Notes on a scandal

Just surfing the tech press and am really put off by the news that both apple and google are storing or locational info.  I mean, as an ad guy I get the desire for more consumer data, you can never get enough.  It's every marketers dream to know exactly what your consumers want so you can sell it to them where they want it, when they want it.  But I always wonder if steve jobs and guy kawasaki get versions of the hardware without these privacy invading add ons.  Because let's face it for all the info I want on the consumers I am targeting, I don't want the marketers targeting me to get my info.

I read that an apple customer actually wrote jobs an electronic mail asking jobs to explain the software and mentioning that he would really hate to have to change to android because they don't "track my location" (which we know now to be untrue).  Jobs' only response: "yes they do".  Cool, great info steve, but what's your reason?

I wonder when exactly, or how a guy like jobs decides to completely sell his soul to corporate success.  Gates, totally get, and now he is atoning by trying to cure diseases and feed the hungry...but jobs seemed like he was the nice guy who you would want to have a beer with.  But while having that beer I never wanted steve's shareholders to know exactly where we were tipping those pints...

Shaking Hands Was The Least of It

So, last night I met Romeo Dallaire. He wrote a pretty famous book called "Shake Hands With the Devil", if you haven't read it do so. Its a powerful account of the civilized world's inability to prevent monstrosities from happening. Now, some of my close friends and I have talked about the rights and wrong of the Rwanadan situation and I'm not sure there will ever be a satisfactory answer, but that's not what I'm really writing about.

So, this man, who looks like he could be my father, stands up in front of an audience of about 1,000 and tells us a horror story. I'm not talking about some Freddy Krugar scare your kids horror story, I'm talking about a real life horror story. It basically goes like this ( and for those of your who read "shake hands with the devil" this won't be new):

General Dallaire was going to northern rwanda when he and his troops came across a kid standing in the middle of the road. Now, normally when a kid is standing in the middle of the road it is to stop travellers so that one of the armies can overwhelm the travellers and either steal their shit or kill them. So, you could imagine the mood of the UN team when they saw this kid. Dallaire ordered them to stop but realizing the danger told his troops to be at the ready.

Once they stopped Dallaire approached the child ( who was about 8, the same age as Dallaire's son back home) and asked him if he was ok. With no ambush and the kid not talking much Dallaire and his troops let their guard down. They started checking the area to make sure the enemy wasnt there, and once the sweep was done the boy was nowhere to be found. Dallaire and the troops dug deeper into the underbrush to find him and discovered a village. Upon closer inspection they discovered the that the villagers had been slaughtered. They went into hut after but to find bodies. The sight was horrible, but the smell was worse...like hamburger left out in the sun for 3 days, it was the smell o rot and decay. In one of the huts they found he young boy who stopped their convoy, he was sitting in a hut with his mom, dad and sister...all of whom were dismembered...like that was his home, or rather, was still his home.

So there was Mr. Dallaire and his troops looking in on the horror of the 20th century and the best they could do was take the child to a refuge camp in a neighboring village.

I had already read this in his book, but hearing him tell this really affected me. I'm no sure if it has changed me, but I can assure you it is the most powerful talk I have attended, and definitely something to think about.

Labour Days

So, we have recently lost a few people at my work. On the way home from one of the going away parties I was listening to the Aesop Rock album Labour Days (he spells it incorrectly because he is american) and it got me to thinking how management in canada treats us lowly workers.

So, before you start crying about the fact that I haven't worked or whatever let me diabuse you of that notion.

I worked retail - for over 2 years I slung shoes for bata. They tried to call it athletes world and sell sport shoes, but at the end of the day it was me doing my best Al Bundy impression of trying to squeeze women into shoes that didn't fit them.

I built hockey arenas all over america. Talk about a pain in the ass...I worked with rednecks and had to share rooms with them.

I drive a truck. Not a moving van, an 18-wheeler, all over north america. Ya, exactly.

I bartended.

I worked in IT.

I work in advertising.

So, ya, I get labour. Listening to the album tonight reminded me how much management takes advantage of labour. Really if you think about it, without labour, management is just nothing. No productivity, no end result. So how is it that management gets away with treating workers poorly?

Oops, call Senator McCarthy, I don' t think I'm allowed to talk about this in public.

Unions, Socialism and the mystifying Stigma

I was at my brother's house this weekend helping him put up a deck. Not the best way to spend a long weekend but I really didn't have anything better to do...I understand that my life is boring so back off. Anyway, we (my father, brother, uncle and a friend of my brother's) worked from about 1pm to about 6pm, mixing concrete, drilling holes, shovelling dirt and generally having a pretty decent time as far as hard labour goes. When we finished the day's work my sister in law had prepared a meal for us as a "thank-you". She made some excellent pulled pork, which I believe was the first time she had ever made it which made it all the more impressive, and some delicious salads. My brother John threw some burgers on the bbq and cracked me a steam whistle - very nice of him to buy my favorite beer since I know he hates it.

We sat eating and drinking and we got around to discussing the garbage strike in Toronto. As an aside you should know that me and my brother constantly argue about the value of unions. So while my brother and the rest start expounding on how the unions are so greedy and how they should be forced back to work or be fired I came to the union's defence, as I often do. As soon as I started my brother says he doesn't want to talk about it because he is bored with the argument that we always have. His friend and girlfriend then pipe up with "unions make people lazy". Now I have heard this before and it shocks me how little people are willing to apply a little bit of logical analysis to the statement. If unions make people lazy then all people in unions must be lazy. Which is false. If they have met lazy union workers and make the leap that all union members are lazy well that is like meeting Hitler and saying all white people are genocidal maniacs.

But, having heard this statement before (always from Laurier grads, one of whom told me that her business prof taught her that - don't even get me started on that) I switch the question to socialism in general. Is socialism bad? I ask. To which they all reply if I like that I may as well be a communist (to which I chuckled) and I asked them what was wrong with that.

The answer rang down like it always does "Communism (and by extention socialism) is a good idea in theory." This is the most inane statement anyone can ever make and yet it continues to be used. Because past communist countries have "failed" then communism doesn't work. Well tell that to the Chinese who own America, or tell it to the Socialist Scandinavians how have the lowest infant mortality rates in the world, or tell it to the Cubans who have more doctors per capita than any "successful" "capitalist" country.

Anyway, just makes me wonder where (besides from imbecillic Laurier profs) people get their irrational fear of socialism. And why is that the people with the most strongly held beliefs against it are so often practicing christians? Could it be that these people are just susceptible to being brainwashed in their early childhood? I remember being told how evil Russia was and how Jesus would protect me; I also remember being told how generous Santa Claus was but I disabused myself of all those notions as I got older.

The Disappearing Male

I just watched a documentary called The Disappearing Male, really a fascinating look at chemicals that we use in everyday life that are harming the male population of the world, and possibly causing the male birthrate to plummet. Now, ladies, before you start celebrating think of the man you are currently with, no think that he would be with a way hotter girl if there were less men...seriously. Anyway, so while watching this doc I got to thinking...why do these chemicals harm us so much?

Well, most of the chemicals they referred to came from petroleum. What is petroleum? Oil. Ok, smartass, what is oil? Oil is basically dead plants and animals that have been rotting in the ground for eons and have turned into a liquid compound.

As we all know humans (and most animals that aren't carnivores) have an aversion to dead bodies. When we think of them we recoil...we don't want to touch a dead body, we don't want to look at dead bodies and we certainly don't want to rub themselves up against a dead body. However, we don't mind using oil every day nonstop.

So, we take these dead animals and plants and burn them to run our car, use them for lube when we fuck or jerk off and we rub it on us to make ourselves more beautiful. And all this affinity for oil is killing off our species. We should have trusted our old instincts and steered clear of all these dead things and focused on live things; fresh vegetables and fruits should have been the source of our technology but our focus on death may indeed end up causing our extinction. Ironic.

Haruki Murakami

When I was living in Japan there was I guy I hung out with.  He was from Melbourne and claimed to not be gay.  I didn't believe him.  But he recommended Haruki Murakami to me, the book was Norweigan Wood.  It changed my life.  You should read his books.

Recent News - ramblings

Ruby Dhalla - some hot MP apparently mistreated her nannies. So, I didn't know who this woman was before this story, even though she was named the 3rd hottest female politician on the planet by Maxim magazine. After following the story for a bit it seems amazing to me that just because someone has been accused of something - and they are a politician - they are automatically assumed to be guilty by the public. That's like someone coming out and saying I kidnapped them for 3 weeks last year and everyone believing it - absurd. I have no loe for politicians, no matter how hot, but I think this story stinks - and I hope they investigate and find out who stands to gain from this woman's crucifixion.

Swine Flu - why do all the most delicious animals have to be so suseptable to the flu? I mean first I couldn't eat chicken and now pork? I will gladly risk swine flu or any other over hyped virus or killer bacteria for a delicious chicken parmsian wrapped in bacon. End of story.

The Recession - did the economy just get better over night? Job rates are up and the TSX is above 10,000 again. Wow, who knew that all that needed to be done was for people to be distracted by a fake pandemic and the recession would go away. Makes me wonder, if we get distracted enough do you think the USA will get out of the middle east? I guess that's asking too much.

New Star Trek Movie - finally a news story I can get behind. Can't wait to see it and it will make my life better.

That's it for news.