Loki and the Fuzz

The great content aggragation

So nothing is actually new anymore, we just reap and sow each others content on the internet all day long, so this comes from Wil Wheaton's Blog and is just funny
http://www.rfjason.com/?p=33

Becel Heart and Stroke Ride For Heart

Erin and I are riding this weekend in the Becel Heart and Stroke Ride For Heart, its a 25 km ride on the Don Valley Parkinglot but with no cars. It should be fun, and after last weekends rain out, it should be easy. If everything goes well, I imagine next year we will go for the 50 or perhaps the 75?

Anyways if people are feeling like donating, a little would be nice, you can do so at this link its really last minute, but it is a good cause.

Thanks all

Geoff and Erin, Team Miltonians

cycling map of madness

Just try and make sense of that route, I dare you...

Don't Panic

It seems without those two wise words, well truly 1 word, and a two word contraction, we would be lost with the passing of Douglas Adams on May 11th, 2001. He was a literary wisenheimer, and to crib a little, he was able to turn a phrase such that it hung in the air, much like brick shouldn't.


So with a proper morning period of two weeks well in place one fateful May 25, 2001 was a time to celebrate Douglas Adams with Towel day. Towel's being so very useful as one hitchhikes across the Galaxy, in fact the guide itself says:

A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitch hiker can have. Partly it has great practical
value - you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy river Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mindboggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you - daft as a bush, but very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.

More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitch hiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have "lost". What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

So Douglas, where ever your disembodied voice might be, let me this with a now cliche of your own devising.

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

McMaster 2 : Guelph A Bajillion

While this is hardly a significant narrowing of the gap between Guelph attenders and Mac attenders in my family, I'm happy to say my brother Alex has accepted his offer of admissions at McMaster for Engineering. I really tried to stay away from giving him my bias through his selection processes, because I truly believe you have to go to the school that is right for you.

I did happen to think that it was the right program, because even if you don't do eng+society Mac still gives you more non-eng electives that will appeal to his multi-sided personality, but I suspect he may just do society anyways.

Anyways glad he chose Mac, hope he enjoys it, now its Alex and I as McMaster Engineers next to everyone else who went or is going to Guelph...

NP

Realizing past volatility of misunderstood posts, I'd like to be clear, about all my flailing mysteries, Erin is not pregnant.

This has been a public service announcement from the Geoff's shenanigans department.

No quote...

The internet has defeated me, alas :( no quotation, but the sentiment I still like.

There is a mystery a foot in my twitter, bet you all are wondering whats going on. Actually there wasn't a mystery in my twitter until I just said there was, so maybe there isn't, but there is a mystery, mysterious no?

Muwohahahahahaha

The words escape me...

Quite literaly the words I'm looking for are lost on the internet. This morning on the CBC there was a story about the escaped terrorism suspects in the UK. There was a quotation from either a police officer or politician that was very enlightened and I wanted to share it, and praise the insight of the individual. Alas it has eluded all attempts at citation. Hopefully the various CBC archives and audio feeds will be updated by tonight and I can exert a more lengthy search.

In the mean time I will try and share the spirit of what he said, the essence was that, in a knee jerk reaction to terrorist threats there was a series of laws that pushed an already disenfranchised set of youth further away, and helped radicalize them. More over the answer is not more laws.

That was the thrust, but the guys saying it was more real, and more British, but I think it was 'spot on' social policy that stigmatize a group, and laws that strip them of there rights isn't a great way to on board them with civil society, but in fact pushes them to the fringes. Fighting terrorism isn't about always fighting, but we have to make sure that the crimes we punish aren't thought crimes, but real transgressions.

Ciao

Civil Liabilities

It looks like your right to privacy (US 4th Amendment and Section 8 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms Section) and all that unlawful search and seizure is no longer an impediment to 'good' police work.

It gals me to come to the defense of the subject of this article but I'm afraid I must, or else our society would be lessened:

The true measure of a civilized society is how it treats people
accused of crimes.

- Winston Churchill

The key is accused of a crime, while this individual is accused of a most heinous crime, he only stands accused, innocent until proven guilty, and while I suspect from the article that the contents of his computer were damning, without warrant and just cause the officers had no business being on his computer.

The issue is probably two fold, one is of the legal systems ability to find the analogs in precedent involving non-technological situations, this can further be subdivided into an issue of first understanding the technological situation, and then seeing that they are truly analogs of the, well, analog situation.

The second issue is the old 1984 bucket, police state and all that. I don't want to blow this way out of the water, but I think the US under George have done a good job of getting us closer to that state. With secret courts, and the suspension of Habeas Corpus its a dark and slippery slope. I'm ever so glad that the Canadian law was not extended that offered our police similar nebulous power.

We stand at a technological and civil crossroads, where Rights and Freedoms are whittled away in the name of safety, and we wrap ourselves in warm blankets of ignorance, until the day comes where our door is broken down, and we are taken away, only because an officer mistook his burrito for a gut feeling.

The author of this post can be found at reeducation center 01101101 and thinks Mr. Bush is double plus swell good.