Stuff and Nonsense

The Beaver, a Canadian history magazine, is changing it’s name. As of the April 1, 2010 issue, the new name will be “Canada’s History.”

Granted, “The Beaver” is not the world’s most creative or colorful magazine name, but it sure as hell beats “Canada’s History” on both counts. Is there a more pedestrian title on the face of this planet than “Canada’s History?” I don’t think so. Some may equal it for banality, but none can exceed it.

So, why are they changing the name? According to the press release, “the name change signals a clear direction for the future of the magazine.” Ho hum.

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On December 30, when the Canadian media were busy getting ready to celebrate New Year’s and they were also tied up reporting on some Canadians going after a hockey championship—nothing is more important in Canada than hockey—our Prime Minister prorogued parliament until March. If you’re not familiar with the word prorogue, I’m not sure of it’s origin, but I think it’s from the Latin for “when the going get’s tough, the tough shut the frigging place down and hide in a hole.”

A few Canadians were upset about our government running roughshod over our democratic institutions. And they said so. After a group of about 170 professors from across Canada put their names to a letter condemning the prorogation, Tony Clement, the federal Minister of Industry, said that the only people who cared about the government proroguing parliament were the elites and the “chattering classes.”

I find it ironic that a member of the federal cabinet—whose salary from his government job is $230,000, and who, as a member of cabinet, shares with his 38 cabinet colleagues executive powers over the affairs of state that no other Canadians have—would belittle other people for being members of the elite. But never mind that.

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I’ve never been overly political.

And I’ve never posted someone else’s video here. (Or mine for that matter, but that’s not surprising seeng as though I’ve never made one.) I don’t know who is responsible for this video. Whoever it is, thank you.

And I usually try to be funny here. Once in a while I’m even successful at that. Somewhat. Well, maybe a little. But this definitely isn’t funny. It’s serious.

However, I thought this was worth posting for the few Canadians who drop by here.

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Did you hear about this? I recently read a news item about a study published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease concerning the effect of cell phone radiation on Alzheimer’s disease.

Researchers had been expecting that cell phone radiation would increase the negative effects of dementia. Before some smartass tells me that “negative” is redundant when attached to the words “effects of dementia,” I need to say that there are some things that I’m looking forward to forgetting. Never mind what they are. I want to forget them.

Considering the scare mongering that arises from time to time based on questionable research about alleged correlations between cell phone use and brain tumors, it’s not surprising that the researchers would start with the hypothesis that there would be a negative effect.

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As an unintended follow-on to my last post, I’ve come up with a way to end suicide bombings.

How can we achieve this goal? Ask yourself the following question: Why do suicide bombers blow themselves and others up? We’re told that it is to gain the reward of 72 black-eyed virgins in heaven. Before you ask, I have no I idea why they want virgins. I don’t imagine sexually transmitted diseases are much of a problem in heaven, so why not go for women with experience; women who know some really hot moves?

That would be my choice, but maybe that’s just me.

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I was visiting friends in the Boston area between Christmas Day and New Year’s Day, inclusive. During that time, I didn’t do much writing.

The big story while I was gone was that someone tried to blow up his testicles while sitting on a plane. Of course, he wasn’t shooting for only his balls. He also wanted to blow up his penis, his internal organs, his torso, his limbs, his face, his head and all of his other body parts that I forgot to mention.

Nor did he want to stop there. He was also hoping to destroy the seat he was sitting on, as well the in-flight magazine and safety card in the seat-pocket in front of him. And, oh yes, he also wanted to obliterate the airplane and the almost 300 passengers and crew onboard.

Fortunately, he failed. This just goes to show that the world vastly underrates incompetence.

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I don’t know what brought this to mind (my brain is a weird and wonder-deficient place), but I recall reading a while back that scientists think that it will eventually be possible to recreate the extinct woolly mammoth, which began dying out about 10,000 years ago and went extinct about 3,700 years ago.¹

The theory goes that, because they have found frozen samples containing complete strands of woolly mammoth DNA and because DNA provides the full recipe for building an individual of that species, it should be possible to clone a new woolly mammoth from the available DNA.

I know next to nothing about cloning, so I may be way off-base on this, but, notwithstanding the film Jurassic Park, I doubt the same would be true for a species such as the dinosaurs that went extinct about 65-million years before the woolly mammoth. The reason being is that, as I understand it, we have no complete, undamaged DNA strands from those Jurassic-era beasts.

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Two or three weeks after his name first started making headlines for reasons other than golf, the newspaper I subscribe to is still dedicating a fair bit of ink to Tiger Woods’ off-the-course problems. Newsflash: I don’t care.

To be perfectly honest, I don’t really know much about what he was alleged to have done. I know there was talk about some sort of car accident and about him having done something that might have displeased his wife. The reason I don’t know more about it is, whenever I see an article with “Tiger Woods” in the headline, I skip the article. Why? Did I mention that I don’t care?

If you live in at least a moderately densely populated area, there’s an excellent probability that someone living within a few blocks of you did something much more morally reprehensible than whatever it is that Tiger Woods was supposed to have done. Why the hell do you care any more strongly about what Tiger Woods did or did not do than you care about someone living within a few blocks of you who did the same thing or worse?

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