kimmy

Uh, you did get that this was "mockery," right, Norm?You're a BC resident, aren't you Norm? I could understand somebody from other parts of the country not being realizing the absurdity of Day boasting that his constituents in the towering hills surrounding Penticton and Kelowna could soon live on lakefront property, but I would expect better from a BC resident. I could see a thread title like "Stockwell Day scoffs at global warming" or "Day makes corny joke", but "Day touts benefits of global warming" seems like an attempt at trolling. -k

Good question. Who do you work for PolyNewbie? Who is paying you to post on this forum?And why are they doing it? There you have it. It looks like he works for some foreign country called the We should start assessing the Platos Republic to determine what sort of threat they pose. Do they have WMDs? Do they have oil? If they have oil, we could have our agents cook up some sort of WMD scare, and make some fake videos of their "leader" saying scary things. We could have a full-scale invasion of Platos underway by January. I will start forging some memos right away. -k

No, no, no. Don't go changing the subject. You always do this... if somebody presses you to explain how the 2nd law of thermodynamics has anything remotely to do with buildings, you start waving your hands in the air about NORAD and stand-down orders, and then two weeks later you're back to thermodynamics. I don't want to hear about WTC7 right now, I want to hear you address the questions I actually posed. If I let you change the subject now, you're going to be back here in 2 weeks saying "any retard can see that it's not Osama in that video". If you can't explain why the Truthies keep showing people that doctored image, then why don't you find me an *unaltered* image from that video that you think makes the same point. -k

This GameSpy review says the game kind of sucks... lousy gameplay, weak game mechanics, poor graphics and art design. Of the "controversial" aspects of the game, the review says "the hysteria is seriously overblown": ... The game is apparently based on a series of books. The thing I find most interesting is that the forces of the Antichrist are apparently modelled after the United Nations. I hope Kofi Annann's feelings haven't been too badly hurt. As Remiel points out, people are now using the medium of video games to spread the message. The US Army, the intifada, and even al Qaeda are in the video game business, perhaps hoping to spread their views or attract new members. -k

Small housekeeping question... when we already have "America Disgraced... by Bush" and "Monumental Stupidity... Impeach Bush" ...is a new thread for "The high cost of an illegal war... Bush regime waste" really merit a new thread? It seems to me that all three topics could have easily gone into the same thread. Perhaps a "Bush Sucks" thread could be stickied onto the top of the first page so that all of these topics could be put there without creating all of this clutter. -k

I think this is "here say" rather than proof. If 911 was an inside job then the CIA could have easily made this up. You're proposing that the CIA has performed attacks all over the globe for a decade, going back to the Clinton regime, to set this up, and continue to do so, in order to maintain this illusion. And that aside from that, that they created fictional intelligence reports to ignore, so that they'd look like idiots and be accused of failing to protect their own citizens. Does it add up? Not really. Show us the real picture then so we can see the doctoring. Do you thing they digitally modified his nose too? I'm not going to go through the video frame by frame to find the image that "Osama E" is based on. Why would I, when I've already shown you a whole page of stills from the same video, posted on a Truthie website, that prove that there are significant differences between "Osama E" and the real content of the video? The background Osama was speaking in front of was a light beige color, not the coffee color seen in "Osama E". The other images from the video also show that the lighting conditions in that room do not create the prominent highlights and shadows seen in the "Osama E" image. The modifications done to the "Osama E" image are not apparent in the other images taken from the video, so no: I don't think anybody forced CNN to broadcast "Osama E". I don't think "Osama E" was ever broadcast. I think that someone has taken a screen capture from the video, used photo-editting software to alter it, and are now using the altered image to support their viewpoint. The obvious JPEG artifacts seen in "Osama E" are proof that the image has been created with image-editting software, so the question is, how much in the image has been changed? The obvious fact that image-editting software has been used means that "Osama E" is contaminated evidence. If that image were presented as evidence at a trial, it would be thrown out of court. The Truthies ask why "Osama E" doesn't look like the other Osamas. The real question is, why doesn't "Osama E" look like any of the images taken from *the* *same* *video*. Get back to me when you've got an explanation for why the "Truthies" are out there promoting a *fake* picture as "proof". -k

I assume this is a calculated attempt to make westerners, and Jews in particular, as angry as people in the Muslim world got over the Mohammed cartoons. His dream would be for outraged Jews to be burning Iranian flags and hucking stuff in mosques all over Europe and North America. Then he could say "See? They mock us for responding with righteous fury when our Prophet is desecrated, but when their own sacred cows are gored, they respond the exact same way." Except, it's not going to happen. Maybe this will be a master-stroke of propaganda in his own homeland and around the Middle East, I don't know. But in the western world, it's just another black mark that will further tarnish peoples' views of the Muslim nations. -k

I can only anticipate that when the other shoe drops, it's going to have something to do with international politics rather than two guys fighting on the street.("Ok, option C wins this poll in a landslide. So why do people feel that using suicide bombers against military targets is unjustified?") -k

Nash won the award last year, didn't he? He'd be deserving again this year. I also think Justin Morneau, the Canadian who won the American League MVP award, deserves consideration. Both have a Rick Mercer factor going for them... we accept a Canadian winning the MVP in hockey as ordinary, but winning in baseball or basketball, that's beating the *Americans* at *their* game, and probably affects our perception of it. I don't think either Morneau or Nash got screwed, though. 5 Olympic medals speaks for itself. The one that bothered me was a number of years ago when Jacques Villeneuve won over Larry Walker. -k

If Q charges at P brandishing a big stick, P shouldn't be required to defend himself using a stick in response. P should be entitled to use whatever means are necessary to ensure his safety, whether that means a stick, a handgun, or a cruise missile. In initiating an assault, it seems to me that Q has waived any right to a "fair fight". P's right to personal security ought to win out. However, if P's actions far exceed what is necessary to nullify the threat, then he's committing a crime. If P''s defence against Q's attack leaves Q rolling on the floor bawling in pain, Q is not a threat anymore, and further violence by P would be unnecessary and probably criminal. -k

I find it believable because of Al Qaeda's previous statements and actions, and their subsequent statements and actions. Is this another thing where you trot out that picture taken from the tape where Osama looks like a fat African guy, "Osama E" in the montage on this website? I'm skeptical. Why is it that the picture the Truthies always brandish about is always the same picture? Why is it always full of JPEG artifacts? The JPEG artifacts alone show that the photo has been digitally manipulated to some degree. To what degree? Well, to assess that, I looked at still images taken from the same video that I found posted on another Truthie website. The first thing that becomes apparent is that the image the Truthies like so much, "Osama E", has been DARKENED. Compare the background from "Osama E" to other frames taken from the same video. The lighting seems different: the contrast between light and dark has been altered. In the Truthie picture, bright areas have been brightened and dark areas are darker than in the actual video. Either they had some problems with their lighting early in the video that they fixed by the end of the tape, or else somebody fucked with the contrast using image-editing software. Funny, in other images from the same video, doesn't look like a fat black man at all. In images that haven't been darkened, he looks like his old self. The blurring from the JPEG artifacts, combined with the darkening of the image and fucking with the contrast, distort the image. Maybe the Truthies didn't darken that image themselves. Maybe the dodgy video equipment, or dodgy lighting caused that portion of the tape to be darker. Or, maybe somebody deliberately fucked with the image to try and make the point that they want to make. Either way, the image that the Truthies say "any retard can see isn't Bin Laden" isn't representative of the content of the video. (I find the analysis of the translation, which suggests that liberties were taken to make the tape seem more damning than it actually is, to raise much more interesting questions than the suggestion that they put a fake beard on some fat black guy.) And that's not the only video where he talks about the attack either. In one of them he mocks Bush for reading the story about the butting goat to the schoolkids while "our planes" were butting against your towers. To discount Al Qaeda involvement, you have to believe that all of the tapes are fake. And here's the thing... even if it was true that the videos were all fakes, and Osama actually got killed in the first month of fighting in Afghanistan, it doesn't actually prove what you claim it does. It just indicates that the US Government has attempted to use deception to maintain public support for their "security agenda". Which is something we already knew. -k

If people were sheep as you suggest (heck, if sheep were sheep), we wouldn't be here today. Some of your ancestors lived at the time of the Roman Empire and they must have done something right because you are the living proof. It might be sometimes wise to do what everyone else is doing but not always. Thinking of evolution, I have never agreed with the "I'm surrounded by idiots" school of philosophy. The ancient Romans (and the sheep, for that matter) apparently did their part, which more or less consisted of reproducing, and providing food, water, warmth, and security for their offspring. I don't see how that relates much to the current topic, though. Neither the Romans nor the sheep had practical means of influencing the traits of their children. They kind of had to wait to find out whether Li'l Augustus was going to grow up to be tall or short, fat or thin, smart or dumb as a rock. And the only practical means our ancestors could have had of deciding the gender of their child would be to wait to see what pops out of the oven, kill it if it wasn't to your liking, and start over. (killing a newborn that you've invested so much effort in bringing into the world seems unlikely even for the most primitive of peoples, and from a practical standpoint: if you're in a society where the odds of any given child reaching childbearing age and reproducing are rather slim, then killing a child at birth because you wanted the other gender is just bad math. Even today there are some cultures where people give birth to as many children as they can, just to try and improve the odds of having a child survive to adulthood.) You suggest the fact that we've made it this far is proof that as a species we're not *that* dumb. And you might be right. But we're not really all that smart either. We could look at any number of great technologies that aren't as great when they achieve widespread availability. We could look at incredibly useful things like automobiles and firearms and explosives and drugs, all of which have been of undeniable importance to mankind in general, yet all of which also kill people in stratospheric numbers every year, because there's a portion of our species that's too stupid to be responsible for the consequences of these technologies. Suppose that genetic technology was widely available some hundred years ago, or so. And suppose that some individual, with the purest, most noble intentions, had set out for Africa with the goal of curing Sickle-Cell Anemia for all time, and within a generation it was wiped out of the human gene-pool completely. Great idea, right? But how many tens of millions of people would have died of malaria because of it? By messing around with genetics without realizing that the genes that cause sickle-cell anemia also confer exceptional resistance to malaria, our well-intentioned explorer has unwittingly created a holocaust of epic proportions... and the kicker is that we'd probably never have even known why malaria started taking so many more lives in those populations each year. In a big picture sense, one can conclude that probably there's an evolutionary reason that we have a 50/50 gender balance. If some other gender balance gave historically better odds of survival or propagation, then that's what we'd see instead of the roughly 50/50 balance at birth. We evolved this way for some practical reason. But you're the guy who is always pointing out that people don't think "big picture" when they're making decisions in their daily life. They make decisions based on what's practical, economical, and suitable to their personal taste. And if picking the gender of one's child was as easy as picking the brand of toothpaste you buy, I have no doubt that a great many people would apply about the same level of thought to that choice. "Baby boys are, like, totally hawt this year!" They want their daughters to get pregnant *after* they've found and married suitable mates, and after graduating high-school at the very least. If you doubt that parents dread the idea of their unmarried teenaged daughters becoming pregnant, I suspect you're probably not actually acquainted with any parents of unmarried teenaged daughters. And yet you seem to be in favor of the mass-market commercialization of technology that aims to do just that? -k

Really, Norm. By "most Liberal MPs," do you mean "somewhere less than half of them"? Because if not, then the vote should have been defeated easily. I agree with what Jean Poutine wrote. I am very disappointed that support for the mission in Afghanistan has fallen, and I am appreciative of those Liberal members who did vote to affirm our commitment to it. I predick dat de Jean Poutine will become de mos' poopoolaire member of de message board! -k {I wonder if he has monogrammed golf balls? }

You have no idea what you're talking about. You have confused Arar with the Khadr family. -k

One time, a prospective employer asked if they could see my transcripts. And I gave them some photocopies instead of sealed originals. And the guy was like "hey, how can I be sure these haven't been altered?" and I was like "come on. If I was going to make fake transcripts, I'd have given myself way better grades." Or one time some reporter once asked Tori Spelling if she had fake breasts, and her reply was "With my money, if I wanted a boob-job, I would have got something a lot nicer than these." That comedy article you posted last week by Mike Habibi or whatever his name was makes the point quite well. Well, if Don Henley, Barbara Streisand, and David Lynch say it's an inside job, it must be. Because, like, actors and singers are experts on virtually everything. I don't trust Don Henley because his music sucks. David Lynch is not credible because his movies are incoherent messes. It's totally fake because it only lasted about an hour and 40 minutes. If the Neverending Story was real, it wouldn't have ended so quickly. -k

pshaw. Larouche was only in prison because The Establishment was afraid of him. -k

Indeed. While they're obviously very fond of the Old Testament and some of Paul's epistles, it seems almost as though they forgot to read the parts that star Jesus. It seems to me that a big portion of the message Jesus gave was through examples like when he challenges an angry crowd to "let he who is without sin cast the first stone". Jesus said that the second greatest of the commandments was "love thy neighbor", right? Judge not lest ye be judged... hate the sin but love the sinner... ...if you forgive those who trespass, your own trespasses will be forgiven? And, of course, "Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do." Seems as though the Westboro posse skipped over those parts. They've taken the "Christ" out of "Christianity". -k

To show up at the funeral of innocent victims of violence and celebrate their death is utterly vile. That it might be legal doesn't make it any less despicable. Sooner or later, something not legal is going to befall these people, and no jury is going to convict anyone for doing it. -k

Oh, come now. Criminals? There's 30 years of ongoing precident that seems to indicate it's not criminal at all. -k

Oh no... not again. I can't bear to watch... please, somebody, stop the carnage! -k

No need to worry! I've grown up with an absurdly healthy sense of self-worth! (or, as mom once put it, I have "an air of arrogance that's not particularly deserved." ) Indeed, there is an old saying, "If you have a boy, you only have to worry about 1 prick. If you have a girl, you have to worry about all the rest". Perhaps many parents don't wish for the extra stress of raising a girl. However, I think most parents would be extremely disappointed if nobody else did either. That occured to me too. Some cultures dealt with a shortage of males after wartime by allowing polygamy; this one seems to create a gender imbalance that's just waiting for a war to thin out the excess males a little. -k

Did Michael Moore get this idea from the gay protesters at the CPC convention in Montreal? Or did the gay protesters in Montreal get this idea from Michael Moore? Anyway, I usually hate Michael Moore, but in this case, good for him. This "Pastor" Fred Phelps and his followers are vermin. They protest at the funerals of murdered gays with anti-gay signs, they protest at the funerals of soldiers, and planned to attend the funeral of the slain Amish schoolchildren with signs saying that the children deserved to die. If you watch this harpy spewing her crap and don't feel the urge to punch her right in the throat, there's something wrong with you. At some point, these shit-bags are going to show up at the wrong event carrying the wrong signs, and are going to get curb-stomped into a chunky red paste... and nobody's going to feel very sorry for them when it finally happens. -k

"If Canada is divisible, then Quebec is divisible." ...and if Quebec is divisible in the course of negotiating a separation, rest assured that Alberta is too. Carving the northeast corner of Alberta (where a considerable percentage of the population is transplanted residents of other parts of Canada anyway) and keeping it in Canada would undoubtably put a considerable damper on the enthusiasm for Alberta separatism. -k

That's probably why CBC Radio 3 is popular with the download crowd. They put it on their Ipods.Canadians are still a little slow when it comes to Sat radio, MPs and the like. People are listening to CBC programs when they want, where they want and how they want now. Maybe I'm just old fashioned, but if I can't receive it on a radio, I don't consider it a "radio station". And I'd rather jab my eardrums out with a knitting-needle than listen to 8 hours of Toronto hip-hop anyway. What could possibly be worse than that? Maybe 8 hours of little kids dropping pots and pans down the stairs, or 8 hours of babies crying, or 8 hours of Jean Chretien speeches, or 8 hours of fingernails on blackboards. That's about all I can think of. Yeah, I bet there's tons of great Muslim Christmas carols they could play. When they eat their Muslim Christmas dinner... http://www.express.co.uk/news_detail.html?sku=732 Hey, Normie, why don't you take a Festive Halal Chicken and blow it out your ass? After they get done making Christmas inclusive, I've got this great idea for an Oktoberfest that will be inclusive of Muslims, because apple-juice will be the only drink on the menu. I also think Shrove Tuesday could be made Jewish-friendly by serving blintzes and bagels instead of pancakes. And why would Muslims even *care* about celebrating Christmas? Why would it matter to them, any more than (for instance) Rosh Hashanah would matter to me? An acquaintence went to Saudi Arabia for work one December, and when he arrived the customs agent inspected his personal belongings. He confiscated Christmas cards, some wrapped gifts, and a neck-tie with a snowflake motif. The cards and tie were destroyed on the spot; the gifts were reluctantly returned (after the wrapping paper was torn off and destroyed.) He protested that none of the cards or the wrapping paper or the necktie contained any Christian symbols, just snow men, snowflakes, poinsettas, and so on. He was told that didn't matter. "Deese look like Christmas. No Christmas allowed." So I suspect that our English friends may have been mislead as to the actual extent that Muslims enjoy celebrating Christmas. Halal Christmas can kiss my pasty white kafir ass. -k

One difference is that characteristics such as physical prowess, attractiveness, intelligence, and resemblance to daddy are quite subjective. (every parent is convinced that little Jimmy is a budding star athlete, a budding Dr Banting, a young Brad Pitt, and a "real chip off the old block".) Gender, on the other hand, is not subjective. Another difference is that while society will carry on much as it always has whether people choose their partners with the idea of having taller or smarter offspring. Messing with the balance of males to females, on the other hand, has broader implications for a society. Not just in a macro sense of affecting future population growth rates and so-on, but also in a micro sense, as in imagine sending your little chip off the ol' block to school, and there's only 2 girls in his class of 25. Basically, people are sheep, they're very susceptible to trends, and I dread the idea of choosing your baby's gender becoming as easy as choosing your next hairstyle. If you've seen a class of school-kids where there's 6 boys named Ryan and 5 girls named Ashleigh, you get the idea. Suppose parents were as susceptible to trends in choosing their kids' gender as in choosing their kids' names, and suppose the same trends hold up for several consecutive years. What happens then? Little August Jr might not be able to find a single girl within 5 years of his own age. School dances are going to start looking kind of ... gay. I think the most popular stereotypes suggest that men are more motivated by physical factors while women are motivated by social status when selecting a mate. The stereotype is that a woman had better be physically attractive, while any toad can find a wife... provided he's a rich toad. It's sometimes suggested that physical attraction in humans is not that different from physical attraction in the animal kingdom. We seek out ...birds with the brightest plumage... the ram with the biggest horns... the elk with a big rack... that sort of thing. Nature provides all sorts of subtle hints as to what sort of traits your prospective mate's offspring might have, whether we're talking about people or parrots... but none at all when it comes to gender. Chuck and T-bag have already addressed this to some extent (that having a son will carry on the family name, and that having a son ensures there'll be a breadwinner who'll look after us when we're old) but I will also add that I think there's a perception that raising a daughter is more difficult and more worrying. I'm sure the #1 parental worry is that their child is going to be hurt, and I suspect the #2 parental worry is that their child is going to get pregnant. Boys are probably seen as less likely to fall victim to violence or sexual molestation, and boys are highly resistant to pregnancy. The Times of India article mentioned 5 million aborted female fetuses per year due to gender testing. To put some perspective on that, India has a population of about 1.08 billion and a live birth rate of 22 per 1000. That equates to 49 million live births per year. (also, 5 million female fetuses aborted after gender tests, and a 1:1 ratio of male fetuses to female fetuses, suggests that at least 10 million, 20% (!) of pregnant Indian couples elected to have this done.) Assuming a 1:1 male:female ratio at conception, and factoring in the missing 5 million female fetuses, that's 27 million male babies and 22 million female babies. The roughly 1:1 ratio changes to about 1:0.8 ...and the article confirms that in some regions of India, the ratio of males to females is indeed less than 800 females per 1000 males. The "balance willed by God" doesn't have to go back to 1:1. It can return there within a generation, but it can just as easily remain where it's at, as long as these guys keep rolling around selling ultrasounds and abortions. It can drop even lower if the technology becomes more ubiquitous and more affordable. Now that the technology is available, and apparently as many as 20% of pregnant Indians are using it, "God" doesn't have as much say in things anymore. Suppose that instead of a 600 rupee ultrasound, somebody invents a disposable fetal gender test (similar to the "pee on a stick" pregnancy test) and sells it along with a tablet of RU-486 in a little kit that costs 20 rupees for a pack of 10. *Now* how much control does "God" have over the ratio of boys to girls? If we're going to compare human mating and propagation to the life-cycle of aging consumer electronics, I'd put it slightly different. They've adopted VHS, but are doing their darndest to make VHS cassettes difficult or impossible to acquire. A whole generation of Indian video enthusiasts is going to be critically short of cassettes.Of course, people who worry about overpopulation and widespread famine and human suffering in poverty-stricken regions of the world wouldn't see any problem at all. Somebody worried about overpopulation would be trying to figure out that "pee on a stick" fetal gender test, packaging it with RU-486 tabs, sending it to southeast Asia, and trying to figure out how to get sub-Saharan Africa interested as well. I'm sure you recognize that just because women might become valuable commodities in these societies, it doesn't follow that women's status will improve. In Mumbai, maybe you have to pay somebody 50,000 rupees to take your daughter off your hands, and maybe in Riyadh you can sell your daughter for mad lootz like she was a primo racing camel or something. Either way, womens' status in these places isn't very high. I suspect that if you look at frontier societies where male settlers went and females didn't come until later... you would probably find things like prostitution and mail-order brides being extremely lucrative enterprises. Women becoming scarce might just serve the function of making them more profitable commodities for economic exploitation. Perhaps I take this whole premise a little personally. I was an unwanted child, something mom has never been shy of reminding me of. Maybe that's what pushes my buttons about this. The idea of a whole culture where *every* girl is an unwanted child disgusts me. The idea of a for-profit industry *promoting* the idea that daughters are undesirable disgusts me. "Spend 600 rupees now and save 50,000 rupees later" makes me sick. And part of me thinks that maybe the best thing that could happen would be if somebody did develop that kit with a pee-on-a-stick fetal gender test and a tab of RU-486, and send them over by the billions, to let these people do what comes naturally and find out in a decade or two what a gigantic mistake they've made. -k