessing a significant moment in America. Hurricane Katrina has revealed some uncomfortable truths about the world's richest and most powerful nation. The catastrophe in New Orleans exposed shocking inequalities — both of wealth and race — and also the relative impotence of the federal authorities when faced with a large-scale disaster. Many Americans are beginning to ask just what sort of country they are living in. There is a sense that the struggle for the soul of America is gathering pace."
There is also suddenly a sense that the American Empire is in decline, that the only successful wars it has ever waged are the ones against the environment and its own people.
There have been many other omens of such a decline this year.
A few days before Katrina struck, for example, tiny Uzbekistan requested that the United States close its military base in the former Soviet republic and remove its troops within six months. This came just a month after a body called the Shanghai Co-operation Organization (SCO) asked for a timeline for the withdrawal of all U.S. troops in Central Asia.
Originally composed of Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, the SCO was created in 1996, admitted Uzbekistan in June, 2001, and more recently granted observer status to Pakistan and India . Thus, it embraces a quarter of the world's population and dominates the heartland of what Anglo-American strategists used to call the world island. Although the SCO was formed as an economic union, the joint Sino-Russian manoeuvres scheduled for later this year are beginning to make it look more and more like a military one.
So, a good measure of the blundering incompetence of the current administration in Washington is the fact that the SCO has achieved in less than five years what neither 50 years of the Cold War nor any previous U.S. government was able to manage: a nuclear-armed military alliance between Russia and China.
It has never been a secret in the Pentagon that U.S. military commanders view China as their ultimate challenge and most dangerous foe since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Indeed, some economic analysts believe that the 2003 invasion of Iraq was prompted by very generous oil concessions given to both China and Russia in deals brokered under the old Baathist regime. And as we have seen, the principles of American capitalism crumble swiftly in the face of a prospect such as that of China buying a majority share in one of the largest U.S. oil companies.
A Chinese conglomerate was merely playing by the rules of a free market when, two months ago, it attempted to acquire a majority stake in Unocal Corp. Yet alarm bells sounded all over Capitol Hill, with voices declaring the proposed takeover of the company, founded 115 years ago as Union Oil of California, a "national security" issue. Probably to contain the damage such a glimpse of U.S. financial vulnerability would cause, Unocal was quickly sold off to Chevron, another U.S. oil conglomerate.
As well, Washington's ongoing beef with Hugo Chavez — summarized with irreducible precision by TV preacher Pat Robertson's recent call for the assassination of the Venezuelan President — chiefly concerns his sale of oil to China. As the world's fifth-largest oil exporter, Venezuela has chosen to do more business with China than it does with the United States although, after the Robertson fatwa, Mr. Chavez did offer to sell oil at reduced prices to America's poor.
China's economic growth rates terrify both Japan, which has been persuaded to remilitarize, and America, which did the persuading. The Central Intelligence Agency's National Intelligence Council predicts that China's gross domestic product will equal that of Britain this year, Germany in 2009, Japan in 2017 and the United States by 2042.
However, Shahid Javed Burki, former vice-president of the World Bank's China Department and a former Pakistani finance minister, forecasts that China will probably have enough purchasing power to surpass the United States as the world's largest economy this year.
The inability of established powers to adjust to new centres of power emerging, or reemerging, has been the cause of all the bloodiest wars over the past two centuries. Besides losing control of its major companies, the problem of Chinese economic primacy, for the United States, rests in the possibility that China may gain control of the dollar.Since president Richard Nixon took the dollar off the gold standard nearly 40 years ago, its value has been unofficially pegged to oil — hence the need for control of the world's largest oil fields. In order to keep the value of the yuan down — and hence keep their exports attractively cheap — the Chinese have been buying dollars and dollar bonds on a massive scale. The worry is that a sudden decision to convert dollar holdings into, say, euros would send the U.S. currency into free fall on international markets.
There are analysts who believe that Saddam Hussein's greatest mistake in his dealings with the United States was trying to persuade the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries to shift the oil price from dollars to euros. He had already started pricing Iraqi oil in euros and also had converted the huge fund held by the United Nations in the oil-for-food program into the European currency.
Before the invasion of Iraq, OPEC apparently was considering whether to start trading in dual currencies, and some economists believe that an announcement like this would send the value of a dollar falling by up to 40 per cent. By gaining control of the Iraqi oil fields —the world's second richest after Saudi Arabia — the United States has effectively prevented an assault on the dollar from that direction.
But U.S. attempts to drive up the value of the yuan, along with China's attempts to gain a foothold in the U.S. stock market, as well as its massive dollar holdings, would suggest that a full-scale economic war is already under way. Add to this President George W. Bush's insistence on the remilitarizing of a Japan already in severe decline and you have the next real war too. Oil is not just big business; it is the biggest business there is. It not only fuels the engines of a modern industrial state, its byproducts are also a mainstay of the pharmaceutical, plastics and several other key industries that are the pillars of major Western economies. This is the sole reason for America's "interests" in the Persian Gulf region and for that area's "strategic importance."
Thus, it is curious that we are not more aware of the importance placed upon relatively recent discoveries of vast deposits of high-grade crude around the Caspian Sea. Indeed, a cynic might say the Bush administration used the September, 2001, attacks as an excuse to pursue its thwarted plan for a pipeline taking oil from the Caspian through Afghanistan to the Pakistani port of Karachi.
When the Taliban were still in charge of Afghanistan, their representatives attended meetings, sometimes in the United States, on the proposed pipeline, upon which, furthermore, Pakistan's economic future to a large extent depends. But the Taliban would not agree to the political and economic conditions the Americans felt were necessary, such as ending support for foreign terrorist organizations.
It was, therefore, convenient at the very least for America to have a reasonably valid reason to attack the country and replace its regime with one led by Hamid Karzai, a former consultant with Unocal, the very company wishing to build the pipeline, and, of course, the one the Chinese tried to buy.
China also has plans of its own to build a pipeline for Caspian Sea oil, heading through, yes, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. The U.S. base in Uzbekistan was principally used for operations in Afghanistan, but it could easily have become a problem for the Chinese pipeline. China views the presence of U.S. military in Uzbekistan in much the same way as America viewed the al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan.
U.S. reasons for attacking Afghanistan were not, however, as valid as they perhaps seemed to be at the time. After all, the Sept. 11 hijackers were from Egypt and, mostly, Saudi Arabia, not Afghanistan, which, though predominantly Muslim, is not an Arab country.
The argument that the Taliban supported al-Qaeda ideologically and, perhaps, materially doesn't hold much water, either. Numerous other countries, or factions within them, including influential factions within Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, opposed aspects of U.S. imperialism in their regions and have been revealed as sources of al-Qaeda funding, so the singling out of Afghanistan was, at the very least, disingenuous.
The stated reasons for next attacking Iraq have been exposed for some time now as shameless lies and a gross violation of international laws, yet — according to the polls — many Americans are still under the impression it was the right thing to do. This is largely due to the inability of U.S. media to tackle the issue of both national and their own culpability in the commission of crimes against humanity. But the proper role of modern media in times of war is far from clear, particularly when so much of their normal function has been devoted to forms of propaganda.
To the real reasons for the attacks launched in revenge for 9/11, we also must add the nature of al-Qaeda itself. The term in Arabic means "the base," and refers to a database kept by the CIA of all the mujahedeen it trained to fight the Soviet Russians during their invasion of Afghanistan. One of these so-called "Afghan Arabs" was Osama bin Laden.
The intelligence agency was well aware that such a training program could easily blow back — and apparently it did. But rather than admit the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon were carried out by people they had actually trained in the art of covert operations, the government threw up a smokescreen around everything.
Why do that — and mislead everyone about the nature of al-Qaeda, which is at best a loose affiliation of extremists, not the vast cohesive entity the War on Terror wants us to believe?
"Leaders like wars because wars remind people they need leaders," Plato wrote 2,500 years ago. In the 16th century, Machiavelli said a leader was better off being feared by friends and enemies alike than he was being loved. More recently, George Orwell's terrifyingly prophetic Nineteen Eighty-Four posited a totalitarian global superpower engaged in perpetual war against a constantly changing enemy.
The principles behind a strong state and its government have never been a mystery, just as proponents of personal liberty and libertarian conservatives are agreed on the necessity for government to remain small and local, if people are to retain the freedoms granted by democratic constitutions.
Canada and the Scandinavian countries are among the few that have managed to achieve anything approaching democracy's ideals for a peaceful egalitarian society. That we are not more aware of this is a sign of the complacency that precedes disaster. And such a disaster, if it comes, will arise from the consequences of bordering an imperial superpower undergoing the death throes of republicanism and heading steadily toward oligarchic totalitarianism.The trouble with democracy is that no one has really believed it can work. Plato's ideal republic was scarcely egalitarian — but it did not pretend to be otherwise. Those entitled to a vote in it amounted to the Athenian oligarchy. Philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose republican ideals infused both the American and French revolutions, stated openly that "barbarous peoples" whose countries were incapable of economic growth were doomed to remain impervious to politics themselves, let alone be capable of anything but despotic rule. "Freedom is not a fruit of every climate," he explained.
He admitted that, "if there were a nation of Gods, it would govern itself democratically," but added that "government so perfect, is not suited to men."Rousseau's idea, ideals and even language echo in the documents of America's Founding Fathers. Yet, when Thomas Jefferson drafted the original version of the Declaration of Independence, citing truths that were "self-evident," including that "all men were created equal and independent" (modified to just "equal" in the final version), he must surely have exempted the 187 slaves he owned from such equality and independence?
And presumably none of those who signed the Declaration believed that America's native peoples enjoyed "certain inalienable rights," such as "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," since they were well aware of the genocide that had been under way since the 17th century and would eventually claim more than 10 million lives.
It is, furthermore, a safe assumption that no one in today's U.S. government thinks, as the Declaration's second paragraph states, it is a citizen's duty to rise up and overthrow any form of rule that becomes an impediment to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."Similarly, the U.S. Constitution, so often cited as though relevant to contemporary America, is in fact a document very much limited to its place and time. Those Americans who read its opening, "We the people," today cannot help but hear it refer to a population of about 200 million, but to whom does it actually refer?
This is, in fact, also the question being asked in Louisiana and Mississippi today. The textual evidence reveals that "we" can only refer to those who have signed the document —the representatives of a tiny land-owning elite, who may have questioned the rights of the British Crown, but never questioned their own. Nobody else seriously questioned them either, since it was assumed that politicians needed to be educated men, and, 240 years ago, education everywhere on Earth was a signal privilege of the few able to afford it.
"The president," says the Constitution, will be "Commander in Chief of the army, navy and militias." George Washington signed the document as the nation's first president. However, he was already commander in chief of the army, so this clause would not have bothered him unduly, nor did it make anyone else wonder if they were signing a recipe for military dictatorship down the road. The reference to "militias" reveals that the American standing army was minuscule back then, relying entirely on militias in the event of a serious threat. The "right to bear arms" clause also relates exclusively to the militias, and, combined, the two clauses show why there was no reason to fear a military coup.
Had the Founders been told this document would one day serve the greatest military power in history, or that there would come a day when handguns were the No. 1 cause of death for young men 18 to 30 years ago, they no doubt would have made considerable changes. As it was, though, they merely addressed their own situation in the most pragmatic manner possible.
Problems with these founding documents arose only when generations of schoolchildren were educated to believe in their literal truth, a practice that has caused as much conflict in American society as that of believing in the Bible's literal truth has caused the world. George Kennan, who died on March 17 at the age of 101, was, as head of the U.S. State Department's Policy Planning Staff, a chief architect of postwar foreign policy, largely responsible for the Cold War and for creating the Central Intelligence Agency. He was, all the same, a remarkably brilliant, insightful and clear-thinking observer of the world as it is, not the world as we'd like it to be.
Social critic Noam Chomsky has unfairly called him an "incredible villain," quoting out of context from a very long, top-secret memorandum Mr. Kennan sent to the Secretary of State in 1948:
"We have about 50 per cent of the world's wealth but only 6.3 per cent of its population. In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security. To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming we need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world benefaction."
Prof. Chomsky fails to appreciate that Mr. Kennan also presents a rare opportunity to observe the thinking behind many of America's foreign-policy decisions since then because, in later life, he was openly apologetic about much of what he had done. He regarded atomic weapons as so dangerous that no nation ought to own them, and deplored the fact that the CIA, which had been designed, he said, solely to counter the threat of the Soviet spy agency, was allowed to continue after the Soviet Union collapsed.
On China, too, he was extraordinarily succinct, urging U.S. leaders to stop preaching to Beijing about democracy, since "even if they created a democracy, it wouldn't resemble ours."
Something of an isolationist, Mr. Kennan believed, wherever possible, in living and letting live. He had determined that, to go to war with America using conventional weapons, a nation needed a heavy industry able to design and build some kind of powerful amphibious craft — since that alone would permit invasion.
Only five countries, he stated confidently, could ever pose such a threat: Britain, Germany, Japan, Israel and Russia. Since the war, four have always been close allies — the Coalition of the Willing — and all of America's energies were focused on Soviet Russia, until it vanished into chaos during the Reagan presidency. (The five-enemies theory is said to be one reason for the Pentagon's shape.)
Mr. Kennan also did something else that is still immeasurably useful: He identified two distinct strains in U.S. political thinking that, at the risk of over-simplifying them, boil down basically to his viewpoint and that of those who oppose it.
He likens his own thinking to that of the Founding Fathers: straightforward, pragmatic, focused on the job at hand. The opposition he characterizes as "day-dreamers," evangelists for the creed of American exceptionalism, who believe the United States is a fulfilment of prophecy, and that it thus has a mission to show the world the paths to freedom.
He blames most of America's foreign-policy blunders on such misguided thinking, believing also that it was to blame for the decay of cities and society in general. Americans had been deprived of seeing the fruits of their tax dollars in the form of free health care and education — things that Europeans took for granted — since the money had been squandered on pointless foreign wars and imperial adventures.
These two strains have collided constantly, with one punishing the other whenever possible. The exceptionalists, however, have the edge because their terms of fiscal profligacy in overseas wars and weapons development can damage the economy beyond any simple repair.
Mr. Kennan didn't like the invasion of Iraq ("political consequences disastrous . . . no plan to deal with the ensuing chaos inside Iraq"), but as far as he was concerned, things had really begun to fall apart during the Reagan presidency (1981-89). His five-enemies theory stressed, above all, keeping the potential enemies as friends. The collapse of Soviet Russia offered the possibility of bringing the sole existing enemy in from the cold, yet the opportunity was not seized wholeheartedly, and eventually it was lost.
Money that could have helped Russia rebuild its shattered economy and social structures was instead diverted into weapons development and other schemes designed to make the Chinese realize they were next. This forced Beijing to spend money it did not possess on an arms buildup of its own, and also may have inadvertently pushed China's economy into the overdrive that has made it little short of an economic miracle today.
Every sinologist in Washington, however, knows full well that China is not expansionist and has no history of imperial acquisition. After times of weakness, Chinese rulers have merely striven to regain the original boundaries of the traditional Chi'in state, the oldest political union on Earth.
This is why Washington is always careful not to deny the possibility that renegade Taiwan will one day be returned. It is why the annexation of Tibet was never seriously challenged. It is why Hong Kong was returned after the British lease ran out in 1999.
Despite the rhetoric, historic patterns of behaviour are deeply respected in politics — a game China has played continuously for nearly 5,000 years, and at which it is a master. While it will generally not attack unless threatened, it will defend itself fiercely. That is what we can see happening now.
The Department of Homeland Security, along with the Patriot Act, has effectively suspended the rule of law in the United States — citizens can now be searched or arrested without a warrant, imprisoned without trial, tried by secret military tribunal, tortured or executed in secrecy. Their phones can be tapped, mail read, Internet monitored, and what they read at or borrow from the library can be analyzed for signs of deviancy. The guarantees of personal liberty in the Constitution have been trampled over.
Between 30,000 and 40,000 people have been detained or harassed under the Patriot Act, and precious few charges involving actual terrorism have been laid as a result. The fabric of American society has been torn to shreds without making Americans any safer.
It is possible, too, that al-Qaeda may largely be a creation of the permanent government that lies behind the passing show and changing pageants of the one that's elected. For the Pentagon, CIA-FBI, and other non-elected institutions amount to a bureaucratic monolith that governs without consent, since it provides advisers to the elected rulers and information to the advisers — all of which can make the job of being president easy or impossible, depending on whom is in the White House. It is not what the Constitution envisaged.
Consider the following: In the mid-fifties, president Dwight D. Eisenhower was informed of a growing hostility toward America among ordinary Arab citizens across the Middle East. The cause of this hostility was a perception that the United States supported brutal, repressive regimes in the area and, hypocritically, cared nothing for the political aspirations of the people.
This perception was hard to counter, the president learned, largely because it was accurate. The CIA added that America was, however, following the correct course of action in supporting status quo regimes in the Middle East, since these were the only kind of governments that could reliably safeguard U.S. interests in the region. The "interests," of course, were oil.
Flash forward to the 1970s and 1980s, where we find America now encouraging the repressive, brutal regimes it has been propping up to foster a resurgence of Islam, through building special religious universities and so on — the idea being to keep godless communism away from the oil with a religious renaissance. At the same time, the CIA was training Arab mujahedeen to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan.
Bearing in mind that America also was humiliated by Iran's Islamic Revolution during same period, something seems out of place.
In his excellent 1998 book, Secrecy, the late senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan states that the collapse of Soviet Russia's social fabric, military, and economy was known among U.S. intelligence circles to be imminent as far back as the early seventies, and that this information was deliberately kept from the public, as well as from some presidents. He argues that money spent during the Reagan administration upon further weapons development and a continuance of the Cold War — which adds up to hundreds of billions — might have been spent on health care and education, were it not for the culture of secrecy prevailing in Washington.
Bearing this in mind, too, why did the CIA even feel it was necessary to train Afghan Arabs to fight the Soviets? Historically, the Afghans themselves have always been more than a match for any invader without outside help. With the Soviet Union on the brink of collapse, the expulsion of its troops from Afghanistan was just a matter of time.
Put these anomalies together: Americans knew of Arab hostility in 1955 Yet they persisted in supporting hated regimes And even got them to promote Islam While training large numbers of devout Muslims in terrorist skills Even after being humiliated by a massive Islamic resurgence in Iran And experts on Islam had pointed out that the religion was populist in appeal and socialistic in nature.
Either you have an extraordinary jamboree of stupidity here, or you have the deliberate creation of a national demon to replace the defeated Soviet Red Peril, a new cause of public anxiety that justifies continued expenditure on arms, explains far-flung wars, and ultimately provides an excuse for the current terror and finances the invisible war against China.
It has to be one or the other.
Since the current administration contains a large number of the most reactionary elements from the old Reagan administration, my bet is on the latter explanation. As state papers from the Reagan years are gradually released under the Freedom of Information Act's 25-year limit, we may well find out some of the truth quite soon. Or we may not.
Paul William Roberts is the Toronto-based author of several books on the Middle East. His most recent, A War Against Truth: An Intimate Account of the Invasion of Iraq (Raincoast), has just appeared in paperback .

Quote: "Conventional Wisdom"--John Kenneth Galbraith

2005-09-05T08:17:00.000-07:00

"We associate truth with convenience," he wrote,"with what most closely accords with self-interest and personal well-being or promises best to avoid awkward effort or unwelcome dislocation of life. We also find highly acceptable what contributes most to self-esteem." Economic and social behavior Galbraith continued,"are complex and to comprehend their character is mentally tiring. Therefore we adhere, as though to a raft, to those ideas which represent our understanding."

Latest Burger King Chicken site

2005-07-28T12:01:00.000-07:00

http://www.coqroq.com/

In One Stroke, Podcasting Hits Mainstream--New York Times

2005-07-28T09:57:00.000-07:00

Apple's iTunes software now offers a gateway to 3,000 podcasts - audio files that can be downloaded to a portable player. Can Apple can do for podcasts what it did for online music? - Read the whole story...

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/28/technology/circuits/28pogue.html?