A GG with no heart

People
Our very own Governor General Michaelle Jean ate a slice of the heart of a newly slaughtered seal during a visit to Rankin Inlet, Nunavut. This proves two things to me: 1) Michaelle Jean is an insensitive bitch and 2) We don't need this idiot pulling a stunt in the name of her support for Inuit seal hunters. You can probably guess that I don't support the seal hunt and think this occupation should have disappeared with lamplighters and draymen. Does anyone really need to buy a coat made from the skins of dead seals with all the advancements in synthetic fur? And does the Queen's representative need to support such a draconian tradition by eating the heart of an innocent animal? Disgusting to say the least. May I suggest…
Read More

The future of Internet technology

Internet
Have you tried WolframAlpha yet? No? You're not alone but I'm guessing that will change in the near future. WorlframAlpha is a new type of online tool being developed by the Wolfram Research Company in Champaign, Illinois. It's not a search engine but a computational knowledge engine: it generates output by doing computations from its own internal knowledge base, instead of searching the web and returning links. Sounds pretty nerdy, huh? But think of the implications. Here's how Wolfram Research explains it: Wolfram|Alpha's long-term goal is to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable and accessible to everyone. We aim to collect and curate all objective data; implement every known model, method, and algorithm; and make it possible to compute whatever can be computed about anything. Our goal is to build…
Read More

TV Wars

Business
Shaw Communications Inc. is running a series of print, tv and online notices bemoaning the fact that Global TV, CTV and CBC are demanding fees to carry their broadcasts and asking for the public's support. The broadcasters have been turned down twice by the CRTC and are taking another kick at the can in the hopes of extracting an additional 6 bucks per month from cable subscribers for their marginal programming. To be honest, I watch very little local content and am content with the high quality programming on HBO Canada and a few of the specialty channels. Shaw Communications and Rogers Communications evenly divided the cable television pie years ago, one controlling cable in western Canada and the other in eastern Canada (I still can't believe that was actually…
Read More

Real Radio

Music
Let's face it...most radio sucks. From the endless loop of classic rock, the predictable offerings of dance and pop stations to the repetitive blips of news and talk radio, terrestrial stations in the Greater Vancouver area are less than stellar. So what does any thinking adult listen to? Answer: Internet Radio. My music system is completely digital (I no longer own or purchase CD's and sold my complete collection of 1300+ discs two years ago) and I have the option of listening to radio stations from practically anywhere on the planet. This is good and bad as the list is endless and finding good stations can be challenging. I subscribe to RadioIO which offers a vast selection of genre specific stations to suit most tastes but I was looking for…
Read More