I'm so fed up with the RIAA that I'm not even going to rant about it. It's like the war in Iraq: everyone's said their piece, so let's just sit back and watch the show.
My girlfriend gets a four day weekend this weekend, and because I'm not working at the moment, that means I get a four day weekend too!
Maybe I'll post something on Canada Day. Maybe.
Reunion highlights need for aircraft carrier
You'd have to be an idiot not to recognize the power of the aircraft carrier. There is no better tool for projecting military power around the globe, and they are one of the foundations of the US military's might. However, let's get serious. Canada with an aircraft carrier? Is anyone else laughing?
I suppose it would be a good start to revitalizing the Canadian military, if there were any Canadian politicians who wanted to do it. The problem with buying a small British-style carrier is that I think you have to fly Harrier's off of them, which aren't exactly the best or most cost effective aircraft. Still, an aircraft carrier would be a good stepping stone to getting other countries to respect our military, even a little bit.
The problem is that having a carrier or two isn't going to solve our military's problems. The army still needs new tanks, new helicopters, and new guns. The air force's F-18s aren't going to last forever, and neither are the rest of the aircraft they fly. The Canadian military seems to be operating on a "life-support" budget, and as soon as things start to break down any more than they are now, the whole thing is going to die.
Maybe that's an exaggeration, I don't know. It just doesn't seem like buying an aircraft carrier would be the best use of $2 billion, when other parts of the military are in such bad shape. The worst part of it would be the politicians; for 20 years they'd say "but we bought you that aircraft carrier" whenever someone wanted money for the military. The whole thing is just messed up.
Well I finally went back into GVFX and got all of the shots I've worked on. Well, almost all of them. In any case, what that means is that I've done an update to the 3D gallery for the first time since I started this site.
I'll be doing a few more updates to the site over the next couple of weeks, and I'll try to keep on top of the daily posts while I'm working. I've managed to let it slip over the last few days. Nothing exciting is happening in the world anyway, right?
Every once and a while something happens which convinces me that we are in fact making progress. This is one of them. For too long Christian religious law and federal government law have been intermingled. Christian (or otherwise) politicians have been imposing their own system of beliefs on the rest of us. Well here's one more step in the right direction.
I caught a piece of a rally yesterday on TV, in which dozens of anti-gay Christian protesters were shouting and preaching about how marriage is "the foundation of our civilization" and how it is a "gift from God to men and women". Unfortunately for them, the Charter of Rights seems to indicate that discrimination on any level is illegal. The US constitution says the same thing, although they've failed to realize it so far.
Look, I don't have any problem with individual churches not sanctioning same-sex marriages. They have that right. I don't have a problem with people thinking same-sex marriages are wrong, or evil, or whatever. They have that right. I have a problem with people who think that religious law, and for some people, religion in general, should be Government mandated institutions. News flash Father!!! We live in a free country where people should be able to do as they please regardless of race, religion or sexual preference. That includes getting married. If you don't like it, don't marry them. If you really don't like it, move to the southern US, I'm sure you'll feel right at home.
1 in 3 Americans born in 2000 will develop diabetes
That sure is a scary thought. Imagine, in 50 years a full third of the US population (and obviously plenty of other people outside the US as well) could be diabetic. The strain on health systems would be almost unbearable. It's bad enough these days with the baby boomers starting to need more and more care, but the problems that 150 million diabetics would cause might be insurmountable.
The solution? It's very simple; exercise. The CDC says that even a 30 minute walk, five times a week, is enough to stem the tide. Sounds good to me. One of the biggest problems with our civilization these days is that it's possible to go through life eating the most unhealthy food possible in large quantities, and there's no need for anyone to exercise. Exercise has become a chore, instead of a natural byproduct of existence.
It would be impossible to go back to the way it was, so that means educating people at an early age into developing healthy exercise habits is the only solution. That doesn't seem likely today however, with school boards everywhere cutting physical education programs (along with art and music) to save money. It's a false economy, since the cost of the health problems that will result from these kids' lack of education will have been able to pay for their entire school's budget ten times over.
I just love the way the world works.
Now that I've got all of this free time as a result of not having a job, I've been giving a lot of thought to learning how to fly. It's been something I've wanted to do for a while now, even though it's a little lower on the priority list than plenty of other stuff. I think that whether I do it now or not will depend on how the job search goes in the next few weeks.
The problem with learning how to fly is that no one pays you to do it unless you join the military. Actually, I'm not sure if the Canadian air force is even able to pay people. In any case, it would hardly be an option for me.
I scoured various Internet news sources today, but just couldn't find anything I really wanted to write about. Even CNN has got a story of a pregnant woman impaling herself on a microphone stand listed on their front page. Things seem to have slowed down in the news these days, with no big story to follow.
I suppose that's a good thing, since a "big story" usually means that something horrible is happening or has happened. Good news is never big news, after all.
What a boring Friday the 13th.
Mom's hands chopped in frenzied attack
Whenever I read stories like this, one of the first things that enters my mind is "What's wrong with that person?" Obviously I'm not talking about the victim, but the sick bastard who thought it would be a good idea to take a machete to someone's hands and cut them off.
There must be some kind of genetic variation that causes some people to react this way. Either they think doing these things are perfectly acceptable courses of action, or they just don't possess the mental ability to control themselves. In either case, there's got to be a cause for what is essentially a disability. I don't know about you, but I really can't see myself picking up the sword on my wall and going after someone with it, no matter how mad I was. I just don't think that way.
Will we ever be able to "fix" problems like these, or are they even problems to be fixed in the first place?
The problem with trying to create peace is that you have to deal with people who simply don't want it. If peace comes about as the result of a war, and not a treaty, the people who don't want it usually don't have a choice. They've either already won the war, lost the war and cannot fight, or they're dead.
It's simply amazing to me that Israeli settlers aren't even willing to give up small, unoccupied trailer "outposts" in an attempt to create some kind of peace with the Palestinians. If you believe that giving "the enemy" even one inch isn't worth a possible peace deal, you deserve to be blown up.
Any kind of peace that has to be created, and not won, is going to require a lot of compromise. Sometimes I think it would be better to have an all out war just so the "no peace" crowd could be eliminated. I mean, what are the Israelis suggesting be done instead? Maybe we should round up all the Palestinians and ship them off to other countries, or better yet, just kill them all. Makes perfect sense, right?
Today is my first day of unemployment since losing my job on Friday. Yeah, it sucks, although getting up at 10:00 in the morning was certainly nice. I realized that I didn't really like going in to work anymore anyway, so I don't think I'm too upset of the whole thing.
Now the tough part; Finding work. Lots of stuff to take care of. The task seems almost insurmountable right now, although I know it won't be too bad. Hopefully I'll have some new stuff to post in the gallery soon. The site may change around a bit as well, but I haven't decided yet.
Well, time to get cracking.
All this talk of the Congo has got me thinking about Africa again. Honestly I don't see why the rest of the world bothers with it. Africa is a perfect example of why "The Prime Directive" exists in Star Trek; to protect immature societies and civilizations from destroying themselves under the weight of advanced technology and society.
The Congo is supposed to be democratic, as are a number of other African nations, but it seems every time someone tries to hold an election, people either cheat or just plain don't accept the results and start a war. Raving bands of crazy men roam from village to village slaughtering women and children in their beds, simply because their "tribe" is somehow associated with one political party or another. Sometimes they do it without even that much of a reason.
Africa simply wasn't ready for "civilization". If you look at the continent from space at night, it's black. It's going to stay black for a long time.
Late for work, no time to post. I did notice that the Mad Cow investigation in Alberta has moved into the US. Wouldn't it just be perfect if some farmer in the US is to blame? I guess all of his federal aid money just didn't cut it.
We'll see.
Imagine how different the world would be if people were telepathic. There wouldn't be any need to explain anything, since we could instantly communicate our ideas with perfection to others. There wouldn't be any need for long conversations, and it would sure turn the rules of dating upside down. You could get to know someone in under 10 seconds.
Of course there's a downside. Walking down the street, or in a mall, would result in an almost unintelligible noise of people's thoughts. Would it even be possible to mentally survive? I think so. After all, think about how many different sounds and sights enter your brain on any given day. If we weren't able to ignore the unimportant bits, they would make us blind and deaf. The same would probably happen to people with telepathic abilities. It would literally become a sixth sense; just as normal as all the others.
I like the idea of the ten second date, however. I could use that right about now.
The latest story in the news about accusations that CSIS knew of the Air India bombing before it happened have reminded me of how ridiculous people can be. Intelligence work has got to be one of the single most difficult jobs in the Universe, and for people to expect intelligence agencies to be capable of preventing all potential bad things from happening is ludicrous. It's the same reason super heroes can't save everyone; they can't be everywhere at once.
America didn't know of the 9/11 attacks before hand, and CSIS didn't know of the 1985 Air India bombing. Intelligence agencies aren't in the business of letting Terrorists succeed. Suggesting anything else is crazy. We should be grateful that we live in a society where people from CSIS or the CIA can't just bust down your door because they "have a feeling". That's no way to live.
If you want to be free, you have to learn to deal with a little bit of danger. Someone, somewhere will always want to kill someone else. It's hard to stop them if they're really good at it. It's just that simple.
I'm sure I've talked about this before. Oh well.
So the latest I've heard is that China might be able to put men on the Moon again within a decade. I don't know if we're still supposed to hate China because they're "evil communists", but I'm glad they've at least got some ambition. In ten years, China could become only the second nation to land people on the Moon in over thirty years. Is it just me, or is that pathetic?
China has also apparently suggested that they want to establish some kind of permanent presence on the Moon, for whatever reason. It's going to be very interesting to see how the Americans respond to this. If China were able to establish even a primitive Moon base, it would catapult them years beyond the Americans in terms of space supremacy. Hopefully NASA and the US government won't take it lying down, and they'll have a fire under their butts for the first time since the 70s.
Space might actually become exciting again! Who would have thought?!?!?!