Canada v. USA Hockey

A pick-up game on Granville Street a few days ago between a bunch of Canadian and American guys.

Maybe they should make this an Olympic sport…

Matt Taibi on the Bank Bailouts

Excerpt from this morning’s Imus show featuring Matt Taibi discussing his latest article in Rolling Stone “Wall Street’s Bailout Hustle” which can be read here (it’s the cached version — RS’s site seems to be experiencing problems as of the time of this posting).

Good idea framing the banks’ schemes in terms of familiar con games.

The Airport Exercise

An hypnotic musical “sketch” by crafty guitarist Steve Ball that incorporates elements of ambient synth-pop abstracts from Robert Fripp and Tony Levin, amongst others.

The vocal track comes from the eccentric British philosopher J.G. Bennett. The ending where it’s said (not in his own voice, I don’t believe) that “it is possible to suffer without achieving the aim” seems to be a perverse twist on his more familiar axiom: “it is impossible to achieve the aim without suffering.”

Young Conservatives

Rising future “superstars” of the conservative movement strutting their stuff at the 2010 CPAC Convention.

Be afraid… be very afraid. We thought the worst of the worst had been realized in the wake of the “Reagan revolution” and the vulgar assortment of evangelical nutters that opportunistically surfed to political dominance over the last few decades, but the fanatical right-wing ideologues and cranky zealots now waiting in the wings and being teed-up for the next-gen leadership of this fascistic movement are even more frightening than their predecessors.

Augmented Reality Maps

Blaise Aguera y Arcas, the architect of Bing Maps at Microsoft, demonstrates the latest augmented-reality “Photosynth” enhanced mapping technology.

One can almost visualize the head of Alex Jones exploding…

Bill Hicks: Last Words

A tribute to Bill Hicks: “I left in love, in laughter, and in truth and wherever truth, love and laughter abide, I am there in spirit…”

Olympic Fundraising

Awkward moments backstage at the making of a Conservative fundraising video attempting to leverage the Olympic event for partisan political benefit, featuring the morbidly corpulent senatorial douchebag from PEI and former host of CTV’s Mike Duffy Live program and Nancy Greene, the former Olympian turned wealthy real estate developer and another Harper-appointed political hack in the Upper Chamber.

Iceman Chronicles: Part 1

Veterinarian/coroner Russell Coldpalm and his cop buddies unearth the horrible truth their parents tried to bury in this dark new comedy that chronicles the serial murders in a small town. Kind of like Twin Peaks — but with more murder!

From “My Damn Channel” with new episodes every Thursday.

An Army of Dicks

Former Texas congressman turned right-wing activist, lobbyist and now through his “FreedomWorks” organization, major funder of the insurgent Tea Party movement, Dick Armey whips up a crowd of disenfranchised rubes at CPAC with an antagonistic speech railing against President Obama.

To all of these people that vehemently resent so-called “big government” I have a simple proposal: immediately stop utilizing any and all government programs.

Quit driving on our public highways and roads for starters. Turn off your municipal water supply and drill your own well to obtain water. Turn off all the power to your house because that likely comes from a crown corporation or has financial linkages to the nefarious government. Cease and desist from using the Internet, because that was developed by the government. Oh, and stop watching TV because we own the airwaves and simply lease them to private broadcasters. If you need medical treatment, go to a private clinic or fly to the USA (although that might be difficult as the airports themselves are run by quasi-private agencies). If your home is broken into, call Brinks or some private security firm to come to the rescue. Likewise, if your house catches on fire or better yet, grab a hose and put it out yourself. Oh wait… you can’t do that because the water is supplied by the government.

I’m being facetious, of course, but you get the idea. Hey, I’m not a fan of “big government” or bureaucracy either, but the fact of the matter is that despite all of its flaws, it provides the infrastructure that enables our quality of life to exist. Simply calling for an end to government “interference” is ridiculous unless such demands are backed up with solid, comprehensive and practical proposals for alternative methods of public service delivery.

As for the nub of Armey’s grievance about “income redistribution” — well, what’s so wrong with that? In countries such as the USA, Canada and the UK where the economic divide between the rich and the poor is now so abject as to be completely ludicrous and the “middle-class” is rapidly becoming an endangered species, is it really such an abhorrent idea to “spread the wealth”? And think about that for a bit… substitute the expression “spread the wealth” for “income redistribution” and see if the arguments maintain the same validity.

Fox News Trashes the Olympics

An excerpt from today’s “Highs and Lows” segment on the Fox News show Political Grapevine that featured absolutely no “highs” whatsoever and an extensive litany of “lows” about the 2010 Vancouver Olympics — how typically “fair and balanced”…

But then the NYT’s take on the event hasn’t been much better. Imagine instead of a bit of unseasonable weather and some technical glitches if we’d had a terrorist bombing.