Per a CBC article, Justin Trudeau made a media comment about the Boston Marathon bombings, to the effect that we need to look for and address the root causes of such violence ( Read more... )

I got yet another phone-spam message left on my answering machine today from Bob Chiarelli ( Read more... )

Without context: When one is doing all that one can, and more than one ought, it is infuriating to be accused of wilfully doing too little.

I cried because the doctors mistakenly cut off my feet, until I met a woman who'd had the doctors mistakenly amputate her legs ( Read more... )

Doofes.  Rhymes with "roofies" and "Goofy's".

We had the 8 a.m.-to-noon "morning window" with Sympatico.  This required me to set my alarm for 8 a.m., which is much earlier than I tend to wake up these days.  (Yeah, I know, whine whine.  Regardless, I'm sleep-deprived and on lots of medication.)  The Sympatico doofes arrived at 8:35, which was quite ( Read more... )

For the past week, the house has been without internet service, and largely without phone service.

It started when we tried to have the phone service switched from Bell to Rogers, leaving behind the internet service.  I don't want to switch the internet stuff yet because I have my personal webspace hosted by Sympatico (Rogers doesn't offer that at ( Read more... )

Earlier, I was musing over the debacle of the live streaming of the Hugo Awards ceremony - the service provider, ustream, cut off the webcast part way through Neil Gaiman's acceptance speech for alleged "copyright violations", apparently because their automated systems for trapping copyright violations were triggered by the video clips provided by ( Read more... )

I was trying to remember why, in my last post, the Immigration Minister's idea seemed so familiar.  It just came to me:
"Back during World War I, they called it 'Loyalty Days,' and they made all the people of German extraction stand up in the middle of the town where everybody could see 'em.  Made 'em all stand up and say the Pledge of Allegiance ( Read more... )

The government is placing a ban on face coverings such as niqabs for people swearing their oath of citizenship, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney said Monday.

Oddly, they will not be checking to see if anyone at the ceremony is just mouthing the words, or has their fingers crossed.

1. A member of a couple of social groups sends out a message to all the other members, inviting them to a social gathering. [Hmm, I'll have to see if I can get to that.]


2. One of the other members sends a curmudgeonly reply to all, warning that "crowding several people in a small area is unhealthy.  Regulations are in place limiting the number of people ( Read more... )