Reader Tips

Reader Tips 117 Comments

It’s been a busy week around here, my apologies for the slow blogging. I spent all day bent over a motorcycle tank and still have a few hours ahead packing and tying up loose ends before I leave for Beijing. No Free Tibet! t-shirt for me. “Free Tibetan Terrier”, maybe. I’m delivering a dog to his new home, conducting an informal seminar, and taking in a show while I’m there.
You’ll be in the capable hands of our usual guest bloggers until I’m back (around the 15th), but I’d be much appreciative if our regular readers would remember not to respond to trolls or drive by provocateurs. There’s a good chance they’ll be deleted, anyway.
A few links that were passed along:
An exercise in stupidity.
An exercise In Futility
Futility has company.
Your tips are welcome in the comments, of course. I’ll see you on the flip side.

117 Replies to “Reader Tips”

  2. Sounds adventurous!
    Have a great time Kate.
    AND authentic Chinese food as well!
    Maybe we’ll see some pictures?

  4. Kate “bent over a motorcycle tank” ?
    (drool) conservative women are sooooo hot.

  5. Hmmmm…”bending over a motorcycle tank”. Reminds me of that old line:
    Some people say they want their women bending over the stove and laying on the bed…but I prefer them laying on the stove and bending over the bed.
    Have fun in China. Maybe now is a good time to start a fast. Beer should be safe to drink, though.

  6. Being a gentleman I will not comment on “bent over” but if I did…
    Seriously, have a safe trip and enjoy.

  7. Laying, isn’t that what hens do?
    Don’t know how that Cal Sun poll on Khadr would go in Toronto their hometown.
    Another poll in Toronto Sun asks “Do you think panhandlers make Toronto less desirable for tourists”? It’s at Yes-89% No-11%. Rather surprising because that Socialist haven has made no attempt to clear the streets.

  8. Be as good girl over there Kate! “Bending” over a hot motorcycle might be considered anti-communist.

  10. Not being a gentleman and knowing that nobody says it any more, but…
    SHWING!

  11. If the ‘plant rights’ movement gains enough momentum, maybe vegans will stop eating altogether.
    And here I thought Darwinism didn’t work in modern society.

  12. Youtube video – The Arrogant Worms – Carrot Juice Is Murder
    Listen up brothers and sisters,
    come hear my desperate tale.
    I speak of our friends of nature,
    trapped in the dirt like a jail.
    Vegetables live in oppression,
    served on our tables each night.
    This killing of veggies is madness,
    I say we take up the fight.
    Salads are only for murderers,
    coleslaw’s a fascist regime.
    Don’t think that they don’t have feelings,
    just cause a radish can’t scream.
    Chorus:
    I’ve heard the screams of the vegetables (scream, scream, scream)
    Watching their skins being peeled (having their insides revealed)
    Grated and steamed with no mercy (burning off calories)
    How do you think that feels (bet it hurts really bad)
    Carrot juice constitutes murder (and that’s a real crime)
    Greenhouses prisons for slaves (let my vegetables go)
    It’s time to stop all this gardening (it’s dirty as hell)
    Let’s call a spade a spade (is a spade is a spade is a spade) . . .

  14. Two things on the technology front, one is a “duh!”, the other is pretty cool.
    1) From The Guardian no less, police in the UK say CCTV doesn’t catch criminals. To which I can only say, DUH! They should fire every cop above a sergeant in that country, I swear.
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/may/06/ukcrime1
    2)Amazing cleverness on display today, news release on a new method for fixing defects in computer chips. Long story short, you melt the traces for a couple miliseconds and let surface tension smooth things out for you. BRILLIANT!!!
    phantomsoapbox.blogspot.com/2008/05/this-is-so-clever.html

  15. When I read about Kate being bent over a motorcycle, I only thought of her painting a motorcycle tank and nothing else…
    Who knows, maybe global warming is affecting my “dirty-mind” ?
    either that or I am getting old…

  16. Have a good trip, Kate.
    Robert Satloff, Just Like Us! Really?
    Gallup says only 7 percent of the world’s Muslims are political radicals. Yet 36 percent think the 9/11 attacks were in some way justified.

  17. Catch John McCain speech going on right now, about the Constitution, and the Judicial philosophy of the United States.
    The appointment of judges, and the lack of appointment of judges, and the whole process is included….worth a listen.

  18. Maybe Inwood married into the Kermani family or went to the Kermani School of Business?

  19. Editorial: Muslim extremism and wars
    The ambassador of Saudi Arabia in Pakistan, HE Mr Ali S Awadh Asseri, in an interview given to Daily Times, has made some thought-provoking remarks on the state of the Muslim mind that need to be dwelt upon. Correctly, he said that there was a need to revisit “the logic behind the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq” and engage the fighting sides there in dialogue. He spoke of Muslim extremism in the same context: “Those few who are engaged in their nefarious effort to promote the cult of extremism and violence are heretics and deviants. They must be controlled through a combined effort of all peace-loving nations of the world”…
    The collapse of Arab nationalism tilted the Arab world into a new-found faith in Islam. This movement was greatly encouraged in all kinds of ways by Saudi Arabia which emerged as the ideological antithesis of Nasserism. But what was seen as the victory of Islam against secular nationalism was also objectively the victory of the United States in the Middle East against its Cold War rival, the Soviet Union. It is tragic that every time we help the US to win, the Muslims are the biggest sufferers…

  20. Speaking of “justice” review the DUI case against Maggie Trudeau. Blows 1.07 which is over the limit of .08. Police give her the right to a lawyer by giving her a list of them to select one. She does but when the police call the number they get an voice answering machine. They inform her there was no answer at that number so she selects another lawyer and the case proceeds.
    Forget the fact she was guilty of the DUI the case hinged on whether her right to select a lawyer of her choice was infringed by the police not saying they reached an answering machine rather than saying there was “no answer”.
    After going up the chain with back and forth decisions she struck gold with the Ontario Court of Appeal acquiting her. Now she did not know any of the lawyers on the list so what difference did it make to her case. It did when you have our Charter of Rights and Freedoms which any lawyer can twist into anything if you have the money and time to do so as this took place in 2005 and settled yesterday. Again the fact that she was guilty of the charge meant nothing. Any wonder why the police are so discouraged by the “legal” system.

  21. Fiction from Jack Binlayton*s website.
    A holiday visit to Fort FrozenMurray. .
    **Of course I just had to see all the sights right away. I wanted to start with the Ralph Klein Environmental Pavilion, but, unfortunately, it was closed for repairs. Just as well. I was a little tired from the trip, and all I really wanted to do was lie on the beach and enjoy the sun. So, I grabbed my bathing suit and jogged over to the Ralph Klein Waste Water Park.
    And that was certainly the right choice. I’ve never seen a water park quite like this. The park looked, for all the world, like a series of interconnected toxic-waste holding ponds right on the Athabasca River.
    I was so impressed that I even stopped and read the information plaque at the entrance to the Waste Water Park. It said that a single barrel of oil from the oil sands produced three times more greenhouse-gas emissions than a barrel of conventional oil and that the ponds and beach areas were one of largest human-made structures in the world and could be seen from space.
    Even more impressive, ninety percent of the water used in processing the oil sands was so toxic that propane cannons had to be used to keep migrating water fowl away.
    They even had times posted when you could watch the park staff blast teals and canvasbacks and buffleheads and northern pintails along with common loons and Canada geese out of the sky to keep them from landing on the water.
    ================ NDP website
    Hmmm, Seems like fun. I heard there was not a single NDPeer elected in Alberta /Sask. = TG

  22. Bret Stephens, Israel’s 60-Year Test
    For reasons both telling and mysterious, Israel has become unpopular among that segment of public opinion that calls itself progressive. This is the same progressive segment that believes in women’s rights, gay rights, the rights to a fair trial and to appeal, freedom of speech and conscience, judicial checks on parliamentary authority. These are rights that exist in Israel and nowhere else in the Middle East. So why is it that the country that is most sympathetic to progressive values gets the least of progressive sympathies?

  23. Anne Applebaum, A Warning Shot from Moscow?
    Before it happened, nobody imagined that the murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo would set off World War I. Before the “shot heard round the world” was fired, I doubt that 18th-century Concord expected to go down in history as the place where the American Revolution began. Before last weekend, when the Russian news agency ITAR-TASS declared that the government of Georgia was about to invade Abkhazia, nobody had really thought about Abkhazia at all. As a public service to readers who need a break from the American presidential campaign, this column is therefore devoted to considering the possibility that Abkhazia could become the starting point of a larger war.

  24. Mark Steyn’s blog is a must read today. Interesting updates as regards the HRC issue(s).
    Background on Dr. Naiyer Habib – the co-plaintiff with Elmasry re the filing being heard before the BCHRT.
    Hearing is set to commence June 2. Like who knows? No indication of whether or not this hearing is going to be open to the public. Where in the hell is the press/media in all of this – very few people even know that this hearing is happening and what is at stake.
    It seems that M.S may be having a debate with the 3 Sock Puppets – 8 pm EST/Wed – with Steve Paiken. It really does beg the question as to why these 3 Puppets seem to be getting the attention as point people, when in fact they are not.

  25. Have fun Kate…New information about Joooos…
    Pakistani Scholar : Dogs And Pigs Are Favorite Animals Of Jews…He also asked the Pakistani government to ban the use of sniffer dogs in the investigation of cases by police.

  26. Charles MacDonald asks:
    So why is it that [Israel,] the country that is most sympathetic to progressive values gets the least of progressive sympathies?
    Because Israel is a democracy, and the left-wing extremists that are constantly attacking it hate democracy more than anything, more even than racism and homophobia.

  27. Tried to watch the proceedings in HofC today…i know,I need to get a life!Started off with Mrs.BinLayton arguing about some obscure immigration law,and it was truly painful to watch.This woman has got to be,the most boring,rambling incoherent member in the House,and I just had to turn it off.Just un-frikken-believable.

  28. Doug,
    If you were to follow posts closely you would know that Kate is not a Conservative. She has mentioned her leaning but since it’s a personal thing I won’t speak for her.

  29. Here’s some wisdom for surviving Beijing traffic (ancient Chinese proverb):
    “Man who run in front of car get tired”
    There’s another saying by Bruce Lee’s stuntman: “I got run over by a Datsun once…oh what a feeling!”

  33. charles macdonald – I disagree that the movement into Islamism, ie, fascism, was due to the ‘collapse of arab nationalism’.
    It was due, I suggest, to the retention of a tribal political and social system within a population base that was too large for tribalism and within an economic mode that had moved from agriculture to industrialism.
    When you have a large (millions) population base within an industrial economy, you absolutely cannot have a political infrastructure that operates by means of tribal hierarchies and powers. The society has to move out of this hereditary and static infrastructure and into one that enables the development of a middle class.
    Membership in the middle class is not hereditary (as it is in a tribe); it is flexible, it is dynamic and this class must have political power.
    Instead, the arab nations refused to enable and empower a middle class; they kept control of, by means of both military force and religious extremism, all the new oil wealth within elite tribalism, reducing the majority of the population to a status ‘kept’ by the state and without power.
    This is the reason for the rise of Islamic fascism. Nothing to do with ‘collapse of arab nationalism’.
    And Bush’s move into Iraq was correct. It moved Islamic fascism from its diversionary agenda against the West back into the ME – which is where it belongs. Why? Because the fight for political and economic power and for a middle class has to be fought by Muslims within their own nations – against that tribal hierarchy.

  34. Mark Steyn gets interviewed by some chick @ a book store, wed. 7 pm Manulife Building (Bloor and Bay).
    (The same bookstore that pulled The Western Standard and “turtled” when it mattered)
    Also tonight @ 8 with Steve Paiken on TVO with the suck puppet 3.

  35. Have a nice trip, Kate, you deserve it.
    Please say “Hello Moe” to fearless leader !
    Mark Steyn gets interviewed by some chick @ a book store, wed. 7 pm Manlfe Building (Bloor and Bay).
    (The same bookstore that pulled The Western Standard and “turtled” when it mattered)
    Also tonight @ 8 with Steve Paiken on TVO with the suck puppet 3.

  36. Hey everyone: don’t forget, Mark Steyn gets to have a word with the sock-puppet three on television tonight, on TVO at 8pm eastern.
    (The Agenda).

  37. This is the reason for the rise of Islamic fascism. Nothing to do with ‘collapse of arab nationalism’. Posted by: ET at May 6, 2008 11:59 AM
    You need to do more reading ET. And you have a western views/mores that is irrelevant to apply. If you disagree with that, maybe you can describe the sunni/shiite conflict within the context of arab/farsi duality. None of that is tribal (in relevance at least), any more than wahhabism is a ruling clique for its’ favored members, while ignoring the idea of a ‘caliphate’. The presence of infidels in the holy land is more important to extremism than a bunch of backwater rubes.

  38. Here is a CBC article from yesterday that is chilling…doctors deciding who gets to die in a pandemic.
    cbc.ca/health/story/2008/05/05/doctors-pandemic.html
    With a chronic disease, I will likely get to be one of the first to die…oh well, survival of the fittest! I’m sure that there’s gotta be a charter challenge in there somewhere…

  39. That “some chick” referenced by richfisher re the interview with Mark Steyn is none other than Chapters/Indigo founder Heather Reisman who is the same person who also had Mein Kampf pulled from her chain.
    Steyn is interviewed Thursday, May 8 on CTS Michael Coren Show with guest host Tim Denis, in Michael’s absence.

  40. Mark Steyn is busy today. He’ll also be on the air in Calgary this evening:
    Rob Breakenridge, The World Tonight
    CHQR 770 AM
    8:00 p.m. MDT

  41. Save the Carrot … and spare those microbes!
    Horticulture is abuse of plants…. Europe is at the forefront of moonbattery on so many issues!
    ….A few years ago the Swiss added to their national constitution a provision requiring “account to be taken of the dignity of creation when handling animals, plants and other organisms.” No one knew exactly what it meant, so they asked the Swiss Federal Ethics Committee on Non-Human Biotechnology to figure it out. The resulting report, “The Dignity of Living Beings with Regard to Plants,” is enough to short circuit the brain….

  43. Does Liberal Ron count as a troll? Just wondering because I cannot ignore the obvious…that he doesn’t know the difference between Conservative and conservative.Is that a liberal tendency or a Liberal trait?
    Hey Kate…so much for the assumption that life is all quiet and cozy down on the farm for you in Saskatchewan.Sounds like life in the fast lane.Hope all goes well.

  44. On CAIR and PM Stephen “Mr. Accountability” Harper:
    “One need not subscribe to theories of conspiracy to recognize the merits of a thorough evaluation of the operations of the CAIR system.”
    That is not to say that access to information has fared very well under the first two years of the Conservative government. The Access to Information Commissioner has noticed a 60 per cent jump in the number of complaints filed with his office in the past year. Many departments aren’t even paying lip service to the legal deadlines to answer access requests – sending out letters claiming delays of 200 days and more before files are even analyzed. The requirement to “consult” the privy council on far more requests than in the past has created a bottleneck that has choked the flow of information to Canadians about what their government is doing.
    Opening up access to documents held by bodies the Conservatives have long disliked like the CBC and the wheat board, while laudable, does little to compensate for the fact that information about what the rest of government is doing has virtually ground to a halt.
    That’s the real danger to democracy.
    Source: http://communities.canada.com/montrealgazette/blogs/onthehill/archive/2008/05/06/why-cair.aspx

  45. hardboiled – your opinions (you need to do more reading; western view..etc..) are without evidence. Discuss the situation; don’t just assert. I suggest you read a bit on tribal socioeconomic and political organization, and the relation of demographics to societal/economic organization.
    I stand by my analysis. Tribalism is the basic cause of the emergence of Islamic fascism because it kept the majority of the population out of power within an economic mode that had changed from stable, unchanging agriculturalism to industrialism.

  46. hardboiled – your opinions (you need to do more reading; western view..etc..) are without evidence. Discuss the situation; don’t just assert. I suggest you read a bit on tribal socioeconomic and political organization, and the relation of demographics to societal/economic organization.
    I stand by my analysis. Tribalism is the basic cause of the emergence of Islamic fascism because it kept the majority of the population out of power within an economic mode that had changed from stable, unchanging agriculturalism to industrialism.

  47. McGuinty’s LIEberals in Ontario marches on:
    Potato chips in schools – BANNED
    Pesticides for lawn care – BANNED
    Smoking in cars with kids – BANNED
    Scraping the Lord’s Prayer in Legislature – IN PROGRESS
    New OPP plane to police speeders – WOW
    Meanwhile back at the ranch…
    -Caledonia lawlessness
    -Gun crime in Toronto
    -Provincial slide into have-not status

  48. “remember not to respond to trolls or drive by provocateurs.”
    I’m swearing an oath on this one. No matter how tempting, no matter how enraging. Gonna be like gandhi with slightly more hair.

  49. You didn’t have to say it twice 🙂
    I am only challenging what I see as a myopic viewpoint. Maybe I am wrong – if you would please describe how the sunni/shiite conflict (within the context of arab/farsi nationalism) is tribal and providing an economics driven extremism, it would help. That is discussing, not asserting.

  50. ted, in your eagerness to express your neurotic hatred of Harper, you are ignoring that the fault is due to, and only to, the civil service bureaucracy, who are all Liberals. It is your beloved Liberals, ted, who are obstructing access to information.
    Ahh, the Liberals. No policies. None.
    Just unprincipled activities.
    When in gov’t, stealing from the taxpayer to fund their election campaigns; using taxpayer money for buying votes from ethnic groups, expensive travel and meals in the best restaurants and etc..
    When out of gov’t, resorting to constant unethical and ungrounded smear campaigns, resorting to their buddies in the Liberal controlled MSM (CBC, CTV, papers) to misinform and disinform the public.
    Resorting to their Liberal appointed bureaucracy, who engage in unprincipled and illegal obstruction, leaks, thefts of documents etc..
    Nothing like a Liberal, eh Ted?
    hardboiled – sorry about the double post. One more thing – arab and farsi aren’t tribes but ethnicities. Sunni and Shia are tribes and fight for political and economic control. That’s the problem. A civic mode of organization moves out of hereditary power bases (and fights for such power) and focuses only on the individual as he is now. Not as he is within his hereditary tribe.

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