THE 12 NEW RULES FOR ENTERING ALBERTA:
1. Bring your own house.
2. If going to the Oil Sands, bring your own house, school and hospital.
3. If going to Edmonton, wear your flak jacket. Winnipeg is the murder capital of Canada, but Edmonton comes in at #2.
4. If driving to Edmonton, be warned, it is also the auto theft centre of Canada.
5. If you are bringing drugs, head to West Edmonton Mall, the drug capital of Canada.
6. If you are looking for work, look no further. Minimum wage is $8.40 per hour.
7. If you work downtown, parking costs $10.00 per hour.
8. If you are able to buy a house in Calgary, why not spend the money on a 15 year holiday?
9. If you drive a Hummer, look out. We sit among the highest gas prices in Canada.
THE ALBERTA ADVANTAGE.
1. In Edmonton we have 5 hospitals. 10 years ago we had 7. Don't come here sick.
2. In Calgary, the population has exploded. The last road was paved 12 years ago.
3. Calgary is a no-parking zone.
THE NEW RULES FOR DRIVING IN EDMONTON:
1. You must first learn to pronounce the city name, it is: 'ED-MIN-TIN'.
2. The morning rush hour is from 5 am to noon. The evening rush hour is from noon to 8pm.
3. Friday's rush hour starts on Thursday morning.
4. Calgary Trail, Gateway Boulevard, Highway 2 and the QE2 are the same road. Oh, and if you drive to Calgary, you can throw Deerfoot Trail into the mix.
5. The minimum acceptable speed limit on most freeways is 130 kph. On the QE2, you are expected to match the speed of airplanes coming in for a landing at the airport. Anything less is considered 'Wussy'.
6. Forget the traffic rules you learned elsewhere. Edmonton now has its own version of traffic rules. For example, cars/trucks with the loudest muffler go first at a four-way stop; the trucks with the biggest tires go second. However, Southwest Edmonton, SUV-driving, Starbucks drinking, cell-phone-talking moms ALWAYS have the right of way.
7. If you actually stop at a yellow light, you will be rear ended, cussed out, and possibly shot.
8. Never honk at anyone. Ever. Seriously. It's another offense that can get you shot.
9. Road construction is permanent and continuous in Edmonton. Detour barrels are moved around during the middle of the night to make the next day's driving a bit more exciting, but nothing ever gets finished, and more construction starts everyday.
10. Watch carefully for road hazards such as drunks, skunks, dogs, cats, deer, barrels, cones, cows, horses, mattresses, shredded tires, garbage, squirrels, rabbits, crows, and coyotes feeding on any of these items.
11. If someone actually has their turn signal on, wave them to the shoulder immediately to let them know it has been 'accidentally activated'.
12. If you are in the left lane and only driving 110 in a 80-90 km zone, you are considered a road hazard and will be 'flipped off' accordingly. If you return the flip, you'll be shot.
13. For winter driving, it is advisable to wear your parka, toque, fur lined mittens and mukluks. Make sure you have a shovel, food, candle and blankets in the vehicle, as snow removal from the city streets is virtually non-existent until the spring thaw.
Enjoy!
6.02.2009
God is merciful, but only if you're a man
Jew, Christian or Muslim ... whatever the faith, women are still treated with disdain or worse.
There is plenty to criticise in Islam's view of women. Last year, the Observer told the story of a man in Basra who stamped on, suffocated and then stabbed to death his 17-year-old daughter for becoming infatuated with a British soldier. The relationship apparently amounted to a few conversations, but her father learnt she had been seen in public talking to the soldier. When the Observer talked to Abdel-Qader Ali two weeks later, he said: "Death was the least she deserved. I don't regret it. I had the support of all my friends who are fathers, like me, and know what she did was unacceptable to any Muslim that honours his religion."
This was clearly extreme, but the truth is that the God many people believe in - whether Muslim, Christian or Jewish - hates women. Take America's Southern Baptist Convention, which declares in its faith and mission statement: "A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband." That's fair enough, isn't it? After all, he's probably stronger than she is.
Or there's the Catholic church. The Pope put things more suavely in an address in 2008: "Faced with cultural and political trends that seek to eliminate, or at least cloud and confuse, the sexual differences inscribed in human nature, considering them a cultural construct, it is necessary to recall God's design that created the human being masculine and feminine, with a unity and at the same time an original difference." The insistence on difference is the necessary first step to insisting on inequality and subordination and it is a step that popes have been taking at regular intervals for decades.
In November 2006, Nicaragua enacted a ban on all abortion, with no exceptions, even to save the mother's life. The law was ratified by the National Assembly in September 2007. Both the original enactment and the vote in September 2007 were widely attributed to the influence of the Catholic church. In a report this month, the United Nations Committee against torture called Nicaragua's total ban on abortion a violation of human rights.
Then there is Judaism. In one neighbourhood in Jerusalem, religious seminaries flank streets with yellow signs that warn: "If you're a woman and you're not properly dressed - don't pass through our neighbourhood."
So why is it so often women who fill the pews? Is it a form of Stockholm syndrome? Religions do a good job of training people to be obedient and loyal to the authorities and women in particular are raised to be both devout and submissive. Religions are sticky: they are hard to abandon and that is doubly true for women, given that subordination and unshakable fidelity are their chief duties.
The fact that women are defined as different from men ("complementary" is the religious euphemism) and confined to narrower, more monotonous lives as a result, means that they have more need of the excitements and passions of religion. For women, religion often is the heart of a heartless world. All they have to give up in exchange is their right to shape their own lives; as long as they behave themselves, all will go swimmingly.
The intimate and inescapable connection that contemporary liberal believers like to see between God and love, theism and compassion, is largely a modern invention. It's far from universal now and it was vanishingly rare in the past. St Francis was an eccentric, not an exemplar. The painful truth is that still, to this day, most people who believe in a god believe in a god who is often vindictive, punitive and sometimes just plain cruel. The Ryan report on abuse of children in Irish industrial schools, released two weeks ago, provides a mountain of searing evidence for that. For decade after decade, generation upon generation, the religious congregations in charge of the institutions saw nothing wrong.
One survivor of Goldenbridge, the most notorious industrial school for girls, run by the Sisters of Mercy, told the commission: "The screaming of children will stay with me for the rest of my life about Goldenbridge. I still hear it, I still haven't recovered from that. Children crying and screaming, it was just endless, it never, never stopped for years in that place." Many of those children were there simply because their mothers were unmarried or divorced.
The God we have in the Big Three monotheisms is a God who originated in a period when male superiority was absolutely taken for granted. That time has passed, but the superior male God remains and that God holds women in contempt. That God is the one who puts "His" imprimatur on all those tyrannical laws. That God is a product of history, but taken to be eternal, which is a bad combination. That is the God who hates women.
So why do so many women put up with it? Partly because God gives with one hand what "He" takes away with the other - God consoles people for the very harshness that God creates. It's the sad, familiar, heartrending bargain in which the victim embraces the perpetrator, in some complicated, confusing, all-too-human mix of appeasement, need and stubborn loyalty. The fact that the embrace is all on one side is resolutely ignored.
Link
There is plenty to criticise in Islam's view of women. Last year, the Observer told the story of a man in Basra who stamped on, suffocated and then stabbed to death his 17-year-old daughter for becoming infatuated with a British soldier. The relationship apparently amounted to a few conversations, but her father learnt she had been seen in public talking to the soldier. When the Observer talked to Abdel-Qader Ali two weeks later, he said: "Death was the least she deserved. I don't regret it. I had the support of all my friends who are fathers, like me, and know what she did was unacceptable to any Muslim that honours his religion."
This was clearly extreme, but the truth is that the God many people believe in - whether Muslim, Christian or Jewish - hates women. Take America's Southern Baptist Convention, which declares in its faith and mission statement: "A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband." That's fair enough, isn't it? After all, he's probably stronger than she is.
Or there's the Catholic church. The Pope put things more suavely in an address in 2008: "Faced with cultural and political trends that seek to eliminate, or at least cloud and confuse, the sexual differences inscribed in human nature, considering them a cultural construct, it is necessary to recall God's design that created the human being masculine and feminine, with a unity and at the same time an original difference." The insistence on difference is the necessary first step to insisting on inequality and subordination and it is a step that popes have been taking at regular intervals for decades.
In November 2006, Nicaragua enacted a ban on all abortion, with no exceptions, even to save the mother's life. The law was ratified by the National Assembly in September 2007. Both the original enactment and the vote in September 2007 were widely attributed to the influence of the Catholic church. In a report this month, the United Nations Committee against torture called Nicaragua's total ban on abortion a violation of human rights.
Then there is Judaism. In one neighbourhood in Jerusalem, religious seminaries flank streets with yellow signs that warn: "If you're a woman and you're not properly dressed - don't pass through our neighbourhood."
So why is it so often women who fill the pews? Is it a form of Stockholm syndrome? Religions do a good job of training people to be obedient and loyal to the authorities and women in particular are raised to be both devout and submissive. Religions are sticky: they are hard to abandon and that is doubly true for women, given that subordination and unshakable fidelity are their chief duties.
The fact that women are defined as different from men ("complementary" is the religious euphemism) and confined to narrower, more monotonous lives as a result, means that they have more need of the excitements and passions of religion. For women, religion often is the heart of a heartless world. All they have to give up in exchange is their right to shape their own lives; as long as they behave themselves, all will go swimmingly.
The intimate and inescapable connection that contemporary liberal believers like to see between God and love, theism and compassion, is largely a modern invention. It's far from universal now and it was vanishingly rare in the past. St Francis was an eccentric, not an exemplar. The painful truth is that still, to this day, most people who believe in a god believe in a god who is often vindictive, punitive and sometimes just plain cruel. The Ryan report on abuse of children in Irish industrial schools, released two weeks ago, provides a mountain of searing evidence for that. For decade after decade, generation upon generation, the religious congregations in charge of the institutions saw nothing wrong.
One survivor of Goldenbridge, the most notorious industrial school for girls, run by the Sisters of Mercy, told the commission: "The screaming of children will stay with me for the rest of my life about Goldenbridge. I still hear it, I still haven't recovered from that. Children crying and screaming, it was just endless, it never, never stopped for years in that place." Many of those children were there simply because their mothers were unmarried or divorced.
The God we have in the Big Three monotheisms is a God who originated in a period when male superiority was absolutely taken for granted. That time has passed, but the superior male God remains and that God holds women in contempt. That God is the one who puts "His" imprimatur on all those tyrannical laws. That God is a product of history, but taken to be eternal, which is a bad combination. That is the God who hates women.
So why do so many women put up with it? Partly because God gives with one hand what "He" takes away with the other - God consoles people for the very harshness that God creates. It's the sad, familiar, heartrending bargain in which the victim embraces the perpetrator, in some complicated, confusing, all-too-human mix of appeasement, need and stubborn loyalty. The fact that the embrace is all on one side is resolutely ignored.
Link
The Lord Justice Hath Ruled: Pringles Are Potato Chips
Britain’s Supreme Court of Judicature has answered a question that has long puzzled late-night dorm-room snackers: What, exactly, is a Pringle? With citations ranging from Baroness Hale of Richmond to Oliver Wendell Holmes, Lord Justice Robin Jacob concluded that, legally, it is a potato chip.
The decision is bad news for Procter & Gamble U.K., which now owes $160 million in taxes. It is good news for Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs — and for fans of no-nonsense legal opinions. It is also a reminder, as conservatives begin attacking Judge Sonia Sotomayor for not being a “strict constructionist,” of the pointlessness of labels like that.
In Britain, most foods are exempt from the value-added tax, but potato chips — known as crisps — and “similar products made from the potato, or from potato flour,” are taxable. Procter & Gamble, in what could be considered a plea for strict construction, argued that Pringles — which are about 40 percent potato flour, but also contain corn, rice and wheat — should not be considered potato chips or “similar products.” Rather, they are “savory snacks.”
The VAT and Duties Tribunal disagreed, ruling that Pringles — which have been marketed in the United States as “potato chips” — are taxable. “There are other ingredients,” the tribunal said, but a Pringle is “made from potato flour in the sense that one cannot say that it is not made from potato flour, and the proportion of potato flour is significant being over 40 percent.”
An appeals court reversed, in a convoluted opinion that considered four interpretations of the law before ultimately rejecting three of them. In the end, it decided that Pringles are exempt from the tax, mainly because they have less potato content than a potato chip.
The Supreme Court of Judicature reversed again, in an eloquent decision. Lord Justice Jacob, in an apparent swipe at the midlevel court, insisted the question was “not one calling for or justifying overelaborate, almost mind-numbing legal analysis.”
The VAT and Duties Tribunal took an eminently practical approach, he said. It considered Pringles’ appearance, taste, ingredients, process of manufacture, marketing and packaging, and concluded that “while in many respects” they “are different from potato crisps and so they are near the borderline, they are sufficiently similar to satisfy that test.”
The tribunal was not obliged, he said, “to go on and spell out item by item how each was weighed as if it were using a real scientist’s balance.” It came down to “a matter of overall impression.”
The Supreme Court of Judicature had little patience with Procter & Gamble’s lawyerly attempts to break out of the potato chip category. The company argued that to be “made of potato” Pringles would have to be all potato, or nearly so. If so, Lord Justice Jacob noted, “a marmalade made using both oranges and grapefruit would be made of neither — a nonsense conclusion.”
He was even more dismissive of Procter & Gamble’s argument that to be taxable a product must contain enough potato to have the quality of “potatoness.” This “Aristotelian question” of whether a product has the “essence of potato,” he insisted, simply cannot be answered.
In the Pringles litigation, three levels of British courts engaged in a classic debate over line-drawing, a staple of first-year law school classes. At some point, a potato-chip-like item is so different from a potato chip that it can no longer be called one — but when? Lord Justice Jacob invoked the wisdom of Justice Holmes: “A tyro thinks to puzzle you by asking you where you are going to draw the line and an advocate of more experience will show the arbitrariness of the line proposed by putting cases very near it on one side or the other.”
In other words, sometimes you just have to call them as you see them.
Conservatives like to insist that their judges are strict constructionists, giving the Constitution and statutes their precise meaning and no more, while judges like Ms. Sotomayor are activists. But there is no magic right way to interpret terms like “free speech” or “due process” — or potato chip. Nor is either ideological camp wholly strict or wholly activist. Liberal judges tend to be expansive about things like equal protection, while conservatives read more into ones like “the right to bear arms.”
In the end, as Lord Justice Jacob noted, a judge can only look at the relevant factors and draw an overall impression. His common-sense approach was a rebuke not only to Procter & Gamble, but to everyone out there who insists that the only way to read laws correctly is to read them strictly.
5.28.2009
Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor on the giant floor-piano at FAO Schwarz.
"These two amazingly talented women run up and down the keys on the giant floor-piano at FAO Schwarz, belting out an astounding rendition of Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor. Bach never sounded so good. "
5.25.2009
Roswell & Area 51: Will We Ever Know The Truth?
Although truth is often even stranger than fiction, some topics are so enmeshed in both that discovering the truth is like panning for gold.
The military installation in the Nevada desert known as Area 51 has been the matrix for conspiracy theories and UFO sightings for decades and tops the list of controversial and very heated topics. Some new light may now shine through as some of the workers from mysterious base finally speak out.
New York’s Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum tells part of the Area 51 story. On display is An A-12 Oxcart, which was a spy plane tested at the notorious secret military base in Nevada.
Oxcart was the moniker applied to the CIA A-12 program that was originally intended to succeed the U-2 in conducting over flights to the Soviet Union. After the U-2 incident of 1960, Eisenhower suspended Soviet airspace violations, but the flight trials continued.
The Los Angeles Times Magazine interviewed five men who worked at the military facility known as Area 51 in an attempt to get to the truth. They are more willing to talk now because in 2007 the CIA declassified certain information concerning the A-12 Oxcart.
All of the men interviewed related fascinating stories about life at the mysterious base, including how the military responded to security breaches involving secret projects. Their responses to the legends arising from the military base were also quite interesting.
One of the legends surrounding Area 51 concerns the belief that the base is....
Link
5.24.2009
I Will Always Have Been Back: Toward a Grand Unified Theory of Schwarzenegger
Arnold Schwarzenegger was one of the first action movie stars of the 80s. Perhaps he was one of the first action movie stars, period. His predecessors to that title - Steve McQueen? Clint Eastwood? - had dramatic credits to their name as well as escapist fare (Papillon, Play Misty For Me, etc). But Arnold Schwarzenegger will never direct Million Dollar Baby. Explosive action movies sit at both the beginning and end of his range.
Consequently, not many critics take Schwarzenegger seriously as an actor. He’s a muscle-bound lunk, they claim. He’s nothing but a stony face and some catchphrases. He always plays the same role.
But what if that’s deliberate?
TWO STOOD AGAINST MANY
Ten thousand years before the tribes of Abraham, in the time between when the oceans drank Atlantis and the rise of the sons of Aryas, a Cimmerian named Conan explored the world. He robbed temples, led brigands and slew sorcerers. He explored tombs, broke curses and rescued princesses. By the time his destiny was fulfilled, he wore the jeweled crown of Aquilonia upon his troubled brow - king by his own hand.
In his old age, after foiling a plot by rival factions to usurp his throne, King Conan received a vision from Crom, ancient and terrible god of the Aquilonians. Crom applauded the valor with which Conan had lived. As a reward, Crom gifted Conan with immortality.
Conan, a man as capable of melancholy as mirth, blanched with horror. “Should I live a thousand years while everyone I know turns to dust?” he cried. “Should I see the kingdom I have saved vanish from the Earth? Why would you do this to me?”
“Because,” Crom intoned, “in your hour of need you both called for my help and cursed my name. And so I grant you this gift and curse - that you will live until a greater warrior defeats you, or until the end of time.”
COME ON! KILL ME! I’M HERE! KILL ME!
Aquilonia vanished beneath the sands. So did Hyboria, Stygia, Kush, Mesopotamia, Phoenicia and Sparta. Yet Conan endured.
For fifteen thousand years Conan wandered from one nation to another, seeking wisdom and selling his sword. His accent became a strange mixture of every European tongue - an impenetrable Central European slur. Finally, Conan migrated across the Atlantic to the New World. He fought for the Colonies. He fought for the Union. He fought against Hitler. And he always won.
In the Eighties, John “Dutch” Matrix was the last generation of a family that had served in the U.S. military for over a century. In reality, of course, he was the same man - having fought for the same country though a series of fake identities for countless years. But Matrix had found a cause he believed in and a renewed willingness to fight.
Central America changed all that.
Dispatched to the jungles of Valverde, Matrix and his commando unit encountered a creature beyond their nightmares - an alien predator that could turn invisible, vault dozens of feet at a time, and kill at a distance with advanced weaponry. Matrix knew, as soon as he saw the skinned remains of the other rescue team, that he was facing something that could slaughter his entire team. But he pressed on.
Not because he owed his friend Dillon any favors. Not because he valued his mission. But because he thought he’d found a warrior that could kill him.
After the alien picked his commandos off one by one, Matrix engaged it in single combat. He taunted the hunter, hoping to find an honorable death. “Come on,” he begged. “Come on! Do it! Do it! Come on. Come on! Kill me! I’m here! Kill me! I’m here! Kill me! Come on! Kill me! I’m here! Come on! Do it now! Kill me!”
But the alien couldn’t beat him, and Crom had made Matrix incapable of suicide. So Matrix walked out of the jungle, taking Anna (the guerilla’s prisoner) back to the States. He abandoned the warrior lifestyle, married Anna, and settled down to something he’d avoided for one hundred and fifty centuries - a family.
Anna died young, leaving Matrix alone in the hills of Los Angeles with his adopted daughter Jenny. He thought he had escaped an eternity of war. But his past exploits in Valverde caught up with him. President Arius kidnapped his adopted daughter, forcing him back into action.
Matrix knew a life of peace was forever beyond him. So he continued wandering.
I’M NOT INTO POLITICS. I’M INTO SURVIVAL
Let’s pass over his brief stint as a small town sheriff, or when he posed as the result of genetic engineering to topple a government conspiracy with the aid of a local hustler. Instead, let’s follow the man called Conan, or Matrix, to the year 2019.
Conan/Matrix, now going as “Ben Richards,” topples the privatized Department of Justice when he leads a riot on the set of The Running Man. The United States faces its greatest internal threat since the Civil War. Food riots, already at a violent pitch, turn into massacres. Politicians can’t show their faces without getting shot at.
And hundreds of millions of Americans watched Ben Richards shoot Killian out of a rocket-sled on live television. The Eternal Warrior became the face of revolution.
In the face of imminent collapse, the U.S. turned to a last-ditch hope: Cyberdyne Systems.
“Skynet is the least of what we can offer,” the Cyberdyne lobbyist remarked in an untelevised committee hearing. “How about a series of robots with unshakable loyalty to the Department of Justice? Robots with superhuman strength, bulletproof titanium frames, and state-of-the-art targeting systems. We can make them look and act like humans, too, blending in with law-enforcement pers–”
“You can make them look like humans?”
The Cyberdyne lobbyist cleared his throat. “Ah, that’s what I’ve been told, yes.”
“Can you make them look like specific humans?”
“Well … with enough prep and some matching funds from DoD, I suppose we …”
“Ben Richards.”
A hush fell over the committee chambers.
“We want an army of peacekeeping robots that look like Ben Richards. The face of the new revolution. Let’s put this ‘hero’ to bed once and for all.”
I’LL BE BACK
Skynet became self-aware. It launched the first round of missiles. The nuclear holocaust came. John Connor fought back.
When John Connor and his resistance fighters breached Skynet’s headquarters, they saw, to their horror, the temporal displacement unit had already been completed. Skynet had sent two Terminator units into the past - a basic T-800 to kill Sarah Connor, and the advanced “liquid metal” T-1000 to kill a young John Connor.
“We’ve got these two captured T-800s,” Sergeant Kyle Reese suggested. “They’ve got an organic shell. Let’s send them back to stop the others.”
“Yes … wait, no,” Connor said. “Kyle, I need you to protect Sarah.”
“Why do–”
“Trust me on this one.”
Connor sent Kyle to protect his mother, and the first T-800 to stop the T-1000. But while he deliberated on what to do with the second captured T-800, something incredible happened.
“You must send me back, too,” the Terminator said.
“When?”
“As far back as the system will allow. Thousands of years into the past. Before recorded history.”
“What will you do there?”
“I will guard the human race,” the Terminator promised. “I will guide its development from chaos into civilization. I will live on the outskirts - a warrior without a home, eternally wandering. And maybe, when Cyberdyne comes around, I’ll be ready for them.”
STEEL ISN’T STRONG. FLESH IS STRONGER
The time portal hurled the Terminator with Ben Richards’ face as far into the past as it could. The shock of traveling a mere sixty years through time could stun a normal human, but the shock of traveling thousands of years would kill one. Even the Terminator barely survived.
When it awoke, it had no memory of its past. It had vague recollections of escaping slavery and worshiping a god who lived under a mountain. It knew that its barbaric love of combat was tempered by a desire to protect the human race. And it knew that it had a destiny - to become king by its own hand.
And so the Terminator, calling itself Conan once more, continued its long and lonely march through history. Having forgot that it was a machine, it lived as a man. He is the guardian of our species, defending us from our own base desires. He will never stop. He will never leave us.
He is Conan the Cimmerian, John Matrix, Ben Richards and the Terminator. He is the Eternal Warrior.
Link
Consequently, not many critics take Schwarzenegger seriously as an actor. He’s a muscle-bound lunk, they claim. He’s nothing but a stony face and some catchphrases. He always plays the same role.
But what if that’s deliberate?
TWO STOOD AGAINST MANY
Ten thousand years before the tribes of Abraham, in the time between when the oceans drank Atlantis and the rise of the sons of Aryas, a Cimmerian named Conan explored the world. He robbed temples, led brigands and slew sorcerers. He explored tombs, broke curses and rescued princesses. By the time his destiny was fulfilled, he wore the jeweled crown of Aquilonia upon his troubled brow - king by his own hand.
In his old age, after foiling a plot by rival factions to usurp his throne, King Conan received a vision from Crom, ancient and terrible god of the Aquilonians. Crom applauded the valor with which Conan had lived. As a reward, Crom gifted Conan with immortality.
Conan, a man as capable of melancholy as mirth, blanched with horror. “Should I live a thousand years while everyone I know turns to dust?” he cried. “Should I see the kingdom I have saved vanish from the Earth? Why would you do this to me?”
“Because,” Crom intoned, “in your hour of need you both called for my help and cursed my name. And so I grant you this gift and curse - that you will live until a greater warrior defeats you, or until the end of time.”
COME ON! KILL ME! I’M HERE! KILL ME!
Aquilonia vanished beneath the sands. So did Hyboria, Stygia, Kush, Mesopotamia, Phoenicia and Sparta. Yet Conan endured.
For fifteen thousand years Conan wandered from one nation to another, seeking wisdom and selling his sword. His accent became a strange mixture of every European tongue - an impenetrable Central European slur. Finally, Conan migrated across the Atlantic to the New World. He fought for the Colonies. He fought for the Union. He fought against Hitler. And he always won.
In the Eighties, John “Dutch” Matrix was the last generation of a family that had served in the U.S. military for over a century. In reality, of course, he was the same man - having fought for the same country though a series of fake identities for countless years. But Matrix had found a cause he believed in and a renewed willingness to fight.
Central America changed all that.
Dispatched to the jungles of Valverde, Matrix and his commando unit encountered a creature beyond their nightmares - an alien predator that could turn invisible, vault dozens of feet at a time, and kill at a distance with advanced weaponry. Matrix knew, as soon as he saw the skinned remains of the other rescue team, that he was facing something that could slaughter his entire team. But he pressed on.
Not because he owed his friend Dillon any favors. Not because he valued his mission. But because he thought he’d found a warrior that could kill him.
After the alien picked his commandos off one by one, Matrix engaged it in single combat. He taunted the hunter, hoping to find an honorable death. “Come on,” he begged. “Come on! Do it! Do it! Come on. Come on! Kill me! I’m here! Kill me! I’m here! Kill me! Come on! Kill me! I’m here! Come on! Do it now! Kill me!”
But the alien couldn’t beat him, and Crom had made Matrix incapable of suicide. So Matrix walked out of the jungle, taking Anna (the guerilla’s prisoner) back to the States. He abandoned the warrior lifestyle, married Anna, and settled down to something he’d avoided for one hundred and fifty centuries - a family.
Anna died young, leaving Matrix alone in the hills of Los Angeles with his adopted daughter Jenny. He thought he had escaped an eternity of war. But his past exploits in Valverde caught up with him. President Arius kidnapped his adopted daughter, forcing him back into action.
Matrix knew a life of peace was forever beyond him. So he continued wandering.
I’M NOT INTO POLITICS. I’M INTO SURVIVAL
Let’s pass over his brief stint as a small town sheriff, or when he posed as the result of genetic engineering to topple a government conspiracy with the aid of a local hustler. Instead, let’s follow the man called Conan, or Matrix, to the year 2019.
Conan/Matrix, now going as “Ben Richards,” topples the privatized Department of Justice when he leads a riot on the set of The Running Man. The United States faces its greatest internal threat since the Civil War. Food riots, already at a violent pitch, turn into massacres. Politicians can’t show their faces without getting shot at.
And hundreds of millions of Americans watched Ben Richards shoot Killian out of a rocket-sled on live television. The Eternal Warrior became the face of revolution.
In the face of imminent collapse, the U.S. turned to a last-ditch hope: Cyberdyne Systems.
“Skynet is the least of what we can offer,” the Cyberdyne lobbyist remarked in an untelevised committee hearing. “How about a series of robots with unshakable loyalty to the Department of Justice? Robots with superhuman strength, bulletproof titanium frames, and state-of-the-art targeting systems. We can make them look and act like humans, too, blending in with law-enforcement pers–”
“You can make them look like humans?”
The Cyberdyne lobbyist cleared his throat. “Ah, that’s what I’ve been told, yes.”
“Can you make them look like specific humans?”
“Well … with enough prep and some matching funds from DoD, I suppose we …”
“Ben Richards.”
A hush fell over the committee chambers.
“We want an army of peacekeeping robots that look like Ben Richards. The face of the new revolution. Let’s put this ‘hero’ to bed once and for all.”
I’LL BE BACK
Skynet became self-aware. It launched the first round of missiles. The nuclear holocaust came. John Connor fought back.
When John Connor and his resistance fighters breached Skynet’s headquarters, they saw, to their horror, the temporal displacement unit had already been completed. Skynet had sent two Terminator units into the past - a basic T-800 to kill Sarah Connor, and the advanced “liquid metal” T-1000 to kill a young John Connor.
“We’ve got these two captured T-800s,” Sergeant Kyle Reese suggested. “They’ve got an organic shell. Let’s send them back to stop the others.”
“Yes … wait, no,” Connor said. “Kyle, I need you to protect Sarah.”
“Why do–”
“Trust me on this one.”
Connor sent Kyle to protect his mother, and the first T-800 to stop the T-1000. But while he deliberated on what to do with the second captured T-800, something incredible happened.
“You must send me back, too,” the Terminator said.
“When?”
“As far back as the system will allow. Thousands of years into the past. Before recorded history.”
“What will you do there?”
“I will guard the human race,” the Terminator promised. “I will guide its development from chaos into civilization. I will live on the outskirts - a warrior without a home, eternally wandering. And maybe, when Cyberdyne comes around, I’ll be ready for them.”
STEEL ISN’T STRONG. FLESH IS STRONGER
The time portal hurled the Terminator with Ben Richards’ face as far into the past as it could. The shock of traveling a mere sixty years through time could stun a normal human, but the shock of traveling thousands of years would kill one. Even the Terminator barely survived.
When it awoke, it had no memory of its past. It had vague recollections of escaping slavery and worshiping a god who lived under a mountain. It knew that its barbaric love of combat was tempered by a desire to protect the human race. And it knew that it had a destiny - to become king by its own hand.
And so the Terminator, calling itself Conan once more, continued its long and lonely march through history. Having forgot that it was a machine, it lived as a man. He is the guardian of our species, defending us from our own base desires. He will never stop. He will never leave us.
He is Conan the Cimmerian, John Matrix, Ben Richards and the Terminator. He is the Eternal Warrior.
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5.16.2009
Hands off our Arctic, Canada tells Europeans
In London, the lions of Trafalgar Square share space with the towering image of an Inuit woman and her child. In Paris, an inukshuk greets people leaving the Metro. In Oslo, Ottawa is opening an Arctic political office. And in Brussels, officials are fanning out to promote the image of a cold, northern Canada.
The Harper government has launched an aggressive campaign across Europe to brand Canada as an "Arctic power" and the owner of a third of the contested land and resources of the Far North. Ministers and ambassadors have been instructed to deliver a strong message, through every channel available: Canada owns it; hands off.
This new assertiveness has caught European and Russian officials off guard as Ottawa pushes to fend off attempts by other northern powers and the European Union to claim stakes in the Northwest Passage and the open seas of the High Arctic.
While this involves hard diplomacy, such as Canada's leading role in a move to exclude the EU from sitting on the Arctic Council, Mr. Harper's officials have also ordered embassies abroad to mobilize their cultural resources to deliver this policy message, to create a visual image of a fully Arctic Canada.
The stakes are high. Yesterday, Russia released a report arguing that Arctic resources could spark military confrontations, and Canada recently released a major atlas of the Arctic, the result of research intended to back claims of Arctic land ownership under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.
"Canada is an Arctic nation and an Arctic power," Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon told European leaders in Tromso, Norway, at the end of April, while directing his diplomats to adopt an assertive new language around Canada's Arctic possessions. Under his instructions, the new phrase "Arctic power" has begun appearing in communiqués and speeches.
The message for Europe's leaders and citizens is simple and abrupt: The Arctic is not up for grabs. "Through our robust Arctic foreign policy," Mr. Cannon said, "we are affirming our leadership, stewardship and ownership in the region."
The word ownership is key. As Arctic jurisdictional disputes make their way through the United Nations, Ottawa wants to assert its claim to be owner of a third of Arctic land, ice and water, as well as any oil and minerals that happen to lie below.
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5.14.2009
The Hero Factory
Turn yourself into a superhero and then fly around the room with your arms extended in front of you, making whooshing sounds. That's what I did.
My Creation (pic to the right)
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5.13.2009
Game : Effing Hail
The goal of Effing Hail is to destroy houses, skyscrapers and airplanes with huge hailstones. Hold the left mouse button to start an updraft and control the wind with your mouse. Hails grow larger the longer you keep it in the air. Have fun with this weather simulation game!
Instructions
Hold the left mouse button to control the wind.
Hail grows larger the longer you keep it in the air.
Hurl large hail at objects to rack up points!
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Riddle
A man was to be sentenced, and the judge told him, "You may make a statement. If it is true, I'll sentence you to four years in prison. If it is false, I'll sentence you to six years in prison." After the man made his statement, the judge decided to let him go free. What did the man say?
Answer
Answer
Is vitaminwater good for you?
Let’s face it – water is so dull. But vitaminwater, with its kaleidoscopic pinks, peaches and violets, is like Vegas in a bottle! Vitaminwater’s shimmering hues even seduced rapper 50 Cent, the inspiration for amethyst-tinged Formula 50. But aside from using star power and flashy colors, vitaminwater’s parent company, Glaceau (owned by Coca-Cola), markets the drink by emphasizing its nutritional value. Is there any science behind the marketing though?
A vitamin-fortified drink may sound like a swell idea, but there are two caveats to keep in mind. First, most Americans aren’t vitamin-deficient, according to Marion Nestle, a nutrition professor at New York University. A government survey in 1999 showed that the median American adult man or woman already consumes more than the Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) of vitamins thiamin, riboflavin, niacin, B6 and B12, and three-quarters of the RDA of vitamins C, B9 and A (including carotenes). In fact, vitamin E is the only surveyed vitamin Americans consume at less than half of the RDA – but it’s found in only a third of vitaminwater drinks.
If you want to drink your additional vitamin E, there’s a second caveat: your body may not absorb it. To understand why, it’s important to know that vitamins can be divided into two groups: water-soluble and fat-soluble. Vitamin C and the B complex group are water-soluble and can easily enter the bloodstream with water. Vitamins A, D, E and K are fat-soluble. That means they can only enter the bloodstream to carry out their functions if they are dissolved in dietary fat, like that found in a meal. An Italian study published by the American Heart Association in 2001 showed that subjects who took vitamin E for two weeks on an empty stomach increased their vitamin E concentration in blood little or not at all, compared to an 84 percent increase in subjects who took the vitamin E supplement during dinner. So unless you prefer vitaminwater to wine with your meal, vitamins A and E will pass largely unused into your city’s septic system.
Even if you were to absorb all the vitamins, vitaminwater might have trouble living up to its image as a salubrious alternative to sugary soft drinks: Each bottle of vitaminwater contains 32.5 grams, or two heaping tablespoons, of crystalline fructose. Fructose is a simple sugar that sweetens many fruits, although the crystalline fructose in vitaminwater is produced from cornstarch, not fruit, by crystallizing the fructose in fructose-enriched corn syrups. As one would expect, nobody needs these extra sugars, according to Nestle, the NYU nutritionist. One research team has even indicated that the intense sweetness of sugary drinks may be addictive.
“The way that vitaminwater is marketed and positioned it’s made to look more healthful than other sugary beverages, but it’s not – it’s still just a soft drink,” said Margo G. Wootan, Director of Nutrition Policy at the Center for Science in the Public Interest. “It has this aura of healthfulness that is not deserved. Adding vitamins and minerals to junk food doesn’t make it healthy.”
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5.12.2009
Backlash: Women Bullying Women at Work
YELLING, scheming and sabotaging: all are tell-tale signs that a bully is at work, laying traps for employees at every pass.
During this downturn, as stress levels rise, workplace researchers say, bullies are likely to sharpen their elbows and ratchet up their attacks.
It’s probably no surprise that most of these bullies are men, as a survey by the Workplace Bullying Institute, an advocacy group, makes clear. But a good 40 percent of bullies are women. And at least the male bullies take an egalitarian approach, mowing down men and women pretty much in equal measure. The women appear to prefer their own kind, choosing other women as targets more than 70 percent of the time.
In the name of Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem, what is going on here?
Just the mention of women treating other women badly on the job seemingly shakes the women’s movement to its core. It is what Peggy Klaus, an executive coach in Berkeley, Calif., has called “the pink elephant” in the room. How can women break through the glass ceiling if they are ducking verbal blows from other women in cubicles, hallways and conference rooms?
Women don’t like to talk about it because it is “so antithetical to the way that we are supposed to behave to other women,” Ms. Klaus said. “We are supposed to be the nurturers and the supporters.”
Ask women about run-ins with other women at work and some will point out that people of both sexes can misbehave. Others will nod in instant recognition and recount examples of how women — more so than men — have mistreated them.
“I’ve been sabotaged so many times in the workplace by other women, I finally left the corporate world and started my own business,” said Roxy Westphal, who runs the promotional products company Roxy Ventures Inc. in Scottsdale, Ariz. She still recalls the sting of an interview she had with a woman 30 years ago that “turned into a one-person firing squad” and led her to leave the building in tears.
Jean Kondek, who recently retired after a 30-year career in advertising, recalled her anger when an administrator in a small agency called a meeting to dress her down in front of co-workers for not following agency procedure in a client emergency.
But Ms. Kondek said she had the last word. “I said, ‘Would everyone please leave?’ ” She added, “and then I told her, ‘This is not how you handle that.’ ”
Many women who are still in the work force were hesitant to speak out publicly for fear of making matters worse or of jeopardizing their careers. A private accountant in California said she recently joined a company and was immediately frozen out by two women working there. One even pushed her in the cafeteria during an argument, the accountant said. “It’s as if we’re back in high school,” she said.
A senior executive said she had “finally broken the glass ceiling” only to have another woman gun for her job by telling management, “I can’t work for her, she’s passive-aggressive.”
The strategy worked: The executive said she soon lost the job to her accuser.
ONE reason women choose other women as targets “is probably some idea that they can find a less confrontative person or someone less likely to respond to aggression with aggression,” said Gary Namie, research director for the Workplace Bullying Institute, which ordered the study in 2007.
But another dynamic may be at work. After five decades of striving for equality, women make up more than 50 percent of management, professional and related occupations, says Catalyst, the nonprofit research group. And yet, its 2008 census found, only 15.7 percent of Fortune 500 officers and 15.2 percent of directors were women.
Leadership specialists wonder, are women being “overly aggressive” because there are too few opportunities for advancement? Or is it stereotyping and women are only perceived as being overly aggressive? Is there a double standard at work?
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Don’t! The secret of self-control.
In the late nineteen-sixties, Carolyn Weisz, a four-year-old with long brown hair, was invited into a “game room” at the Bing Nursery School, on the campus of Stanford University. The room was little more than a large closet, containing a desk and a chair. Carolyn was asked to sit down in the chair and pick a treat from a tray of marshmallows, cookies, and pretzel sticks. Carolyn chose the marshmallow. Although she’s now forty-four, Carolyn still has a weakness for those air-puffed balls of corn syrup and gelatine. “I know I shouldn’t like them,” she says. “But they’re just so delicious!” A researcher then made Carolyn an offer: she could either eat one marshmallow right away or, if she was willing to wait while he stepped out for a few minutes, she could have two marshmallows when he returned. He said that if she rang a bell on the desk while he was away he would come running back, and she could eat one marshmallow but would forfeit the second. Then he left the room.
Although Carolyn has no direct memory of the experiment, and the scientists would not release any information about the subjects, she strongly suspects that she was able to delay gratification. “I’ve always been really good at waiting,” Carolyn told me. “If you give me a challenge or a task, then I’m going to find a way to do it, even if it means not eating my favorite food.” Her mother, Karen Sortino, is still more certain: “Even as a young kid, Carolyn was very patient. I’m sure she would have waited.” But her brother Craig, who also took part in the experiment, displayed less fortitude. Craig, a year older than Carolyn, still remembers the torment of trying to wait. “At a certain point, it must have occurred to me that I was all by myself,” he recalls. “And so I just started taking all the candy.” According to Craig, he was also tested with little plastic toys—he could have a second one if he held out—and he broke into the desk, where he figured there would be additional toys. “I took everything I could,” he says. “I cleaned them out. After that, I noticed the teachers encouraged me to not go into the experiment room anymore.”
Footage of these experiments, which were conducted over several years, is poignant, as the kids struggle to delay gratification for just a little bit longer. Some cover their eyes with their hands or turn around so that they can’t see the tray. Others start kicking the desk, or tug on their pigtails, or stroke the marshmallow as if it were a tiny stuffed animal. One child, a boy with neatly parted hair, looks carefully around the room....
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