Category: In the News

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In the News The Current Situation

Adios, Pendejo!

Alberto GonzalesIt’s nice to start the working week with some good news: the world’s most sleazy amnesiac, U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has resigned. Says the A-G, who’s stepping down on September 17th:

I have lived the American dream. Even my worst days as Attorney General have been better than my father’s best days.

How would he know? He can’t remember a damned thing.

Not Up on Your Spanish Profanities?

Here’s the definition of pendejo (pronounced “pen-DEH-hoh”).

Alberto Gonzales: Some Videos

Here’s a CNN piece on Gonzales’ inability to remember key details at his hearings:


Can’t see the video? Click here.

Here’s Gonzales stating that the U.S. Constitution doesn’t guarantee habeas corpus as a right:


Can’t see the video? Click here.

Here’s Jon Stewart on Bill Moyers’ show. He hits the nail on the head when he says that Gonzales, based on his testimony, is “either a perjurer or a low-functioning pinhead”:


Can’t see the video? Click here.

And finally, a telenovela from The Daily Show, Mommy, Why is the Lying Man Still in Charge of the Law?:


Can’t see the video? Click here.

Categories
In the News

R.I.P. Blinky, the Two-Headed Calf (Who Looks Just Like the Tucows Logo)

(This article was cross-posted to Global Nerdy.)

Boing Boing points to the story of Blinky, the two-headed calf, who was euthanized yesterday.

My co-workers at Tucows and I couldn’t help but notice that Blinky bore a rather uncanny resemblance to our corporate logo:

Blinky the two-headed calf, side-by-side with the Tucows logo

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In the News Toronto (a.k.a. Accordion City)

Alex is Missing, Part 2

Alexandra FlanaganHere’s the latest news item I could find on the case of Alexandra Flanagan, who’s been missing for over a month, courtesy of the Barrie Examiner:

Friends and family members of missing Barrie woman Alexandra Flanagan are leaving no stone unturned in their search to find their loved one. Most recently, they set up a booth at Kempenfest to get the word out to a mass audience about the fact she has still not been found.

“Still no activity with her bank accounts,” said long-time friend Darlene Pestill, who helped staff the booth over the weekend. “We’ve been organizing search efforts almost every day. We won’t stop our efforts until we find her.”

Pestill said many people stopped by the booth to ask questions about Flanagan, take an information flyer, or offer their support.

“One good thing is that some people who didn’t know about the fact she is missing, now do. Being here at Kempenfest has helped to get the word out even more,” she said.

Flanagan has been missing a month. She was last spoken to on July 7, and has had no contact with friends or family since.

Wendy Flanagan, the mother of the missing girl, said no solid tips came in at Kempenfest, despite the well-meaning efforts.

“We just want to find out one way or the other. I’m really at a total loss as to what has happened to her. We’ve got posters all over the place – somebody has to have seen her,” she said. “People need to know she has never done this before; it is totally out of character.”

She added that although it has been reported in the news that there were sightings of Flanagan in Toronto, none of the leads have yet panned out and she isn’t confident that the people who called in actually saw her daughter.

“Nobody who knows her personally has seen or heard from her. Absolutely nobody,” she said. “I’m no further ahead about where she is than I was a month ago when she first went missing.”

Police are continuing their investigation into the case.

For more details about what is known about Alex’s disappearance, see:

Categories
funny In the News

Homer Simpson X-Ray Used in Medical Article in Chinese News

(This article was cross-posted to Global Nerdy.)

Take a look at this article from China View, the English-language site run by China’s official Xinhua News Agency and pay particular attention to the accompanying photo:

Small screenshot of China View article featuring Homer Simpson’s head x-ray
Click the screenshot to see it at full size.

What’s happening here? I’ll let Computerworld explain:

The article, which appeared on China’s official Xinhua News Agency’s English news site on Monday, displays text about a new genetic discovery relating to MS, attributed to “agencies.” Alongside is an x-ray rendering of the diminutive brain of the cartoon character Homer Simpson, attributed as a “file photo.”

This isn’t the first time Chinese media has fallen prey to satire presented to an English-language audience. In 2002, the Beijing Evening News (Beijing Wan Bao) picked up an article from humor site The Onion, stating that the U.S. Congress had threatened to move out of the Capitol building in Washington, D.C., unless the building were upgraded to include a retractable dome. The newspaper also ran a drawing The Onion had published of the fictional new roof design.

Both online and print media in China routinely use photos downloaded or scanned from other sources without proper attribution or copyright permission.

I can understand how it’s possible that someone at China View might not known enough North American cultural folderol under their belt to recognize Homer Simpson, but wouldn’t whoever incuded the x-ray image have thought that it looked a little odd? I suppose it’s possible that he or she thought it was a diagram in the style of Asian electronics instruction manuals, which are full of cartoony characters.

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In the News Toronto (a.k.a. Accordion City) Work

The “Ghetto Dude” Email Gaffe

Evon Reid
Evon Reid, who was called the “Ghetto Dude” in a mis-forwarded email from the Ontario government. Photo taken from his Facebook page.

Gun pointed at one’s own footIt’s insult added to injury: not only did poor Evon Reid find out that he wasn’t accepted for a job by way of an accidental email forwarding, he was referred to in the email as a “ghetto dude”.

“This is the ghetto dude that I spoke to before,” said the email written by Aileen Siu, who works in the Ontario government cabinet office as an acting team leader in cabinet office hiring, which was meant to be forwarded to a job-search colleague.

There’s a mish-mash of issues brought up by this gaffe, including:

  • Race: Reid is black, but there’s some question as to whether or not Siu knew that. In the Toronto Star article, Reid did indicate that the office spoke to his mother, who has a Jamaican accent. Siu pointed out that she’s Asian and implied that she understands racial discrimination. Of course, not being white doesn’t give you immunity from being a racist, in spite of what the loonier elements from the left will tell you. Kudos to Reid for handling this issue well: in a follow-up article in the Star, he said “”This isn’t a Confederate flag in a pickup truck. But it’s the kind of private view that affects decisions about someone like myself in the job market.”
  • Class: I’ve seen the term “ghetto” used as an adjective by people from all races and all walks of life to refer to something that’s cheap, crass or tacky: “He shortchanged us when the bill came around! That’s so ghetto!” Reid’s from Malvern, a part of the large east-end Accordion City suburb called Scarborough (which often gets tagged with derisive names such as “Scarberia“, “Scarlem”, or the one that made me laugh out loud the first time I heard it, “Scompton”). Malvern has a rep, and Reid pointed this out when he said that it’s got one of the highest levels of youth unemployment in Canada.
  • Qualifications: Reid’s credentials, from what was written in the Star article, are pretty good for someone who’s not quite out of university yet. They include a summer course in international management strategies at the University of Hong Kong, some solid projects in his courses, a good resume and a glowing letter from a former employer. It’s a crying shame that he wants to work for the government.
  • Using office email wisely: First, there’s the obvious issue of double-checking the list of people in the “to:” and “cc:” fields of your email — we’ve all heard stories about people who’ve forwarded mail to the wrong people. But less obvious is the fact we live in the post Sarbanes-Oxley age, which means that every last little email you send using your employer’s email system is logged somewhere. The bottom line is that you should write email on the company email system as if someone at a law firm will be going over it with a fine-toothed comb someday.
  • Multi-tasking: Siu said that she was multi-tasking when she made the mistake. Let this be a lesson to those of you who still think you’re being productive when you multi-task.

Related Reading

Categories
funny In the News

One Lapdance Per Child

[Cross-posted to my technical blog, Global Nerdy]

OLPC with screen that reads “IM IN MY DEVELOPIN CNTRY WATCHIN UR PRON”

Sometimes I write a blog entry just for the sake of getting a funny title out there. This is one of those times, thanks to this report: Nigerian pupils browse porn on donated laptops.

(With apologies to the fine people at the One Laptop Per Child project)

Categories
In the News

On Blogs and the Monkey Knife Fight

On Blogs

Logo for “The Globe and Mail”This blog got mentioned in a list accompanying an article in today’s Globe and Mail titled It’s not the blogs I hate, it’s their fans. In the article, Ivor Tossell talks about blogging’s image problems on its (contested) tenth anniversary, summing it up with:

People want the same thing from blogs that they want from every other print outlet: a good read. There are plenty that provide, and the sooner that blogging triumphalism is history, the sooner “blog” will stop being an unfairly loaded word. As someone wiser than me once said, it’s not the band I hate. It’s their fans.

As for Ivor’s summary of this blog, it’s:

A nice guy, an interesting life, a good writer: exactly what a first-person blog should be. Engaging and sometimes touching, but never overwrought.

Thanks for the mention, Ivor! (I’m sure I’ve been overwrought on this blog at least once, though.)

On the Monkey Knife Fight (a.k.a. Blog Comments)

Superfriends and Space Ghost characters betting on a monkey knife fight between Gleek and Blip.

In one of those coincidences that happen more often than we like to think, the comments for the aforementioned article have thus far are related to another current story about blogging. As I write this, there are two comments made in response to that article:

(Somebody better tell Brad that sometimes people quote things that come from even farther back in time. For instance, consider the saying “An eye for eye, a tooth for a tooth” saying? That’s, like, at least 200 times older than Sloan’s Coax Me.)

These sorts of comments are one reason why a number of people don’t allow comments in their blogs — some people don’t want to deal with the aggravation. In a short piece about what makes a blog a blog, Dave Winer says that it’s the fact that it’s your unedited voice and not the use of comments (which he says detract from your voice), and Joel Spolsky has written an article in which he agrees.

(I agree with the bit about a blog being your voice, but not Dave’s contention that the voice should necessarily be unedited. Having met — and dated — people incapable of doing so, I can assure you that self-editing is a virtue whose value has been severely underestimated. While the lack of that inner editor makes for some entertaining stories, self-editing and self-restraint are graces that people could stand to practice a little more.)

Before I got into blogging, I had been a street musician for a couple of years, and before that, a DJ at a campus pub for five. Handling unruly commenters is child’s play compared to the sort of people-managing I had to do with those other two hobbies. Often, the bravado that a detractor will show from the safety of his or her keyboard — especially one who does so anonymously — evaporates in a face-to-face encounter.

Hence there are comments on this blog. I handle commenters in a manner similar to what Lisa Williams calls “The Living Room Doctrine”: if I’ll allow it in my living room, I’ll allow it in the comments section of my blog. The system’s worked quite well for almost six years, and so I’ll keep it running that way.