Judge for yourself . . .

SUITE101.COM is an interesting site that covers a whole range of human endeavours. Their history section has a fascinating article by Rupert Taylor, "Matthew Begbie: British Columbia's "Hanging Judge"". It's a look at Begbie's time as the first judge of the new colony of British Columbia. These were tough times, in the new colony.

At the age of 39, and unmarried, Begbie arrived in Victoria in November 1858. It was a rough and tumble place with the Fraser River Gold Rush drawing thousands of prospectors and hangers-on.

• • • •

And, biographer Sydney G. Pettit describes him as, “Fearless and incorruptible, he made his name a terror to evil-doers who, rather than face his stern and impartial justice in the Queen’s court, abstained from violence or fled the country, never to return.”

• • • •

He told one ill-fated wretch standing in the prisoner’s box and seeking the right to appeal his sentence, “It will take six months or more for the colonial secretary to deal with the matter and months more before we learn of his decision. But you will not be interested in what he decides, for you are to be hanged Monday morning.”

Another convicted murderer complained he had not received a fair trial, to which Judge Begbie responded “I shall send up your case for a new trial - by your Maker.”

Rube would've loved this . . .

LOVE A GOOD RUBE GOLDBERG, and there's this creative bunch, OK GO, who have an incredible RG set-up, "This Too Shall Pass". Worth the watch. Love the TV and the piano, myself.

Perspectives . . .

Monica Joshi, 22, kills some time before her graveyard shift at a Gurgaon call center.

MOTHER JONES has a great article by Andrew Marantz, "My Summer at an Indian Call Center".

Lessons learned: Americans are hotheads, Australians are drunks—and never say where you're calling from.

• • •

Every month, thousands of Indians leave their Himalayan tribes and coastal fishing towns to seek work in business process outsourcing, which includes customer service, sales, and anything else foreign corporations hire Indians to do. The competition is fierce. No one keeps a reliable count, but each year there are possibly millions of applicants vying for BPO positions. A good many of them are bright recent college grads, but their knowledge of econometrics and Soviet history won't help them in interviews. Instead, they pore over flashcards and accent tapes, intoning the shibboleths of English pronunciation—"wherever" and "pleasure" and "socialization"—that recruiters use to distinguish the employable candidates from those still suffering from MTI, or "mother tongue influence."

In the end, most of the applicants will fail and return home deeper in debt. The lucky ones will secure Spartan lodgings and spend their nights (thanks to time differences) in air-conditioned white-collar sweatshops.Every month, thousands of Indians leave their Himalayan tribes and coastal fishing towns to seek work in business process outsourcing, which includes customer service, sales, and anything else foreign corporations hire Indians to do. The competition is fierce. No one keeps a reliable count, but each year there are possibly millions of applicants vying for BPO positions. A good many of them are bright recent college grads, but their knowledge of econometrics and Soviet history won't help them in interviews. Instead, they pore over flashcards and accent tapes, intoning the shibboleths of English pronunciation—"wherever" and "pleasure" and "socialization"—that recruiters use to distinguish the employable candidates from those still suffering from MTI, or "mother tongue influence."

PSA Dep't.

Dear World,

Please stop freaking out about 2012. Our calendar ends there because some Spanish dirtbags invaded our country and we got a little busy, OK?

Sincerely,

The Mayans

Silicon Valley . . .

EVERYBODY KNOWS SILICON VALLEY, it's the heart of our solid-state digital world, where all of our goodies originate. A lot of people have no idea of its origins.

Well, there's a video on YouTube that is worthy of your attention.

In this lecture, renowned serial entrepreneur Steve Blank presents how the roots of Silicon Valley sprang not from the later development of the silicon semiconductor but instead from the earlier technology duel over the skies of Germany and secret efforts around (and over) the Soviet Union. World War II, the Cold War and one Stanford professor set the stage for the creation and explosive growth of entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley. The world was forever changed when the Defense Department, CIA and the National Security Agency acted like today's venture capitalists funding this first wave of entrepreneurship. Steve Blank shows how these groundbreaking early advances lead up to the high-octane, venture capital fueled Silicon Valley we know today.

Perspective . . .

You may have seen this, but it's worth another look.

A thoughtful Canadian . . .

KAI NAGATA QUIT HIS JOB. He was CTV’s Quebec City Bureau Chief, based at the National Assembly, mostly covering politics. In many ways, a dream job in Canadian news broadcasting, especially for his age.

I quit my job because the idea burrowed into my mind that, on the long list of things I could be doing, television news is not the best use of my short life. The ends no longer justified the means.

Kai goes on to outline his discontent. He has interesting observations:

TV news is a curious medium. You don’t always know whose interests are being served – or ignored.
• • • •
Consider Fox News. What the Murdoch model demonstrated was that facts and truth could be replaced by ideology, with viewership and revenue going up. Simply put, you can tell less truth and make more money.
• • • •
People like low-nutrition TV, too. And that shapes the internal, self-regulated editorial culture of news.
• • • •
I admit felt a profound discomfort working in an industry that so casually sexualizes its workforce. Every hiring decision is scrutinized using a skewed, unspoken ratio of talent to attractiveness, where attractiveness often compensates for a glaring lack of other qualifications.

Worth the read. H/T to Bruce and Scanner, parts of the ad hoc civilian intelligence network, so to speak.

An oldie . . .

BUT GOODIE. Oh my, yes. From Dan in Algiers, this stunning gem of how to march a conversation, as some telemarketer's mind implodes.

Is it the water?

ALEX MIGHT HAVE A POINT: “Your people, sir, is nothing but a great beast”. Looking at the latest from People of Wal-Mart, Hamilton was probably being considerate.

Self-portrait . . .

ISN'T SHE MARVELOUS? More at the Daily Mail, with explanation. Her expression reminds me of Wallace and Gromit, somehow. Anyway, check out the full-size pictures.

Blue Balls . . .

NATURAL NEWS is a site devoted to health and nutrition. They have a very interesting report on blueberries: "Blueberries faked in cereals, muffins, bagels and other food products". Apparently all those "blueberries" found in cereals and muffin mixes are artificial confections.

Where did the blueberries go?

They certainly didn't end up in Total Blueberry Pomegranate Cereal. This cereal, made by General Mills, contains neither blueberries nor pomegranates. They're nowhere to be found. But the cereal is made with red #40, blue #2 and other artificial colors. And it's even sweetened with sucralose, a chemical sweetener. And that's in addition to the sugar, corn syrup and brown sugar syrup that's already on the label.

Demographic distortion . . .

FOREIGN POLICY is an interesting site, with an interesting article by Mara Hvistendahl, "Where Have All the Girls Gone?". You may be aware of the problem, but there are something like 160 million women MISSING from the population in Asia.

How did more than 160 million women go missing from Asia? The simple answer is sex selection -- typically, an ultrasound scan followed by an abortion if the fetus turns out to be female -- but beyond that, the reasons for a gap half the size of the U.S. population are not widely understood. And when I started researching a book on the topic, I didn't understand them myself.

Now, observers have been assuming that the cause of this is the patriarchal societies predisposition for male heirs. Well, it seems that there are other influences.

I thought I would focus on how gender discrimination has persisted as countries develop. The reasons couples gave for wanting boys varies: Sons stayed in the family and took care of their parents in old age, or they performed ancestor and funeral rites important in some cultures. Or it was that daughters were a burden, made expensive by skyrocketing dowries.

But that didn't account for why sex selection was spreading across cultural and religious lines. Once found only in East and South Asia, imbalanced sex ratios at birth have recently reached countries as varied as Vietnam, Albania, and Azerbaijan. The problem has fanned out across these countries, moreover, at a time when women are driving many developing economies. In India, where women have achieved political firsts still not reached in the United States, sex selection has become so intense that by 2020 an estimated 15 to 20 percent of men in northwest India will lack female counterparts. I could only explain that epidemic as the cruel sum of technological advances and lingering sexism. I did not think the story of sex selection's spread would lead, in part, to the United States.

From the cornfield . . .

A classic. Makes me think of Stevie . . .

Fireworks . . .

WIRED has a great piece on DIY fireworks. It seems that there are those who find commercial fireworks dull and banal, and some have resorted to making their own.

Essentially all public shows will use mass-produced factory fireworks, mostly from China; competition and regulation have largely snuffed out U.S. makers. These fireworks are cheap and abundant, great for post-barbecue reverie but unsatisfying to discerning eyes.

“In municipal displays you’ll see quantity over quality,” said Niesen, a member of Northern Lighter Pyrotechnics. “For something really spectacular, the public should come to the conventions of fireworks clubs.”

Fireworks clubs? Somehow, I don't think there are very many Canadian hobbyists. With the extreme firearms paranoia of urban Canadians, I bet the purchase of all the firework fixin's is prohibited.

Anyway, check out how BIG some of those fireworks are! AWESOME!

Questions for the Boat People . . .

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS IS UNIMPRESSED. And he has some hard questions for these well meaning mariners. To read all about them, click on the link.

The tale of the Gaza "flotilla" seems set to become a regular summer feature, bobbing along happily on the inside pages with an occasional update. A nice sidebar for reporters covering the Greek debt crisis: a built-in mild tension of "will they, won't they?"; a cast of not very colorful characters but one we almost begin to feel we know personally. Such cheery and breezy slogans—"the audacity of hope" and "free Gaza"—and such an easy storyline that it practically writes itself. Since Israel adopts a posture that almost guarantees a reaction of some sort in the not-too-distant future, and since there was such a frisson of violence the last time the little fleet set sail, there's no reason for it not to become a regular seasonal favorite.

It seems safe and fair to say that the flotilla and its leadership work in reasonably close harmony with Hamas, which constitutes the Palestinian wing of the Muslim Brotherhood. The political leadership of this organization is headquartered mainly in Gaza itself. But its military coordination is run out of Damascus, where the regime of Bashar Assad is currently at war with increasingly large sections of the long-oppressed Syrian population. Refugee camps, some with urgent humanitarian requirements, are making their appearance on the border between Syria and Turkey (the government of the latter being somewhat sympathetic to the purposes of the flotilla). In these circumstances, isn't it legitimate to strike up a conversation with the "activists" and ask them where they come out on the uprising against hereditary Baathism in Syria?

Only a few weeks ago, the Hamas regime in Gaza became the only governing authority in the world—by my count—to express outrage and sympathy at the death of Osama Bin Laden. As the wavelets lap in the Greek harbors, and the sunshine beats down, doesn't any journalist want to know whether the "activists" have discussed this element in their partners' world outlook? Does Alice Walker seriously have no comment?

Hamas is listed by various governments and international organizations as a terrorist group. I don't mind conceding that that particular word has been used in arbitrary ways in the past. But what concerns me much more is the official programmatic adoption, by Hamas, of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. This disgusting fabrication is a key foundational document of 20th-century racism and totalitarianism, indelibly linked to the Hitler regime in theory and practice. It seems extraordinary to me that any "activist" claiming allegiance to human rights could cooperate at any level with the propagation of such evil material. But I have never seen any of them invited to comment on this matter, either.

Of course, Hamas and Hezbollah have a vested interest in things as they are. Look at all those men with their RPG's and AK-47's, strutting around and being macho — beats working for a living, don't it? After all, the 800 pound gorilla in the room is the fact that the Arab world just doesn't have what it takes to off Israel. They tried in 1948, 1967, 1973; they've tried German rocket scientists and Pakistani/North Korean atomic scientists, without result.

Then again, a lot of "progressives" aren't known for depth of analysis or historical perspective. The silence of all the Left on the horror show of Bashar Assaad and the Syrian oppression is disgusting, but par for the course.

"The Freedom Ride of this era"

Toronto Star reporter Jim Rankin is filing live reports from Greece onboard the Canadian boat Tahrir carrying 19 Canadians, two of whom have been arrested and held without charges. The Tahrir is taking on water, having been slammed into a cement wall while being detained by Greek authorities.

So, other than Jim Rankin, are any other Canadian media interested in the Canadian boat in the Freedom Flotilla currently being illegally detained by Greece? Or are we going to have to get all our news of it from The Jerusalem Post and  The Guardian :

"Spiros Spirou, the provincial official in charge of the Ionian islands, told the Guardian that he "admires and supports the activists' struggle" and said he would make no attempt to stop the ship if it left harbour. "Greece loves peace, but at this moment it can't confront more powerful economic forces," claimed Spirou, adding that official attempts to tie the flotilla up in bureaucracy and paperwork were merely a pretext to preventing it from sailing at all."

h/t Antonia Z.  #flotilla2

Fixed : Link to The Star's Jim Rankin

Pictures of the past . . .

Today's Inspiration is an interesting blog devoted to illustrators. Some of 'em are Canadian, eh. But check 'em all out, glorious work.

After Franklin Arbuckle, Rex Woods was probably Maclean's magazine's most prolific cover artist during the 50's. Some have called Woods "the Norman Rockwell of Canada".

The Big Lie Dep't.

TRUTHOUT has a great article by Dr. Cynthia Boaz, "14 Propaganda Techniques Fox "News" Uses to Brainwash Americans" that is worthy of your attention. Here's the first five:

1. Panic Mongering
2. Character Assassination/Ad Hominem
3. Projection/Flipping
4. Rewriting History
5. Scapegoating/Othering

Click on the link for the rest, and explanations.

Competence . . .

THE BOSTON HERALD has a mind-boggling report. Apparently, the municipal workers at Veteran’s Memorial Pool at Lafayette Park in Fall River aren't the sharpest tools in the drawer. You see, poor Marie Joseph (above) went into the pool, and didn't come out — for over two days. YIKES!

Later that night, city officials said a young couple who jumped the pool’s 7-foot fence for an illicit, after-hours dip discovered the body of 36-year-old Marie Joseph.

The gruesome discovery has touched off a “top-to-bottom review” by the Department of Conservation and Recreation of all 24 state-run pools that were closed Wednesday, but Gov. Deval Patrick said he hopes to reopen them by the Fourth of July.

Considering it's about swimming pools, maybe they might want to make that "bottom-to-top".

enough with the uniform fetish already

"Wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross" indeed.
Didn't thousands of brave Canadians die in World War Two just so we could avoid exactly this kind of creeping militarism and fascist-style soldier worship? It really is just a matter of time before Stephen Harper appears in a fancy uniform with lots of gold braid and a big sash, isn't it?
Watch for the big parade of military vehicles and the air force flyover on Parliament Hill next year.
Mandatory pledges of allegiance in school and participation in "young pioneers" youth programs are probably not far behind.
Oh, and on a slightly different theme, Bill Blair can once again bite me. The media should not apologize to the police for publishing the tragic story of Constable Styles and his last words to the police dispatcher, at least not until Bill Blair and far too many of his officers go around and personally apologize to the thousand or so people they arrested or otherwise brutalized for no good reason during the G20.

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