More
h/t

You’ve heard about it, right?

This is Linux.
Details here.

If this look replaces the below-the-waist pant, I’m all for it.

Reader Bruce shares his observations on the gated-community community in the comments;

I had a number of lawyers that I considered friends who subsequently became judges. Intelligent people, reasonable people (at least at the time). I have never, ever been able to figure out what exactly happened to some them after they were elevated to the bench.
One example, and this is after I left drug enforcement; I believe I was on homicide at the time. The RCMP arrested a notorious drug importer, and someone that I had been chasing (and had caught a few times) for years when I was still doing that type of work. He was a vicious, nasty guy who had become filthy rich by importing copious quantities of drugs, of all kinds, into Canada.
A judge, a friend of mine, presided over the trial. It was a slam-dunk case. He was convicted. All of the precedents called for a very lengthy prison term, especially considering the previous lengthy record of the accused. The judge ( I’ll call him Doug because, well, because that is his name) ignored the submissions of the Crown calling for a sentence of between 12 to 20 years) and sentenced the man to 18 months. This meant he would be out on day parole in 3 months. Needless to say, the druggie was led from the court, snickering – even HE thought the judge was an idiot..
A couple of weeks later I had occasion to have dinner with Doug, the judge. The issue of this case came up in conversation. I expressed my shock at the sentence, pointed out that this particular offender was one of the biggest dealers, at least in western Canada, that he had in the past actually put out contracts to kill police officers and that he had been responsible for killing several associates and/or competitors.
The response: “But Bruce, it was only marihuana”.
My response: “But Doug, it was FOUR TONS of marihuana.”.

For those who missed it, the videos are up at Hot Air.

h/t

“You wanna see something really scary?“
*

Once upon a time anyone with a basic education learned that the dose makes the poison. That is, no matter how harmless a chemical may seem, at high enough levels of consumption it becomes toxic. (And the corollary is one should not be too concerned about highly toxic chemicals if they are in sufficiently tiny amounts).
Alas, that lesson appears to have been learned too late for this unfortunate woman who died in a water drinking contest.
Yes, as a matter of fact, there is a toxic dose for water.
Update: I would be remiss in my duties if I didn’t take this opportunity to link to the valuable Dihydrogen Monoxide Research Division, an organization at the forefront of publicizing these sorts of dangers.

In mankind’s endless quest to stay one step ahead of government regulators…

h/t

Who would guess that the world’s most expensive chocolates (several times over) are made in a tiny kitchen shoehorned between a pair of hair salons in a half-abandoned strip mall in Plano, Texas?

h/t Sean

The “sleuthing” continues in the anti- Bourque whisper campaign..

December 15, 2006 – Who took this photo of Dion, in a bid to embarrass him? That sure is an interesting URL. Hmmm.

Hmmm.
The URL: http://d.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/rids/20061214/i/r936720742.jpg
The intrigue must lie in the directory path… let’s see what other images might be listed in the sinister http://d.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/rids directory …. hmmm… lots of photos from …. Reuters.
And in the strangest of coincidences , it looks as though http://d.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/ap holds photos for the Associated Press.
The plot thickens, I tell you.
Meanwhile, over at TDH Strategies, it looks like Jonathan Ross got the same email I did.

• One simple question: Is Pierre Bourque’s headlines for sale? I mean, he had Stéphane Dion’s citizenship story up for many more days than the mainstream media paid attention, and now has posted a picture of Dion “jaywalking,” demonstrating that Mr. Dion prefers to walk rather than take a driver everywhere he goes? The wording of Mr. Bourque’s links are often brutal to those he doesn’t like, so I am curious as to whether the sentiments directed towards specific individuals is related to the amount certain parties pay him on an ongoing basis.

I mean, don’t you just love the way these Liberals try to look as though they just stumble over these “suspicions” on their own?

Warren “Harry Potter Is not a documentary*” Kinsella sees dark spirits at work on the interweb;

“Viral campaign” is a phrase coined, approximately a decade ago, by New York City artist and designer Tim Nolan. A pioneer of what he called “guerrilla art,” Nolan used the Internet as a platform to spread stories, which spread like a computer virus. Nolan promoted his artistic installations using the Web’s social networks — e-mail, Web sites and so on — and created a rhetorical artistic “buzz.” Before long, the marketers were in on the act, promoting brand awareness; naturally, the political consultants weren’t far behind. In the U.S. 2006 mid-term election, we all read many news features about politicians making use of You Tube or the online “encyclopedia” called Wikipedia to promote themselves and denigrate their opponents. That is viral marketing: indirect, insidious, sometimes injurious.
The Stephane Dion dual citizenship story first appeared immediately after the conclusion of the Liberal leadership convention. My friend Ezra Levant, a long-time conservative (and Conservative) activist, revealed the “news.” Wrote he in the Calgary Sun: “When it comes to making decisions about the war on terror, and Canada’s role in Afghanistan, will Dion be unduly influenced by France, a country that has taken up the role of lawyer and arms dealer for every terrorist state in the world, even defending Saddam Hussein until the eve of his overthrow?”
It was vintage Ezra — lots of partisan bombast and hyperbole, but essentially harmless. In a sane world, it would have remained there, but then — inexplicably, abruptly[1]– another friend, Pierre Bourque, devoted the main page of his much-read Bourque Newswatch to Levant’s story. Day after day, Bourque ridiculed Dion, even on one occasion asking respondents to participate in an easily manipulated (and therefore completely unscientific) online “poll.” Conservative bloggers — most of whom couldn’t be counted upon to recite the lyrics of O Canada without professional help — then took up the refrain, regurgitating the anti- Dion talking points with glee.
At that point, the so-called mainstream media had no option but to cover the story, and force Dion to respond.

“Day after day” … until the “mainstream media had no option”.
Like so many experts in 20th century communications, Warren has yet to learn the first axiom of blogging – “Google is your friend”.
On September 6th, Dion’s French citizenship was discussed at some length in a Globe & Mail profile.
On October 11th – six weeks before the convention – Paul Knowles in the New Hamburg Independent wrote a piece that looked primarily at the flaws of Michael Ignatieff. Nearer the bottom, there’s a single line noting a Dion problem;

“Stéphane Dion – it has not been widely reported – holds dual Canadian and French citizenship.”

This was the source noted on October 13th, when it first appeared in the comments here at SDA, submitted by perennial commentor “Maz2”.
Over the next few weeks, Dion’s dual citizenship was mentioned in the comments often enough that most regular readers were well aware of it. As I wasn’t following the Liberal leadership very closely, it remained just a factoid I filed away.
Dec.2 – My first mention liveblogging the Liberal convention;

“The new leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, and citizen of France… Mr. Anybody But”

So, that was probably the first post-convention blog mention. Truth be told, I just thought it was funny. I didn’t know it was a secret.
Ezra Levant’s Calgary Sun column appeared on Dec.4. I emailed Ezra this evening to ask if he remembered where he first heard about it;

I can’t recall where I first saw it. I heard the rumour somewhere, on the blogosphere I think, on the day he was chosen. I must have visited a dozen sites that day. I used the Google blog search to find a source, but couldn’t. So then I checked the Infomart archives, and found confirmation in an interview he did a few years ago with Montreal Gazette.
Kinsella misunderstands the nature of viruses — that they are natural. Uninteresting ideas don’t catch on, even if they’re forced, while hot news — or interesting revelations — spread spontaneously. This didn’t spread because of Tory black ops. It spread because it was startling news, and then it spread more because of how Dion mishandled it. And now it spreads further because of Kinsella.

Indeed.
By the time other blogs took the matter to their front page, talk radio and mainstream media already had the ball rolling. CBC reported it on the 5th, the Globe & Mail on December 6.
The rest is, as they say, revisionist history.
The Dion dual citizenship story followed no more “viral” a route to the public domain than any other political controversy. And in this case, the path turns out to be a lot more easily traced than the columns and “news” items that originate in the time-honoured journalistic tradition – between drinks (or bed sheets) with party operatives.
Footnote:
[1] The words “inexplictably, abruptly” are hinting at an allegation that appeared at eFrank.ca alleging that Pierre Bourque sells his headline services to whatever party hack is willing to pay the promotional fee. If the figures mentioned were true, someone takes his advertised traffic stats far too seriously.
anti- Bourque whisper campaign update – Why, it looks like TDH Strategies got the same email I did. Don’t you love the way these Liberals try to look as though they’ve just stumbled over these things on their own?

Lurking everywhere.
h/t

SDA News;

The Conservative government is taking women’s rights back into the Dark Ages by scrapping program funding and stripping department mandates, the Liberal women’s caucus charges. The group, headed by MP Belinda Stronach, released its Pink Book of policies intended to further women’s economic stature yesterday. “The current system favours women who are willing to earn their way to the top through intelligence, hard work, and initiative.” Ms. Stronach said, speaking before reporters. “This is clearly discriminatory.”

“Speaking as a member of the privileged underachiever community, I can personally testify that mediocrity would have stood in the way of my goals, had it not been for the support and extreme wealth of my family. I would never have headed my father’s company, nor had a snowball’s chance in Hell of becoming a Member of Parliament. In our current patriarchal system, these jobs almost always go to college graduates.”
But what of women who don’t have nepotism and cronyism to fall back on? Ms. Stronach was passionate, “I had the pleasure of meeting a number of ordinary, undermotivated women while conducting our interviews. Our group also met with several government funded advocacy groups that function as sheltered workshops for female underachievers. This raises grave concerns about their future – where are the women of SoW, for example, to go, should their budgets be slashed? They may be forced to seek employment in sectors that reward measurable performance – something for which they are fundamentally ill-suited.”
“Merit based advancement will become the norm, setting back women’s rights a generation,” warned Judy Sgro, chairwoman of the Commons committee on the status of women. “The past government worked very hard to get women out of the kitchen, into spike heels and wrapped around a pole. It would be shameful to see such progress set back by the neanderthal views of Conservatives who believe women to be the equals of men and numerically undeserving of minority status.”

“I mean, how far will these American imperialists go?

… to just follow the instructions.

As media pundits rode the emotion pony into a lather this week, someone forgot to ask an important question of Michael J. Fox.
As fate would have it, he volunteered the information today on ABC’s This Week;

Stephanopoulos: In the ad now running in Missouri, Jim Caviezel speaks in Aramaic. It means, “You betray me with a kiss.” And his position, his point, is that actually even though down in Missouri they say the initiative is against cloning, it’s actually going to allow human cloning.
Fox: Well, I don’t think that’s true. You know, I campaigned for Claire McCaskill. And so I have to qualify it by saying I’m not qualified to speak on the page-to-page content of the initiative. Although, I am quite sure that I’ll agree with it in spirit, I don’t know, I— On full disclosure, I haven’t read it, and that’s why I didn’t put myself up for it distinctly.

I’m sure that in light of this development, Adler will have a followup this week. Not on the details of Missouri’s Amendment 2 – that’s just US domestic politics, after all – but on the legendary laziness of his profession in failing to present political controversies in their factual context.
(To be fair, I did send Mr.Adler a couple of links last week that examined the nuts and bolts of what the Amendment actually speaks to in the context of Michael J. Fox’s endorsement, along with a criticism of Fox by a physician familiar with the science. For all I know, he’s been working on it all weekend.)
Video

David MacLean;

“This certainly puts a bullet in the “Senators were set up by the government” conspiracy theory.

(link fixed)

Aussie style;

HALF a billion dollars spent buying back hundreds of thousands of guns after the Port Arthur massacre had no effect on the homicide rate, says a study published in an influential British journal.
The report by two Australian academics, published in the British Journal of Criminology, said statistics gathered in the decade since Port Arthur showed gun deaths had been declining well before 1996 and the buyback of more than 600,000 mainly semi-automatic rifles and pump-action shotguns had made no difference in the rate of decline.
[…]
Politicians had assumed tighter gun laws would cut off the supply of guns to would-be criminals and that homicide rates would fall as a result, the study said. But more than 90 per cent of firearms used to commit homicide were not registered, their users were not licensed and they had been unaffected by the firearms agreement.

It made no difference for the same reason as establishing the gun registry in Canada has made no difference – it’s already illegal to shoot people.
Despite laws banning the practice, the problem of people shooting people (along with the closely related “kniving people” and “bludgeoning people”) persists. Faced with that difficult reality, gun control advocates turn to delusion as a solution – arguing that laws against owning murder weapons will succeed where laws against commiting murder have failed.
The director of the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics, Dr Don Weatherburn, has advice for such people.

He said it showed “politicians would be well advised to claim success of their policies after they were evaluated, not before”.

h/t