The Lives of Others is a disturbing film about East Germany during the Soviet era. It’s a careful examination of how the government got neighbours to spy on neighbours and the authorities spied on everyone.
With a similar mindset, “Two Democratic members of the New York City city council will propose paying people to spy on other residents’ idling vehicles.” More here.
Happy Flag Day
Good Enough for Gov’t Work
Thanks @JennyErinRowe for her sharp eye and this photo of an Austrian flag on the Albert Memorial Bridge #yqr #Canada pic.twitter.com/owO5eVhwzy
— CBC Saskatchewan (@CBCSask) February 17, 2015
The level of “I don’t give a darn” necessary for that mistake to happen is chin-level. When it comes to the public-sector, I’m a ‘broken-window’ type of person. Fire them. Yeah…firing someone is a little harsh.
Victimless Drug
If only California, New York, Toronto, and Martensville/Warmen would do this kind of study on vaping prior to banning it.
Dr Marwaha said: “The observed tendency for cannabis use to precede or coincide with rather than follow mania symptoms, and the more specific association between cannabis use and new onset manic symptoms, suggests potential causal influences from cannabis use to the development of mania. It is a significant link.”
FWIW, on the 26th, I’ll have been 1 year cigarette free thanks to electronic nicotine delivery. Given 8 cigarettes a day @ 13.50/pk I’ll have not spent $1570 on cigarettes, but have spent about $700 on juice, atomizers and gear. Aside from health, a 50% savings…50% which would have gone to the gov’t.
h/t: Sean.
We Need A Famine
National Post: Being fat is a disability, EU judges have ruled, meaning that companies in Europe must offer obese staff bigger chairs, special parking spaces and a lighter work load.
h/t Kevin B.
Net Neutrality
Showing Up To Riot
A nanny-state tobacco ban goes horribly wrong;
Twenty-five minutes into the meeting, the hearing was closed by Board of Health chairwoman Andrea Crete, “amid shouts of ‘America!’ and ‘Freedom Now.’ ”
WBZ’s Julie Loncich captured video of the crowd protesting at the meeting.
“The crowd’s getting out of control and the room’s filled to capacity,” Crete said. “We don’t want any riots.” Crete and two other board members were escorted out by the police. The crowd sang “God Bless America” as it was cleared out of the room.
It’s not enough to be angry. You’ve got to show them you’re angry. (Via)
The World Is Being Run By Crazy People
The rubber plantation has 8,000 workers with 71,000 dependents. It is an hour north-east of Monrovia, surrounded by Ebola outbreaks. The virus arrived on the plantation in March. Knowing that the UN and the Liberian government were not going to save them, the managers sat around a rubber tree and googled “Ebola” and learned on the run instead.
h/t John Lewis
Vancouver’s Dismal Drug Culture
David Berner is interviewed about the latest sad chapter in Vancouver infamous drug scene:
Nanny and the Inspector
From Kevin D. Williamson’s “They Are Coming for Your Children:
“(Connecticut Governor Dannel) Malloy’s committee on the Newtown shootings is recommending that Connecticut require home-schooling families to present their children to the local authorities periodically for inspection, to see to it that their psychological and social growth is proceeding in the desired direction.
That would be the bureaucrats‘ desired direction, of course, not that of the parents.
Read the whole thing.
Kneejerk Reactions
Breakenridge says the Alberta Health Minister is partaking in a knee-jerk reaction to electronic nicotine delivery.
Related, via via John Galt, which I don’t have an issue with. Kids shouldn’t use electronic nicotine delivery or smoke.
Lessons of Prohibition
Like all bureaucracies the response is over the top.
Before You Donate To The Canadian Heart and Stroke Foundation
What was deadly at Fukushima?
The only thing to fear, is fear itself;
In common with Three Mile Island, Fukushima doesn’t seem to have caused any deaths from radiation; even at Chernobyl the demonstrable death toll which resulted from radiation exposure was small compared to events like Bhopal or the Banqiao dam failure.
What created the human misery at Fukushima was the response – not the immediate precautionary evacuation but what followed and ironically what preceded. The only other area currently excluded because of human activity is Chernobyl. It follows, to the rational non-expert, that the levels of radiation throughout these exclusion zones must represent a higher risk than any other man-made threat on the planet.
h/t Eric A.
The Road to Hell
Is paved with nanny state intervention.
On Monday, by a vote of 36 to 2, Toronto City Council voted in favour of a Board of Health recommendation which would prohibit e-cigarette use in all City of Toronto workplaces. The Board also called on the provincial government to amend the Smoke-Free Ontario Act to ban e-cigarette use wherever cigarettes are banned and to prohibit the sale of e-cigarettes to minors.
I have no problem explicitly banning the sale to minors. Any retailer I’ve used does that already.
I can guarantee you that if Saskatchewan jurisdictions start along the same road I’ll probably be back on cigarettes when I work in those areas. You don’t get anywhere near the nicotine dose from electronic nicotine delivery as you do from smoking. When working on-site it’s more efficient to puff a cigarette for 5 minutes than to vape for 30.
No cigarette since February, thanks to electronic devices, at risk because people say it looks like smoking and have absolutely no facts supporting any serious health issue.
Corner of W. Dundas and Keele
Photo credit: Brick60
What’s The Opposite of Diversity?
University! College newspaper can’t be called ‘The Bullet’ anymore because it’s too dangerous
Your Tax Dollars At Work
In a story that sounds almost too ridiculous to be true, both La Presse and the Toronto Star are reporting that John Baird’s Twitter account is being investigated by Graham Fraser, Canada’s language watchdog – after someone complained that the foreign affairs minister’s tweets were mostly in English.
The World Is Being Run By Crazy People
Actually, that’s not quite accurate.
I think the world is being run by aliens. Because only someone who has never been a child could think like this.
Related*
The World Is Being Run By Crazy People
I used to have trouble understanding why “civilized” European countries were so often at war.
Today, I just want my own B-29.
The Tolerant Left
It’s increasingly ridiculous to use the word “liberal” to describe the modern American collectivist. There’s nothing liberal about them at all. They’re shooting for the ultimate subversion of liberty, by re-defining “liberty” as a form of compulsion. In other words, they’re saying you are being oppressed unless a wise and virtuous dictatorial authority can force other people to give you what the authoritarians have decided you “deserve.” You aren’t “free” as long as you must provide for yourself. Liberty becomes a term used to describe its exact opposite: a set of active obligations placed upon other people. It’s right up there with any perversion of language and thought described by George Orwell in “1984.” Actually, it is one of the perversions he laid at Big Brother’s feet: “Freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength.”
h/t EBD