It's Flarking Great!

I imagine going something like this:

Harper: *stare*

Putin: *STARE*

Harper: *stare*

Putin: *STARE*

Harper: *stare*

Putin: *STARE* I like your shirt.

Harper: *stare* Look behind you its your daughter high-fiving Gorbachev.

Putin: *STARE* No. See, I will take you for a drive. You can take two things with you, your clothes and your passport. We will drive to nice mountain, where I will talk to you for fifteen minutes. It will be good discussion. Then I take around to back of the car and we drive again. We will keep driving until we get to red forest. I will let you wander forest for six hours until you find proper tree and then we drive more. We drive until I take you to factory. You will work in the factory with me until you make a sweater vest. You will not talk to me while we do this. Then you will wear sweater vest. Then I take you home.

Harper: *cries*

In the last two days a lot has happened that has opened a Pandora’s box of problems. Whether it is RIM replacing its CEOs, Rick Santorum declaring that rape-babies are a gift, and that Canada has its own version of SOPA in the works. But remember everyone at the bottom of Pandora’s Box is always hope. For instance, if we think hard enough, Santorum may spontaneously combust.

Research in Motion Replaces Moronic CEOs with a Boring CTO

It’s too early to entirely dismiss RIM, but its hit upon hard times. RIM should have realized to pick up the damn pace when their phones became looked upon as the way parents cop out of giving their teenage son or daughter an actual smartphone. Nope. RIM is no long at the top of the business world. They went from nearly 50% market saturation to 9%. This isn’t helped by the fact that their anticipated ‘big break’, the Playbook, was hampered by ludicrous software design decisions that changed it from an actual iPad competitor to a sad mistake. Not to mention the management flaws are so severe that an engineer wrote an open letter to the higher-ups saying that there are a ton of problems that could be solved by their CEO not being CEO.

With this in mind, it should be no surprise that RIM’s CEO Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie* have stepped down and replaced by Thorsten Heins. Heins isn’t a bad guy and doesn’t seem to have a poor track record. The problem is he doesn’t have a good track record either. They got a software guy to replace two other software people. As of yet, he’s remarkably average captain trying to convince the Titanic from hitting the iceberg.

And then RIM released this interview. He is boring. I’m sorry, I couldn’t watch that entire thing because he is the one the least engaging things on Youtube. There are nyancat videos more interesting that that interview. And as if to prove my point further he looks like German Steven Harper, albeit more reminiscent of a human being.

I have hope for the company. I actually like the Playbook. But, unless Heins does something drastic, he is too moderate a man for an extreme situation.

*People mistakenly believe they are two people, when in fact, due to an accident at the University of Waterloo, it is one mind spread over two malformed bodies

Rick Santorum Is The Republican Nominee Most Likely Going to Hell

Santorum is going to hell. I mean, most of the Republican nominees are obvious sinners. Romney ruins the livelihoods of thousands of Americans. Gingrich abandons those who love him consistently when they need support for things like cancer and MS. Rick Perry is an idiot who can barely form a coherant sentence and therefore only attracted a crowd through paganistic magic. But sorry, Santorum beat the odds and wins the race for which of these men are going to face the devil. And that’s all the hope we get.

Why? Aside from being so far right that he wishes to uniformly ban abortions, he uh.. Well it’s probably best to hear it from the demon’s mouth:

…the right approach is to accept this horribly created — in the sense of rape — but nevertheless a gift in a very broken way…

But, nevertheless, we have to make the best out of a bad situation.

-Rick Santorum

Yep. He wins. He’s anti-gay, anti-abortion and apparently telling raped women to just go ahead and make the best of a bad situation. Spend nine months with that disgust-infested rape seed in your body that you had no choice in creating, and try to love it. Try not to think of the child as a living memory that you were violated, and look upon it as a gift that you now have a financial burden for which you may not have a means to support. Thanks for the advice Santorum.

The Internet Killed SOPA in the US, But Not in Canada

Bill C-11, our potential DMCA, has magically gained clauses that replicate SOPA’s effects of blocking access to websites that infringe on copyright. While some may suspect that it may have spread because the Prime Minister’s mouth is so firmly routed to America’s ass, SOPA, like herpes, is transmitted by close contact of wet orifices. However, it was actually the music industry, making it more akin to a zombie bite.

The big problem is that, unlike the DMCA in the US, Canada doesn’t have a fair-use clause in this bill. Should this bill pass, Canadians would have very few ways of legitimizing use of content without an expensive license. This absence makes content use even harder to defend than it would in the United States.

This isn’t anything new though. ACTA appeared in Canadian parliament after the US proposed it. Plus, the record companies have an established pattern of coming to Canada and attacking piracy. For instance, they are suing Canada based ISOhunt, a torrent aggregation site.

On the other hand, Geist points out there is an actual upside to this. SOPA is venom to a politicians reputation right now in Canada or the US. When it comes up for discussion later this month, the conservatives may decide against those specific clauses because it could ruin or at the very least bring unwanted attention to Steven Harper’s regime.

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So, it’s not a great start to the week. Personally, I’m just really disappointed that the HARPER VS. PUTIN FINAL BOUT turned out to be not real. But that’s a pandora’s box too! Because while there is all the sadness that Harper will not have his legs broken by a man who considers Formula One racing a casual thing to do on Fridays, I have hope that it will instead be replaced by a strategic staring contest. Winner gets to keep their eyeballs.

karmic-retributi0n asked: It was part of Lenin's 'New Economic Policy'. He didn't really have the time to implement it fully however.

Thanks for pointing that out. I have a bit of egg on my face, but I deserve it. I’ve never taken the time to read about the NEP, and I should have. Regardless, I still want my Hitler with money cigar.

In Canada, there’s one thing that we all know deep down, but often fail to realize. We have great cities. We have great big beautiful sprawling cities filled with more life than we give them credit for. Our cities have such a reputation that three of our five major cities Toronto, Ottawa and Vancouver (sorry Atlantic Canada) are in the top 20 most liveable cities in the World. Vancouver, of all places, ranks fifth beating New York City, London, Tokyo. If I can use these scores as a direct quantification, living in Vancouver is somehow eight times better than living in the centre of beauty and culture in Spain, Barcelona, which ranks 40th.

Vancouver is also the 76th in terms of economic ranking. This gap between economic and livability, especially in Canada, isn’t that surprising. We have less people than the United States. Canada isn’t growing as fast as China. It doesn’t have the manufacturing foundation that Germany does.

But I want to show you a graph.

Do you see Hamilton there, all the way at the bottom-right? I’m frankly shocked it even made it on the list if Toronto, the city that has our stock exchange, is 79th. Hamilton, which while not great, is probably the closest thing Ontario has to a bustling city outside of the GTA and it barely exists on that graph. I can’t even tell what it’s making, it’s so small. It’s probably not making 0 billions, because Hamilton reeks of enough rot and smoke that it must be creating some money.

And yet, Canada is by no means alone in this.

So, while Canada may not be doing gangbusters, Hamilton still managed to beat most major American cities, including San Francisco and Los Angeles. Every major Canadian city is ranked higher than these two. Canada may not be the best cities economically, but in the end, it definitely balances out between liveability and economy.

In hindsight, this is actually its own special kind of horror, as comparing yourself to the US is now like comparing your grades to the special needs child who sits at the back of the class. Whether we like it or not, the United States is Canada’s biggest trade partner. If they go down, so do we.

I think it’s about time we start checking out if China, Brazil and Mexico are interested in buying some maple syrup. They can have mine, I actually prefer honey.