Mood:  a-ok

Great impromtu stlye free written breezy style post by  Mike "The Hack" @ the Black Flag Cafe.

Since another American mall style shooting can't bring the brunt of Flaggers to give pause for thought on the needless and senseless and moreover: violent... loss of life, in a serious way,...

seems like violent acts are what turns the waterwheel for what passes for conversation over there, without which, their meagre mainstay diets would have to satisfied with the few morsels coming out of Iraq or Afghanistan.

So now that the laughter from the jokes have died down they figure its time for seriousness...

Perhaps it's time we did the people of Omaha Nebraska a favor and indeed the world and worked towards a prescription for the ills of the world, perhaps as a starting and shooting off point, help eliminate the potential for the type of macabre commenting I had noted in my blog entry a day ago, by proscribing certain types of on-line behavior.

Shooter: dressed in camo (how surprising!),  previously medicated (of note are the number of times Flaggers have repeatedly referred to people and other posters as being: "off their meds") and of course as usual: young.

No one over there would seem to have enough sense to give pause for thought or reflect on the fact that five women seem to have died at the point of a gun in this mall massacre. Almost exactly to the day that we Canadians are all searching ourselves for that moment in time to try and commemorate the lives of 13 women gunned down so many years ago at a Montreal University. Memory may fade but its hard not to let this last incident serve as a shocking remnder.

So ye Flaggers you can joke and post your bathroom wall type humor all you want, not one word of your posts from thereon in deserve to be taken seriously. Mind you

Mike "the Hack" does seem to provide some much needed balance.

Each situation seems to be different when shooters are involved. One will waltz into a room of small school children and hold them hostage, one will barricade him self in a tower and sniper shoot from a distance, another will burst onto the scene through corridor doors and take rooms one by one advancing down a hallway, and yet another will take an elevator to the third floor, wait for the doors to open before announcing hes robbing the store before indiscriminately firing into crowds of workers, shoppers and on-lookers before killing himself. 

That we here in the virtual world of reality, mentally bonded to our locales in our own individual communities could only speculate on our own reactions is almost like a bit of a no-brainer. Its as difficult a choice to imagine as trying to pick out the next target or method of the next shooting incident.  But have you got your jokes handy and ready now?

The common denominator? Drugs? Youth? Ease of access to a weapon? There are a lot of kids like that.

I would say just plain crazy is more like it. And crazy with ease of access to guns purely dont make for a good combination and don't mix as lessons of the last shooting in America show.

But don't let anyone ever try and tell you that the BFC is a turnstile for idiots to yank comments from their joke arsenal to post. That fact would only seem to be self-evident.

 

 - - - - - - - 

Posted by mach1231 at 3:38 PM PST

Updated: Saturday, December 22, 2007 8:32 PM PST

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Mood:  caffeinated

Hong Kong and Kuala Lumpur both moved their airports in 1998 and the Athenians moved theirs in 2001. 

 Meanwhile this article states: after decades of aviation misery, campaigning and protest, it is time to face the truth and admit the problem: Heathrow is in the wrong place....

Problem: Heathrow's in the wrong
Times Online, UK - 23 Nov 2007

Ask Kit Malthouse. In life, as in like politics, you have to know when to stop digging. 

  - - - -

Speaking of digging, when digging for answers and digging for the truth, always be careful, especially when it comes down to having to answer to male superiors. We've seen this before.

Ms. Turpel-Lafond, a Saskatchewan judge who took a leave from the bench to help rebuild B.C.'s troubled child-protection system has had her request for adequate funds denied. I take it the upbraiding she gave the government was taken 'that' type of , seriously.

 Child advocate's cash request denied

 - -  -

I was surprised at the amount of discussion taking place over the airports problems. Whats stopping peoples from discussing these other things. Are they too far from home to matter?

Five Best Airport to City Rail Connections

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Heathrow Airport passengers could find themselves with a wider choice of options for travel to Europe in the future, with plans drawn up for a rail service. Heathrow to Paris @ 186 MPH?

Plans to link Heathrow to Paris

 Don't even think about it

Posted by mach1231 at 12:31 PM PST

Updated: Friday, December 7, 2007 12:48 PM PST

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Mood:  bright

Leading Canadian building owners, developers and design professionals know how to deliver large scale and permanent reductions in GreenHouseGas emissions.

Over the past five years, these professionals have designed, constructed and operated hundreds of green, energy-efficient buildings across Canada with the support of Natural Resources Canada’s Commercial Building Incentive Program (CBIP).

Recently-announced federal initiatives give no meaningful support to the building industry and cancel the CBIP funding that has helped improve energy performance of buildings since 1998.

“The government should build on the demonstrated success of CBIP rather than canceling it, and not putting anything new in its place,” .. “..we urge the government to entrench a stronger federal role in green building development and support the momentum of the Canadian building industry.”

http://www.cagbc.org

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"I think it is just foolish to try to exempt the big polluters from taking meaningful action" - John Baird, Canadas Environment Minister speaks 

-  -

Greenhouse-gas reductions likely overestimated, panel says

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070921.wharperenvironment0922/BNStory/National/home/ 

OTTAWA — The Conservative government is overestimating the amount of greenhouse-gas reductions that will be achieved through its climate-change policies, a federally funded panel of business and environmental experts reports.

September 21, 2007

Posted by mach1231 at 2:34 PM PST

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Mood:  cheeky

Mommy Santa is wearing lipstick! -lol. Just a little added joke about the song that Mom was seen kissing Santa Clause.

-  - 

While researching for my last blog entry, I chanced upon a PR release disguised as story that told how L'Oreal Paris has improved their web site with an extensive and sophisticated diagnostic tool.

This interactive features a tool that prompts users to answer a series of questions, guided by videos of L'Oreal Paris experts. Once the questions are completed, a complex algorithm determines a customized solution from thousands of possibilities.

 I was just wondering though, how do users know if they are not actually being answered by "ARTIFICIAL" intelligence?

Lol.

 - -

 Ha ha...dirty Santa..."It's all over the Internet now!!!!!!!!"

Bad Santa

 Microsoft Spikes Dirty Santa Bot

Microsoft Silences Santa Sex Talk

-  -

Definintely, 'not what you think' Dept. material. 

Posted by mach1231 at 12:16 PM PST

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Mood:  don't ask

More proof that we need a National Youth and Child Welfare and Safety Minister.

Remember the Hong Kong company that manufactured millions of poisonous toy beads in mainland China? No? Me neither all the  warnings issued over toxic toys and recalls has been a absolute blur, but in any case they have issued a public apology.

Company that made toxic beads apologizes

Wow. I dont know how heartfelt such an apology might be, or the extent of its reach. But does anyone actually believe a  PR supplied type of apology would honestly SUFFICE?!

Mind you when we read that China is tearing down some food facilities , we hope we are not being dumbed down or treated like a Motley Fool.

Because have you heard  of www.americanmadetoysonly.com yet there China?

While you are busy with the wrecking ball and opening curtains for 2008 Olys, we hope you are as concerned about chemicals in children's cosmetics as everyone else seems to be:

Annual report lists unsafe toys as holiday approaches

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Well even as  admit I have no idea there would even be cosmetics for kids as toys, its not a problem for just the wee ones. The adults in the room want to set an example as well-lol

Newly Launched Skincare Company Teaches Kids How to Prevent Colds

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Dangerous Beauty: Taming Toxics in Everyday Cosmetics

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Img courtesy ragingrouge.com

...happy safe shopping...uhm(!!!)

Posted by mach1231 at 11:53 AM PST

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Mood:  don't ask

RYP what's this story? Led Zeppelin hasn't toured since 73 and talks of a reunion are largely speculation, rumour and innuendo (kinda like yellowcake from Nigeria and lost WMD's huh?)

 -  - - -

I think I might just start on a personally approved mission of sorts to promote Robbie Young P's "Black Flag Cafe"

(sounds kinda like a name for a new super fried cool brand of hot chile sauce doesn't it?)
far and wide as a great place for losers to hang out, get accepted and post and vent their frustrations about life.

While many people might stereotypically complain about an excess of excess holiday shoppers, long lineups and stores running out of the toy

"my little Johnny really really really wanted",.. we usually don't worry too much as we are going to a mall about being shot.

Nine dead in Nebraska shooting

While Flaggers view the story and event to cap each other with their wit and reserve placemats for themselves to use the event as an excuse to engage in faux imitation gallows humour (gallows humour involves larger amounts of people dying and is typically used when the situation is particularily grave or dire with humour as a healthy valve or release,) and crack wise, I guess we are supposed to presume some of them have "earned" that right.

And how? Is the right to  preserve a sanctity for death something that someone should have to  "earn"?

While the site may not worry about optics, it definitely looks like the posts are made in poor taste. What medals of honour or badges of courage handed out also serve as free passes to make popcorn light jokes about people dying? A passport stamp? The events are both tragic and recent, and the jokes fresh as footprints in a newly minted snow. Theres something about this that bodes ill.

The Flaggers may not like it, but they are inviting the world into their living rooms to watch the events as told by tv/internet news to witness their comments.

They should be promoting themselves as a place where depressed , sporadically employed and troublesome youths with split parents can come and gain acceptance and comraderie. 

On Weather and Tragedy

http://khastv.com/blog/?p=289 

 - -

Guess they wont talk too much about Springsteens Grammy nod (Grammy subplots) (although hes hated at the Flag, he oughta write a song about this shooter in that Tom Joad I Don't Like Mondays kind of way!), an ABBA Museum in Sweden(good clean sporting fun for them) Plans unveiled for Abba 'museum' and singer Frank Sinatra making his way to being on a U.S>postage stamp. Frank Sinatra to feature on postage stamp

Maybe they could even tell us how the phrase Number One with a Bullet came into use on music trade magazine Billboard while they are it. In between flying jokes that is! 

Posted by mach1231 at 10:36 AM PST

Updated: Thursday, December 6, 2007 12:14 PM PST

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YouTube - In Memory of Larisa Fayed

Posted by mach1231 at 12:52 AM PST

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Mood:  don't ask

A truck driver was in the news today for an accident that happened about an hours drive from here.

I was initially all over the press via email in an attempt to try and garner more national acclaim for the story; more indepth coverage because I wanted people far and wide to be aware of the dangers of this highway.

Especially since looking out my window to the street below from where I live affords a view of this very same highway where this accident took place.

Because accidents are always in the news and you can just as easily forget about one as easily as you remember hearing about another.

Somewhere; someplace. 

Our retention for odd assortments of facts doesn't allow for easy compression for retrieval later for just when it's handy.

But when you hear a story about a story, or a story within a story, or when backdrop is created in a story, put some focus on it...enlarging detail, its not as easy to forget.

This is a  highway already notoriously dubbed the Highway of Tears, in light of the fact of the high number of native women the highway has seemingly swallowed whole; never to be seen or heard from again; missing women.

And now it has taken the lives of 4 children and their mother.

With the weather predicted to be the "worst in 15 years", my instigation to further spotlight cover this story grew from an impetus to share the information that this seems to be a deadly highway of sorts; in more ways than one; and if more people knew about it, the more they might take care when traveling.

Apparently, the driver is quite devastated even though we are left honestly to presume he is not at fault.  This last accident is just the very latest in a string of incidents that would make anyone question their resolve to continue life. His own son has suffered permanent brain injury from an auto accident and his older sister took her own life some time later.

Even though the community from which they are from may be 3 hours or less from here, the accident scene an hour away, its hard not to get the feeling that;.. as we drive and go about our business and routines, getting from one place to another in the turbulence of winters worst bitter cold, the seasons piling snow, fog, blizzards and icy roads....that there are not a lot of people concerned with selfish pursuits of getting somewhere in a hurry or complaining too much about it.

In my mind, there doesn't even seem to be a corner that has not been turned, a snowbank not left curtailed in a turn without being checked twice first,  without the gravity of thought weighed towards considering how instantaneously we can be here one minute and gone the next.

There may even be hundreds of people arriving to come and pay respects, say hello or goodbye, pat a shoulder, wipe an eye.

It's certainly not too hard to imagine.

Posted by mach1231 at 11:55 PM PST

Updated: Thursday, December 6, 2007 12:55 AM PST

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Mood:  chatty

Canada’s Policy on Immigrants Brings Backlog

Twenty percent of people living in Canada are foreign-born, a proportion second in the world only to Australia.

On Census day, May 16, 2006, almost 20 per cent of the population, or 6,186,950 people, were foreign born.

And for starters, for the first time, the proportion of foreign-born immigrants from Asian and Middle Eastern countries (41 per cent) have outstripped those of European heritage ..

I suppose the main reason why this is news breaking and not making is the fact that the level of this percentage of citizen immigration has not been duplicated since the 1930's, over 75 years ago.

More than one million immigrants arrived in Canada in the last five years, in places such as Richmond BC outside of Vancouver the number of citizen residents who were not born in Canada reflect most accurately the statistics above. Much the same as Greater Toronto where up to half the population is born out of Canada.

Half of GTA foreign-born: Census

In fact, the brunt of these growth spurts are being absorbed by the three largest cities in Canada (Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver) which are struggling to cope with a flood of newcomers primarily from places like China, India, the Philippines and Pakistan.

(Of course as a corrolary to all this impressive growth, on a sidebar note; and with this population growth contributing to multi-ethnic vitality are reports of the usual pockets of racism.)

But taking the last ten years of influx: Canada’s foreign-born population growth rate quadrupled the rate of the Canadian-born population.

But is there something else lost in this? Sure how about the number of Canadians going the other way. According to APFC, the rough equivalent of nine percent of Canadas population live abroad.

For comparison sakes, this is the statistical equivalent of being the 4th largest diaspora in the world - outpacing even China and iNdia.

The lions share of these Canadian foreign passport holders and Canadas largest ex-pat group outside of the U.S. are enclaved in the mountainous archipelago known as Hong Kong. Rough estimates put that number as between 200 to 300 hundred thousand dual-Citizenship holders.

But take an average well educated girl like Amy Wong who speaks Mandarin, Cantonese French and English who cant find a job in Vancouver with these language skills but finds opportunities in Hong Kong : "everywhere".

Is all of this lost opportunity? Of course it is. When a Ryerson University graduate goes on to gain exclusive rights to open up 25 Comfort Inns across China by 2010, but can't find wallpaper or furnishings sourced by Canadian companies, it's probably about time to take stock of our assets and our tally's.

Source for all this wonderful information?

Business journalist Andrea Mandel-Campbell, a veteran journalist specializing in international business and global competitiveness,  who traveled to China last year on a media fellowship the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada and author of a new book entitled:

Why Mexicans Don't Drink Molson: Rescuing Canadian Business from the Suds of Global Obscurity

http://www.thecommentary.ca/ontheline/20070430b.html 

  --

Thanks for visiting the Cafe today. Like most immigrants and visitors to our great country, you knew you'd at least get something new though didn't you?

:)

Its not the first time someone has stated a matter of factly that Canada stands to lose if it doesn't stand out itself more to compete internationally in the global marketplace. Good place to start? What a no-brainer. Tap the aboriginal population of course.

  - -

Africa: The Investment Destination for Double-digit Growth Rates

CANADIANS ABROAD
Toronto Star,  Canada - 14 Nov 2007
This weekly feature asks Canadian expatriates what it's like living abroad

UAE - one of world’s most attractive expatriate destinations, in ...

Tourism Vital for Dubai

Three Names the World Should Know

-  - 

Ciao!

Posted by mach1231 at 6:54 PM PST

Updated: Tuesday, December 4, 2007 10:13 PM PST

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Mood:  special

Attention News Editors:

The Learning Partnership publishes action agenda on education

Federal and provincial policy makers, educators
and community leaders must develop a more collaborative and cohesive strategy
to address demographic challenges that pose serious risks to Canada's public
education system.

This integrated approach emerged as a key theme from a national series of
roundtable discussions, which examined the effect of immigration as well as
Aboriginal and rural populations on Canadian classrooms.

Hosted by school boards, universities, educational associations and
community organizations, the 11 roundtables have produced an "action agenda"
designed to enhance educational outcomes among these diverse groups and, in
turn, improve the economic prospects of individuals, families and the nation
as a whole. A summary of policy recommendations can be found at
http://www.thelearningpartnership.ca. 

Established in 1993, The Learning Partnership is a national
not-for-profit organization dedicated to championing a strong public education
system in Canada through innovative programs, credible research, policy
initiatives and public engagement. 

Posted by mach1231 at 10:25 PM PST

Updated: Saturday, December 1, 2007 10:39 PM PST

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