Da' Bears Have It

Bear with me here as I pun around some great news for Ursus Major. A sancturary for bears and the ancient forest has been declared in B.C.; Great Bear Rainforest.

Years of tension end with 'unique' BC rain forest deal
Globe and Mail - 20 hours ago
VANCOUVER -- After 10 years of logging-road blockades, marketplace boycotts and meetings that were so fractious people couldn't even agree on lunch breaks, the antagonists in British Columbia's great land-use debate finally made peace. ...
Canada creates massive `working` park Monsters and Critics.com
Canada signs deal with loggers to save ancient rainforest Independent
CTV.ca - The Moscow Times - Vancouver Sun (subscription) - Environment News Service - all 178 related »

And the US is looking at the crisis of the Polar Bear in the Arctic due to Climate Change. Someone hasn't told Bush about this cause you know what he thinks of Global Warming.

White House to Study Protecting Polar Bears
Washington Post, United States - 4 hours ago
The Bush administration has agreed to study whether polar bears should be added to the nation's endangered species list because global warming is shrinking ...
US considers endangered status for polar bears CBC News
US mulls protecting polar bears as Arctic melts Reuters Canada
Polar Bears May Join Endangered Species ListiThe NewStandard


This must mean the Right To Arm Bears campaign has been making headway.

See A Hunting We Will Go

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The Curse of Bruce McNall

It must be the curse of LA Kings owner Bruce McNall who bought Gretzky from the Oilers with his coin collection and then got busted for fraud.

Cause now the Gretzky's wife and other NHL players are rumoured to be involved in a gambling ring. Gretzky's Wife, Tocchet, NHL Players Cited in Gambling Ring
And it's really bad timing as Gretzky prepares to go to Turin with Team Canada for the Winter Olympics. Gretzky remains top pitchman He hasn't played for seven years, but the Great One still king of marketing

No shock here, it's business as usual in professional sports which has a historical link to gambling and the underworld of crime in England and North America.

Sports and gambling -- the American way?
Office pools, point spreads, off-track/off-shore betting, illegal bookies
you name it, we bet on it.

The Economics of Gaming: Risk and Reward in American History

BETTING ON THE FUTURE OF SPORTS: WHY GAMBLING SHOULD BE LEFT OFF THE FIELD OF PLAY

PlanetPapers - Gambling

I found this interesting blog while researching this
<>The Sports Economist Economic Commentary on Sports & Society

Also See: Pro Sports and Criminal Capitalism




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Dino Time

Andrew at Bound for Gravity has posted the latest dino news Guanlong wucaii: Early Tyrannosaur Interesting is that this smallest of T Rex had feathers, and a hollow crest not unlike the Duckbill Dinosaur family. No indication of Intelligent Design though, just further proof of change and adaptability, that thing called evolution.

Enlarge Image

An artist's rendition of the Guanlong wucaii, or crowned dragon of the five-coloured rocks. Its most spectacular feature was its nasal crest, a delicate bony structure that juts out of its nose and rises towards its eyes. (Zhongda Zhang/IVPP)

Once again scientists, or reporters, are showing gender bias.....Father of Tyrannosaurus is unearthed in China So how did they determine the sex of the bones?


See:

(r)Evolutionary Theory

Intelligent Design is just another word...

Design Yes But Not ID

Chimps and Man Closer Relatives In Time

Dialectical Science-JBS Haldane

Morality not from animals

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dinosaurs, palentology, evolution,

Vic Toews Lied

The new Conservative Justice Minister Vic Toews said on Mike Duffy Live on CTV yesterday that he didn't know why the Firearms Registry cost $2 billion dollars.

He didn't know! Let me repeat that. He said He Didn't Know Why The Firearms Registry had cost overruns. And that he was going to have the Auditor General look into it.

But she already has. And as I wrote in 2004 during the last election, it's because they contracted out the computer hardware, software and programing and the call centre.

Canada’s Billion Dollar P3 Boondoggle

What the Liberals and Conservatives Don’t Want You To Know

The real story behind the cost overruns at the Canadian Firearms Centre

"Just read your piece on the firearms P3 – quite a revelation. I am amazed we have never heard this before – congratulations for bringing it to light." Murray Dobbin, author of Paul Martin Canada's CEO

And the costs increased because the provinces like Alberta copped out of paying their share. It's already documented not only by the Auditor General of Canada but by a third party audit of the Justice Department.

And as the opposition Justice critic Toews knows this. So taking a cue from his leader, Toews lied on national TV. And like his leader he is thinking of using American style politics to eliminate the gun registry through the back door of cabinet.




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Lost and Found

The discovery of the Lost World in Indonesia this week may have been its death sentence. What had been a remote inaccessbile area is now going to be under threat from poachers and the wealthy collectors of the world who can access it.Papua's 'Lost World' target for poachers With unintentional irony one Australian paper ran this headline 'Lost world' may be Earth's last

Ars Technica science blog Noble Intent noted the similarity of this Lost World with the popular novel, movie and TV adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyles Lost World of Prehistoric dinosaurs. Since several species found in this isolated forest were thought extinct as well species never documented. For instance species that had coexisted in the region with the Dodo bird.

Several newly discovered species of animals have appeared in the Indonesian islands this past year as more humans expand into the old growth forest, which is being destroyed by Archer Daniel Midlands (ADM) and Cargill for the creation of Palm plantations for palm oil.

The slash and burn economy of these International Agribusiness giants has created conditions where humans are going further into ancient forests than have been explored even by the native peoples who have lived there for thousands of years. It is currently threatening the very existenence of our closest primate relative the Orangutan.Genetic study shows direct human link to orangutan decline

The discovery of this Lost World shows that we still have remote areas in the world that can bring forth discoveries of new species, unknown life forms or those thought extinct giving greater credence to Cryptozoology.

See my articles on:

	Cryptozology Part 1
	Cryptozoology Part 2

The fact that the skeletal remains of a recently deceased race of pigmy human was also found in Indonesia, Our Lady of Flores, gives greater credence to the idea that their may be aYeti or Sasquatch in remote areas of Nepal and China or North America.

NEW SPECIES: Mammal expert Kris Helgen holds a newly found golden-mantled tree kangaroo. - Conservation International / Associated Press

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Extinct, science, Indonesia, discovery, cryptozoology, ADM, Cargill, animals,

Science Fact or Fallacy

It is being reported that the PR director of NASA has been forced to resign for being a Bush hack trying to push the White House agenda via NASA. Just the Facts Ma'am has been replaced by facts of convienance. No such thing as Climate Warming or the Big Bang.

I like this headline Bush man resigns NASA post in scandal though I don't think they quite meant it the way it sounds.

White House accused of censoring Nasa

Row brewing over climate change and creationism

Iain Thomson, vnunet.com 08 Feb 2006

A row is reportedly growing in the US over attempts by the White House to censor scientific information coming from Nasa.

There are signs of increasing tension within the organisation, and one scientist has claimed that he has been told to stop talking about climate change or face "dire consequences".

Another reported case involves a political appointee attempting to get the theory of creationism onto the Nasa website.

In the latter case George Deutsch, a presidential appointee to the Nasa press office whose previous experience involved working for the Bush/Cheney campaign, sent an email questioning Nasa's website in October, which was leaked to the New York Times.

"The Big Bang is not proven fact; it is opinion," Deutsch wrote. "It is not Nasa's place, nor should it be, to make a declaration such as this about the existence of the universe that discounts intelligent design by a creator."

Now the agency's administrator, Dr Michael D. Griffin, has stepped in to settle the row.

"It is not the job of public affairs officers to alter, filter or adjust engineering or scientific material produced by Nasa's technical staff," Dr Griffin wrote in an email to the agency's 19,000 employees

BREAKING NEWS: George Deutsch Did Not Graduate From Texas A & M University

Through my own investigations I have just discovered that George Deutsch, the Bush political appointee at the heart of administration efforts to censor NASA scientists (most notably to prevent James Hansen from speaking out about global warming), did not actually graduate from Texas A&M University. This should come as a surprise, since the media has implied otherwise, with even The New York Times describing the 24-year-old NASA public affairs officer, as “a 2003 journalism graduate of Texas A&M.” Although Deutsch did attend Texas A&M University, where he majored in journalism and was scheduled to graduate in 2003, he left in 2004 without a degree, a revelation that I was tipped off to by one of his former coworkers at A&M's student newspaper The Battalion.

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Monopoly Capitalism in Cyberspace

More on the corporartions attempt to control your access to the Internet. Monopoly capitalism in cyberspace. So much for all those liberaltarian apologists for capitalism that viewed the birth of the dot.com economy as different than good old capitalism. Like Wired magazines infamous article on the Long Boom

The Long Boom: A History of the Future, 1980 - 2020
By Peter Schwartz and Peter Leyden
We're facing 25 years of prosperity, freedom, and a better environment for the whole world. You got a problem with that

Welcome to the new world of Trusts in cyberspace, which is going to result in more regulation rather than competition. Your choice. Monopolies with no competition, or regulations to promote choice which result in Oligopolies with no competition. And that contradiction has led to the voices of the freedom in cyberspace to now come on side with us, the users versus the monopoly corporations dominating the WWW.

Google, Telecom Execs Stir Up The Internet Access Debate On Capitol Hill

The issue is network neutrality: Should telecom and cable companies charge premiums for companies like Google and Skype that benefit from broadband pipes?

Are Internet toll roads ahead?

'Father of the Internet' Asks for Internet Neutrality Law

Vinton Cerf says Congress should pass law forbidding discrimination against competing Web services.

Echoing consumer group concerns that the newly deregulated telecom carriers will try to give their own services better speeds over broadband networks, Cerf asked the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee to adopt a Net neutrality law, requiring broadband providers to allow customers to go to any legal Web site, attach any legal device, and run any legal application on their networks. If large broadband providers are permitted to charge Web sites or Web-based application vendors extra for customer access, small innovative companies will get frozen out, he said.

"Nothing less than the future of the Internet is at stake in these discussions," said Cerf, now vice president and chief Internet evangelist at Google. "We must preserve neutrality in the system in order to allow the new Googles of the world, the new Yahoos, the new Amazons to form. We risk losing the Internet as catalyst for consumer choice, for economic growth, for technological innovation, and for global competitiveness."

A Gated Internet

The companies who build and control the Internet's pipes want to control the content over those pipes, too.

Anush Yegyazarian, PC World

Thursday, February 02, 2006

Priority for Sale?

The capitalist in me says, "Go for it." The consumer in me says, "Wait a minute." If ISPs truly need more revenue to cover the costs of deploying broadband networks (and let's give them that one, for the sake of argument), I can understand that they'd want to raise rates for Internet access and bandwidth use, or impose penalties for excessive bandwidth usage. In fact, many contracts already include such a provision; a Web site can be shut down if it goes over its bandwidth allocation. What I'm far less sanguine about is allowing ISPs any control over content, especially if that control comes with a price tag.

Large Web sites offer me most of what I want when I surf the Net. But smaller sites are typically the ones that offer innovative services or radical improvements on existing services. Would Google have grown to its current prominence if Yahoo had been able to pay ISPs to make its site run much faster? Perhaps, perhaps not. The pay-to-prioritize scheme automatically favors large, established players who already have a customer and revenue base and can afford the rates. What will we miss out on if smaller sites have even less chance of being seen?

Moreover, content prioritization can be taken much further. Since many ISPs offer services that compete with those of third-party vendors, it's no stretch to believe that, somewhere down the line, ISPs may also prioritize their own offerings and even lock out those of their competitors. It's easy to envision a world where, say, Verizon customers have fast access to Verizon Wireless's music store, but have a harder time getting consistent, fast performance when they go to Apple's iTunes. Voice-over-IP services are another case in point: Will customers be able to subscribe to Vonage if their ISP has its own VoIP service? Your ISP could become like your cell phone provider: You can call anyone you like, but there are certain music and video services that are only available (or only viable) from specific carriers.

Consumer advocacy groups Consumer Federation of America, the Consumers Union, and Free Press recently released results from a survey that indicates Americans want their Internet to remain neutral. These groups are lobbying Congress to incorporate network neutrality into law, while telecom firms are lobbying hard to prevent it.

Although I don't particularly want more regulations, I do think that in this case there is something worth protecting. The Internet's pipes are just that: pipes. They should not be turned into gates that wall in or restrict certain content while giving preferential treatment to other data. I want the content and services that I choose; I don't want my ISP limiting or handicapping my choices.

It is interesting to put this debate on Information and Ideas in the context of the original debate on Trusts which was over 100 years ago. Here is American Anarchist Benjamin Tuckers take on the matter which is perhaps more relevant than ever in this day and age of the new information economy and the corporatization of copyright and intellectual property. Such property rights are not yours or mine but the use of patent by corporations to hold onto their right to profit and monopolize ideas, products, genes, etc.

The Attitude of Anarchism Toward Industrial Combinations

Excerpted from the book;
Individual Liberty: Selections From the Writings of Benjamin R. Tucker
Vanguard Press, New York, 1926
Kraus Reprint Co., Millwood, NY, 1973.

---

From September 13 to 16, 1899, the Civic Federation held a Conference on Trusts, in Chicago, before which it invited about one hundred individuals from every walk of life and of various political and economic beliefs to discuss the question of trusts from every angle. Mr. Tucker was one of those invited to address the assembly, and his paper, which is here reproduced in full, excited more interest and comment, according to the newspaper accounts at the time, than the remarks of any other speaker at the conference:

Now, Anarchism, which, as I have said, is the doctrine that in all matters there should be the greatest amount of individual liberty compatible with equality of liberty, finds that none of these denials of liberty are necessary to the maintenance of equality of liberty, but that each and every one of them, on the contrary, is destructive of equality of liberty. Therefore it declares them unnecessary, arbitrary, oppressive, and unjust, and demands their immediate cessation.

Of these four monopolies - the banking monopoly, the land monopoly, the tariff monopoly, and the patent and copyright monopoly - the injustice of all but the last-named is manifest even to a child. The right of the individual to buy and sell without being held up by a highwayman whenever he crosses an imaginary line called a frontier; the right of the individual to take possession of unoccupied land as freely as he takes possession of unoccupied water or unoccupied air; the right of the individual to give his IOU, in any shape whatsoever, under any guarantee whatsoever, or under no guarantee at all, to anyone willing to accept it in exchange for something else, - all these rights are too clear for argument, and any one presuming to dispute them simply declares thereby his despotic and imperialistic instincts.

For the fourth of these monopolies, however, - the patent and copyright monopoly, - a more plausible case can be presented, for the question of property in ideas is a very subtle one. The defenders of such property set up an analogy between the production of material things and the production of abstractions, and on the strength of it declare that the manufacturer of mental products, no less than the manufacturer of material products, is a laborer worthy of his hire. So far, so good. But, to make out their case, they are obliged to go further, and to claim, in violation of their own analogy, that the laborer who creates mental products, unlike the laborer who creates material products, is entitled to exemption from competition. Because the Lord, in his wisdom, or the Devil, in his malice, has so arranged matters that the inventor and the author produce naturally at a disadvantage, man, in his might, proposes to supply the divine or diabolic deficiency by an artificial arrangement that shall not only destroy this disadvantage, but actually give the inventor and author an advantage that no other laborer enjoys, - an advantage, moreover, which, in practice goes, not to the inventor and the author, but to the promoter and the publisher and the trust.

Convincing as the argument for property in ideas may seem at first hearing, if you think about it long enough, you will begin to be suspicious. The first thing, perhaps, to arouse your suspicion will be the fact that none of the champions of such property propose the punishment of those who violate it, contenting themselves with subjecting the offenders to the risk of damage suits, and that nearly all of them are willing that even the risk of suit shall disappear when the proprietor has enjoyed his right for a certain number of years. Now, if, as the French writer, Alphonse Karr, remarked, property in ideas is a property like any other property, then its violation, like the violation of any other property, deserves criminal punishment, and its life, like that of any other property, should be secure in right against the lapse of time. And, this not being claimed by the upholders of property in ideas, the suspicion arises that such a lack of the courage of their convictions may be due to an instinctive feeling that they are wrong.

I have tried, in the few minutes allotted to me, to state concisely the attitude of Anarchism toward industrial combinations. It discountenances all direct attacks on them, all interference with them, all anti-trust legislation whatsoever. In fact, it regards industrial combinations as very useful whenever they spring into existence in response to demand created in a healthy social body. If at present they are baneful, it is because they are symptoms of a social disease originally caused and persistently aggravated by a regimen of tyranny and quackery. Anarchism wants to call off the quacks, and give liberty, nature's great cure-all, a chance to do its perfect work.

Free access to the world of matter, abolishing land monopoly; free access to the world of mind, abolishing idea monopoly; free access to an untaxed and unprivileged market, abolishing tariff monopoly and money monopoly, - secure these, and all the rest shall be added unto you. For liberty is the remedy of every social evil, and to Anarchy the world must look at last for any enduring guarantee of social order.

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Anarchist Mayor of Milan

This is interesting Dario Fo: anarchist, playwright … and Milan’s next mayor?

Fo is famous for two plays one Accidental Death of an Anarchist about the Italian Police killing an Anarchist in the late sixties and another play "We Won't Pay! We Won't Pay" about the Hot Summer of 68 in Italy that saw autonomous activity of workers, women and the unemployed refuse to pay rent, seize goods from stores on peoples credit and create an alternative economy that we have seen recently in the rise of autonomous community activities in Argentina after their economic collapse.

Deliberate birth of an activist: Fo runs for mayor in Milan

Well he lost......

Dario Fo loses contest to run for Milan mayoralty

Barbara McMahon in Rome
Tuesday January 31, 2006
The Guardian

The Nobel prize-winning playwright Dario Fo has lost an election to determine the centre-left opposition's candidate for mayor of Milan.

The city's former police chief Bruno Ferrante won 67.5 % of the vote held on Sunday, followed by Mr Fo with 23.4%.

The 79-year-old author of plays such as Accidental Death of an Anarchist, who has never held public office but was backed by the Communist and Green parties, paid a grudging tribute to his rival, saying: "He's someone who says the same things as I do, only the day after." The mayoral election will be held in May.

However his plays are getting more popular presentations.

Satirical comedy premieres tonight

Friday, February 03, 2006

By SANDRA E. CONSTANTINE

sconstantine@repub.com

SOUTH HADLEY - A comedy about bureaucracy?

Such a play might sound far fetched. But that's exactly the theme of "Archangels Don't Play Pinball," a satiric play that will be performed beginning tonight by the Pioneer Valley Performing Arts Charter Public School's Repertory Theatre Company.

The play by Italian Nobel laureate Dario Fo is in the style of commedia dell'arte, following the protagonist Lanky through a farcical adventure as he travels to Washington, D.C., to get his pension for being a disabled veteran. Commedia dell'arte is Italian comedy of the 16th through 18th centuries improvised from standard situations with stock characters like the buffoon or the corrupt official.

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How did they know

Who leaked the news to the Anti-Abortion Anti-Gay Lifesite News
that

Kenney has been appointed the Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister. Another pro-life MP of prominence within the Conservative Party who was passed over for a cabinet post, Diane Ablonczy, will be the parliamentary secretary to the Finance Minister.

And why did this right wing lobby group know what the MSM didn't ? The politcal influence of the right wing anti-choice anti-gay MP's cannot and should not be underestimated in the Harper government.


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Ping

Another blogger time saver available is Ping-O-Matic it allows you to ping multiple sites at once. For instance Blogspot/Blogger that I use is linked to Technocrati, Weblog and Feedster but for your own pages its best to ping directly to these. So Ping-O-Matic does it for you and allows you to access lots of other services that your blog host may not ping. And it free to register and easy to use.

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Ping-O-Matic, ping, pinging, pings, blogs, blogging, bloggers, utilities

Blogging No Big Deal, au contraire

Gallup: blogs no big deal

The Gallup Poll organization released a survey of Internet users showing "reading blogs" at the bottom of a list of 13 options. However, Gallup reported at least 10% of U.S. Web users "frequently" or "occasionally" read Web logs, according to a report of the poll by Editor and Publisher. But nearly 60% "never" look at blogs.

Riiiiiight. So says a report done by Gallup.

Mail and News Are Main Internet Attractions Gallup Poll News

Really no biggee. And lets not forget that Gallup only speaks about the American public. Their 'internet users" should be qualified as "American internet users".

The lack of interest is not slowing blogs' growth. Dave Sifry, founder of Technorati.com, reported his Web log service is seeing 75,000 new blogs a day. "Technorati currently tracks 27.2 million Web logs, and the blogosphere we track continues to double about every 5.5 months." He reported as many as 9% of new blogs are spam or in some way bogus rather than useful content.

The blogosphere is over 60 times bigger than it was only 3 years ago.

Blogosphere still expanding

The blogging phenomenon continues to be one of the Net's brightest stars Around half of bloggers continue to post three months after creating their blog. 10 per cent keep their blogs updated weekly or more often.

So according to Gallup 10% of their American users view blogs, and 10% of us update our blogs, and it is a growing phenomena around the world. So that seems to contradict the nay sayers at Gallup. Of course Gallup being a commercial corporate shill is more interested in the WWW as a source of buy and sell.

Gallup: Blogs Catching On With Web Users

By E&P Staff

Published: February 06, 2006 2:20 PM ET
NEW YORK In the Web universe, how popular are blogs? A report today by The Gallup Poll organization on its latest surveys could be interpreted two ways.

On the one hand, asked to rank their most frequent online activity, Americans who use the Web (now 73% of the population) placed "reading blogs" at the bottom of its list of 13 choices.

But on the other hand: blogs barely existed until recently and now fully one in five Americans say they consult blogs "frequently" or at least "occasionally." That 20% figure trails instant messaging (28%), auctions (23%), videocasts and downloading music (22%).

E-mailing still heads the list at 87%, followed by checking news and weather (72%) and shopping and travel planning (both at 52%).

In terms of blog activity, there is a slight gender gap (24% of men and 17% of women read them), and of course a generation gap, with 28% of those 18 to 29 using them and only 17% of those over 50.

Nearly 60% still say they "never" look at blogs.

Gallup reported big jumps in those paying bills online and making travel plans.

A total of 1,013 adults were surveyed nationally for the poll

Blogs are part of the growing access to the internet, and one form of information sharing. Technocrati reports that blogging is expotentially one of the greatest growing way's that ordinary non techie types gain access to speaking on the WWW.

Blogosphere balloons

Blogging is rapidly becoming one of the favourite online activities. The Technorati website says it is currently tracking just under 19 million blogs.

Furthermore, the practice shows no sign of diminishing. According to Technorati, the number of blogs is doubling every five months and has been doing so for the past three years. This makes the blogosphere thirty times the size it was in 2002.

Although blogging, like many Internet trends, started as an English language activity, it is increasingly spread around the world. The Technorati survey says that there are around 70,000 new blogs started every day - or one a second. In particular, the Chinese have taken to blogging in a big way with some of the biggest growth seen in the Chinese version of MSN Spaces and the native blogcn.com.

Given the well-publicised dangers of stepping out of line in the People's Republic, it is amazing that so many Chinese citizens are willing to put their thoughts online where they can be tracked.

The level of activity of these online scribblers is extraordinary. Somewhere between 700,000 and 1.3 million posts are made each day. That is about 33,000 posts per hour or about 9.2 posts per second.

Blogging is seen as allowing the ordinary citizen to make their voice heard alongside the big companies that control the world's media. Some 50 per cent of bloggers talk about companies at least once a week with 63 per cent of readers believing them to be a trustworthy source or product information. Although many companies provide corporate blogs, 80 per cent of people prefer not to get the executive view. They would rather read a blog from an employee.

For instance since 1997 I have been online posting articles, email discussions, creating and using email listserves for discussions, creating speciality web pages, helping develop sites, etc. etc. and for over a year I too have been blogging since it fits in well with the WYSIWYG that the web has been all about. WYSIWYG systems have allowed those with little or no coding, HTML, experience to now access the web with their thoughts.

The WWW has always been about interactivity, and communications about convergence and cross platform use. There geeky enough for ya. What that means to BCE the corporate owner of Bell Canada, Globe and Mail, CTV, etc. is different than what it means to you or me. Which is why Gallup voice of corporations like BCE, says its not important that the web is now accessed interactively, not passively, Welcome To The Blogosphere: Population 27.2 Million And Growing

For us ,the users , the cyber citizens of the internet convergance and cross platform use is having a web page, email, and blogging, having a pay pal account and doing business on e-bay or buying from Amazon .com, reaing our news online rather than subscribing to a paper, researching using a search engine, downloading information, music, files, uploading information and playing games.

Whew no wonder we never get out much.

Disrupto-Memes: First fired for blogging, now quit to blog

Will Richardson, author of Weblog-ed: The Read/Write Web in the Classroom has announced that he's quitting his job as a school teacher to focus on his popular edu-blog and blog evangelism. For what it's worth, a Jux2 search finds the following numbers: "fired for blogging" Google (69,000) Yahoo! (90,300) MSN (18,658) vs. "quit to blog" Google (34) Yahoo! (3)

David Wiley of OpenContent.org put it nicely in a recent speech to the US Department of Education's Commission on the Future of Higher Education: as global culture shifts towards information and learning being available on demand, mobile, personalized, remixable and sharable - traditional institutions are threatened by declining relevance. Wiley notes the growing importance of private certification as part of this. I would contend that this may even be the case only for people like Will Richardson (above) - perhaps some of the most high-energy, innovative and engaged people in traditional institutions like education.

My favorite headline for this story though is this one:

Blogs Replicating Like Tribbles On Heat

The Trouble With Tribbles

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Tag You're It

A great article here on a quickie tagging solution with video instruction on easing the use of tags. Watch Beths video on this page and you can add a tagging bookmarklet to your tool bar to create your tags. No more cut and paste into the HTML coding on your web page or blog. Wow saves you all that time you waste trying to tag. And eating your fingers down to the nub as Marshall Kirkpatrick says

I think that it makes a big difference whether people are employing tags themselves or just using blog software that supports categories. That's part of why I encourage people to use a bookmarklet to make such tagging easier. Why doesn't Technorati offer a bookmarklet like that? The blogosphere is full of people who would rather eat their own fingers than add the HTML for each tag link with a rel=tag at the end of each post. Requiring them to do so is a real limit to the specificity of tags being applied by non technical bloggers. That's part of why people like WYSIWYG blog editors.

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Chavez Denounces Anti-Semitism

Earlier this year the Zionist press and their right wing synchophants in North America released a scurrilous accusation that President Chavez of Venezuela made Anti-Semitic remarks in his Christmas speech. To which I replied here.

Now here is the latest news about Chavez and the Jewish community in Venezuala.

Of course don't expect the likes of Colby Cosh to admit they were wrong, or that they failed in their journalistic duty to actually follow up the original accusations rather than just link and comment on them.

Chavez asks Jewish community in Venezuela to join social interest projects

VHeadline.com News Editor Patrick J. O'Donoghue writes: Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez Frias has met with members of the Jewish Community in Venezuela, clarifying alleged anti-Semitic remarks made by the former last Christmas.

Confederation of Israeli Associations president, Fred Pressner says President Chavez Frias has been asked to extend his rejection of anti-Jewish remarks to other instances of government.

Pressner says the community is deeply concerned about racial remarks made in Venezuelan media.

The President is said to have been "receptive" to a petition to penalize discrimination in any of its forms, among which is anti-Semitism

According to Jewish community representatives, there have no differences with the Venezuelan government.

"President Chavez Frias was clear in attacking anti-Semitism during his national rendering of accounts at the National Assembly but we want this to filter down into all government instances."

The President has gone a step further requesting the Jewish community to collaborate or develop projects of social interest.

Speaking on Sunday, Chavez Frias criticized the opposition press for blowing the incident out of all proportions and insisting on supporting a policy of promoting co-existence between Israel and Palestine.

The Jewish community has condemned the originator of the scandal, the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

Also see:

A Libertarian Defense of the Left Wing in Latin America

Chavez

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The Prophet of Death

For all those liberals who have blogged that we should understand Islam as a religion of peace and understanding, one that is tolerant and blah, blah, blah I submit for your consideration these two items.

Do Dogs Have More Love For The Messenger Of Allah Than Do Muslims?
Feb 07, 2006

By Abu Haitham Al-Hijazee

As the Muslim world erupts over the blatant act of ridicule and blasphemy by European newspapers against the Prophet (pbuh), Islamic history scholar Abu Haitham Al-Hijazee turns to the times past for answers and weighs in on this latest attack on Islam.

Reviling and insulting Allah or His messenger is very serious offense that carries the death penalty. If such offense is committed by a Muslim, he becomes an apostate because of it and his blood becomes lawful immediately and no apology or repentance is accepted from him. The verdict of Allah is very clear.

Two killed as Afghans stage new protests over cartoons

State Religions, organized religion that carries with it the power of the State and is the State is the very enemy of freedom. All monothiestic religons are by their nature state religions, they have come into existance by the suppresion of peoples spiritual beliefs, rites and customs. They justify intolerance, torture and death of those who opposed them. They have grown by the forced conversion of peoples. All will be assimilated. Those who oppose religious tyranny cannot defend Islam in the name of freedom of religion.

Anarchists demand freedom from religion. No God! No Master! is our watchword. "Ni dieu ni maître!"--Neither God nor master!--is a phrase coined by the socialist Auguste Blanqui in 1880, when he published a journal by that name. It became an anarchist slogan.

Religion is Tyranny.

Nature created neither servants nor masters. I want neither to rule nor to be ruled.
La Nature n‘a fait ni serviteurs ni maîtres, je ne veux donner ni recevoir d‘ordres.

In this I find myself once again agreeing with Christopher Hitchens. Who has mocked religion on more than one occasion himself. Truth is blasphemous. Blasphemy is truth.

Also see:

Looney Toons

Blasphemy is in the Eye of the Beholder

Ibn Khaldun 14th Century Arab Libertarian

Jewish Anti-Zionism

The Need for Arab Anarchism

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Edmonton Left Out In The Cold, Again

Redmonton did not get any representation in Cabinet. None. Zip. Nada. Sorry but Rona Ambrose does not count as being from Edmonton. As I wrote in my comment to Daveberta;

She is not from Edmonton, she is from Spruce Grove. Damn hyphenated ridings. Well ok she lives in Edmonton Strathcona but she represents Spruce Grove that's like saying the MP from Airdrie represents Calgary or the guy from Oshawa represents Toronto. Hmm yeah the Harper did do that to.

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